Today’s classic Girl Group song of the day is another obscure one by another obscure group but one with a strong connection to a music legend.
“The One You Can’t Have” was released in 1963 by a group called the Honeys. The Honeys were sisters Diane and Marilyn Rovell and cousin Ginger Blake. They formed, as the Rovell Sisters, when they were in high school and were discovered on the Southern California talent show circuit by producer Gary Usher. Usher produced several of the surf music groups of the time, including the Hondels and the Surfaris, and later went on to produce the Byrds. He thought the Rovell Sisters would do well as a female surf music group and featured them (as the Usherettes) on his 1963 single “Three Surfer Girls.”
While performing at a Hollywood club called Pandora’s Box, the girls met the Beach Boys, who were on the same bill. Marilyn and Beach Boy Brian Wilson fell in love and (in December of 1964) got married, which is a long story in itself. Brian also took creative control of Marilyn’s group, renamed them the Honeys, and wrote and produced several singles for them on the Capitol and Warner Brothers labels.
Unfortunately, none of the Honeys tracks saw more than modest regional success. That’s a shame, because Brian, on those records, faithfully reproduced the West Coast Wall of Soundish Girl Group sound. Case in point is “The One You Can’t Have,” which is an up-tempo shuffle driven by Hal Blaine’s drums and the backing of the rest of the Wrecking Crew. Brian wrote and produced it and it’s a classic Girl Group record. (Brian also references himself in the lyrics: “And Brian’s awful sweet to me,” right there in the second line of the first verse.)
Outside of the Honeys, the girls sang backup vocals on a number of Beach Boys tracks (including “Be True to Your School”) and on several songs by Jan and Dean (“The New Girl in School,” “Dead Man’s Curve,” and “The Little Old Lady from Pasadena”). When Ginger Blake left the group in 1969, Diane and Marilyn continued for a bit under the name of American Spring, with Brian Wilson again acting as songwriter and producer for their sole album, 1972’s Spring. The sisters broke up a few years later but reunited in the early ’80s for two comeback albums that didn’t go anywhere.
Brian and Marilyn divorced in 1979. Marilyn got custody of daughters Carnie and Wendy (later to be two thirds of the ’90s vocal group Wilson Philips). and became a successful real estate broker in Encino, California. She’s still there today, aged 75.
