April 12, 1966…In an eerie real-life recreation of the duo's single from two years earlier, Jan Berry of Jan & Dean crashed his Corvette into a parked truck on Beverly Hills' Whittier Drive, near a stretch of road in Los Angeles known as "Dead Man's Curve." He required four years of rehabilitation to be able to talk, and it was a full decade before he could perform live again.
After you know this story, it's impossible not to think of it when you hear the song. Especially that spoken part in the middle of it...
