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The Beach Boys.
A short history by David of the Beached Boys
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their career as the most popular surf band in the nation, the Beach Boys
finally emerged by 1966 as America's pre-eminent pop group, the only act
able to challenge
(for a brief time) the
overarching success of the Beatles with both mainstream listeners and the
critical community. From their 1961 debut with the regional hit "Surfin,"
the three Wilson brothers -- Brian, Dennis, and Carl -- plus cousin Mike
Love and friend Al Jardine constructed the most intricate, gorgeous
harmonies ever heard from a pop band. With Brian's studio proficiency
growing by leaps and bounds during the mid-'60s, the Beach Boys also
proved to be one of the best-produced groups of the '60s, exemplified by
their 1966 peak with the Pet Sounds LP and the number one single "Good
Vibrations." Though Brian's escalating drug use and obsessive desire to
trump the Beatles (by recording the perfect LP statement) eventually led
to a nervous breakdown after he heard Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club
Band, the group soldiered on long into the 1970s and '80s, with Brian only
an inconsistent participant. The band's post-1966 material is often
maligned (if it's recognized at all), but the truth is the Beach Boys
continued to make great music well into the '70s. Displayed best on 1970's
Sunflower, each member revealed individual talents never fully developed
during the mid-'60s -- Carl became a solid, distinctive producer and
Brian's replacement as nominal bandleader, Mike continued to provide a
visual focus as the frontman for live shows, and Dennis developed his own
notable songwriting talents. Though legal wranglings and marginal oldies
tours during the '90s often obscured what made the Beach Boys great, the
band's unerring ability to surf the waves of commercial success and
artistic development during the '60s made them America's first, best rock
band.
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The origins of the group lie in
Hawthorne, CA, a southern suburb of Los Angeles situated close to the
Pacific coast. The three sons of a part-time song plugger and occasionally
abusive father, Brian, Dennis, and Carl grew up a just few miles from the
ocean -- though only Dennis had any interest in surfing itself. The three
often harmonized together as youths, spurred on by Brian's fascination
with '50s vocal acts like the Four Freshmen and the Hi-Lo's. Their cousin
Mike Love often joined in on the impromptu sessions, and the group gained a fifth with the addition of Brian's high-school football teammate, Al
Jardine. His parents helped rent instruments (with Brian on bass, Carl on
guitar, Dennis on Drums) and studio time to record "Surfin'," a
novelty number written by Brian and
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Mike. The single, initially released in 1961
on Candix and billed to the Pendletones (a musical paraphrase of the
popular Pendleton shirt), prompted a little national chart action and
gained the renamed Beach Boys a contract with Capitol. The group's
negotiator with the label, the Wilsons' father, Murry, also took over
as manager for the band. Before the release of any material for
Capitol, however, Jardine left the band to attend college in the
Midwest. A friend of the Wilsons, David Marks, replaced him.
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Finally, in mid-1962 the Beach
Boys released their major-label debut, Surfin' Safari. The title track, a
more accomplished novelty single than its predecessor, hit the Top 20 and
helped launch the surf rock craze just beginning to blossom around
Southern California (thanks to artists like Dick Dale, Jan & Dean, the
Chantays, and dozens more). A similarly themed follow-up, Surfin' U.S.A.,
hit the Top Ten in early 1963 before Jardine returned from school and
resumed his place in the group. By that time, the Beach Boys had
recorded their first two albums, a pair of 12-track collections
that added a few novelty songs to the hits |
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they were packaged around. Though Capitol policy
required the group to work with a studio producer, Brian quickly took over
the sessions and began expanding the group's range beyond simple surf
rock. |
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By the end of 1963, the Beach Boys had recorded three full LPs,
hit the Top Ten as many times, and toured incessantly. Also, Brian
began to grow as a producer, best documented on the third Beach
Boys LP, Surfer
Girl. Though surf songs
still dominated the album, "Catch a Wave," the title track, and
especially "In My Room" presented a |
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giant leap in songwriting, production, and group
harmony -- especially astonishing considering the band had been recording
for barely two years. Brian's intense scrutiny of Phil Spector's famous
Wall of Sound productions was paying quick dividends and revealed his
intuitive, unerring depths of musical knowledge.
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The following year,
"I Get Around" became the first number one hit for the Beach Boys.
Riding a crest of popularity, the late 1964 LP Beach Boys Concert
spent four weeks at the top of the album charts, just one of five
Beach Boys LPs simultaneously on the charts. The group also
undertook promotional tours of Europe, but the pressures and
time-constraints proved too much for Brian. At the end of the
year, he decided to quit the touring band and concentrate on
studio productions. (Glen Campbell toured with the group
briefly, then friend and colleague Bruce Johnston became Brian's
permanent replacement.) |
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With the
Beach Boys as his musical messengers to the world, Brian began working
full-time in the studio, writing songs and enlisting the cream of Los
Angeles session players to record instrumental backing tracks before
Carl, Dennis, Mike, and Al returned to add vocals. The single "Help
Me, Rhonda" became the Beach Boys' second chart-topper in early 1965.
On the group's seventh studio LP, The Beach Boys Today!, Brian's
production skills hit
another level entirely. In the rock era's first flirtation with an
extended album-length statement, side two of the record presented a
series of down-tempo ballads, arranged into a suite that stretched the
group's lyrical concerns |
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beyond youthful
infatuation and into more adult notions of love. |
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Two more LPs followed in 1965,
Summer Days (And Summer Nights!!) and Beach Boys' Party. The first
featured "California Girls," one of the best fusions of Brian's production
mastery, infectious melodies, and gorgeous close harmonies (it's still his
personal favorite song). However, dragging down those few moments of
brilliance were novelty tracks like "Amusement Parks USA," "Salt Lake
City," and "I'm Bugged at My Old Man" that appeared to be a step back
from Today. When Capitol asked for a Beach Boys record to sell
at Christmas, the live-in-the-studio vocal jam session Beach Boys'
Party resulted, and sold incredibly
well after the single "Barbara
Ann" became a surprise hit. |
In a larger sense though, both
of these LPs were stopgaps as Brian prepared for production on what he
hoped would be the Beach Boys' most effective musical statement yet.
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In late 1965, the Beatles released Rubber Soul. Amazed at the high
song quality and overall cohesiveness of the album, Brian began
writing songs -- with help from lyricist Tony Asher -- and
producing sessions for a song suite charting a young man's growth
to emotional maturity. Though Capitol was resistant to an album
with few obvious hits, the group spent more time working on the
vocals and harmonies than any other previous project. The result,
released in May 1966 as Pet Sounds, more than justified the
effort. It's still one of the best-produced and most
influential rock LPs ever released, culminating years of Brian's
perfectionist productions and songwriting.
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Critics praised Pet Sounds, but the new direction failed to impress
American audiences. Though it reached the Top Ten, Pet Sounds missed a
gold certificate (the first to do so since the group's debut LP).
Conversely, worldwide reaction was not just positive but jubilant. In
England, the album hit number two and earned the Beach Boys honors for
best group in year-end polls by NME -- above even the Beatles, hardly
slouches themselves with the releases of "Paperback Writer"/"Rain" and
Revolver. |
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The
Beach Boys' next single, "Good Vibrations," had originally been
written for the Pet Sounds sessions, though Brian removed it from the
song list to give himself more time for production. He resumed working
on it after the completion of Pet Sounds, eventually devoting up to
six months (and three different studios) on the single. Released in
October 1966, "Good Vibrations" capped off the year as the group's
third number one single and still stands as one of the best singles of
all time. Throughout late 1966 and early 1967, Brian worked feverishly
on the next Beach Boys LP -- a project named Dumb Angel, but later
titled SMiLE, that
promised to be as great an
artistic leap beyond
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Pet Sounds as that album had
been from Today. He drafted Van Dyke Parks, an eccentric lyricist and
session man, as his songwriting partner, and recorded reams of tape
containing increasingly fragmented tracks that grew ever more
speculative as the months wore on. Already wary of Brian's
increasingly artistic leanings and drug experimentation, the other
Beach Boys grew hostile when called in to the studio to add vocals for
Parks lyrics like, "A blind class aristocracy/Back through the opera
glass you see/The pit and the pendulum drawn/Columnaded ruins
domino/Canvas the town and brush the backdrop" (from "Surf's Up"). A
rift soon formed between the band and Brian; they felt his intake of
marijuana and LSD had clouded his judgment, while he felt they were
holding him back from the coming psychedelic era. |
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As recording for SMiLE
dragged on into spring 1967, Brian began working fewer hours. For
the first time in the Beach Boys' career, he appeared unsure of
his direction. If SMiLE ever appeared salvageable, those hopes
were dashed in May, when Brian officially canceled the project --
just a few weeks before the release of the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's
Lonely Hearts Club Band. In August, the group finally released a
new single, "Heroes and Villains." Very similar to the fragmentary
style of "Good Vibrations," though not so commercially immediate,
it missed the Top Ten. That fall, the group convened at Brian's
Bel Air mansion-turned-studio and recorded new versions of several
SMiLE songs plus a few new recordings and re-emerged with
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Smiley Smile. Carl
summed up the LP as "a bunt instead of a grand slam," and its
near-complete lack of cohesiveness all but destroyed the group's
reputation for forward-thinking pop. |
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As the Beatles were ushering
in the psychedelic age, the Beach Boys stalled with the all-important
teen crowd, who quickly began to see the group as conservative,
establishment throwbacks. The perfect chance to stem the tide, a
headlining spot at the pioneering Monterey Pop Festival in summer
1967, was squandered. Though the Beach Boys regrouped quickly -- the
back-to-basics Wild Honey LP appeared before the end of 1967 -- their
hopes of becoming the world's pre-eminent pop group with both hippies
and critics had fizzled in a matter of months. |
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All this incredible
promise wasted made fans, critics, and radio programmersundeniably bitter toward
future product. Predictably, both Wild Honey and 1968's Friends
suffered with all
three audiences. They
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deliberately under-produced, including song fragments and
recording-session detritus often left in the mix, the skeletal
blue-eyed soul of Wild Honey and the laid-back orchestral pop of
Friends made them favorites only after fans realized the Beach
Boys were a radically different group in 1968 than in 1966.
Sparked by the Top 20 hit "Do It Again" -- a
song that saw the first
shades of the group as an oldies act -- 1969's 20/20 did
marginally better. Still, it was too little too late. Capitol dropped the band soon after. One
year later, the Beach Boys signed to Reprise. |
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The first LP for
Brother/Reprise was 1970's Sunflower, a surprisingly strong
album featuring a return to the gorgeous harmonies of the
mid-'60s and many songs written by different members of the
band. Surf's Up, titled after a reworked song originally intended for SMiLE, followed in 1971. Though frequently
lovable, the wide range of material on Surf's Up displayed not
a band but a conglomeration of individual interests. During
sessions for the album, Dennis put his hand through a plate
glass window and was unable to play
drums. Early in 1972,
the band hired drummer Ricky Fataar and guitarist Blondie
Chaplin, two members of a South African rock band named the
Flame |
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(Carl had
produced
their self-titled
debut for Brother Records the previous year).
The next album
was Carl and the Passions "So Tough". This was the first album
featuring Ricky and Blondie, (Bruce Johnston having left
the band after Surf's Up). It was certainly not "immediate" to
most listeners but did feature
Carl's "Marcella". This is a favorite of many Beach Boys fans
and years later Brian would feature this track in his "live"
shows as a tribute to his brother. After this album came
"Holland". A big budget was put forward by the record
company to fly the Beach Boys,
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entourage
and studio out to said country to record the album. Brian of course stayed
at home as he wrestled with his own personal demons. When the "finished"
product was presented to the studio, who then "diplomatically" said we
don't hear the single, Van Dyke Parks had to (as the story goes)
practically force Brian back into the studio to finish a track they had
been working on together some years before called "Sail on Sailor". This
proved to be one of the Beach Boys enduring masterpieces. However it was
never going to be enough to save the album from the savaging it recieved from the
critics. |
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Perhaps a bit
gun-shy, the Beach Boys essentially retired from recording during the
mid-'70s. Instead, the band concentrated on grooming their live act, which
quickly grew to become an incredible experience. It was a good move,
considering the Beach Boys could lay claim to more hits than any other
'60s rock act on the road. The Beach Boys in Concert, their third live
album in total, appeared in 1973. |
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mid-1974, Capitol Records went to the vaults and issued a repackaged hits
collection, Endless Summer. Both band and label watched, dumbfounded, as
the double LP hit number one, spent almost three years on the charts, and
went gold. Endless Summer capitalized on a growing fascination with oldies
rock that had made Sha Na Na, American Graffiti, and Happy Days big hits.
Rolling Stone, never the most
friendly magazine to the
group, named the Beach Boys its Band of the Year at the end of the
year. Another collection, Spirit of America, hit the Top Ten in 1974,
and the Beach Boys were hustled into the studio to begin new
recordings. |
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Trumpeted by
the barely true marketing campaign "Brian's Back!," 1976's 15 Big Ones
balanced a couple of '50s oldies with some justifiably exciting Brian
Wilson oddities like "Had to Phone Ya." It also hit the Top Ten and went
gold, despite many critical misgivings. Brian took a much more involved
position for the following year's The Beach Boys Love You (it was almost
titled Brian Loves You and released as a solo album). In marked contrast
to the fatalistic early-'70s pop of "Til I Die" and others, Brian
sounded
positively jubilant on gruff proto-synth
pop numbers like "Let Us Go on This Way" and "Mona." However
idiosyncratic compared to what oldies fans expected of the Beach
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Boys, Love You was the group's best album in years.
(A suite of beautiful, tender ballads on side two was quite reminiscent of
1965's Today.)
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After 1979's
M.I.U. Album, the group signed a large contract with CBS that stipulated
Brian's involvement on each album. However, his brief return to the
spotlight ended with two contrasting efforts, L.A. (Light Album) and
Keepin' the Summer Alive. The Beach Boys began splintering by the end of
the decade, with financial mismanagement by Mike Love's brothers Stan and
Steve fostering tension between him and the Wilsons. By 1980, both Dennis
and Carl had left the Beach Boys for solo careers. (Dennis had
already released his first album, Pacific Ocean Blue, in 1977,
and Carl released his eponymous debut in 1981.)
Brian was removed from
the group in |
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1982
after his weight ballooned to over 300 pounds, though the tragic drowning
death of Dennis in 1983 helped bring the group back together. In 1985, the
Beach Boys released a self-titled album which returned them to the Top 40
with "Getcha Back." It would be the last proper Beach Boys album of the
'80s, however.
Brian had been
steadily improving in both mind and body during the mid-'80s. This was
largely down to the
work of Dr Eugene Landy. Landy
can be given credit for pulling Brian back from the brink.
Unfortunately he then went on to exploit his position to try to |
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garner greater fame and
fortune for himself. He is credited for working with Brian on the
autobiography Wouldn't It Be Nice and supposedly wrote lyrics for
Brian's first solo album, 1988's Brian Wilson. When the Beach Boys
performed the single "Kokomo," from the soundtrack to Cocktail, which
hit number one in the
U.S. late that year, Landy apparently prevented Brian from being part of
the project or from appearing in the video because he (Landy) wouldn't
recieve any royalties. The group later sued Brian, more to force Landy out
of the picture than anything, and Mike Love later sued Brian for
songwriting royalties (Brian had frequently admitted Love's involvement on
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of them). |
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Despite the
many quarrels, the Beach Boys kept touring during the early '90s, and Mike
and Brian actually began writing songs together in 1995. Instead of a new
album though, the Beach Boys returned with Stars and Stripes, Vol. 1, a
collection of remade hits with country stars singing lead and the group
adding backing vocals. Also, a Brian Wilson documentary titled I Just
Wasn't Made for These Times aired on the Disney Channel, with an
accompanying soundtrack featuring spare renditions of Beach Boys classics
by Brian himself. Just as the band appeared to be pulling together for a
proper studio album though, Carl died of cancer in 1998. |
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Ten years after
his first solo album, Brian became aware of his immense influence on the
alternative rock community; he worked with biggest-fans Sean O'Hagan (of
the High Llamas) and Andy Paley on a series of recordings. One night,
Brian and his second wife Melinda happened to go into a club
where a band called
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the Wondermints were performing versions of old Beach Boys' songs.
Brian had been thinking for some time about going on the road again and
the band provided the catalyst for setting the process in motion. The
wondermints on board plus some other notable musical talents, saw Brian
perform for two triumphant nights at the "Roxy Theatre", West Hollywood,
in front of some of the music industry's most famous people, and many
others more ordinary yet lucky enough to be witnessing a piece of history.
The energy of these performances have been captured on the album "Live at
the Roxy Theatre" but greater triumphs
were to follow. Firstly the
Pet Sounds album in |
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it's entirety was toured to the delight of fans worldwide,
then the seemingly impossible happened! Brian finally came to terms with
his lost masterpiece. "Smile" was finally finished and put together in a
cohesive order and performed "live" for the first time at the Royal
Festival Hall, London in front of an astonished crowd. It recieved
standing ovations. Better was to come later that year as Brian finally
won a "Grammy" for the "Fire-Mrs O Leary's cow" sequence in smile. |
Meanwhile the
Beach Boys, featuring Mike Love and Bruce Johnston continue to tour as
does a band featuring Al Jardine, called "Friends and family", but rather
sporadically. Although the various remaining scions of what was possibly
the greatest band on Earth have little to do with each other these days,
in every fans heart, there is always that hope that perhaps, just once
more there will be, "live," on stage, "THE BEACH BOYS".
This is the Legacy of the Beach Boys. This is what the Beached Boys hope
to keep alive in a very small way. Please step inside our site and have a
look. Also please take a quick peek at our gig guide and look out for the
signs - COMING SOON TO A BEACH NEAR YOU!
The Beached Boys!
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