Biography by John Bush
Beginning 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.
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
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, Murray, 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.
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
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.
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 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.
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.)
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 beyond youthful infatuation and into more
adult notions of love.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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 a
distinctly inferior follow-up, 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 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.
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.
All
this incredible promise wasted made fans, critics, and radio
programmers undeniably bitter toward future product. Predictably, both Wild Honey and 1968's Friends
suffered with all three audiences. They survive as interesting records
nevertheless; 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, Capitol dropped the band soon after. One year later, the Beach Boys signed to Reprise.
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 (Carl had produced their
self-titled debut for Brother Records the previous year).
Carl and the Passions - So Tough,
the first album released with Fataar and Chaplin in the band, descended
into lame early-'70s AOR. For the first time, a Beach Boys album
retained nothing from their classic sound. Brian's mental stability
wavered from year to year, and he spent much time in his mansion with
no wish to even contact the outside world. He occasionally contributed
to the songwriting and session load, but was by no means a member of
the band anymore (he rarely even appeared on album covers or
promotional shots). Though it's unclear why Reprise felt ready to take
such a big risk, the label authorized a large recording budget for the
next Beach Boys album. After shipping most of the group's family and
entourage (plus an entire studio) over to Amsterdam, the Beach Boys
re-emerged in 1973 with Holland. The LP scraped the bottom
rungs of the Top 40, and the single "Sail On, Sailor" (with vocals by
Chaplin) did receive some FM radio airplay. Still, Holland's muddy sound did nothing for the aging band, and it earned scathing reviews.
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.
Then, in 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.
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, Bria 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 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.)
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 dismal 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 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, though
the rest of the group grew suspicious of his mentor, Dr. Eugene Landy.
Landy was a dodgy psychiatrist who reportedly worked wonders with the
easily impressionable Brian but also practically took over his life. He
collaborated with Brian on the autobiography Wouldn't It Be Nice and
wrote lyrics for Brian's first solo album, 1988's Brian Wilson.
Critics and fans enjoyed Wilson's return to the studio, but the charts
were unforgiving, especially with attention focused on the Beach Boys
once more. The single "Kokomo," from the soundtrack to Cocktail, hit number one in the U.S. late that year, prompting a haphazard collection named Still Cruisin'.
The group also 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 most of them).
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.
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. Again, good
intentions failed to carry through as the recordings were ditched in
favor of another overly produced, mainstream-slanted work, Imagination.
By early 1999, no less than three Beach Boys-connected units were
touring the country — a Brian Wilson solo tour, the "official" Beach
Boys led by Mike Love, and the "Beach Boys Family" led by Al Jardine.
In 2000, Capitol instituted a long-promised reissue campaign, focusing
on the group's long out of print '70s LPs.
Content provided by All Music Guide. Copyright 2008 All Media Guide, LLC.
