the Beach Boys

the Beach Boys, American rock group whose dulcet melodies and distinctive vocal mesh defined the 1960s youthful idyll of sun-drenched southern California. Initially perceived as a potent pop act—celebrants of the surfing and hot rod culture of the Los Angeles Basin during the 1960s—the Beach Boys and lead singer-bassist-producer Brian Wilson later gained greater respect as muses of post-World War II American suburban angst. Notwithstanding sales of 70 million albums, their greatest achievement was their ability to express the bittersweet middle-class aspirations of those who had participated in America’s great internal westward movement in the 1920s. The Beach Boys extolled the promise of a fragile California dream that their parents had struggled to sustain.

Formation of the Beach Boys and first releases

Growing up in suburban Los Angeles (Hawthorne), the Wilson brothers were encouraged by their parents to explore music. Their father, Murry, who operated a small machinery shop, was also a songwriter. Their mother, Audree, was an organist and pianist. While still teenagers, Brian, drummer Dennis, and guitarist Carl joined with cousin Michael Love and friends Alan Jardine and David Marks to write and perform pop music in the alloyed spirit of Chuck Berry and the harmonies-driven Four Freshmen and Four Preps.

Dennis, a novice surfer and adolescent habitué of the Manhattan Beach surfing scene, goaded Brian and the rest of the group (then called the Pendletones) into writing songs that glorified the emerging sport. The regional success in 1961 of the Beach Boys’ first single, “Surfin’,” led in 1962 to their signing as Capitol Records’ first rock act. Brian’s latent ambitions as a pop composer were unleashed; for years he would write almost all the group’s songs, often with collaborators (most frequently Love).

The Beach Boys soon appeared on Billboard’s U.S. singles charts with such odes to cars and surfing as “409” and “Surfin’ Safari,” while their debut album reached number 14. After the commercial triumph of the follow-up album and single, “Surfin’ U.S.A.,” in 1963 (the year in which Jardine, back from school, replaced his replacement, Marks), Brian assumed complete artistic control.

Surfer Girl

Their next album, Surfer Girl, was a landmark for the unheard-of studio autonomy that Brian had secured from Capitol as writer, arranger, and producer. Redolent of the Four Freshmen but actually inspired by “When You Wish Upon a Star” from Walt Disney’s film Pinocchio (1940), the album’s title track combines a childlike yearning with sophisticated pop poignancy. Like his hero, pioneering producer Phil Spector, the eccentric Brian proved gifted at crafting eclectic arrangements with crisply evocative rock power (for example, “Little Deuce Coupe,” “Fun, Fun, Fun,” “I Get Around,” and “Don’t Worry Baby”).

Pet Sounds, “Good Vibrations,” and Brian Wilson’s seclusion

After the first of a series of stress- and drug-related mental health crises in 1964, Brian withdrew from touring and was replaced first by singer-guitarist Glen Campbell, then by veteran surf singer-musician Bruce Johnston. Brian focused thereafter on the Beach Boys’ studio output, surpassing all his role models with his band’s masterwork, Pet Sounds (1966). A bittersweet pastiche of songs recalling the pangs of unrequited love and other coming-of-age trials, Pet Sounds was acknowledged by Paul McCartney as the catalyst for the Beatles’ own masterpiece, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967).

Brian soon eclipsed himself again with “Good Vibrations,” a startlingly prismatic “pocket symphony” that reached number one in the autumn of 1966. It garnered the Beach Boys three Grammy Award nominations, including for best performance by a vocal group. Brian’s self-confidence stalled, however, when an even more ambitious project called Dumb Angel, then SMiLE, failed to meet its appointed completion date in December 1966. Exhausted and depressed, he went into seclusion as the rest of the band cobbled remains of the abortive album into a tuneful but tentative release titled Smiley Smile (1967).

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Career peaks and valleys and the death of Dennis Wilson

For the remainder of the decade, the Beach Boys issued records of increasing commercial and musical inconsistency. They departed Capitol amid a legal battle over back royalties and signed with Warner Brothers in 1970. When the splendid Sunflower sold poorly, Brian became a recluse, experimenting with hallucinogens and toiling fitfully while the rest of the group produced several strong but modest-selling albums in the early 1970s. Meanwhile, Endless Summer, a greatest hits compilation, reached number one on the charts in 1974. In 1976 an uneven but commercially successful album, 15 Big Ones, signaled the reemergence of the still-troubled Brian. In 1977 Dennis released a critically acclaimed solo album, Pacific Ocean Blue.

Despite personal turmoil, the reunited Beach Boys seemed destined for a new artistic peak when Dennis drowned in 1983 while swimming in the ocean at Marina del Rey. The excellent The Beach Boys was released in 1985. In 1988 Brian released a critically acclaimed self-titled solo album, the other Beach Boys had a number one hit and another Grammy nomination with “Kokomo,” and the group was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Later projects and solo albums

In the 1990s the Beach Boys continued to tour and record, with Love continuing his longtime role as the band’s business mind. Brian released another solo album (Imagination) and collaborated on albums with Van Dyke Parks (Orange Crate Art). He also collaborated with his daughters Carnie and Wendy (The Wilsons), who are successful performers in their own right, having formed the group Wilson Phillips with Chynna Phillips (the daughter of John and Michelle Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas). Carl, who was considered the group’s artistic anchor during the turbulent 1970s and ’80s, died of cancer in 1998. Later that year the Beach Boys released Endless Harmony, a rarities collection culled from an acclaimed television documentary on the group.

In 2004 Brian released Gettin’ In over My Head, with contributions from McCartney, Eric Clapton, and Elton John. The landmark work of this period in Brian’s career, however, was SMiLE (2004), finally offered to the world as a completed solo album after he had spent nearly four decades fine-tuning its sound. A boxed set of the original SMiLE recording sessions followed in 2011. He continued to record solo albums, and his life was the subject of the biopic Love & Mercy (2014).

Legacy

In 2005 the U.S. Library of Congress added Pet Sounds to the National Recording Registry, a list of audio recordings deemed “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.” In 2012, a year after the 50th anniversary of the Beach Boys’ formation, the main surviving members reunited for a celebratory tour. The concerts coincided with the release of That’s Why God Made the Radio, the group’s first album in two decades to feature original material. In 2013 the two-disc concert album The Beach Boys Live: The 50th Anniversary Tour was released, followed by numerous archival releases and remastered versions of the band’s early works

In 2023 the tribute concert A Grammy Salute to the Beach Boys aired on television, featuring performances by Beck, Brandi Carlile, Norah Jones, John Legend, Michael McDonald, Mumford & Sons, My Morning Jacket, LeAnn Rimes, St. Vincent, and Weezer, among others.