The Beach Boys are an American rock band formed in Hawthorne, California, in 1961. The group’s original lineup consisted of brothers Brian, Dennis, and Carl Wilson; their cousin Mike Love; and their friend Al Jardine. Distinguished by their vocal harmonies and early surf songs, they are one of the most influential acts of the rock era. The band drew on the music of jazz-based vocal groups, 1950s rock and roll, and black R&B to create their unique sound, and with Brian as producer, composer, and de facto leader, they pioneered novel approaches to popular music form and production. He later arranged his compositions for studio orchestras and explored a variety of other styles, often incorporating classical or jazz elements and unconventional recording techniques in innovative ways.
The Beach Boys began as a garage band, managed by the Wilsons’ father Murry, with Brian’s increasingly sophisticated music talents dominating their creative direction. In 1963, they gained national prominence with a string of hit records reflecting a southern California youth culture of surfing, cars, and romance, later dubbed the “California Sound”. After 1964, they abandoned beachgoing themes for more personal lyrics and multi-layered sounds. In 1966, the Pet Sounds album and “Good Vibrations” single raised the group’s prestige to the top level of rock innovators and established the band as symbols of the nascent counterculture era. Following the dissolution of the group’s Smile project in 1967, Brian gradually ceded production and songwriting duties to the rest of the band, reducing his input because of mental health and substance abuse issues. The group’s public image subsequently faltered, and despite efforts to continue their psychedelic ventures and reclaim their hippie audiences, they were dismissed as an embodiment of the values and outlooks shared by early 1960s white, suburban teenagers.
The continued success of their greatest hits albums during the mid-1970s precipitated the band’s transition into an oldies act, a move that was denigrated by critics and many fans. Since the 1980s, much-publicized legal wrangling over royalties, songwriting credits and use of the band’s name transpired. Dennis drowned in 1983 and Carl died of lung cancer in 1998. After Carl’s death, many live configurations of the band fronted by Mike Love and Bruce Johnston continued to tour into the 2000s while other members pursued solo projects. Even though Wilson and Jardine have not performed with Love and Johnston’s band since their one-off 2012 reunion tour, they remain a part of the Beach Boys’ corporation, Brother Records Inc.
The Beach Boys are one of the most critically acclaimed, commercially successful, and widely influential bands of all time. The group had over eighty songs chart worldwide, thirty-six of them US Top 40 hits (the most by an American rock band), four reaching number-one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. The Beach Boys have sold in excess of 100 million records worldwide, making them one of the world’s best-selling bands of all time and are listed at No. 12 on Rolling Stone magazine’s 2004 list of the “100 Greatest Artists of All Time”. In 2017, a study of AllMusic’s catalog indicated the Beach Boys as the 6th most frequently cited artist influence in its database. The core quintet of the three Wilsons, Love and Jardine were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988.
Formation
At the time of his sixteenth birthday on June 20, 1958, Brian Wilson shared a bedroom with his brothers, Dennis and Carl – aged thirteen and eleven, respectively – in their family home in Hawthorne. He had watched his father, Murry Wilson, play piano, and had listened intently to the harmonies of vocal groups such as the Four Freshmen. After dissecting songs such as “Ivory Tower” and “Good News”, Brian would teach family members how to sing the background harmonies. For his birthday that year, Brian received a reel-to-reel tape recorder. He learned how to overdub, using his vocals and those of Carl and their mother. Brian played piano with Carl and David Marks, an eleven-year-old longtime neighbor, playing guitars they had each received as Christmas presents.
Soon Brian and Carl were avidly listening to Johnny Otis’ KFOX radio show. Inspired by the simple structure and vocals of the rhythm and blues songs he heard, Brian changed his piano-playing style and started writing songs. His enthusiasm interfered with his music studies at school. Family gatherings brought the Wilsons in contact with cousin Mike Love. Brian taught Love’s sister Maureen and a friend harmonies. Later, Brian, Mike Love and two friends performed at Hawthorne High School. Brian also knew Al Jardine, a high school classmate. Brian suggested to Jardine that they team up with his cousin and brother Carl. Love gave the fledgling band its name: “The Pendletones”, a portmanteau of “Pendleton”, a style of woolen shirt popular at the time and “tone”, the musical term. Though surfing motifs were prominent in their early songs, Dennis was the only avid surfer in the group. He suggested that the group compose songs that celebrated the sport and the lifestyle that it had inspired in Southern California.
In October 1961, the Pendletones recorded the two surfing song demos in twelve takes at Keen Recording Studio. Murry brought the demos to Herb Newman, owner of Candix Records and Era Records, and he signed the group on December 8, 1961. When the boys eagerly unpacked the first box of singles – released both under the Candix label, and also as a promo issue under X Records (Morgan’s label) – they were shocked to see their band had been renamed as the Beach Boys. Murry Wilson learned that Candix wanted to name the group the Surfers to directly associate them with the increasingly popular teen sport. But Russ Regan, a young promoter with Era Records – who later became president of 20th Century Fox Records – noted that there already existed a group by that name, and he suggested calling them the Beach Boys.
Beach-themed period
eleased in December 1961, “Surfin'” soon aired on KFWB and KRLA, two of Los Angeles’ most influential teen radio stations. It was a hit on the West Coast, going to number three in Southern California, and peaked at number 75 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. By the final weeks of 1961 “Surfin'” had sold more than 40,000 copies. By this time the de facto manager of the Beach Boys, Murry Wilson landed the group’s first paying gig (for which they earned $300, equivalent to $2,400 in 2016) on New Year’s Eve, 1961, at the Ritchie Valens Memorial Dance in Long Beach, headlined by Ike & Tina Turner. In their earliest public appearances, the band wore heavy wool jacket-like shirts that local surfers favored before switching to their trademark striped shirts and white pants. Murry effectively seized managerial control of the band, and Brian acknowledged that he “deserves credit for getting us off the ground … he hounded us mercilessly … [but] also worked hard himself.”
In the first half of February 1962, Jardine left the band and was replaced by Marks. The band recorded two more originals on April 19 at Western Studios, Los Angeles: “Lonely Sea” and “409”. They also re-recorded “Surfin’ Safari”. During early 1962, Morgan requested that some of the members add vocals to a couple of instrumental tracks that he had recorded with other musicians. This led to the creation of the short-lived group Kenny & the Cadets, which Brian led under the pseudonym “Kenny”. The other members were Carl, Jardine, and the Wilsons’ mother Audree.
On June 4, the Beach Boys released their second single “Surfin’ Safari” backed with “409”. The release prompted national coverage in the June 9 issue of Billboard. The magazine praised Love’s lead vocal and said the song had strong hit potential. On July 16, 1962 – after being turned down by Dot and Liberty – the Beach Boys signed a seven-year contract with Capitol Records, based on the strength of the June demo session. This was at the urging of Capitol exec Nick Venet who signed the group, seeing them as the “teenage gold” he had been scouting for. By November, their first album was ready – Surfin’ Safari, which reached 32 on the US Billboard charts. Their song output continued along the same commercial line, focusing on California youth lifestyle.
In January 1963, three months after the release of their debut album, the band began recording their sophomore effort, Surfin’ U.S.A., a breakthrough for Brian, who began asserting himself as songwriter and arranger. The LP was the start of Brian’s penchant for doubletracking vocals, a pioneering innovation. Released on March 25, 1963, Surfin’ U.S.A., met a more enthusiastic reception, reaching number two on the Billboard charts. This propelled the band into a nationwide spotlight, and was vital to launching surf music as a national craze. Five days prior to the release of Surfin’ U.S.A., Brian produced “Surf City”, a song he had written for Jan and Dean. “Surf City” hit number one on the Billboard charts in July 1963, a development that pleased Brian but angered Murry, who felt his son had “given away” what should have been the Beach Boys’ first chart-topper.
At the beginning of a tour of the Mid-West in April 1963, Jardine rejoined the Beach Boys at Brian’s request. Although he had started playing live gigs again, Brian soon left the road to focus on writing and recording. The result of this arrangement produced the albums Surfer Girl, released on September 16, 1963 and Little Deuce Coupe, released less than a month later on October 7, 1963. This sextet incarnation of the Beach Boys did not extend beyond these two albums, as Marks officially left the band in early October because of conflict with manager Murry, pulling Brian back into touring.
Following a successful Australasian tour in January and February 1964, the band returned home to face the British Invasion through the Beatles appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show. Also representing the Beatles, Capitol support for the Beach Boys immediately began waning. This caused Murry to fight for the band at the label more than before, often visiting their offices without warning to “twist executive arms.” The band finished the sessions on February 20, 1964 and titled the album Shut Down Volume 2. “Fun, Fun, Fun” was released as a single from the album (backed with “Why Do Fools Fall in Love”) and was a major hit. The LP, while containing several filler tracks, was propelled by other songs such as the melancholic “The Warmth of the Sun” and the advanced production style of “Don’t Worry Baby”.
Brian soon wrote his last surf song in April 1964. That month, during recording of the single “I Get Around”, Murry was relieved of his duties as manager. Brian reflected, “We love the family thing – y’know: three brothers, a cousin and a friend is a really beautiful way to have a group – but the extra generation can become a hang-up.” When the single was released in May of that year, it would climb to number one, their first single to do so, proving that the Beach Boys could compete with contemporary British pop groups. Two months later, the album that the song appeared on, All Summer Long, reached No. 4 on the Billboard 200 charts. All Summer Long introduced exotic textures to the Beach Boys’ sound exemplified by the piccolos and xylophones of its title track. The album was a swan-song to the surf and car music the Beach Boys built their commercial standing upon. Later albums took a different stylistic and lyrical path. Before this, a live album, Beach Boys Concert, was released in October to a four-week chart stay at number one, containing a set list of previously recorded hits and covers that they had not yet recorded.
Today! and Summer Days
In June 1964, Brian began recording the bulk of The Beach Boys’ Christmas Album with a forty-one-piece studio orchestra in collaboration with Four Freshmen arranger Dick Reynolds. Released in December, it was divided between five new, original Christmas-themed songs, and seven reinterpretations of traditional Christmas songs. It would be regarded as one of the finest holiday albums of the rock era. One single from the album, “The Man with All the Toys”, was released, peaking at No. 6 on the US Billboard Christmas chart. On October 29, the Beach Boys performed for The T.A.M.I. Show, a concert film intended to bring together a wide range of hit-making musicians for a one-off performance. The result was released to movie theaters one month later.
By the end of the year, the stress of road travel, composing, producing and maintaining a high level of creativity became too much for Brian. On December 23, while on a flight from Los Angeles to Houston, he suffered a panic attack only hours after performing with the Beach Boys on the musical variety series Shindig!. In January 1965, he announced his withdrawal from touring to concentrate entirely on songwriting and record production. For the rest of 1964 and into 1965, Glen Campbell served as Wilson’s temporary replacement in concert, until his own career success pulled him from touring with the group in April 1965. Bruce Johnston was asked to locate a replacement for Campbell; having failed to find one, Johnston himself became a full-time member of the band on May 19, 1965, first replacing Brian on the road and later contributing in the studio, beginning with the vocal sessions for “California Girls” on June 4, 1965.
After Brian stopped touring in 1965, he became a full-time studio artist, showcasing a great leap forward with The Beach Boys Today!, an album containing a suite-like structure divided by songs and ballads, and portended the Album Era with its cohesive artistic statement. During the recording sessions for Today!, Love told Melody Maker that he and the band wanted to look beyond surf rock and to avoid living in the past or resting on their laurels. The resulting LP had largely guitar-oriented pop songs such as “Dance, Dance, Dance” and “Good to My Baby” on side A with B-side ballads such as “Please Let Me Wonder” and “She Knows Me Too Well”.
Today! established the Beach Boys as album artists and marked a maturation in their lyric content by abandoning themes related to surfing, cars, or teenage love. Some love songs remained, but with a marked increase in depth, along with introspective tracks accompanied by adventurous and distinct arrangements. While the band’s contemporaries grew more intellectually aware, Capitol continued to bill them as “America’s Top Surfin’ Group!” expecting Brian to write more surfing material for the yearly summer markets despite his disinterest.
In June 1965, the band released Summer Days (And Summer Nights!!). The album included a reworked arrangement of “Help Me, Rhonda” which became the band’s second number one single in the spring of 1965, displacing the Beatles’ “Ticket to Ride”. “Let Him Run Wild” tapped into the youthful angst that later pervaded their music. In November 1965, the group followed their US number-three-charting “California Girls” from Summer Days (And Summer Nights!!) with another top-twenty single, “The Little Girl I Once Knew”. It was considered the band’s most experimental statement thus far, using silence as a pre-chorus, clashing keyboards, moody brass and vocal tics. The single continued Brian’s ambitions for daring arrangements, featuring unexpected tempo changes and numerous false endings. Perhaps too extreme an arrangement to go much higher than its number 20 peak, it was the band’s second single not to reach the top ten since their 1962 breakthrough.
Capitol demanded a Beach Boys LP for the 1965 Christmas season, and to appease them, Brian conceived Beach Boys’ Party!, a live-in-the-studio album consisting mostly of acoustic covers of 1950s rock and R&B songs, in addition to covers of three Beatles songs, Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are a-Changin'”, and idiosyncratic rerecordings of the group’s earlier hits. In December, they scored an unexpected number two hit (number three in the UK) with “Barbara Ann”, which Capitol released as a single with no band input. Originally by the Regents, it became one of the Beach Boys’ most recognized hits.
Pet Sounds
In 1966, the Beach Boys formally established their use of unconventional instruments and elaborate layers of vocal harmonies on their album Pet Sounds. It is considered Brian’s most concise demonstration of his production and songwriting expertise. With songs such as “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” and “Sloop John B”, the album’s innovative soundscape incorporates elements of jazz, classical, pop, exotica, and the avant-garde.
The instrumentation combines found sounds such as bicycle bells and dog whistles with classically inspired orchestrations and the usual rock set-up of drums and guitars; among others, silverware, accordions, plucked piano strings, barking dogs, and plastic water jugs. For the basic rhythmic feel for “God Only Knows”, harpsichord, piano with slapback echo, sleigh bells, and strings spilled into each other to create a rich blanket of sound.
Released in May, Pet Sounds peaked at No. 10 in the US and No. 2 in the UK. This helped the Beach Boys become the strongest selling album group in the UK for the final quarter of 1966, dethroning the three-year reign of native bands such as the Beatles. Met with a lukewarm critical reception in the US, Pet Sounds was indifferently promoted by Capitol and failed to become the major hit Wilson had hoped it would be. Its failure to gain a wider recognition in the U.S. combined with Capitol’s decision to issue Best of The Beach Boys in July dispirited Brian, who considered Pet Sounds an extremely personal work. Some assumed that the label considered the album a risk, appealing more to an older demographic than the younger, female audience the Beach Boys built their commercial standing on. Pet Sounds sales numbered approximately 500,000 units, a significant drop-off from the chain of million-selling albums that immediately preceded it. Best of The Beach Boys was quickly certified Gold by the RIAA.
Pet Sounds is considered by some as a Brian Wilson solo album in all but name, as other members contributed relatively little to the compositions or recordings. Influenced by psychedelic drugs, Brian turned inward and probed his deep-seated self-doubts and emotional longings; the piece did not address the problems in the world around them, unlike other psychedelic rock groups. As Jim Miller wrote of the album’s tone, “[It] vented Wilson’s obsession with isolation cataloging a forlorn quest for security. The whole enterprise, which smacked of song cycle pretensions, was streaked with regret and romantic languor.”
Good Vibrations” and Smile
Seeking to expand on Pet Sounds’ advances, Wilson began an even more ambitious project: “Good Vibrations”. Like Pet Sounds, Brian opted for an eclectic array of instruments rarely heard in pop music. Described by Brian as a “pocket symphony”, it contains a mixture of classical, rock, and exotic instruments structured around a cut-up mosaic of musical sections represented by several discordant key and modal shifts. It became the Beach Boys’ biggest hit to date, and a US and UK number one single in 1966. Coming at a time when pop singles were usually made in under two hours, it was one of the most complex pop productions ever undertaken, and the most expensive single ever recorded to that point. The production costs were estimated between $50,000 and $75,000, with sessions for the song stretching over several months in at least four major studios.
To the counterculture of the 1960s, “Good Vibrations” served as an anthem. Rock critic Gene Sculatti prophesied in 1968, “[It] may yet prove to be the most significantly revolutionary piece of the current rock renaissance.” Its instrumentation included Paul Tanner’s Electro-Theremin, a manually-operated oscillator with a sound similar to a theremin, which helped the Beach Boys claim a new hippie audience. Upon release, the single prompted an unexpected revival in theremins while increasing awareness of analog synthesizers, leading Moog Music to produce their own brand of ribbon-controlled instruments.
ian met lyricist and musician Van Dyke Parks while working on Pet Sounds. A year later, while in the midst of recording “Good Vibrations”, the duo began an intense collaboration that resulted in a suite of challenging new songs for the Beach Boys’ forthcoming album Smile, intended to surpass Pet Sounds. Recording for the album spanned about a year, from 1966 to 1967. Wilson and Parks intended Smile to be a continuous suite of songs that were linked both thematically and musically, with the main songs being linked together by small vocal pieces and instrumental segments that elaborated upon the musical themes of the major songs. Surviving recordings have shown that the music incorporated chanting, cowboy songs, explorations in Indian and Hawaiian music, jazz, tone poems with classical elements, cartoon sound effects, musique concrète, and yodeling.
Smile would go on to become the most legendary unreleased album in the history of popular music. In the decades following its non-release, it became the subject of intense speculation and mystique. Many believe that, had the album been released, it would have substantially altered the group’s direction and established them at the vanguard of rock innovators. Writing about the album for the 33⅓ book series, Luis Sanchez stated: “If Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys were going to survive as the defining force of American pop music they were, Smile was a conscious attempt to rediscover the impulses and ideas that power American consciousness from the inside out. It was a collaboration that led to some incredible music, which, if it had been completed as an album and delivered to the public in 1966, might have had an incredible impact.”
After meeting Maharishi Mahesh Yogi at a UNICEF Variety Gala in Paris, France on December 15, 1967, Love, along with other high-profile celebrities such as Donovan and the Beatles traveled to Rishikesh in India during February and March 1968. The following Beach Boys album Friends (1968) had songs influenced by the Transcendental Meditation taught by the Maharishi. The album reached No. 13 in the UK and 126 in the US, the title track placing at No. 25 in the UK and No. 47 in the US, the band’s lowest singles peak since 1962. In support of the Friends album, Love had arranged for the Beach Boys to tour with the Maharishi in the U.S., which has been called “one of the more bizarre entertainments of the era.” Starting on May 3, 1968, the tour lasted five shows and was cancelled when the Maharishi had to withdraw to fulfill film contracts. Because of disappointing audience numbers and the Maharishi’s withdrawal, twenty-four tour dates were subsequently canceled at a cost estimated at US$250,000 (approximately US$1,670,000 today) for the band. This tour was followed by the release of “Do It Again”, a single that critics described as an update of the Beach Boys’ surf rock past in a late 1960s style. The single went to the top of the Australian and UK single charts in 1968 and was moderately successful in the US, peaking at No. 20.
For a short time in mid-1968, Brian Wilson sought psychological treatment in hospital. During his absence, other members began writing and producing material themselves. To complete their contract with Capitol, they produced one more album. 20/20 (1969) was one of the group’s most stylistically diverse albums, including hard rock songs such as “All I Want to Do”, the waltz-based “Time to Get Alone”, and a cover of the Ronettes’ “I Can Hear Music”. The diversity of genres have been described as an indicator that the group was trying to establish an updated identity. The album performed strongly in the UK, reaching number three on the charts. In the US, the album reached a modest 68.
In spring 1968, Dennis befriended Charles Manson, an aspiring singer-songwriter, and their relationship lasted for several months. Dennis bought him time at Brian’s home studio where recording sessions were attempted while Brian stayed in his room. Dennis then proposed that Manson be signed to Brother Records. Brian reportedly disliked Manson, and so a deal was never made. The Beach Boys recorded one song penned by Manson without his involvement: “Cease to Exist”, rewritten as “Never Learn Not to Love”. The idea of the Beach Boys recording one of his songs reportedly thrilled Manson, and it was released as a Beach Boys single. After accruing a large monetary debt to the group, Dennis deliberately omitted Manson’s credit on its release while also altering the song’s arrangement and lyrics. This greatly angered Manson. Growing fearful, Dennis gradually distanced himself from Manson, whose cult of followers had taken over his home. He was eventually convicted for several counts of murder and conspiracy to murder. From there on, Dennis was too afraid of the Manson family to ever speak publicly on his association, or even to testify against him.
On April 12, 1969, the band revisited their 1967 lawsuit against Capitol Records after they alleged an audit undertaken revealed the band were owed over US$2,000,000 (US$13,350,000 today) for unpaid royalties and production duties. The band’s contract with Capitol Records expired on June 30, 1969, after which Capitol Records deleted the Beach Boys’ catalog from print, effectively cutting off their royalty flow. In November 1969, Murry Wilson sold Sea of Tunes, the Beach Boys’ catalog, to Irving Almo Music, a decision that, according to Marilyn Wilson, devastated Brian. In late 1969, the Beach Boys reactivated their Brother label and signed with Reprise. Around this time, the band commenced recording a new album. By the time the Beach Boys tenure ended with Capitol in 1969, they had sold 65 million records worldwide, closing the decade as the most commercially successful American group in popular music.
Beginning with Wild Honey (Number 24, 1967), other group members shared writing and production, along with Bruce Johnston, who joined the touring Beach Boys after Brian retired from the road in late 1964. (Johnston replaced Glen Campbell after a brief stint.) Johnston has been associated on and off with the Beach Boys, primarily as producer, ever since. The Beach Boys’ late-1960s touring band also included Daryl Dragon (later the Captain of the Captain and Tennille) on keyboards; Blondie Chaplin (later a sideman with the Rolling Stones and others) on guitar, bass, and vocals; and Ricky Fataar (later of Joe Walsh’s band) on drums.
In 1968 the Beach Boys became the first major American rock band to play behind the Iron Curtain when they performed in Czechoslovakia. Increasingly, Carl played a larger role in directing the group. His was the lead voice on “Good Vibrations,” “Surf’s Up,” “Wild Honey” (Number 31, 1967), “Darlin'” (Number 19, 1967), and “Friends” (Number 47, 1968), among others.
Beginning in 1970 and for the next 18 years, the Beach Boys released their records on their own Brother label, a custom imprint of Warner/Reprise. Their first album under the deal, Sunflower (Number 151, 1970), inaugurated a five-year performance hiatus for Brian, although he tried one live show in early 1970 at the Whisky-a-Go-Go in L.A. The group’s hugely popular oldies-dominated live shows reinforced in the public’s mind the image of a group whose creative past was behind it. In fact, however, 20/20 (Number 68, 1969), Sunflower, and its more successful followup, Surf’s Up (Number 29, 1971) contained some of the group’s more adventurous and interesting work: the lower charting but important singles “Do It Again” (Number 20, 1968), “I Can Hear Music” (Number 24, 1969), “Add Some Music to Your Day” (Number 64, 1970), “Long Promised Road” (Number 89, 1971), and the intriguing album cuts “This Whole World” and “‘Til I Die.”
In 1972 the Beach Boys decided to record in Holland, but after relocating their families learned there were no adequate studio facilities. They had a studio broken down, shipped, and reconstructed in a converted barn, where for over six months they recorded Holland. Reprise initially rejected the album for a lack of what the company considered a solid hit single, so Brian Wilson and Van Dyke Parks provided “Sail On Sailor” (written by Brian and several others in addition to Parks). With a rare lead vocal by Blondie Chaplin, the single hit Number 79 when released in 1973, but rose to Number 49 when re-released in 1975. Holland also contained “The Trader,” yet another of Carl’s more introspective, mature works, and Al Jardine’s “California Saga (On My Way to Sunny Californ-i-a)” (Number 84, 1973).
Aside from a critically acclaimed double live album, The Beach Boys in Concert (Number 25, 1973), the group’s next five charting releases would be repackages and greatest-hits compilations, including Endless Summer (Number One, 1974) and Spirit of America (Number 8, 1975). Another stellar live collection, Beach Boys ’69 (The Beach Boys Live in London) came out in 1976 (Number 75).
Meanwhile, efforts continued to coax Brian out of his Bel Air mansion, which included a sandbox as well as a recording studio. In the late 1960s he had briefly run a West Hollywood health food store, the Radiant Radish, and in 1972 he produced an album by his wife, Marilyn, and her sister Diane Powell, as Spring (or American Spring). In 1976, after a much-publicized rehabilitation, Brian rejoined the band for 15 Big Ones (Number Eight, 1976). It included oldie remakes (Chuck Berry’s “Rock and Roll Music,” which went to Number Five and was the Beach Boys’ only Top Ten hit from late 1966 through mid-1988) and Brian Wilson originals such as “It’s O.K.” (Number 29, 1976), with backing tracks Brian had recorded with ELO founder Roy Wood’s group Wizzard.
In 1977 open personality clashes (primarily between Dennis Wilson and Mike Love) jeopardized the band’s future as it switched labels and moved over to CBS; eventually Love’s brothers Stan and Steve were removed from the Beach Boys’ management organization. Steve Love was later sentenced to prison for embezzling nearly $1 million from the group. Johnston was back as co-producer for L.A. (Light Album); in the mid-1970s he had left the band to concentrate on songwriting (including Barry Manilow’s hit “I Write the Songs”) and make a solo album, Going Public (1977). Love You (Number 53, 1977) contained another overlooked gem, “Honkin’ Down the Highway” along with Brian’s surreal tribute to the king of late-night TV, “Johnny Carson.” Chartwise, the late 1970s were a low time for the group: Neither M.I.U. Album (1978) nor L.A. (Light Album) (1979) charted. A flop single from M.I.U. was rereleased in 1981 and provided the group’s first nonmedley Top 20 hit since 1976 in a Number 18 remake of the Dell-Vikings’ “Come Go With Me.”
The 1980s proved a tumultuous decade for the group. Carl Wilson quit in 1981 to concentrate on his solo career. He, more than the others, seemed to resist the band’s increasingly nostalgic appeal. But after his return the following year, the Beach Boys continued being known more as an oldies-but-goodies act, albeit an extraordinarily successful one. In 1983 they unwittingly became the center of controversy when Secretary of the Interior James Watt banned them from performing a Fourth of July concert at the Washington Monument. Public opinion was solidly against Watt, who later resigned, and the group was personally invited to play the Washington Monument the next summer by First Lady Nancy Reagan.
Nineteen eighty-three marked Brian’s return to the stage with the group, but also the death of Dennis. On December 28 the hard-living drummer drowned while swimming off his boat in Marina Del Rey, California. With the help of President Ronald Reagan, special permission was granted so that Dennis’ body could be buried at sea. Brian had since come and gone from the group. The Beach Boys enjoyed their third Number One hit, their biggest-selling single ever, “Kokomo” (1988), from the hit film Cocktail, without him. Brian’s long-awaited first solo album came out that year. Co-produced by his longtime therapist, Dr. Eugene Landy (whose license to practice therapy was later revoked), Brian Wilson elicited glowing reviews but sold poorly. The Beach Boys were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988.
As of 1993 Brian was a touring Beach Boy again. Later Mike Love sued Brian, his cowriter Todd Gold, and Landy, claiming he had been defamed in Wilson’s autobiography, Wouldn’t It Be Nice?: My Own Story. The case was settled out of court in early 1994. In 1995 Brian and Love settled a long-running legal dispute over songwriting credit and royalties for Love. Wilson paid Love $5 million and Love has writing credit on such songs as “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” and “California Girls.” That same year, Brian Wilson and his estranged daughter Carnie reconciled their differences and contributed “Fantasy Is Reality/Bells of Madness” to Rob Wasserman’s Trios.
The period from the mid-1990s through the turn of the century brought dramatic changes within the group, including what appears to be, at this writing, the end of the Beach Boys as we know them. They made their biggest impression on the country chart, where their Stars and Stripes, Vol. 1 (Number 12 C&W, 1996) featured “duets” with the group and country stars. In 1995 Brian was the subject of producer Don Was’ documentary I Just Wasn’t Made for These Times; he also released a second solo album, Orange Crate Art, and remarried. In 1997 he provided some production work, songwriting, and background singing for his daughters Carnie and Wendy’s album The Wilsons. His third solo album, Imagination (Number 88, 1998), was warmly received upon its release, and Wilson returned to performing.
By then he had relocated to Illinois, and in a series of candid interviews gave the impression of someone happy and comfortable at last. “My music isn’t going to save the world,” he said when Imagination was released. “But I think it’s going to save souls, certain people in the world. It pleases me to be able to do that. It feels good.” He began touring in 1999. For his 2000 tour, he performed Pet Sounds accompanied by a symphony orchestra; a live album was released from that tour in 2001. In June 2000, Brian was inducted into the Songwriters’ Hall of Fame. In 2001 he and Pet Sounds were the recipients of a star-studded tribute (with guests Elton John, Paul Simon, and Billy Joel, among others), televised on TNT.
Ironically, as Brian Wilson seemed to be coming back into his own, the Beach Boys were enduring perhaps the most difficult times of their long career. In 1997 Carl Wilson was diagnosed with lung cancer, which later developed into brain cancer. He continued to tour with the group as his health would permit, sometimes even performing sitting in a chair. However, by fall 1997 he retired (he was replaced by David Marks, an original member who quit the group in 1963 but continued receiving about $20,000 a year in royalties). Carl died on February 6, 1998, in L.A., at age 51.
Shortly after Carl’s passing, Al Jardine quit the group, leaving only Love, Johnston, and Marks (who, ironically, had been replaced by Jardine back in 1964). The trio toured as the Beach Boys, with added musicians, while Jardine emerged with his Beach Boys Family and Friends (later renamed Al Jardine’s Family and Friends Beach Band after Brother Records International, the corporate entity that is the Beach Boys, got an injunction against his using the Beach Boys name), which included two of his sons and Carnie and Wendy Wilson. Love and Jardine feuded bitterly in the press and in court, but much of this was overshadowed by an ongoing celebration of the Beach Boys legacy, in a documentary (VH1’s The Beach Boys: Endless Harmony), a made-for-TV miniseries (The Beach Boys: An American Family), and three simultaneously released greatest-hits packages. In 2001 the group received a Lifetime Achievement Award Grammy.
Capitol began another round of Beach Boys reissues and compilations in the early 2000s, and a Love-fronted version of the Beach Boys continued touring while Wilson appeared at various events with other rock legends including Elton John and Paul McCartney.
