Celebrating THE Great American Band

We are only two days away from the great USAmerican celebration of Independence Day, the 4th of July. The day means different things to different people. For some it is a celebration of Summer, with picnics by the river and cold beers under a clear night sky filled with fireworks. For some it is a day of flags and parades, a celebration of patriotism and history. And for some- like me- it is a day to celebrate the good things in life that are uniquely USAmerican. You know the list- baseball, hot dogs, apple pie, mud wrestling, Dairy Queen Blizzards...and The Beach Boys. You may not think of them as the greatest band our nation has ever produced, but they may be. And at the very least, they are the official band of summer!

Denny, Al, Carl, Mike & Brian

The Beach Boys began in the southern California town of Hawthorne back in 1961. Three brothers- Brian, Dennis and Carl Wilson- along with their cousin Mike Love and a friend named Alan Jardine- began singing together and a new sound was born. This was not a boy band, as they played their own instruments and wrote their own songs. Brian played bass and wrote music and lyrics (and also produced almost all of the songs right up through 1968), Carl played lead guitar, Al was on rhythm guitar (replaced for a short time early on while he was taking college classes by another friend, David Marks), Dennis banged the drums and Mike wrote lyrics and was the lead vocalist. And everyone sang! When they walked into a local recording studio and recorded Surfin' and Surfin' Safari in 1962 they changed pop music forever and created a new cultural craze. The album Surfin' Safari came out in December of that year and before long kids in North Dakota and Utah thought they were surfers too! Hot rods, big waves and beautiful girls were all part of the California dream of the early 60s, and the Boys helped us all enjoy the fantasy. Other band members were added as time passed- people like Bruce Johnston, Blondie Chaplin and Ricky Fataar- and the sound changed. But even in 2015, pretty much every USAmerican knows at least one of their songs. They still conjure up images of the perfect summer, and for many of us of a certain age, they were the "soundtrack to falling in love." 

Ahhhh- the 70s!

It's now 54 years later and it's still hard to find anyone who doesn't love some of their songs. They are used in movie soundtracks, in commercials and pretty much anyplace music is played. Brian Wilson's songwriting influenced everyone from The Beatles to Queen (listen to the opening to Bohemian Rhapsody again- that's classic BB vocals!) to U2 (check out the song Santa Barbara on their most recent album- it's practically a tribute to the Boys). The Beach Boys were labeled irrelevant on many occasions, but they always found a way to reinvent themselves and come back. When surf music seemed "done" all they did was record Pet Sounds, one of the greatest albums of all time. They followed that by giving us Good Vibrations, one of the greatest songs ever recorded. While The Beatles ruled the charts in this country, the Boys often outsold them in the UK. In fact, even as sales dropped in this country, the music critics fell in love with the new sound of The Beach Boys. They are perhaps the only band in history to have had 7 different lead singers perform songs that made the Billboard charts. In the late 60s and early 70s they focused on touring and became one of the world's great concert bands, selling our large venues around the world. They changed the way rock bands toured, inventing monster sound systems and taking extra musicians (3 keyboardists, 2 drummers, a 7-piece horn section) on the road so they could better replicate their songs for audiences. Despite lots of turmoil- having to fire Murry Wilson (father to the 3 brothers) as their manager; the death of Dennis in 1983; Brian's well documented psychological struggles and long absence from the studio; the death of Carl in 1998 and lots of internal fighting between Mike and pretty much everyone else- they kept making great music. And in various forms they are still making music today.

My own relationship with The Beach Boys began nearly 12 years after they became stars. In 1974 their former label, Capitol Records, released a compilation album of their early music called Endless Summer. My friend Steve and I discovered the double album and it seldom left our turntables. Another compilation of hits, Spirit of America, only served to increase our appreciation of the band. We began to explore some of their other albums and we liked what we heard, even though some of it seemed far different from those breezy songs about the beach, girls and cars. In 1975 we heard Sail On, Sailor on FM radio and could not believe it was the same band. In 1976 we were at Myrtle Beach when Steve told me he was pretty sure he had just heard a new Beach Boys song on Top 40 radio. That seemed nuts at the time. But he was right, and soon the "new" song, Rock and Roll Music, was a top 5 hit. Of course it was actually an old Chuck Berry song that The Beatles had also recorded, but we didn't know that at the time. It was new Beach Boys and we were psyched! From that point on, we listened to every album and read every magazine article, learning the history of the band and becoming serious fanboys. We discovered that some albums that never sold well in the U.S. were in fact absolute classics- projects like Wild Honey, Holland, 20/20, Surf's Up and Sunflower. There was the weirdness of Smiley Smile and the fun of 15 Big Ones and Love You. We saw them in concert on several occasions. This "washed up old band" had opening acts like Billy Joel and Chicago, and they blew the doors off the Greensboro Coliseum and the Carowinds Paladium. My interest waned a bit when I lost my record collection, but there were still times when their music (via the box set of CD's I got in mid 90s) was the only thing that could take me away from the struggles of the day. In 2005 I was one of the few who got to see Good Vibrations (the jukebox musical) on Broadway; we loved it but apparently few others did. It only ran for 3 months. Over the past couple of years my iPod has been loaded with many of my favorite BB albums & songs; in fact, there are more than 225 tunes currently on that playlist. With Brian's brilliant solo album No Pier Pressure (which, btw, might as well be the most recent Beach Boys album as it features vocals from Al, David and Blondie!), the new Love & Mercy film and my son Will growing to love them now as well, they are once again an obsession of mine. And that's not a bad thing. 

So what does all of this have to do with July 4th? I am going to spend Thursdays (and one Friday) in July celebrating what is in my humble opinion THE great USAmerican band. We're going to countdown my 55 (one for each year of my life!) favorite Beach Boys songs of all-time, with 11 each week for the next 5 weeks. This will not be your typical list; these are MY favorites. Some of you might think picking 55 would be simple, but ranking them might be tricky. Nothing about this is simple. I've been working on the list for over 2 weeks already, and I'm down to 62. I have no idea how to make the final cuts. We will be drilling deep into their catalogue. How deep, you ask? Even at the current 62 songs classics like Be True To Your School, Shut Down, Little Honda and 409 didn't make it. Surfin' Safari is in serious danger. And the song many of my younger readers may know best, Kokomo, is (to quote another great USAmerican band, The Eagles) "already gone." I'd love to hear which songs you expect to find on my list, but I make no promises. It's my list- an this is going to be fun, fun, fun! :)

One final thought. In 1983 The Beach Boys were set to play a free July 4th concert on the Mall in Washington, DC when then Secretary of the Interior James Watt refused to grant them access, saying they would bring a "bad element" to the city. There was a huge uproar, and First Lady Nancy Reagan personally invited them back for 1984. On July 4th of the following year, 1985, they played for over 1 million fans in Philadelphia in the afternoon and for over 750,000 fans in Washington that night. The Beach Boys are an American institution. And for the next month of Thursdays you can celebrate them with me!