The Beach Boys: The California Sound, From Surf to Symphony

Pop · Rock · Surf

“Five young Californians turned surf, sun and sibling harmony into the most ambitious pop music of the 1960s — and kept going for decades.”

The Beach Boys began in 1961 in Hawthorne, California, when three brothers — Brian, Dennis and Carl Wilson — teamed up with their cousin Mike Love and friend Al Jardine. Their first single, “Surfin’,” was a regional hit that year; a contract with Capitol followed, and the group became the defining voice of the California sound: bright harmonies, ringing guitars and songs about the beach, cars and young love.

Surfboards and Symphonies

Between 1962 and 1964 the hits piled up — “Surfin’ Safari,” “Surfin’ USA,” “Surfer Girl,” “Be True to Your School” — and in 1964 “I Get Around” gave the group its first American No. 1. Behind it all was Brian Wilson, who late in 1964 retired from touring to concentrate on writing and producing. Working with Los Angeles session musicians and collaborators including Mike Love, Gary Usher and later Van Dyke Parks, he pushed the group far beyond surf music.

The result was Pet Sounds (1966), an album of extraordinary emotional depth and studio craft, followed by the single “Good Vibrations” — assembled over months in multiple studios — which reached No. 1 in late 1966. The unfinished Smile sessions became pop’s most famous lost album, but the music Brian made in this period permanently raised the bar for what a pop record could be.

The Long Road

The late 1960s and early 1970s were harder: changing tastes, Brian’s withdrawal and internal tensions. Yet the group kept making distinguished music — Sunflower (1970), Surf’s Up (1971) and Holland (1973), the latter recorded partly in the Netherlands and home to the enduring “Sail On, Sailor,” sung by newer member Blondie Chaplin. In 1976, 15 Big Ones marked Brian’s return to the producer’s chair and gave them a Top 5 hit with a cover of Chuck Berry’s “Rock and Roll Music.”

The late 1970s brought the M.I.U. Album and L.A. (Light Album); in 1981 the compilation Ten Years of Harmony helped return the 1957 Del-Vikings oldie “Come Go with Me” — re-recorded for M.I.U. — to the Top 20 in early 1982. Dennis Wilson’s death in December 1983 was a devastating blow, but the group carried on: the 1985 album The Beach Boys yielded “Getcha Back,” a Top 30 hit rich with the old harmonies, and in 1988 “Kokomo” — written for the film Cocktail — became their first No. 1 in twenty-two years.

Inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988, the Beach Boys remain America’s quintessential vocal group: a band that started with surfboards and ended up, through Brian Wilson’s studio genius, rewriting the possibilities of pop.