Whether you grew up in Malibu or Milwaukee, Manhattan Beach or Midtown Manhattan, The Beach Boys created the soundtrack for the California Dream.
For more than 60 years, The Beach Boys’ songs have captured the very essence of California—surfing, cool cars, and technicolor sunsets out over the Pacific. Listen to The Beach Boys and you can practically hear the crashing waves, smell the salt air, and feel the good vibrations.
Their glorious, multipart harmonies, innovative arrangements, and reverb-soaked guitar riffs brought surf music and a vision of California to the world that spans the generations. Lead guitarist Carl Wilson, one of the group’s three Wilson brothers, called The Beach Boys’ sound “the music of joy.”
In a California Now Podcast interview with host Soterios Johnson, Beach Boy Mike Love summed up the group’s timeless appeal: “This music transcends and uplifts people and takes them on a journey in their mind, which relieves them of the stress and tension of the day, either interpersonally or environmentally or internationally…the positivity that our music generates is more special these days than ever.”
It’s no wonder that Visit California is collaborating promotionally on the launch of the new documentary, The Beach Boys. After all, there’s no better place to have fun than in California—the Ultimate Playground.
Capturing 60 Years of Music Magic
With a May 21 world premiere of the all-new Disney+ documentary The Beach Boys at Hollywood’s landmark TCL Chinese Theatre and a May 24 Disney+ streaming debut, The Beach Boys was co-directed by celebrated filmmakers Frank Marshall and Thom Zimny. Marshall has earned five Academy Award Best Picture nominations, and, along with his producer wife Kathleen Kennedy, received the prestigious Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award honorary Oscar. Zimny’s work includes Grammy and Emmy award-winning projects with Bruce Springsteen.
The Beach Boys film has already won raves from the audience that knows the story best.
“I’m super happy with the way the documentary turned out, they did an amazing job,” says Beach Boy Brian Wilson, the group’s visionary singer, composer, and producer. “It really brought me back to those days with the boys, the fun and the music. And of course, those incredible harmonies.”
Watching the film also rekindled memories for Wilson’s fellow Beach Boy Al Jardine. The two began singing together in college and as recounted in the documentary, Jardine’s mother actually paid for the group’s first recording session.
“There's always another story that you haven't thought of,” Jardine says in the California Now Podcast. “The band is so complex. The whole experience. Geez, my God. Sixty years of evolution of a band, which is pretty unusual as a matter of fact. I mean, I don't think anybody's ever been around this long to talk about it.”
Indeed, to borrow a phrase from the Grateful Dead, another iconic California band, what a long, strange trip it’s been. The Beach Boys’ journey took them from singing at holiday family gatherings, to the top of the charts, and all the way to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
The Sounds of Summer
The Wilson brothers, their cousin Love, and Jardine all grew up in the Los Angeles suburb of Hawthorne, the same town where the Mattel toy company created such timeless California-born classics as Barbie and Hot Wheels. Hawthorne may be a few miles inland from the South Bay’s waves, but surfing infused The Beach Boys’ sound from the very beginning. In the podcast, Love describes the genesis of the 1962 song Surfin’ , which he and Brian Wilson only needed 15 or 20 minutes to write while collaborating in the Wilson family garage.
“There were surf bands and stuff but that was the first song with lyrics about surfing,” says Love. A year later while playing a show in Minnesota, the band realized they had hit on something special. Between sets, the group went outside and saw a line-up of cars that stretched for a mile.
Love recalls, “I told Brian, ‘Hey, this must have been what it was like when Elvis started out.’”
From those early surf hits, the Beach Boys sound evolved as Brian Wilson developed an ingenious sophistication as a producer and songwriter. Wilson was inspired in part by the group’s friendly rivalry with The Beatles and Love believes the bands made each other better.
He describes how Bruce Johnston, who joined The Beach Boys in 1965, brought an acetate of The Beach Boys’ masterpiece Pet Sounds to London and played it for none other than John Lennon and Paul McCartney. “They listened to the album twice through and they got busy and did Sgt. Pepper’s,” says Love.
