beach boys books

joel charles snell

The Beach Boys are America’s band. They

are the number 1 concert attraction in the

United States. They have more top 40 songs than any other American band.

The Wilsons lived in a lower blue collar neighborhood in Hawthorne, California. Neighbors liked them but did not realize the awesome pathology that went into their small slab house.

Murry was the father from hell. He beat his sons so badly that today they would have been taken from the couple in this present time.

According to the author, no one knew that of the three boys as punishment would have to defecate in front of the others. There were severe beatings by the father.

The Wilsons AS DESCRIBED BY THE AUTHOR would be a reflection of a new field called social neurosciences.

This theory traces social, psychological-psychiatry, and neurobiology together. Briefly, immense success turned family dysfunction into world wide exposure. That is the sociological variable. Nearly all who were attached by blood had some psychological connection to drugs and violence. The serotonin “the happy well being natural bio- chemical” was in short supply for most of them. Ordinary debate turned into physical violence. The violence then spread its way into the press.

Written by prominent pop culture writer Steven Gaines, Heroes and Villains, the true story of the Beach Boys celebrate and/or exposes the chaos and pathology of the group. The book was released on the 25^th anniversary of the band.

The heroes are not blood related. Al Jardine and Bruce Johnston distanced themselves from the group. The rest had their troubles. Sixty years later in my state (Iowa), Mike and Bruce played in the Quad cities and Bruce and Al performed at the other end in Council Bluffs. All of this was on the same night. Mike owns the name the Beach Boys band.

Many know the story of the upbringing, but others only know that they would NOT want to tour for months with the group. Fights, quarrels, and chaos followed them for years. They could do no wrong from 62’ to 66’ Historians usually describe the 60’s as the beginning of 65’ by then JFK was assassinated. The war in Vietnam grew rapidly and for the band, the music changed with the influx of the Counter Culture. In the summer of 1966, I watched my favorite band up front in button down yellow shirts and tiny amps. The crowd looked dramatically different. One got 45 minutes of songs and they were done. Within a few years, they were nearly broke. They played in a venue in New York State to a “crowd” of 300.

The album “Pet Sounds” was their first album to not initially succeed commercially, but critically. The conservative youth wanted more fun in the sun and the hip counter culture wanted anti-war and related. Around the turn of the century Billboard ranked “Pet Sounds” as the second most creative album of the 20^th century. A box set was released to compliment their position. It finally sold a million copies.

As of this writing, it appears that they release singles and compilation albums. That seems to do it. By the way, they have a single that went to number 32, but was not recorded by any of the numerous books or the internet. Why? Only Brian sang on the song, so it was considered to not be a Beach Boys single.

It is “Caroline, No” So hopefully, someone reading this will change the number to add to the many songs this beautiful ballad that ended the album of “Pet Sounds “and was arranged right before the barking dog and distant train. In fact, that happened. So?  It is a Beach Boys song and a Brian Wilson song. It does not qualify for the top 40.

At any rate “Good Vibrations” put them at the top and they toured all around the world. Then came “Smiley Smile” which was outrageous at the time but is more acceptable decades later.

So now let’s list other stories

1. Charlie Manson

2. Transcendental Meditation

3. Maharishi Yogi

4. James Watt

5. Ronald Reagan

6. David Marks

7. Blondie Chaplin

8. Crowd of millions on the 4^th of July.

9. Dennis and his wives and girl friends

10.Mike Love’s wives /TM instructor/ Front man/ Saxophone/ lyricist.

11. 50^th and 60^th anniversaries.

12. Dennis and his burial at sea.

13. Endless Summer/Spirit of America/Sunshine Dream

14. Fans, Enablers, and Record Companies

15. The Many Moods of Brian Wilson

16.  Dr. Eugene Landy

17. The Honeys

18. Antisemiticism

19. Carl dies but not in this book.

20. Audree, the mother of the Beach Boys

I have been within 20 feet of the band. I got an e-mail from one of Dennis Wilson’s one night stands. Mother kept the baby and she got a really great non-biological Father. She did not want money, but would like to get to know the cousins. My name came up. It was near the 50^th anniversary of the band. I encouraged her to drop the subject. I financed a record by another talented individual, John Phillips who wrote and recorded “Got Around.”

I want to thank “Alice” of Beach Boys United” and Diane DeConnick-Ferelli for her Mike Love fan club. Before the Internet her fan mail was great. It still is, but it has been crowded by some other group(s).

I really enjoy ENDLESS SUMMER QUARTERLY. I have all the copies since the first issue with a picture of Mike Love.

One organization ( ULTIMATE CLASSIC ROCK AND CULTURE ) ranked the Beach Boys as the # 1  American band. They have 55 HOT 100 hits and 38TOP 40’S. However during the holidays, “Little Saint Nick” became number 39. All over the planet they have 80 hits. Most of the above comes from the following.

Gaines, Steven (1986) Heroes & Villains, The True Story of the Beach Boys, New York: New American Library,374 pages

Gaines, Steven (1995) Heroes & Villains, and the True Story of the Beach Boys, New York: Da Capo Press, 374 pages (Read in 1995 and again in 2024)

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This next book Brian’s Wouldn’t It Be Nice, My Own Story is filled with controversy. I read it 1991 and then again now (2024.)The book is dedicated to Dr. Eugene Landy and the critics say that he (Landy) really wrote it. That Todd Gold plagiarized some of it and other parts of the book were lifted from other sources. So the spine of the story is in the first book by Steven Gaines and additional details are from other sources or created by Landy.  How much of it is true? Of course, I don’t know but it is likely that Marilyn (his first wife) and the band saw Brian drift off and were told that Landy could work wonders. As time went on, they changed their mind when he continued to charge more and more money. The band continually tours and half of the money goes to Brian. They play to capacity crowds, because their music has become the verbal-linguistic portion of American culture. The car and surf have now gradually changed to summer and good times metaphors. They put on a fantastic show and some songs drive the crowds into frenzy. Please recall that the songs are ones a casual fan would like and be pleased. They are classics not oldies.

Both sociologically and psychological plus neurobiology tie most of the band together. Only Bruce, David, and Al are not related.

The book is an ongoing triumphant book about how Dr. Landy saved the cash cow of the band, Brian Wilson. From 62’ to 66’ was their time. Clearly, by the time (fall of 67’) that Smiley Smile was released their first wave and the most productive era were over. Much of their concert production draws from their hits from that first era. It would appear that Brian wrote most of that material. However, Mike Love made a significant contribution lyrically and put a huge effort in making the band as popular as it is.

I now really like Smiley Smile. So the book is contested in court. Brian disowns it and Gold indicated that he borrowed a good deal from other than original sources. Landy indicated that he had little or nothing to do with the book.

Most other writers relative to Brian disagreed. The book was written by many and Brian spent 30 to 40 hours correcting it.

I do not know the ultimate outcome of the trials. It is time to move on. Other authors of major books will be discussed or listed later.

The following came from:

Wilson, Brian with Todd Gold(1991) Wouldn’t It Be Nice/My Own Story, NewYork: HarperCollins Publishers

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On the other hand, I AM BRIAN WILSON no or few problems have emerged.27 reviews are included in the front of the book. It has become a New York Times bestseller.

First, the Beach Boys are no longer young males. This book ends in 2016. Although the denotation of their words is white heterosexuals singing  love songs to automobiles. The cars are special as they assist young men to meet young women. It is high school in California and it is about 1963 or 1964. As time goes on, the connotation is that it is about another time period and is wrapped in nostalgia. All that is mixed with instruments and human harmony stretched with reverb, tremolo, digital reworking and other new technologies. It’s “AMERICAN GRAFFITTI. “ That movie ended with “All Summer Long” by the band. Further, one of the actors states that “the Beach Boys were boss.”

The music also covers so many other topics. By the mid 70’s civil war, racial strife, and future shock encouraged many to become fun in the sun. The local beach or back yard was a place to enjoy emotionally endless summers.

One could go to their room and go back in time with top notch harmony and sing along with boys of summer.

Brian Wilson had songs emerging in his cerebral cortex that were catchy and uplifting. Those songs competed with scary voices of vague ghosts that screamed at him for his lack of self worth in his mind.

Externally, he had his father who was really mean, because he loved them. What a mixed message! The Diagnostic &Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders may suggest that Brian was a paranoid schizophrenic or a bipolar/ manic-depressive with schizo-affective features. So work with that.

At any rate, Brian was treated poorly but the enablers need him to be well so that he could make “them” more money. The Nazis at EMI Capitol did not like PET SOUNDS so they did not promote it. In the long run, the album would keep the band at or toward the top.

So this book appears to be Brian being encouraged or remembering the early days to the middle of the second decade of the year 2016.

Brian is talking with and in his own language to a pop rock writer Ben Greenman. Dad hit him. Dad screamed at him. Dennis got into trouble and Carl and his mother Audree tried to keep their distance in a tiny house in the middle of one of the most acknowledged state in America. The little house has gone because a large 4 lane replaced the neighborhood. There is a memorial there now.

As each portion of his life is discussed it is interlaced with lyrics of a certain song. They are songs that Brian wrote and why he wrote them.

(BREAKING NEWS!!!!!!!!! “Little St. Nick” created and recorded by the Beach Boys in the early to mid 60’s. It is back and is in the TOP 40.That is another hit to place them in the #1 place as they are ranked among other American bands in terms of Top 40 songs.)

Brian’s fear is created both outwardly and internally. When he describes his “family” it is not only his family of origin (Marry and Audree) rather it is also his family with Marilyn, Carnie, and Wendy, but also his current family of  his  wife who has passed on, Melinda and all of their adopted children.

1961

By now with his teen male friends, Brian and his brother are getting to know all the types of rock music. They borrowed from each other, so a song that was a hit with one band became reorganized and refiltered to be another hit for another band. Everyone liked Chuck Berry and his “Sweet Little Sixteen” that became “Surfin’ USA.” Why did Brian do that? His father said it was legal. Berry sued and the rest is history. However, the sharing continued.

Now were back to connotation. Literally, could someone surf all over the USA? Right? Well no! Surfin’ over the years means in the fantasy of one’s mind that you are to fly all over “Americana” the legend. Now we are in the mountains and valleys of metaphors.

Much of that last part of the book is about the awards, his presentations and the audience of Brian’s later life. He talks about the late Ted Kennedy bopping to his songs along with Republicans.

For this book, we can use system theory which comes from sociology’s structure- functionalism. Most of the Wilson families discussed in this book are troublesome or dysfunctional.

So let’s talk about the band as a micro group. The instrumental leader at the beginning was Brian. Supposedly, he is the alpha. However, Brian was gone most of the time after 1964. So Mike became the alpha and Carl was the expressive leader. The rest of the bands are Betas. Over the years, Brian, and Mike, was the instrumental and expressive leaders and the rest were Betas of the “Brian Wilson” band. Mike and Bruce were and are the instrumental and expressive leaders of their own band called “The Beach Boys band.” So (again) there are two bands. Mike’s group which performs more often and Brian’s group and that appears to work. The brand name of “Beach Boys” is owned by Mike. “Brian Wilson” is owned by Brian and those two groups seem to work or are functional.

Most of the leaders are now moving into their 80s so the whole system is now who shall follow Carl and Dennis to the other side. What will the two groups do as a micro social system? Will the next generation continue the band as many are musical.

Brian ends this book with “Can you hear music? I can hear it all the time.”

Wilson, Brian with Ben Greenman, I am Brian Wilson. (2016)  New York: New York, Da Capo Press, 310 pages (Made in USA. September, 27th 2023, Monee, Illinois, 310 pages.)

Years ago, I wrote an E-book called “Summer of Love.” It was published by my own little firm called Brock-Martin and hopefully this book was finished before Carl Wilson died in early 98’ and made an impact. One of the complaints about my book is that I was not critical of Mike Love. So let’s see how those statements hold up some years later in Mike’s book.

I Am Brian Wilson was published in 2016. As indicated earlier, I have read earlier books on him. His book I read at that time (2016) and re-read it 2024. This also applies to Mike Love’s Good Vibrations, My Life as a Beach Boy. This one is more thorough and has more details than Brian’s book.

However, to really know more about Brian and some of the inner workings you read his book. For a more comprehensive look at the outside world, Mike does a great job.

Mike’s family like Brian’s came from the Midwest to financially improve their lives. His dad owned a steel plant and his father grew the business with money from the Defense Department. As other nations were rebuilding the USA was clearly out producing nearly everyone. So this context made the Loves a very prosperous Swedish Lutheran family that lived about 10 miles from the Wilsons. However, the Loves were socially and economically much more distant from the Wilson family. Michael felt close to Brian then his own family of which he was the oldest of 5 children.

Michael is now over 80 has a net worth of 80 million and has a number of former wives and children. All are reimbursed by him. His current wife has been with him the longest and they have two children. She is/was  very talented in the business of rock music. She has been able to cut cost and increase the difficult schedule of traveling and performing. Mike has the talent to perform, create the music, arrange set lists, and create lyrics. The Beach Boys band is a tight knit group of Mike and Bruce along with 5 or 6 others who play back up. They can perform and quickly pack up and play somewhere else very efficiently. This is less clear to me, but Mr. Love has played as front man for over 5, ooo concerts. He has also produced and performed on 5 solo albums.

The band usually entertains in a big city, but make less money because the major promoter dictates contracts so they play in smaller venues nearby so that the touring is not only good but profitable. They do about 120 to 150 performances a year.

Mr. Love writes more about the band as it impacts the wider society. As noted early, the early songs were about surf, cars, and summer. Now a song about a car has moved from its literal meaning to a symbolic meaning. Summer means fun.

To make things easier, he loves to travel and perform. This author is closer to Brian’s approach to life. I like to stay at home or make little trips to the numerous lakes and rolling hills in Iowa. That’s right. We have many RV parks on small lakes. The city now has trails and other amenities so one can rest and relax nearby. Further, we have at least three major Lakeland areas and numerous cabins overlooking the two major rivers, the Mississippi and the Missouri. We are and feel close to Wisconsin and Minnesota.

The Beach Boys band has played in many smaller cities in Iowa, along with Cedar Rapids, the Quads, and Des Moines. Most or all of the concerts attract capacity crowds. The second to last one here had 10, 000 and was located in a green field that is part of my school’s campus. The very last one was in a brand new outdoor theater. It was filled to capacity.

Love praises his band mates, and explains statements of the past. This is especially poignant to the speech made in 1988. It was at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame awards ceremony. Further, he notes that he did not fire anyone at the end of an anniversary tour. He needed to return to the Beach Boys band of Mike and Bruce. The other Beach Boys wanted to continue. However, the 25 members of the Beach Boys were losing money until they got to Asia. The band was making a grand tour with twenty-five members. What they were doing was too costly. No one was fired. There were many other details, but even if it is half valid, there appears to be a winning description of Mike and the band. Those who wrote in their opinion indicated that Mike did a reasonable job. The book was a New York Times bestseller.

Love, Mike with James S. Hirsch (2016) Good Vibrations: My Life as a Beach Boy, New York: Penguin Random House, LLC, 436 pages.

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Imagine a 4 lane super highway with off ramps. The lanes are filled with heavy traffic going both ways. The off ramps are many and they help give definition to the 4 lanes.

This is what the late Timothy White has done with the Beach Boys. Their story of the start and rise of the group as well as the golden era of 62’ to 65’ is discussed. Then there is the downfall and near ruin of the band until the Endless Summer album and the movie American Graffiti. By this time they have 3 big sellers and a compilation that also sold well. They zoom through the 70’s and in the late 80” is

“Kokomo.” They continue on with singles, compilations, box sets and capacity crowds up to the end of the book in 1994. Now take that story and multiply it by 20 or 30 times with incredible details and you have White’s Nearest Faraway Place. I helped give a small townnearby our home, the Nearest Faraway Place. It is a pretty town with cabins on the edge, a pretty forest and numerous rides.

So now look at how White works his magic. Brian and the band sign with small labels until they reach EMI Capitol. So? There is a long build up to Brian’s action and a long history of Capitol records. Something that could be reduced to one sentence explodes into nearly a chapter. So Brian’s contractual agreement is the busy 4 lane highway, the off ramp is the history of EMI Capitol records.

Deductively, you approach the book with an incredible cover. It is followed with chapters each using a song that the Beach Boys sang. Further, you discover that White is prominent in the Rock and Roll business. He has been both a writer and editor of popular Rock magazines. Further, he is also a social historian. When the band did something, what was going on around them? Who else had signed contracts with Capitol? What did the building look like for the record company?

Where did the name Nearest Faraway Place come from? Well it was Bruce Johnston who created this instrumental that was on their 20/20 album. His approach was to try and make a Brian Wilson instrumental. It is beautiful. He also wrote a Brian Wilson complimentary song I WRITE THE SONGS (THAT MAKE THE WHOLE WORLD SING.)

That became a super hit for Barry Manilow. It also helped him win a Grammy.

He is a real talent coming from a family who were significant in the corporation of Rexall Drug Stores. He had his own band and his own hits before joining the Beach Boys in the mid 60’s.

White goes back numerous generations to the trek from Sweden to Kansas to the California beaches. You can see two maps that outline where Hawthorne is located, and the Wilsons and Loves lived. The map is of the year 1929.

Then the chapters move along to the end. The reader now is expecting a doctoral dissertation because of his elegant word usage. We come now to the end of the deductive ladder that Brian is better and that Dr. Landy dies. He did try to get Brian to sign away his money to the Psychologist. Please remember that a PhD or PsyD cannot write prescriptions. Generally an M.D. along with a PhD clinical pharmacologist generally make all the scripts for the meds. The book ends with going back to “the child is the father of man” (William Wadsworth.) Those sunny days of youngsters have yet to be complicated. There is a child like craving to go back when that is not possible.

There was a huge acknowledgements, index of books, journals, and related. So White can no longer add more because he died of a heart attack at 50. This is the book. As this has been read from 1994 and again by  2024, one is overwhelmed by how long the band has lasted.

Surf’s Up!

 White, Timothy (1994) The Nearest Faraway Place, New York: Holt and Company

David Marks played with the band for 4 albums and 300 concerts. However, he did not get credit as a member of the band, because he did not help on the very first song.

Marks lived in Inglewood which was just over the interstate from Hawthorne. Both Carl and Dennis threw things at him when he first joined the neighborhood. Later, he learned with Carl how to be the lead guitar player, Al played rhythm.   

Like everyone else most were inspired by Brian. David once watched him play a part of a record of the Four Freshman over and over again. Brian was the genius, and Carl became co-director of the two pickers or leads. However, he liked most was Dennis. He was a good friend to have because he could beat up every male in and around his age in the area. He was continually in trouble and hurt one youngster so bad that Denny was pushed out of his high school. Later, Dennis was so drugged up that he would hang over the drums.

Another back up drummer kept the beat for the band.

David was fired from the Beach Boys by Murry the manager of the band in the early days. David started his own band and later was a concert back up performer and session stylist for numerous top groups. His father “Pappy” was a carpenter and his mother was a psychic. How’s that? She fit in with the California culture of the late 60’s.

In the later years, he has played with the Beach Boys band (Mike and Bruce) and then would help the Brian Wilson band (Brian and Al Jardine.)

He studied at the Boston Conservatory. He played in the Super Bowl when Al was forced out of the band.

This and all the mysteries that make up the Beach Boys and John Stamos and related make this a superior book. The index as well as folks around him are listed.

John Stebbins with David Marks (2007) The Lost Beach Boy, London: Virgin Books, 254 pages.

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Dennis Wilson was the real surfer. However, it was also his good looks that put him in the Beach Boys band. However, his life style was not with the band. As much as he was missed, he would hang over his drums and another would provide the beat for a song. His performances were off putting, but he was “family” and thus he played with the group, but also sang a song” You are so beautiful” in off key and his ability to move around really meant that he stumbled. The key organ player would try to drown out Dennis’s singing.

He lived very fast and he was a difficulty to the rest of the group. Without checking with an investigator, he became involved with Charles Manson and his cult followers. The Beach Boys played Manson’s “Ceast to Exist” with a new title “Never Learn Not to Learn.” It was on the 20/20 album. After Manson’s cult killing spree, the band went into hiding and Terry Melcher a friend of the group had to testify against him in court.

Wilson died when looking for a piece of jewelry that he threw overboard at an earlier time of his life. It was in 8 foot of water.

He left behind a lot of well wishers, and was buried at sea with the support of Ronald Reagan, the President of the United States.

 Stebbins, Jon (2000) Dennis Wilson, The Real Beach Boy, Los Angles: Midnight  Rider Press,230 pages.

ATTENDUM

I have run out of books and yet so much more needs to be said. We will borrow from Wikipedia and other sources. This is legal because there isn’t charge for this E-book. THANKS AGAIN WIKIPEDIA!

Therefore, we begin.

Carl Wilson, Long Promised Road

Carl Only Knows: A New Biography of the Man Legally Known as the Beach Boys

Critic Jesse Jarnow on the new biography of Beach Boy Carl Wilson, Long Promised Road.

By Jesse Jarnow

October 12, 2015

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While the recent biopic Love and Mercy continued the deification of Brian Wilson, it was his youngest brother Carl that led the Beach Boys for more than twice as long, both onstage and in the studio. Kent Crowley’s Long Promised Road: Carl Wilson, Soul of the Beach Boys, the Biography is a fascinating but frustrating effort to recast Carl as the hero of an alternate but equally real version of Beach Boys (and pop music) history. And of all the Wilson family members in need of illumination, Carl deserves it most, the voice of “God Only Knows” and “Good Vibrations”, the Boy who captained the band o’er the stormy seas between their ’60s hits and their improbable stadium-filling success in the ’70s and ’80s.

-=-=-=-But Long Promised Road reads more like a Carl-centric take on the familiar surf-rock-to-stardom narrative, offering few peeks into the brooding, bearded Wilson on the front cover. Indeed, when 18-year-old Carl shows up at the recording session for Beach Boys Party in late 1965 with his new fiancée on his arm, it’s a surprise to learn that young Carl has been dating, or even (one assumes) moved out of the Wilson home in suburban Los Angeles. The textures of Wilson’s life are mostly absent as Crowley leaves the well-told parts of the Beach Boys’ tale to previous biographers and instead focuses on Wilson’s unlikely and influential teendom in L.A.’s thriving independent rock scene of the early ’60s. Crowley uncovers some interesting facts (Wilson’s teenage guitar lessons with fellow teen and future Walker Brothers guitarist John Maus, who’d played with Richie Valens) and some not terribly interesting ones (Wilson’s preferred gauge of guitar strings), but offers no real doorway into Carl himself.

Though Mike Love gets all the (bad) press, and brother Dennis is remembered as his own out-of-control ’60s rock caricature, it was Carl who provided the rudder/anchor/shore to the Beach Boys, and his almost-silent subplot within the band invests the book with some amount of natural plot movement. However, it isn’t until more than two-thirds of the way through Long Promised Road that Crowley drops one of the book’s most interesting points: from early on, Beach Boys’ contracts stipulated that the band would consist of “Carl Wilson and four musicians known as the Beach Boys.” Carl Wilson wasn’t merely the soul of the Beach Boys but, for legal purposes in most jurisdictions, he was the Beach Boys, and his regime was a progressive one.

Following Brian Wilson’s emotional recession in the wake of the failed Smile project, it was Carl (as Crowley rightly points out) who fused the road and studio Beach Boys, “reconcil[ing] the complex chorale of ‘Cool, Cool Water’ with the raucous simplicity of ‘409.’” These are the years that one wishes Long Promised Road might luxuriate in, building an emotional and artistic historical space for Carl Wilson around the golden art-rock detailing of the Carl-helmed classics Friends, Sunflower, and Surf’s Up. Here, Carl was responsible for completing some of Brian’s Smile recordings and contributing his own fully-formed songs for the first time. These fertile and collaborative moments of creative calm pass by all too quickly before Capitol Records’ 1971 deletion of the entirety of the Beach Boys catalogue and the unexpected second wave of success with 1974’s Endless Summer singles compilation, toppling the band’s internal balance toward nostalgia.

But for Beach Boys fans looking for fresh angles that might reflect back on the band’s music and life, Long Promised Road is full of fun and surprises, a 300-level text perhaps best consumed after more standard works like Timothy White’s Nearest Faraway Place: Brian Wilson, the Beach Boys, and the Southern California Experience or even Keith Badman’s The Beach Boys: The Definitive Diary of America’s Greatest Band. (David Leaf’s The Beach Boys and the California Myth remains out-of-print and prohibitively expensive.) Working in semi-unauthorized mode, Crowley pieces together Carl’s corner of the Wilson saga without access to Brian or surviving Beach Boys Mike Love, Al Jardine, or Bruce Johnston. The book suffers for it, and interviews with Beach Boys historians offering second-hand assessments don’t quite work to fill in the gaps. Since he died from lung cancer in 1998, there remain many aspects of the Carl Wilson story that can never be told. Instead, Long Promised Road delivers its punches in brief episodic bursts that hit like stories told in single panel comics, often more tantalizing than illuminating.

Yet Carl Wilson’s personal triumphs and struggles are all present, driven by family demons and the strange Californian currents just as palpably as in the more familiar stories of his brothers Brian and Dennis, but they are almost never fully animated. On the spectrum of Beach Boys writers, Crowley veers dangerously close to being an apologist for Murry Wilson, the band’s notoriously abusive father, even quoting members of the Sunrays (a Murry-produced act, introduced to him by Carl) to the effect that Murry couldn’t’ve been that bad. Still, Crowley raises a valuable point as he details Murry’s presence around Gold Star studios as an aspiring songwriter a decade before Brian led sessions there for Pet Sounds and Smile: “Murry’s musical aspirations and efforts laid the groundwork to turn the Beach Boys from a surf band to the family business to a legend.”

In How the Beatles Destroyed Rock ‘N’ Roll: An Alternative History of American Popular Music, Elijah Wald brilliantly uncovers and connects the seething indie music scenes that existed in regional pockets around the country from the jazz era up through the moment when, Wald notes, surf rock was the last major twist that “helped to form a new image of the rock’n’roll band.” Parallel to the arrival of the lead guitar as an iconic totem of the ’60s, Carl Wilson was the lead guitarist in the world’s most popular surf band. Though they grew long-haired and bearded and briefly psychedelicized, the Beach Boys were never fully at peace with the counterculture, and their creative choices and tensions grew from an earlier and perhaps even weirder time in American history. On the left were the Wilson brothers, voting as a block to continue creating new music and, on the right, cousin Mike Love and others, happy to churn out the hits for paying customers. By the ’80s, it was Love was who was most visibly calling the shots. Staying true to his school, as promised, it was Love who forged relationships with Nancy and Ronald Reagan, who sometimes appeared onstage at the Beach Boys’ annual Fourth of July concerts in Washington, D.C., where the Hawthorne group branded themselves America’s Band. By then, the contracts had been changed and Carl’s reign was over, perfectly mirroring the dim end of the 1970s.

“I haven’t quit the Beach Boys but I do not plan on touring with them until they decide that 1981 means as much to them as 1961,” Crowley quotes Carl as saying near the turn of that decade. It could be a big moment in the book, coming after a long creative battle with Mike Love. Isolated strands of drama lead up to it, such as a pivotal 1977 meeting with Brian voting against his brothers and effectively ending Carl’s leadership of the band, followed almost immediately by an acceleration of Carl’s own substance abuse. But, like many rock biographies, Long Promised Road goes into fast-forward as the 1980s arrive, covering the entirety of Carl’s solo career, subsequent return to the Beach Boys, and remaining decade-and-a-half of his life in the last 13 pages. It’s a disappointing end to a promising set-up: a study of the odd and shifting power center of the Beach Boys’ American epic, simultaneously an archetype and totally unrepeatable, and the singular Wilson brother who kept it (mostly) together.

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AL JARDINE

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Al Jardine
Jardine performing in 2019
Background information
Birth name	Alan Charles Jardine
Born	September 3, 1942 (age 81) Lima, Ohio, U.S.
Origin	Hawthorne, California, U.S.
Genres	Rockpopfolk
Occupation(s)	Musiciansingersongwriter
Instrument(s)	Vocalsguitarbass
Years active	1961–present
Member of	The Beach Boys
Website	aljardine.com

Alan Charles Jardine (born September 3, 1942) is an American musician who co-founded the Beach Boys. He is best known as the band’s rhythm guitarist, background vocalist, and for occasionally singing lead vocals on singles such as “Help Me, Rhonda” (1965), “Then I Kissed Her” (1965), “Cottonfields” (1970), and a cover of the Del-Vikings’ “Come Go with Me” (1981). His song “Lady Lynda” was also a UK top 10 hit for the group in 1978. Other Beach Boys songs that feature Jardine on lead include “I Know There’s an Answer” (1966), “Vegetables” (1967), a cover of Buddy Holly’s “Peggy Sue” (1978), and “From There to Back Again” (2012).

Following the death of fellow band member Carl Wilson in 1998, Jardine left the touring Beach Boys and has since performed as a solo artist, rejoining the band only for their 2012 50th anniversary tour. Since 2013, Jardine has toured alongside fellow Beach Boys founder Brian Wilson and his band; Jardine has also made solo appearances, increasing the amount of these especially since 2018. He has released one solo studio album, A Postcard from California (2010). Jardine was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the Beach Boys in 1988.^[1]

Early life[edit]

Alan Charles Jardine was born at Lima Memorial Hospital in Lima, Ohio,^[2] the younger of two children to Virginia and Donald Jardine.^[3] Having spent his first years of childhood in Lima, he moved with his family to Rochester, New York, where his father worked for Eastman Kodak and taught at the Rochester Institute of Technology.^[4] His family later moved to San Francisco and then to Hawthorne, California, where he and his older brother Neal spent the remainder of their youth.^[5]

At Hawthorne High School, he was a fullback on the football team, soon befriending backup quarterback Brian Wilson.^[6] Jardine also watched Brian and brother Carl Wilson singing at a school assembly.^[7] After attending Ferris State University during the 1960–61 academic year, Jardine registered as a student at El Camino College in 1961.^[8] There, he was reunited with Brian and first presented the idea of forming a band as the two worked through harmony ideas together in the college’s music room. Jardine’s primary musical interest was folk and he learned banjo and guitar specifically to play folk music. When the Beach Boys formed at Wilson’s home, he first tried to push the band toward folk but was overruled in favor of rock ‘n’ roll.^[9]

A versatile string instrumentalist, Jardine played stand-up bass on the Beach Boys’ first recording, the song “Surfin’” (1961). He fully rejoined the Beach Boys in the summer of 1963 at Brian Wilson’s request and worked alongside guitarist David Marks with the band until October 1963, when Marks quit the Beach Boys after an altercation with the band’s manager, Murry Wilson.^[10][11]

Career[edit]

1960s–80s[edit]

Jardine in 1965

Jardine played double bass on the Beach Boys’ first (and only) record for Candix Records, “Surfin’“, but quit the band a few months later, in February 1962. A common misconception is that Jardine left to focus on dental school. In reality, Jardine did not even apply to dental school until 1964, and the reason he left was due to creative differences and his belief that the newly-formed group would not be a commercial success.^[12] He returned to the Beach Boys full-time in 1963 following David Marks‘ departure.^[13]

Jardine first sang lead on “Christmas Day”, on 1964’s The Beach Boys’ Christmas Album and followed with the Number 1 hit “Help Me, Rhonda“.^{[14][better source needed]} It was at Jardine’s suggestion that the Beach Boys recorded a version of the folk standard “Sloop John B“, which Brian Wilson arranged and produced for their Pet Sounds album in 1966.^{[15][better source needed]}

After Brian Wilson discontinued touring in late 1964, Jardine took on a more prominent role as a lead vocalist during live performances with the group. Beginning with his contributions to the Friends album, Jardine also became a songwriter and wrote or co-wrote a number of songs for the Beach Boys. “California Saga: California” from the Holland album, charted in early 1973. Jardine’s song for his first wife, “Lady Lynda” (1978), scored a Top Ten chart entry in the UK. Increasingly from the time of the Surf’s Up album, Al became involved alongside Carl Wilson in production duties for the Beach Boys. He shared production credits with Ron Altbach on M.I.U. Album (1978) and was a significant architect (with Mike Love) of the album’s concept and content. As with “Lady Lynda” and his 1969 rewrite of Lead Belly‘s “Cotton Fields,” “Come Go with Me” and “Peggy Sue” on M.I.U. Album were Jardine productions, the first being a measurable hit in the UK.^[16]

Jardine instigated the Beach Boys’ recording of a remake of the Mamas and the Papas‘ song “California Dreamin’” (featuring Roger McGuinn), reaching No. 8 on the Billboard adult contemporary chart in 1986. The associated music video featured in heavy rotation on MTV and secured extensive international airplay. The video featured all the surviving Beach Boys and two of the three surviving members of the Mamas and the Papas, John Phillips and Michelle Phillips (Denny Doherty was on the East coast and declined), along with former Byrds guitarist Roger McGuinn.^[17][18]

1990s–present[edit]

Jardine performing with the Beach Boys during their 2012 reunion tour

In 1991, Jardine had allegedly been “suspended” by Love from the band prior to the recording of the album Summer in Paradise, supposedly because of a dispute about content;^[19] however, he returned during the sessions to sing lead vocals on two of the album’s songs and contributed to the partial re-recording of tracks for the UK release of the album.

Early in 1997, Carl Wilson was diagnosed with lung and brain cancer after years of heavy smoking. Despite his terminal condition, Carl continued to perform with the band on its 1997 summer tour (a double-bill with the band Chicago) while undergoing chemotherapy. During performances, he sat on a stool and needed oxygen after every song.^[20] (David Marks rejoined the group in Carl’s absence, touring with Love, Jardine, and Johnston.) Carl died on February 6, 1998, at the age of 51, two months after the death of the Wilsons’ mother, Audree.^[21]

After Carl’s death in 1998, Jardine was forced out of the touring version of the Beach Boys, leaving Love as the only original member in the group playing live concerts; Love retained David Marks (until Marks himself left in 1999) and Bruce Johnston in his group. Jardine continued to tour and recorded with his band, “Beach Boys’ Family and Friends, with a rotating line-up that utilized many former longtime Beach Boys touring members, including Billy Hinsche (originally from Dino, Desi and Billy before working with The Beach Boys), Ed Carter, Bobby Figueroa, and Daryl Dragon (better known as “The Captain” from Captain and Tennille after leaving The Beach Boys), alongside Jardine’s sons Matt (who himself had worked as an assistant stage manager for The Beach Boys from 1986 until 1988 and then as a member of the backing band, contributing percussion and vocals, from 1988 until 1998) and Adam, Brian Wilson’s daughters Carnie and Wendy (who had worked as a trio in Wilson Phillips and as a duo as The Wilsons), and Owen Elliot (the daughter of Cass Elliot of The Mamas and the Papas). (Jardine and his band were also promoted or billed under the banners “Al Jardine, Beach Boy” and “Al Jardine of the Beach Boys” during this time.)

Jardine began to perform regularly with his band “Beach Boys: Family & Friends” until he ran into legal issues for using the name without a license from the band’s corporate holdings company (and occasional record label), BRI (Brother Records). (Love had already received a license from BRI after Carl’s death.) BRI and Love initiated legal action against Jardine after a 1999 show where promoters had incorrectly billed Jardine’s band as “The Beach Boys.”.^[22] Meanwhile, Jardine sued Love, claiming that he had been excluded from their concerts,^[23] BRI, through its longtime attorney, Ed McPherson, sued Jardine in Federal Court. Jardine, in turn, counter-claimed against BRI for wrongful termination.^[24] BRI ultimately prevailed.^[25]

In 2002, Jardine and his band released his first solo live album, Live in Las Vegas (see discography section below for track listing).^[26] The amount of Jardine’s live appearances dwindled after the lawsuit, partially since Jardine had little name recognition when compared to “The Beach Boys” (touring band led by Love and Johnston) or Brian Wilson (touring solo).^{[27][22][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39]}

The courts later ruled in favor of BRI and Love, in the dispute over The Beach Boys’ name and that of Jardine’s band “Beach Boys’ Family and Friends, denying Jardine the use of the Beach Boys name in any fashion. Jardine proceeded to appeal this decision in addition to seeking $4 million in damages. The California Court of Appeal ruled that Love acted wrongfully in freezing Jardine out of touring under the Beach Boys name, allowing Jardine to continue with his lawsuit.^[40] The case ended up being settled outside of court with the terms not disclosed ^[41]

In late 2006, Jardine joined Brian Wilson and his band for a short tour celebrating the 40th anniversary of Pet Sounds.^[42]

In March 2008, Jardine settled a lawsuit brought against him by BRI (led by Love and the estate of Carl Wilson) and Love regarding use of the “Beach Boys” name. Love had licensed the Beach Boys name, and it was deemed that Jardine’s newly formed band, called the Beach Boys Family & Friends (featuring sons Matt and Adam Jardine, Carnie and Wendy Wilson, Daryl Dragon, Billy Hinsche, and others), was a breach of title use.^[43] During and after the lawsuit, Jardine was allowed to tour as “Al Jardine, Family, and Friends” and “Al Jardine and the Endless Summer Beach Band”.

In 2009, Jardine’s lead vocal on “Big Sur Christmas” was released on MP3 download, produced by longtime Red Barn Studios engineer Stevie Heger under Heger’s band’s name, Hey Stevie. The track also was released on the Hey Stevie album, Eloquence.^[44]

Jardine released A Postcard from California, his solo debut, in June 2010 (re-released with two extra tracks on April 3, 2012). The album features contributions from Beach Boys Brian Wilson, Carl Wilson (posthumously), Bruce Johnston, David Marks, and Mike Love. There are also guest appearances from Glen Campbell (who had frequently worked with The Beach Boys as a touring musician and session guitarist in the mid-1960s), David Crosby, Neil Young, Stephen Stills, Steve Miller, Scott Mathews, Gerry Beckley and Dewey Bunnell (members of America) and Flea. A spoken intermission written by Stephen Kalinich, called “Tidepool Interlude”, features actor Alec Baldwin.^[45]

Jardine made his first appearance with the Beach Boys touring band in more than 10 years in 2011 at a tribute concert for Ronald Reagan‘s 100th birthday;^[46] at this concert, he sang lead on “Help Me, Rhonda” and “Sloop John B”. He made a handful of other appearances with Love and Johnston’s touring band in preparation for a reunion.

In December 2011, it was announced that Brian Wilson, Mike Love, Al Jardine, David Marks, and Bruce Johnston would reunite for a new Beach Boys album and The Beach Boys 50th Anniversary Reunion Tour in 2012.^[47] The album, titled That’s Why God Made the Radio, was released in June 2012 and features the song “From There to Back Again,” on which Jardine shared lead vocals with Wilson. Critics have acclaimed Jardine’s performance in the song, with Ryan Reed of Paste magazine praising his “stand-out lead vocal”,^[48] while John Bush of Allmusic deemed the song the “most beautiful” in the album, having been “impeccably” framed by Wilson around Jardine’s “aging but still sweet” voice.^[49]

In September 2012, it was announced that Jardine, Wilson, and Marks would no longer tour with the band. Love returned the lineup to its pre-Anniversary Tour configuration, with Love as the only original member (Bruce Johnston joined in 1965). As a result, it was announced that Jardine and Marks would appear with Wilson and his band for a short summer tour in 2013, featuring the three. Jardine has appeared at almost every single Brian Wilson concert or other performance since the end of the Beach Boys’ 50th Anniversary reunion tour in 2012, with very few exceptions.^{[nb 1][53][50][51][52][54][55][56][57][58][59][60]} During this time, Jardine also continued to make sporadic solo appearances with his band.^{[53][50][51][52][54][55]}

Continuing in collaboration with Wilson, Jardine and Marks (along with former Beach Boy Blondie Chaplin) contributed to Wilson’s solo album, No Pier Pressure, which was released in April 2015.^{[citation needed]} Jardine also contributed to Wilson’s Pet Sounds 50th Anniversary World Tour and has been featured in all subsequent tours. In July 2016, Jardine appeared in an episode of the Adult Swim series Decker, playing the role of the President’s “science advisor”.^[61]

Jardine and his son Matt contributed backing vocals to John Mayer‘s “Emoji of a Wave“, which was released in 2017.^[62] In 2018, Jardine began performing solo storyteller concerts called “Al Jardine – A Postcard From California – From the Very First Song With a Founding Member of the Beach Boys” which featured his son Matt and long time Peter Asher associate Jeff Alan Ross. Jardine continued to tour these shows into 2020, while still performing with the Brian Wilson band.^[63]

In April 2019, Jardine was inducted into the Rochester Music Hall of Fame.

On February 12, 2021, Jardine released a CD single featuring a new rendition of his bonus track from “A Postcard from California” titled “Waves of Love 2.0” (as the A-side) and a new song “Jenny Clover” (as the B-side). It was co-written and produced by his long time collaborating partner Larry Dvoskin.^[64] A portion of the proceeds were earmarked to raise money for “The World Central Kitchen” charity org.^[65]

In 2022, Jardine announced the “Family & Friends Tour” featuring Carnie & Wendy Wilson of Wilson Phillips. “Family & Friends” will also feature Al’s son, Matt Jardine; the eight-member band for the tour will be led by Carnie’s husband Rob Bonfiglio, who is Wilson Phillips’ musical director and performs regularly in Brian Wilson’s band.^[66] The band will also include long-time Beach Boys associates Ed Carter, Bobby Figueroa and Probyn Gregory.

Book[edit]

Jardine has authored one book, Sloop John B: A Pirate’s Tale (2005), illustrated by Jimmy Pickering. The book is a children’s story about a boy’s Caribbean adventure with his grandfather, reworded from the original folk lyric of the song “Sloop John B“. It also includes a free CD with singalong acoustic recording by Jardine.^[67][68]

Discography[edit]

See also: The Beach Boys discography

Albums

Year	Album details
2001	Live in Las VegasReleased: 2001Tracks: “Dance, Dance, Dance”; “Do You Wanna Dance“; “Catch a Wave”; “Hawaii; Do It Again”; “Darlin’”; “Wild Honey”; “Come Go with Me”; “Surfer Girl”; “Don’t Worry, Baby”; “Shut Down”; “Little Deuce Coupe”; “I Get Around“; “In My Room”; “Girl Don’t Tell Me”; “Break Away”; “Sail On Sailor”; “God Only Knows”; “Sloop John B”; “Wouldn’t It Be Nice”; “Good Vibrations”; “Heroes & Villains”; “Help Me, Rhonda”; “Surfin’ USA”; “Barbara Ann”; “Fun, Fun, Fun”; “California Energy Blues”
2010	A Postcard from CaliforniaReleased digitally and in hard copy on demand: June 29, 2010 (Limited edition Black Friday vinyl release: November 23, 2018)

Singles

Date of release	Title	Album	Label
December 2002	“PT Cruiser”/”PT Cruiser” (a cappella)/”PT Cruiser” (track)[69]	N/A	CQ
November 17, 2009	“Christmas Day”[70]	N/A	Jardine Tours
April 16, 2011	“Don’t Fight the Sea” (featuring The Beach Boys) b/w “Friends” (a cappella) (non-album track)	A Postcard from California	Capitol
December 2015	“Hurry Up, Hurry Up, Santa Claus”[71]	N/A	William V Roach
December 10, 2017	“Sunshine to Snowflakes”[72]	N/A	Deborah Arman Lent
February 12, 2021	“Waves of Love 2.0” b/w “Jenny Clover” (non-album track)[73]	A Postcard from California reissue	Do What You Love Media

Notes[edit]

1. ^ Exceptions, in which Brian Wilson has performed without Jardine, include January 10, 2013; February 24, 2013; January 22, 2014; October 23, 2014; and May 16, 2015.^[50][51]tour

In 1991, Jardine had allegedly been “suspended” by Love from the band prior to the recording of the album Summer in Paradise, supposedly because of a dispute about content;[19] however, he returned during the sessions to sing lead vocals on two of the album’s songs and contributed to the partial album.	Album details
2001	Live in Las VegasReleased: 2001Tracks: “Dance, Dance, Dance”; “Do You Wanna Dance“; “Catch a Wave”; “Hawaii; Do It Again”; “Darlin’”; “Wild Honey”; “Come Go with Me”; “Surfer Girl”; “Don’t Worry, Baby”; “Shut Down”; “Little Deuce Coupe”; “I Get Around“; “In My Room”; “Girl Don’t Tell Me”; “Break Away”; “Sail On Sailor”; “God Only Knows”; “Sloop John B”; “Wouldn’t It Be Nice”; “Good Vibrations”; “Heroes & Villains”; “Help Me, Rhonda”; “Surfin’ USA”; “Barbara Ann”; “Fun, Fun, Fun”; “California Energy Blues”
2010	A Postcard from CaliforniaReleased digitally and in hard copy on demand: June 29, 2010 (Limited edition Black Friday vinyl release: November 23, 2018)

Singles

Date of release	Title	Album	Label
December 2002	“PT Cruiser”/”PT Cruiser” (a cappella)/”PT Cruiser” (track)[69]	N/A	CQ
November 17, 2009	“Christmas Day”[70]	N/A	Jardine Tours
April 16, 2011	“Don’t Fight the Sea” (featuring The Beach Boys) b/w “Friends” (a cappella) (non-album track)	A Postcard from California	Capitol
December 2015	“Hurry Up, Hurry Up, Santa Claus”[71]	N/A	William V Roach
December 10, 2017	“Sunshine to Snowflakes”[72]	N/A	Deborah Arman Lent
			Do What You Love Media

 ­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­__________________________________________________________________

BRUCE JOHNSTON

Posted on February 3, 2024 by joelsnell99.

Bruce Johnston
Johnston performing with the Beach Boys in Doswell, Virginia, 2023
Background information
Birth name	Benjamin Baldwin
Born	June 27, 1942 (age 81) Peoria, Illinois, U.S.
Origin	Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Genres	Poprock
Occupation(s)	Musiciansingersongwriter
Instrument(s)	Vocalskeyboardsbass
Years active	1957–present
Member of	The Beach Boys
Formerly of	Bruce & TerryCalifornia MusicThe GamblersThe Rip Chords

Bruce Arthur Johnston (born Benjamin Baldwin; June 27, 1942) is an American singer, musician and songwriter who is a member of the Beach Boys. He also collaborated on many records with Terry Melcher (his bandmate in Bruce & Terry, the Rip Chords, and California Music) and composed the 1975 Barry Manilow hit, “I Write the Songs“.^[1]

Born in Illinois, Johnston grew up in Los Angeles and studied classical piano in his early years. While in high school, he arranged and played on his first hit record, Sandy Nelson‘s “Teen Beat” (1959), and also worked with musicians such as Kim Fowley and Phil Spector. One of Johnston’s first gigs was as a member of the surf band the Gamblers before becoming a staff producer at Columbia Records.

In 1965, Johnston joined the Beach Boys for live performances, initially filling in for the group’s co-founder Brian Wilson. Johnston’s first appearance on the band’s records was as a vocalist on “California Girls” (1965). He later contributed original material to the group’s albums, including “The Nearest Faraway Place” on 20/20 (1969), “Tears in the Morning” and “Deirdre” on Sunflower (1970), and “Disney Girls (1957)” on Surf’s Up (1971).

Johnston left the Beach Boys in 1972 and subsequently embarked on a solo career. During this time, Johnston recorded one solo album, Going Public (1977), his latest to date. In late 1978, he rejoined the Beach Boys to co-produce the group’s L.A. (Light Album) (1979). Since then, he has continued to tour as a member of the band.

Background[edit]

Born in Peoria, Illinois in 1942, he was adopted as child by William and Irene Johnston of Chicago and grew up in the wealthy Los Angeles neighborhoods of Brentwood and Bel-Air. His adoptive family is of Irish descent, with his grandparents hailing from Markethill, County Armagh.^[2] His adoptive father was president of the Owl Rexall Drug Company in Los Angeles after moving from Walgreens in Chicago.^{[citation needed]}

Johnston attended the private Bel Air Town and Country School (later renamed John Thomas Dye School) and the University of California, Los Angeles. He also studied classical piano in his early years, training at Interlochen Arts Camp as a youth.^[3]

Early career[edit]

Bruce & Terry (left) with Brian Wilson (right) in early 1966

In high school, Johnston switched to contemporary music. He performed in a few “beginning” bands during this time and then moved on to working with young musicians such as Sandy Nelson, Kim Fowley, and Phil Spector.^[4][5] Soon, Johnston began backing people such as Ritchie Valens,^[6] the Everly Brothers, and Eddie Cochran.^[7]

In 1959, while still in high school, Johnston arranged and played on his first hit record, “Teen Beat” by Sandy Nelson.^[8] The single reached the Billboard Top Ten. The same year, Johnston made his first single under his own name, “Take This Pearl” on Arwin Records (a record label owned by Doris Day) as part of the Bruce & Jerry duo (Jerry Cooper was a high school friend of Bruce’s).^[9] The teenage Hot Rod film entitled “Ghost of Dragstrip Hollow” (1959), features the song “I Promise You” by Johnston and Judy Harriet.

In 1960, Johnston started his record production career at Del-Fi Records, producing five singles and an album – Love You So – by Ron Holden (many of the album’s eleven tracks were written or co-written by Johnston).^[10]

In 1962 and 1963, Johnston continued his recording career with a series of surfin’ singles (vocal & instrumental) and an album, Surfin’ ‘Round the World, credited to Bruce Johnston, and another “live” album, the Bruce Johnston Surfin’ Band’s Surfer’s Pajama Party. In 1963 came the first collaboration with his friend Terry Melcher (Doris Day’s son), a mostly instrumental covers album credited to the Hot Doggers.^[11]

The first artist that Johnston and Melcher produced was a group called the Rip Chords. The pair were then working as staff producers at Columbia Records, Hollywood, and by the time they were producing the million-selling “Hey Little Cobra“, a knock-off of the Beach Boys car song vocal style, they also wound up singing every layered vocal part for the recording.^[12] The two of them made a few recordings as Bruce & Terry and the Rogues, but Melcher began to focus more on his production career (with the Byrds, Paul Revere & the Raiders).^[13]

Original tenure with the Beach Boys[edit]

Main article: The Beach Boys

Johnston in 1966

On April 9, 1965, Johnston joined the Beach Boys in New Orleans, replacing Glen Campbell, who briefly filled in as a touring member for Brian Wilson, and had declined an offer to officially join the band. Johnston did not start playing bass until his first tenure with the Beach Boys, and the first contributions Johnston made as one of the Beach Boys was on Summer Days (And Summer Nights!!). For contractual reasons, however, he was not credited or photographed on a Beach Boys album cover until Wild Honey (1967).^[14]

In May 1966, Johnston flew to London and played Pet Sounds (1966) for John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and Keith Moon.^[15] Johnston provided backing vocals to six of the album’s 13 tracks: “Wouldn’t It Be Nice“, “You Still Believe in Me“, “That’s Not Me”, “God Only Knows” (also co-lead), “Sloop John B“, and “I Just Wasn’t Made for These Times“.^[16] He similarly contributed backing vocals to some of the subsequent Smile sessions.^[17] In early 1967, Wilson discussed the extent of his personal relationship with Johnston to Melody Maker: “I’m afraid I only know Bruce superficially. […] I only see him at recording sessions. […] He’s a very likeable person.”^[18]

Johnston did not participate in most of the 1967 Smiley Smile sessions^[19] and played on only a few tracks on Wild Honey.^[20] Reflecting on Smiley Smile, Johnston said it was “a thousand times better than the [original Smile] […] It’s just the most underrated album in the whole catalog for me.”^[21] He had an unfavorable opinion of the band’s 1968 album Friends, calling the songs “wimpy”.^[21] The Beach Boys asked touring member Billy Hinsche to permanently replace Johnston in mid-1969, although Hinsche elected to focus on his studies at UCLA and Johnston was not aware of the offer at the time.^[22]

Starting with the instrumental “The Nearest Faraway Place” from 20/20 (1969), Johnston’s original compositions began appearing on the band’s records. Johnston considered his favorite Beach Boys album to be Sunflower (1970).^[23] In a 1970s interview, he described it as the last true Beach Boys album because, in his belief, it was the last to feature Wilson’s input and active involvement.^[24] He nonetheless regretted the inclusion of his two songs, saying that “Tears in the Morning” was “too pop” and that “I wish I hadn’t recorded [‘Deirdre‘] with the group.”^[23]

Johnston with the Beach Boys, 1971

Surf’s Up (1971) included Johnston’s most notable written composition for the band, “Disney Girls (1957)“, which was subsequently recorded by, among others, Cass Elliot, Captain & Tennille, Art Garfunkel, Jack Jones, and Doris Day.^[25] From a performance standpoint, he later cited 1971 as his favorite year of the group musically because their set lists focused on newer songs.^[26] He also criticized Surf’s Up as “a hyped-up lie.”^[27] His final contribution before departing consisted of backing vocals on their 1972 song “Marcella“.^{[citation needed]}

In 1972, Johnston was dismissed from the band. According to manager Jack Rieley, he fired Johnston at the request of the Wilson brothers.^[28] Brian told an interviewer, “All I know is he got into a horrible fight with Jack Rieley. Some dispute, and they got into a horrible fight, and the next day Bruce was gone.”^[29] Dennis Wilson said, “There’s less tension since Bruce left. […] Musically, we didn’t click [and] appreciate each other, so one day we both said, ‘OK, that’s it.’ He’s a good guy but he was writing stuff for a solo album. […] We’re a band.”^[30] Mike Love stated, “It was very amicable. The Beach Boys never threw him out. He was just on a tangent that was outside The Beach Boys for so many years.”^[31] Johnston himself said that he left the band partly due to his unhappiness with Brian’s creative withdrawal from the group.^[31] Later, in 1974, he said that he departed because he “didn’t want to go on singing oldies for the rest of my life” and was “too frustrated being [considered as] a fifth of something – what was what I was with the Beach Boys.”^[32]

Solo career and return to the Beach Boys[edit]

Although he was no longer an official member of the band, Johnston continued to make occasional appearances on their albums from the mid-1970s.^[21] Concurrently, he embarked on a solo career. In 1977, he released his third solo album Going Public, which included among its tracks Johnston’s own recording of “I Write the Songs” as well as a disco remake of his 1970 Beach Boys song “Deirdre“. Johnston would also score a hit off the album on the disco charts with a dance-oriented remake of the Chantays‘ hit “Pipeline” after the recording was popularized by Manhattan-based underground DJ David Mancuso.

At the end of 1978, Johnston rejoined the Beach Boys at Brian Wilson’s request to appear on (and co-produce) the album L.A. (Light Album).^[33] The following year he was credited as sole producer on the follow-up LP, Keepin’ the Summer Alive. Johnston has remained with the Beach Boys ever since and was the only member to continue touring with Mike Love as the Beach Boys after the death of Carl Wilson.

Biographer Peter Ames Carlin approached Johnston during the writing of the 2006 book Catch a Wave: The Rise, Fall and Redemption of the Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson. However, Johnston was reluctant to be interviewed and only offered a few comments via e-mail.^[34] According to Carlin, Johnston remarked at one point, “I can tell that you are far deeper into the Beach Boys thing than I will ever be in 100 lifetimes! It’s only business to me.”^[35]

Johnston with the Beach Boys in 2019

Johnston still retains his equal ownership of the band’s ASCAP publishing company, Wilojarston, and is the only member of the band to have earned a Grammy Award for Song of the Year.^[36][37] As of 2020, Johnston remains the longest-tenured active member of the Beach Boys on tour after Love.

Other work[edit]

In 1967, Johnston sang on “My World Fell Down”, a minor hit for the Gary Usher-led studio group Sagittarius.

In the mid-1970s, he wrote “I Write the Songs“, which was originally recorded by Captain & Tennille. The song became a Billboard number one hit by Barry Manilow, for which Johnston won a Grammy Award for Song of the Year in 1977.^[38] “I Write the Songs” would go on to be recorded by over two hundred artists, including Frank Sinatra, among others. Regarding the Grammy win, Johnston stated: “How can I get a Grammy for a song that I wrote in my car and The Beach Boys, Brian Wilson and Mike Love have not won? Why is fate being so uncool?”^[39]

In 1977, Johnston provided vocal arrangements and sang back-up vocals on Eric Carmen‘s LP Boats Against the Current and can be heard on the hit single “She Did It“, with inspiration taken from the 1968 Beach Boys’ hit “Do It Again“. Additionally, during this period Johnston wrote backing vocal arrangements and also sang on the recordings for Elton John including “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me“. He also contributed vocals to several songs on Pink Floyd‘s album The Wall,^[40] most notably in the song “The Show Must Go On“, which Roger Waters specifically wrote for Beach Boys-style vocal harmonies.

In 2021, a reconstituted line-up of California Music was formed by Johnston with members of the Beach Boys and their family. Omnivore Recordings released their first album, California Music Presents Add Some Music, in April 2021.^[41]

Bruce Johnston is one of the producers of The Weeknd‘s album Dawn FM (2022), in which he wrote and co-produced “Here We Go… Again” featuring rapper Tyler, the Creator.

Personal life[edit]

Johnston married Harriet Johnston in 1976 and has four sons: Ozzie, Justin, Ryan, and Max.^[42] He described himself as “a real conservative guy” and stated that he had never taken drugs other than alcohol in his life.^[43]

Politically, he identified as a Republican as of 2012. He was subjected to criticism during the band’s 50th anniversary tour, when a fan video during a meet and greet caught him being critical of then-US President Barack Obama, as well as 2012 Republican Presidential nominee, Mitt Romney.^[44]

Discography[edit]

Solo[edit]

Albums

Year	Album details
June 1962	Surfers’ Pajama PartyReleased: June 1962Label: Del-Fi RecordsTracks: “Surfer’s Delight”; “Kansas City”; “Mashin’ the Popeye”; “Gee But I’m Lonesome”; “Green Onions“; “Ramrod”; “Last Night”; “Surfer Stomp”; “What’d I Say”; “Something On Your Mind”
July 1963	Surfin’ Round the WorldReleased: July 1963Label: Columbia RecordsTracks: “Surfin’ Round the World”; “Maksha at Midnight”; “Down Under”; “Cape Town”; “Biarritz”; “Jersey Channel Islands, Pt. 7”; “The Hamptons”; “Virginia Beach”; “Surf-A-Nova”; “Hot Pastrami, Mashed Potatoes, Come on to Rincon-Yeah!!”; “Malibu”; “Surfin’s Here to Stay”
May 1977	Going PublicReleased: May 1977Label: Columbia RecordsTracks: “I Write the Songs”; “Deirdre“; “Thank You Baby”; “Rendezvous”; “Won’t Somebody Dance With Me“; “Disney Girls (1957)”; “Rock and Roll Survivor”; “Don’t Be Scared”; “Pipeline”

Singles

Date of release	Title	Label	Chart positions
February 1962	“Do the Surfer Stomp (Part One)”/”Do the Surfer Stomp (Part Two)”	Donna	never charted
April 1962	“Soupy Shuffle Stomp”/”Moon Shot”	Donna	never charted
March 1963	“The Original Surfer Stomp”/”Pajama Party”	Del-Fi	never charted
August 1977 (UK)	“Pipeline”/”Disney Girls”	CBS Records	#33 (UK)
September 1977	“Pipeline”/”Disney Girls” + “Pipeline”/”Deirdre” (12″)	Columbia Records	never charted
1977	“Rendezvous”/”I Write the Songs”	Columbia Records	never charted

with the Beach Boys[edit]

• 1965: Summer Days (And Summer Nights!!)
• 1965: Beach Boys’ Party!
• 1966: Pet Sounds
• 1967: Smiley Smile
• 1967: Wild Honey
• 1968: Friends
• 1969: 20/20
• 1970: Sunflower
• 1971: Surf’s Up
• 1972: Carl and the Passions – “So Tough”
• 1979: L.A. (Light Album)
• 1980: Keepin’ the Summer Alive
• 1985: The Beach Boys
• 1989: Still Cruisin’
• 1992: Summer in Paradise
• 1996: Stars and Stripes Vol. 1
• 2012: That’s Why God Made the Radio

with Mike Love[edit]

• 1998: Salute NASCAR (along with David Marks)
• 2001: Summertime Cruisin’
• 2017: Unleash the Love
• 2018: Reason for the Season
• 2019: 12 Sides of Summer

Songs (written or co-written)[edit]

• Three Window Coupe (1964)
  • “Beach Girl” (with Terry Melcher)
• Hey Little Cobra and Other Hot Rod Hits (1964)
  • “The Queen” (with Ray Colcord, Terry Melcher)
  • “Trophy Machine” (with Terry Melcher)
  • “Gone” (with Terry Melcher)
  • “’40 Ford Time” (with Terry Melcher)
  • “Bunny Hill” (with Terry Melcher, S. Stewart)
• Wild Honey (1967)
  • “How She Boogalooed It”
• 20/20 (1969)
  • “The Nearest Faraway Place”
• Sunflower (1970)
  • “Deirdre” (with Brian Wilson)
  • “Tears in the Morning“
• Surf’s Up (1971)
  • “Disney Girls (1957)“
• California Music
  • “Ten Years Harmony” (single) (1974)
• Going Public (1977) (That are not on Beach Boys albums)
  • “I Write the Songs“
  • “Thank You, Baby”
  • “Rendezvous” (with Bill Hudson, Brett Hudson, Mark Hudson)
  • “Rock and Roll Survivor”
  • “Don’t Be Scared”
• Keepin’ the Summer Alive (1980)
  • “Endless Harmony”
• The Beach Boys (1985)
  • “She Believes in Love Again“
• Still Cruisin’ (1989)
  • “Somewhere Near Japan“
• Summer in Paradise (1992)
  • “Slow Summer Dancin’ (One Summer Night)”
• The Best Of Bruce & Terry (1998)
  • “Don’t Run Away” (with Mike Love)
  • “I Love You Model “T”” (with Terry Melcher)
  • “Roger’s Reef” (with Terry Melcher)
  • “Yeah!” (with Terry Melcher)
  • “Thank You Baby” (with Denie Dudley)
• Dawn FM (2022)
  • “Here We Go… Again” (with The Weeknd, Tyler, the Creator, Masamune Kudo, Christian Love, Brian Kennedy, Benny Bock,

JOEL WHITBURN’S TOP 40 HITS/1985

Very little was said about the band and he even forgot to include in the list of hits “Good Vibrations.” –

JOEL WHITBURN’S TOP 40 HITS/ 1992

Wow! There are more hits and the list ends with Kokomo. The band had the longest run of first hit to last hit. “Good Vibrations” was included. Thanks folks.

JOEL WHITBURN’S TOP POP ALBUMS  /1993

There are 41 albums listed with lots of gold and some platinum records. Pet Sounds is on the charts twice.

JOEL WHITBURN’S ADULT  CONTEMPORARY/1961-1993

There were 15 hits and #1 was “Getcha Back” There was a lengthy discussion of the group

JOEL WHITBURN’S BUBBLING UNDER THE HOT 100/ 1959-1985

The #1 was “She knows me too well” It was the flip side of “When I Grow Up to be a Man.” There were 6 songs. Bubbling Under means that it almost made the HOT 100.

JAY WARNER’S THE BILLBOARD BOOK OF AMERICAN SINGING GROUPS/1940-1990

The Beach Boys had only 2 years where they were not on one chart of another. There is a list of hundreds upon hundreds of singles that were released. The last song listed in this book was Kokomo/Tutti Fruitti by Little Richard.

NORMAN N. NITE’S ROCK ON VOL.#1, THE ILLLUSTRATED ENCYCLOPEDIA OF ROCK N’ ROLL/ UPDATED EDITION/1982

This is the book that has both titles and photographs. The band’s description of number of hits start with “Surfin’ “ to “Come Go With Me.” His earlier edition did not include the Beach Boys.

H. KANDY RHODE’S THE GOLD OF ROCK N’ ROLL/ 1970 This book introduces the reader to the Top Ten for each week from 1955 to 1967. The Beach Boys were included 19 times.

DAVID REES & LUKES CRAMPTON’S ENCYCLOPEDIA OF ROCK STARS/ 1996

This source follows some of the stars in most comprehensive way. Of all the books, this is the best. They start in 1961 when they meet Hite Morgan to the 1995 “Orange Crate Art.” An album that goes Gold is mentioned again when it hits Platinum and then Double Platinum.

THE BEACH BOYS 50^TH ANNIVERSARY TRIBUTE. DELUXE COLLECTORS EDITON/ This is a picture book with general audience reading level. Every page has pictures. It can be a tour book or sold in a super. It claims to have the complete details from 1962- 2012.

BEACH BOYS DOCUMENTARIES AND MOVIES

BEACH BOYS: AN AMERICAN BAND

 BEAUTIFUL DREAMER: BRIAN WILSON AND THE STORY OF SMILE

BRIAN WILSON: I JUST WASN’T MADE FOR THESE TIMES

BRIAN WILSON: LONG PROMISED ROAD

ENDLESS HARMONY: THE BEACH BOYS STORY

GOOD TIMIN’LIVE AT KNEBWORTH ENGLAND 1980

BEACH BOYS: IT’S OK

LOVE & MERCY

BEACH BOYS: NASHVILLE SOUNDS

SUMMER DREAMS: THE STORY OF THE BEACH BOYS

(AGAIN! THANK YOU WIKIPEDIA AND WIKIMEDIA)

---

By Mojo Staff |

THE BEACH BOYS redefined the possibilities of pop music, creating harmonies and experimenting with production in ways that had never been heard before and have rarely been rivalled since. Accordingly, their catalogue is one of the richest and most labyrinthine in popular music, encompassing flat-out rock’n’rollers and golden-age pop, bittersweet ruminations, and experimental harmonic euphoria under the direction of troubled genius Brian Wilson. From Little Deuce Coupe to California Girls, God Only Knows and beyond, from LSD highs to doubtful, regret-ridden lows, MOJO’s expert team of writers have selected

The Beach Boys are an American rock band formed in Hawthorne, California, in 1961.^[1] Their discography from 1961 to 1984 was originally released on the vinyl format, with the 1985 album The Beach Boys being the group’s first CD release. The Beach Boys’ catalogue has been released on reel-to-reel, 8-track, cassette, CD, MiniDisc, digital downloads, and various streaming services.

THE BEACH BOYS DISCOGRAPHY

Studio albums	29
Live albums	11
Compilation albums	56
Video albums	12
Music videos	36
EPs	25
Singles	75
Soundtrack albums	1
Remix albums	1

Other album appearances

Year	Song	Album
1979	“It’s a Beautiful Day“	Americanthon
1991	“Crocodile Rock“	Two Rooms: Celebrating the Songs of Elton John & Bernie Taupin

PERSONAL CD’S

I spent 20 years working on this. It was completed before Brian Wilson’s SMILE as well as years after the original SMILEY SMILE My interpretation is my own and I have taken various sources to compose this. I did discover that there are a number of SMILE albums. A number of them vary considerably. This is mine. There are two levels with this album. They are Macro and Micro and the lyrics are often metaphors.

So, here is the following:

An androgynous youngster is riding up in the clouds with his shiny bicycle. He can ride through both time and space. As he looks down he sees the earth moving away from the early years of humans.

He hears a wordless, acapella welcoming him from the other side. He is ambivalent, but he is still hopeful.

As he passes a border town that he once lived, he sees a town that is dying. He remembers his girl friend who was Native American and Latina. She was killed in the bar and now years later a dancer tries to keep the town alive with drinks and old patrons who are drunk. This is the cantina. A near nude dancer is a familiar role for females.

What are dying are the little town, the countryside, and the city. He has seen it all. The music of good vibrations is about interactional mysticism and  bio-chemical invisible messages not seen by the naked eye, but felt at another level of consciousness. The feeling comes from neuro-transmitters. It is a synthetic intermixture. Its iterations building and swirling to the hilltop

The elements of our existence contain cool water that looks clean, but may be harmful. Sitting on the porch of a cabin, one can hear wind chimes. The rustle and tingle are caused by the wind coming off the lake.

Roll Plymouth Rock deals with the virgin earth and the beginning of the American Indian church that is destroyed by the settlers. This is the trail of tears. Fall Breaks and Back to winter deals with the seasons and cabin essence. The second term means the inward path to a warm spot in one’s cerebral cortex. Fire means the destruction and repair of the human condition.

We now enter the interaction in and among humans. The virgin girl is also the planet. Both reach for the clearing of the ozone layer. It was partially destroyed by mindless, godless carbon technology.

The good vibrations are still happening, but it is still a long trail to go home. Good-bye from the back of one’s mind.

Prof, Joel Charles Snell

Behavioral Methodologies

SMILEY SMILE-GOOD VIBRATIONS

INTRO/

OUR PRAYER/ heavenly voices  HEROES & VILLAINS/ the masses  GOOD VIBRATIONS (INSTRUMENTAL) pocket symphony to God / ROLL PLYMOUTH ROCK/ bicycle rider looks down at the chaos

ELEMENTS/

COOL, COOL WATER/ source of solace/ WIND CHIMES/ whispering wind /FIRE/ Mrs. O ‘Leary’s Cow CABINESSENCE/ earth / FALL BREAKS AND BACK TO WINTER/ climate cycle

HUMANKIND/

WITH ME TONIGHT/yin-yang /WONDERFUL/virginity violated LET’S GO AWAY FOR AWHILE/ far from the maddening crowd

OUTRO/

 GOOD VIBRATIONS/ 1966/ YOU’RE WELCOME/ finis

FINIS