I’m looking through a big coffee table book I borrowed from the library today about the Beach Boys. It’s called The Beach Boys by The Beach Boys. It’s pretty lush with amazing vintage photos and text that’s all in their words. I believe there’s a documentary film companion to it. It was such a blast to see it there, a large book in the library, I just had to borrow it. We have some good shit in there sometimes, you know. I don’t know how informative or revealing it will be (it is an ‘official’ account), but I will at least enjoy the copious photos. One little tidbit: according to David Marks, Dennis Wilson could be a bit of a bully. I wonder where he got that from? (hello Murry Wilson).
I read more of that Beach Boys coffee table book. We’re still in that 63/64 period where the British Invasion looms large, but the BBs are holding their own with number one hits like I Get Around. They released the Beach Boys In Concert album, which weirdly was their most successful album of the decade. It seems it wasn’t all quite live, with Brian Wilson going back in the studio and doing some overdubs and even rerecording some numbers. There were some quotes where mainly Mike Love talked about their performance on the TAMI Show, which was considered to be much better than their performance on the Ed Sullivan show earlier in the year. It famously has some classic performances from The Rolling Stones and, especially, James Brown. According to Mike, the Beach Boys were not friends with the Rolling Stones. I can well believe that: the Boys in their nerdy stripe shirts, the Stones in their cool leathers. It made me want to look back over my TAMI dvd to check out their performance again. It stands for Teenage Awards Music International.
After reading about it, I busted out my dvd and watched the Beach Boys’ performance on the TAMI Show. They only showed them doing four songs: I Get Around, Surfin’ USA, Surfer Girl and Dance Dance Dance. I wonder if they did more? I was surprised and disappointed they didn’t finish with Fun Fun Fun. The TAMI show’s gogo dancers danced behind them for the first two numbers, adding some goofy fun. Dennis was the star, belting out his drums from his riser on high. I can see why the girls sometimes mobbed the stage to get to him. Brian, Al and Carl laid down some solid music and sang beautiful harmonies, while Mike jumped around and frugged a bit while singing most of the lead vocals. He’s such a nerd. Surfer Girl slowed things down and was probably not what the crowd wanted. But this Beach Boys fan loved it. Brian’s high lead vocals were amazing. An awesome performance, but the set was far too short. I must revisit the entire concert again soon.
I’m up to the 69-70 period in the Beach Boys coffee table book now. Among other things, this is when the band performed behind ‘the iron curtain’ in East Germany and Czechoslovakia. Mike Love couldn’t help give a Capitalist diatribe about the tour, how they ‘symbolised the freedom that the United States represented for a lot of people’ and how they ‘represented prosperity and opportunity’. To Mike, they were bringing freedom and democracy to them heathen Communists, and while there getting a ‘crash course on the shortcomings of a planned economy’. Mike, blow it out yer arse.
I finished that Beach Boys coffee table book. I was interested in the sections detailing the making of the Love You album and Dennis’s solo album, Pacific Ocean Blue. They’re both favourites. Dennis was apparently in the studio so much doing his album that it cut into the making of the Love You album. The other members’ mostly lukewarm responses to his album seemed strange, because it’s clearly a great album. Love You was probably Brian’s last gasp with the group as a full hands-on producer and writer. His quirky majesty is all over that album. Al and Mike mostly looked on from the sidelines while the Wilson brothers did their thing. As usual, Mike Love was complaining the band at times were ‘too democratic’. He called it ‘an accommodation of egos’ as opposed to ‘the collective best strengths’, which I get, but he clearly was always after the hit. The book ends around 1980, which is about right. All that was left for them after that was the deaths of Dennis and Carl, the final hit, Kokomo, and the much-better-than-we-deserved That’s Why God Made the Radio album from 2011. Plus that final tour – which I saw. It was a terrific though highly selective read, with many awesome, never-seen-before photos. Recommended for all Beach Boys fans.