Trying to match the Beatles popularity.
The Beach Boys started life as The Pendletones when Brian Wilson (guitar, vocals, leadership, songwriting, paranoia) younger brother Carl (vocals) and middle brother Dennis (actual surfing interest) combined with their cousin Mike Love (vocals, impending old-age crankiness) and Al Jardine (vocals) to form a harmless pop combo. In order to distinguish them from all the other harmless pop combos, Dennis suggested the group record music about surfing and so debut single Surfin was written in roughly the time it takes to wax a longboard. The song began: “Surfin is the only life, the only way for me” which was a total lie and established the groundwork for their entire dishonest success.
The group was renamed The Beach Boys and in 1962 released their debut album Surfin Safari which perpetuated the myth still further and an image was born. For the next few years, the group appeared to be acting entirely as the propaganda arm for the surfing industry. A relentless stream of albums and singles appeared all of which glorified every aspect of the surfing lifestyle with a fanaticism usually associated with religious fervour or veganism. The band churned out three albums a year for three years, each one crammed with inane song titles like Noble Surfer, Surf Jam, The Rocking Surfer, Girls on the Beach and I’m Bugged At My Old Man. While many groups would have buckled at a 9-albums-in-three-years workload, the Beach Boys were able to meet their record label demands thanks to the low standards of their fanbase. Instead of cramming their LP’s with original songs they padded out their 12 track releases with covers, throwaway instrumentals and in one of the most cynical moves perpetrated by a sixties artist, spoken word track which were simply the group talking about recording the other 11 songs. The Beach Boys entire 1964 output consisted of 22 original songs, 5 Christmas Carols, 3 instrumentals, 2 covers, and 3 tracks that were just the band chatting in the studio.
1964's Shut Down Volume 2. Three and a half minutes of its 27 minute running length was taken up with an unlistenable and painfully unfunny spoken word sketch between the band-members. The fact that this is the highlight of the album says much for the quality of their musical output at the time.
While the group was drifting from their surfing roots, Brian Wilson was gradually drifting from any sense of reality. Drugs and the success of the Beatles combined to push the elder Wilson to a nervous breakdown, which occurred on an aeroplane in 1964 and meant he had to be replaced in the touring incarnation of the band. Audiences barely noticed when other smiling faces were stuffed into band uniforms to fill the Brian-shaped hole and things continued as before. For much of the sixties, Brian remained at home writing, recording and producing while the rest of the group performed the songs he had written as their own cover band.
Trying to match the Beatles' critical acclaim.
The turning point for Wilson came when he heard Revolver by the Beatles, which he saw as a gauntlet thrown down to other bands and a challenge to come up with something even more overblown and self-indulgent. Brian had his own ideas but realised his band’s rudimentary instrumental ability wasn’t up to the task of translating what was in his head onto vinyl. Consequently, the touring Beach Boys discovered they had become session vocalists on their own album as Brian spent months recording his magnum opus with talented ring-ins. The result was Pet Sounds, a triumph of production over songwriting which is universally praised by the sort of people who love lush sounds and don’t concern themselves with memorable melodies or heartfelt performances.
Pet Sounds a "Beach Boys Album" on which the band weren't actually allowed to play very much. The 57 credited sessions musicians included nine guitarists who all played instead of band guitarist Al Jardine, who sang occasional backing vocals and fetched things.
Wilson followed up Pet Sounds with Good Vibrations, a song that took half a year, 4 separate studios and a reported $50,000 to record. Wilson recorded 90 hours of tape using a new modular style he developed in which a song was recorded in sections and then assembled later in much the same way you would assemble an ikea wall unit, and just as soulfully. The success of Good Vibrations prompted Brian to work on his next great masterwork, an album he named Smile for reasons nobody has ever been able to adequately explain. The rest of the group went off to tour Europe while Brian stayed behind creating tracks for an album he was determined would be better than anything the Beatles could hope to produce.
When the other Beach Boys returns to the US they found the recording of Smile had been hampered by Brian's over-ambition and tenuous grip on the remaining shreds of his mental health. LSD usage had permanently affected Brian's brain to the point where he began hearing voices, an experience which would be difficult for anyone but significantly worse for someone attempting to correctly mix multiple overdubbed four-part harmonies. Behaviour which some charitably called "eccentric" and others labeled "barking mad" involved the construction of a tent in his home to hold meetings in and the conversion of one room into a sandpit with a piano in the middle for songwriting purposes. At one point Brian scrapped work on a song entitled Fire because he believed it caused an outbreak of real blazes in the nearby area.
Work on Smile was abandoned when it became clear Brian had recorded hours of overcomplicated nonsense that he had no idea how to complete and a simplified and rushed version entitled Smiley Smile was unleashed on an apathetic public who felt The Beach Boys has clearly thrown in the beach towel after hearing Sgt Peppers.
The Beatles, who Wilson feared were better at album covers, songwriting, performance and in all probability, surfing.
Trying to match the Beatles' drug-taking.
The following years were terrible for Beach Boys fans but a positive boon for lovers of rock star excess and drug-fueled shenanigans. Wilson took a break from the group in order to dedicate himself to full-time eccentric behaviour. He spent extended periods in bed binging on marijuana, cocaine and other drugs while overeating and smoking heavily. Given his lifestyle, his decision to dedicate himself to a health food store entitled The Radiant Radish baffled his friends at the time and everyone else in the decades since. The store closed after less than two years as an operating concern, partly because potential patrons were often greeted by an overweight Brian Wilson chainsmoking in a bathrobe, which is hardly the appropriate image for a business attempting to promote a healthy lifestyle.
Not content with one drug-crazed madman in their orbit, the rest of the group, and Dennis Wilson in particular, decided to befriend Charles Manson, who, in his pre-murder spree days, was regarded by some as an interesting guy to hang around with. When he became significantly less fun and a lot more angry and stabby, the band tried to distance themselves from him but the damage had been done and their reputation as just a bunch of surf-lovers was in tatters.
The group's continued releasing music during Wilson's "wilderness years" without chart success, critical acclaim or anyone actually noticing. Their nadir during these years is possibly 1968's Stacks-o-tracks, an album of previously released songs without vocals, put out under the bizarre misconception that anyone who heard God Only Knows was desperate to know what it sounded like without those pesky harmonies.
Brian and the group were formally reunited in 1976 to record a new album dominated by old rock covers. Tensions returned as the group which had previously been frustrated by Wilson's pathological need to tinker with recordings for months was now annoyed at his "one take is fine" attitude. The old-Brian was back for the follow-up album which was called The Beach Boys Love You but filled with music so bad it suggested the band actually loathed their fanbase.
Trying to match the Beatles' legal bills.
The Beach Boys broke up briefly in 1977 thanks to some simmering acrimony fueled by drugs, alcohol and seethng resentment. Carl and Denis Wilson formed one faction with Jardine and Love on the other and Brian struggling to remember who he was related to. The group succumbed to pressure to enter into negotiations and work through their differences; pressure that didn't come from their fans (who didn't actually exist at that point) but from their families, business managers and accountants.
The three Wilsons, Love and Jardine staggered on until 1978 when Brian staggered off into the night with a bottle in his hand, having rediscovered his love of chemical-induced oblivion. His wife hired a private detective to look for him, presumably tasking him with scouring local health shops for a fat guy in a bathrobe. He was eventually spotted in San Diego where he was living in a park under a tree.
It became clear that Brian needed help and so his former psychiatrist Eugene Landy was recalled to resume his treatment. Landy's had previously been sacked as Brian's mental carer for charging exorbitant fees but was persuaded to return in exchange for annual payment approaching half a million dollars. His technique involved taking total control of his patient's life with 24 hour "care" that involved dispensing food and drugs and limiting contact with the outside world and later extended to co-writing songs, co-producing albums and even ghost-writing Wilson's autobiography.
Eugene Landy (svelte) with Brian Wilson (portly). Landy's controlling nature has often seen him described as the Yoko Ono of the Beach Boys, which isn't really a fair comparison- it's possibly Landy had a passable singing voice and a modicum of musical talent.
Meanwhile, brother Dennis was having his own issues with the bottle and was becoming increasingly unreliable onstage. His drinking increased to the point where in 1983 he was homeless and in and out of rehab units with no success. He celebrated Christmas that year but throwing all his ex-wife's possessions off a yacht they co-owned during a particularly messy divorce proceeding. Three days later he had an attack of remorse and decided to jump into the water and retrieve everything he had ditched. His body washed up not long afterwards and the only Beach Boy whoever actually seriously surfed was the only one to drown.
By 1988 the state of popular music in America was so dire that even the Beach Boys were capable of claiming a number one spot when they released the truly execrable Kokomo, a song that regularly tops lists of worst songs of the eighties, beating an incredibly competitive field. In the same year, the band were inducted into the rock and roll hall of fame and the audience was treated to a speech by Mike Love in which he promoted harmony and the need to get along, while criticising Paul McCartney, Mick Jagger, Diana Ross and others who he lambasted for not being harmonious enough. Love's major issue with Paul centred on the fact that the former Beatle was involved in a lawsuit with George and Ringo. Mike was annoyed at the time but it didn't stop him from launching his own lawsuit against Brian in 1992 in an attempt to earn songwriting royalties.
Around the same time his cousin was suing him, Brian Wilson severed ties with Eugene Landy after family members raised concerns about the incredible quantity of prescription drugs the psychiatrist was dolling out to his patient. The courts became involved and Landy lost his licence to practice and was legally unable to contact Brian for the rest of either of their lives.
By 1997, Carl Wilson's years of smoking had caught up with him and he succumbed to lung cancer, which meant the band could at least match the Beatles in the number of dead members.
Despite not having sufficient surviving personnel for one band, the remaining members fragmented into two separate groups. Love had the rights to the Beach Boys name and so tours along with regular Brian replacement Bruce Johnson. Brian tours and records under his own name with the assistance of Al Jardine who is just grateful for something to do. The surviving members do occasionally reunite for a performance but not as frequently as their legal teams who regularly get together to sort out the various law-suits and disagreements they continue to be involved in.
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