The Beach Boys

The compelling new documentary on Disney+ looks at not just the quintessential California band's sound but their fraught familial relationships and place as cultural icons.

I’ve always preferred The Beach Boys to The Beatles, though in truth I’m a pretty casual fan of each. Both exist at a level of pop culture iconography that’s incredibly rarefied, so even if the guys from Liverpool are generally regarded as the GOAT rock band, No. 2 ain’t exactly a bad place to hang.

It turns out that during much of the 1960s, the two bands were very consciously in competition with each other, trading places on the charts and prime time television appearances, each fresh evolution of one band’s sound spurring the other to new heights. Purportedly The Beatles heard 1966’s “Pet Sounds” and their envy led to “Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band” the next year.

That’s just one of the takeaways in the new documentary, dubbed simply “The Beach Boys,” debuting today on Disney+. Co-directed by Frank Marshall, known more as a super-producer, and seasoned music documentarian Thom Zimny, it’s an engrossing and insightful look at the band consisting of “three brothers, a cousin and a best friend.”

(Plus a few others, as we’ll see.)

The film consists of plenty of archival footage, but also lots of modern interviews with the principals. And there are incredible outtakes from studio recordings, arguments and backtalk, that demonstrate how much volatility there was behind those incredible harmonies.

For ardent Beach Boys fans, I’m guessing a goodly chunk of what is discussed is known to them. Like the fact the band that broke out as a surfing music quintet — “Surfin’ Safari” was their first album in 1962 — consisted of guys who almost drowned when they tried to hang ten. Eldest brother Brian Wilson, the main creative force behind the band’s songs, admits he surfed once and never again.

Only Dennis Wilson, the wild child drummer, truly embraced the sunny California beach lifestyle depicted in the band’s mythology. Youngest brother Carl Wilson, pegged as the shy and sweet one, eventually grew into the role of band leader after Brian retreated into a haze of drugs and mental health challenges.

The sibling’s cousin, Mike Love, was only 21 when the band broke out but looked closer to 40, happily assuming the reins as front man and lead singer. Friend Al Jardine, whose mother gave the boys $300 to rent their first instruments, quit the band to continue his college education but was soon lured back.

The gang from Hawthorne, Calif., lived a very humdrum middle class life. The Wilsons were the sons of two wannabe musicians, including dad Murry, who managed the band during their early years and extended his physical abuse as a parent of small kids to emotional bullying when they became hit sensations while Carl and Dennis were still teens. David Marks, brought in to replace Al during his absence, was just 13 and soon quit when he couldn’t take Murry’s micromanagement.

Firing Murry as their manager was one of the hardest events in Brian’s young life, and clearly contributed to his erratic emotional state. Dad still retained publishing rights and — never quite believing “his” band had what it took to truly make it — sold their song catalogue without their knowledge in 1969 for a mere $700,000.

(Tack on at least three zeroes to get an idea of today’s value.)

Their singular sound started from a very simple impetus: taking the instrumental surfing bands like Dick Dale that were regionally popular as guitar-thrumming background music for beach-based B movies, and adding vocals. Their other chief influences were Chuck Berry, The Everly Brothers and especially crooners The Four Freshman.

The Wilsons found they could sing by harmonizing together during long trips in the family station wagon, and things went from there. The mission was to “sublimate your individuality to create a great harmony sound.” Not caring for the name The Beach Boys, a creation of first label Capitol Records, they wanted to call the band the Pendletones, playing off the plaid shirts popular on California beaches.

The most mesmerizing thing about the film is tracing the musical development of the group from three-chord boy band to legendary music-makers. Brian, though musically untrained, had an uncanny ear and began writing songs with more intricate musicality and pairing them with Mike Love’s lyrics, which also became deeper and richer.

“Don’t Worry Baby” in 1964 marked a turning point by all accounts, and Brian decided he’d rather stay in the studio and write rather than go on tour, which rattled his nerves. He began a long collaboration The Wrecking Crew musicians, Glen Campbell was brought in for a bit to be Brian’s replacement (later swapped out for Bruce Johnston), and The Beach Boys effectively split into two groups: the touring band and the recording band.

It led to an astonishingly rich and prolific output, as Carl led the band on the road while Brian delved deeper into the music playing inside his head, and by the time the touring group came home they were ready to record their next album. Amazing.

Tension inevitably developed, chiefly between Brian and Mike, especially as Brian’s reputation as “the genius” grew and he sought collaboration with other lyricists like Tony Asher, who worked on “Pet Sounds.” It was to be Brian’s creative apex, and when it didn’t sell as well as their earlier records he was bitterly crushed. He spent nearly a year working on the follow-up, “Smile,” only to shelve it in the artistic equivalent of a nervous breakdown.

After Murray died, Mike realized that because he was uncredited as a co-writer on many of the Boys’ hits, his only recourse to obtain his due recognition (and royalties) was to sue. That predictably led to hard feelings, and the two admit they don’t speak much these days.

“Brian was lucky to have our voices to sing his dreams,” Mike says as his own punctuation on the matter.

The film doesn’t go far into The Beach Boys’ exploits in the last 50 years. The unexpected — and unwanted — release of the compilation album “Endless Summer” by Capitol in 1974 revived them as an evergreen act, with Mike saying their audiences perpetually extend from age “8 to 80.” He wound up with the rights to the band’s name and has acted as its sole leader.

Certainly you won’t hear anything about their revival tour from a few years ago, which Mike cut short, essentially “firing” his band mates. The surviving ones, anyway — Dennis’ 1983 death due to drowning and Carl’s in 1998 to cancer are left entirely unmentioned, other than a tribute line at the end.

All this could probably be a whole other documentary. “The Beach Boys: Endless Summer After,” perhaps. (That’s a freebie to whoever wants it.)

I suppose you can fault the filmmakers for shying away for some of the more unpleasant aspects of their familial drama, getting old and bitter, etc. But for musicians who primarily sang about the joyful things in life, leavened certainly with shades of loss and melancholy, it’s an understandable choice.

“Their music takes you someplace,” one of the many musical commentators says of The Beach Boys sound, and certainly this film does, too. For a fake surf band, they did OK.