Michael Lynch:
April,
2005

The Beach Boys: The Definitive Diary of America's Greatest Band on Stage and in the Studio

By Keith Badman
(Backbeat Books)

October 2004

Well, lately it seems like every major band of the 1960s gets one of those "everything they ever did and the date they did it" books, thanks to Mark Lewisohn's bar-raising Beatles bibles, so here's one for the California boys.

Keith Badman gives an exhaustively detailed rundown of every Beach Boys recording session, concert (with many setlists), television appearance, record release date, and notable personal going-on between January 1961 (Mike Love's first of many marriages) and December 1976 (a 15th anniversary concert at the L.A. Forum), with the years before and after summed up in paragraphs.

With all events dated and chronologized for all to see, the book brings home how crazy being a Beach Boy was during their peak years. The spring and summer of 1965 particularly had some rather insane concert scheduling, seeing the band illogically zig-zagging between coasts, rather than gradually working their way across the country, one region at a time. Instead, concerts in California are immediately followed by shows in New Hampshire, after which the band moved back west to play San Diego, soon after treking back east for one New Jersey show, and hitting Fresno the next night. Whew! Equally crazy, it seems they began May 5, 1965 in a California recording studio, and ended it, time difference aside, gigging in Connecticut! With all this tight scheduling, it's a miracle they didn't all suffer nervous breakdowns.

Like all good sourcebooks, this one answers little questions I've had about minor things, such why isn't Dennis Wilson in the "Sloop John B" promotional film (because he was operating the camera), and who is that non-Beacher who pops up a few times in the same clip (it's their PR man, Derek Taylor, who I'd never seen without a moustache).

But a few other questions remain unanswered...the barker on "Amusement Parks USA?" Is it really Hal Blaine, as is often rumored? Badman says it "may be" Hal Blaine. Thanks, Keith.

As Badman is a Brit, his book offers a decent (and most welcomed) amount of British perspective, such as always indicating British chartings and release dates alongside the American (and citing British only releases such as the 1967 British 45 release of "Then I Kissed Her"), reviews and details of their UK happenings in general.

Additionally, his account of Dennis's association with Charles Manson is the most thorough I've ever read, outlining the evolution of Dennis's perception of him from talented local fellow to frightening threat to his life.

Also, despite being a Beach Boys fan, Badman remains, to his credit, rather matter-of-fact regarding their 1967 fall from grace, not offering any excuses or sympathy, instead just outlining exactly what happened, and as a result we sense the group sealing their own fate through bad decisions or bad luck. In fact, Badman's frequent quoting of reviews underlines that even during their creative peak, the band always had their detractors (it's interesting to see that not everyone in England loved Pet Sounds upon its release, and some notable names of the day let their feelings known). Concert reviews quoted are seldom raves.

A few factual errors pop up here and there: In the discography, the tracklisting for Endless Summer is that of the CD, and not the original LP, a description of the Pet Sounds promo film attributes Brian's character to Al Jardine (likewise, Mike is identified as Al in a photo caption later in the book), and Badman's transcription of dialogue from the infamous "Help Me Rhonda" session tape has several incorrect lines. He also accidentally places Spokane Coliseum in Washington D.C. (rather than the state of Washington), and, in the entry for the date of its recording, says that their song "And Your Dreams Come True" was never released on record, when in fact it closed the 1965 Summer Days album (as is noted in other sections of the book.)

But Badman can easily be forgiven for these innocent slipups when they are weighed against the bulk of the exhaustive research that makes up this, the one book that Beach Boys fans will immediately go to for the answers.

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