Skip to main content

Well, You're Welcome!

Welcome to Beach Boys Books. If you don't want to know more about books about The Beach Boys you may be in the wrong place. My name is DanG, an obsessive fan of many years who can also be found posting photos and brief reviews of my record collection over on Instagram. Unsurprisingly, Beach Boys records pop up frequently.

I've accumulated quite a library of Beach Boys-related books, many of which remain un-thumbed. To remedy this, I've set myself the task of reading (or re-reading) and reviewing them all in roughly chronological order of publication. The complete works of Solzhenitsyn will have to wait. Instead of just posting my thoughts on Instagram, I wanted to write some longer, fuller reviews and hence this blog has popped into existence. 


There are some brilliant biographies that are well-noted for their accurate documenting of facts about the band and for taking a balanced, critical view of their work, relationships and place in music history. There are incredibly detailed, essential reference books detailing the band's recording sessions, concerts and daily movements. But then there are the more obscure titles, many out of print or rendered obsolete by updated publications; hard-to-find and apparently superseded, what information or alternative perspective could they possibly yield? I aim to find out. Some earlier books - although littered with factual errors - have fascinating contemporary perspectives and often throw up interesting nuggets that have been lost over time, not to mention rarely-seen photographs.

So, whilst I'll cover the better-known, mainstream biographies, this blog is geared more towards the indoctrinated fan who maybe wants to delve deeper into the well of Beach Boys writings: whether that be on the music, the social history or the dirty laundry of the band. My hope is that it will stand as a record and resource for fans to get a little more insight into some of the more obscure titles out there that can be hard to find or that command increasingly eye-watering prices. I also hope to connect with more Beach Boys fans and look forward to being corrected in the comments! 

I'd like to acknowledge a few resources that set me on this path:

  • the incredible Beach Boys Legacy who do a staggering job of detailing every Beach Boys related release, official or otherwise, including a very complete bibliography. They are always unearthing new facts and photos on their twitter account too. 
  • Andrew Doe's Bellagio 10452 site, a fastidious reference (based on prior published work by others that I will no doubt get to in time!)
  • and The Beach Boys' Complete Guide website, especially their books page which is often the only source of online reviews for specific titles. This was the first website I discovered when getting into the band and the on-the-nose reviews guided my early understanding of the group's catalogue, most of which I broadly agree with still.

This blog will be quite an undertaking, and I don't expect to be whizzing through these titles, so I'll only be posting intermittently. More of a 'No-Go Showboat' than a 'Custom Machine'. If you want to stick around for the long haul, please consider hitting the 'Follow' button so you can be notified when I publish a new post.

Let's go trippin'!

DanG

Comments

  1. B. KramerSeptember 26, 2022 at 7:11 AM

    Looking forward to following along on here and IG. Cheers!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. DGSeptember 27, 2022 at 2:00 PM

      Thanks, great to have you along for the ride!

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Beach Boys - Dean Anthony

The Beach Boys Dean Anthony First Published: HB. 1985. Crescent Books, New York. This Edition: First Edition Crescent Books’ The Beach Boys has the outward appearance of a children’s annual and the journalistic substance of the back of a baseball card. It took me a long time to track down a copy of this slim tome, since very few copies seem to have washed up on the shores of England despite our fairly fervent appetite for the group. That said there are always scores of copies to be under for under $5 on eBay in the US, albeit with eye-watering international postage. Finally getting my hands on a copy could only really ever result in disappointment. To be fair, I knew this was a light book, and although the text is brief, I did expect a bit more of it. Dean Anthony provides a brisk narrative taking us from the group’s early formation through to 1985 and rumours of the band’s imminent return with what would be their self-titled album. Anthony barely scratches the surface and there is ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Heroes and Villains: The True Story of The Beach Boys - Steven Gaines

Heroes and Villains: The True Story of The Beach Boys Steven Gaines First Published: HB. 1986. New American Library, New York. This Edition: HB. 1986. Macmillan, London. Who are the Heroes and who are the Villains? Steven Gaines wisely avoids calling the shots, but few come out of this book unblemished. Choosing to revel in the groups’ dirty laundry, Gaines tells an astonishing roller-coaster story of domestic abuse, mental illness, drug abuse, backstabbing, lies, infidelity and death. The backdrop is the incredible rise of the Beach Boys; a tale of unbridled excess left unchecked in the face of massive commercial success en route to becoming one of the world’s most financially successful bands. The book has a reputation for being gossipy and some fans look down upon its gutter-sniping. David Leaf had consciously glossed over the “often-embarrassing specifics” in his book, in which the band had criticised their characterisation. Ironically, they come off looking far, far worse in thi...
Post a Comment
Read more