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The Beach Boys (German Edition) - David Leaf

The Beach Boys
David Leaf
First Published: PB. 1979. Ballantine Books, New York.
This Edition: PB. 1980. Wilhelm Hayne Verlag, München.

This is a just a short supplementary post to my previous one looking at the 1985 edition of David Leaf's tremendous book. This edition was actually published before the 1985 update, and is quite commonly found for sale online at low, low prices. I took a chance on an eBay listing that had no photos hoping it might be the original 1979 paperback, but alas this is what arrived! Kind of redundant since I don't speak German, but as a Beach Boys book collector it's kind of a cool little addition to the shelf.

This was published in the Heyne Discothek series, which also included books on the likes of David Bowie, The Who, Dire Straits as well as German stars Nina Hagen and Udo Lindberg. 

The book was translated by Dr. Bukhard Busse and when I posted the chapter headings on Instagram a few German speakers commented that the translation of headings was kind of odd. Some others that had actually read the book added that there are issues throughout with the translation and that it's very clunky. Regardless, it's great that a mass-market version was made available and a shame something similar couldn't have been done in the UK. To it's credit, the book includes a few plate sections of black and white photos - nowhere near the number included in the US editions, however the replication is of a higher quality, even if the photos chosen are far more commonplace and nothing to go out of your way for.

If anyone bought and read this in the 1970s or 1980s I'd love to know what you thought of it.

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