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 really nothing of value to be gleaned. What I find inexcusable are the many errors made. Some are understandable, Anthony regurgitating the accepted “creation myth” that has since been queried by the likes of James Murphy due to his own diligent research. However, Anthony fumbles facts, stating that David Marks was part of the line-up that recorded ‘Surfin’’. He then goes on to misspell Al Jardine’s name (“Jardin”) along with “Murray” Wilson, Bruce “Johnstone” and Jack “Reily”.

In his pursuit of brevity, Anthony makes some sweeping statements that move the story on apace, but eschew the facts. “'Surfin'' was a minor hit… The major record companies soon came running,” he beams. Well, we know that the band toiled away in obscurity for a good six months, cutting further demos that went unreleased and were in serious threat of being a regional one-hit wonder. It was really only due to the persistence of Murry that they were able to strike a deal for a single with Capitol, whilst the other major labels he approached refused meetings with him. They certainly didn’t come running. There are a few other clangers. ‘Good Vibrations’, possibly the popular song most synonymous with the theremin, is instead erroneously noted for its “hypnotic use of the new Moog synthesizer”.

In an incredibly reductive bit of storytelling, Anthony manages to cover Dennis’ contributions to the band’s mid-to-late ‘70s albums, his appearance in Two-Lane Black Top, his solo career and his death in one blunt shopping list of a sentence: “Dennis Wilson contributed to all this, cut one fine solo LP ‘Pacific Ocean Blue’, appeared in films and then, on December 28, 1983, tragically drowned in the harbour at Marina Del Rey.”

So, anyone choosing to seek this out should enjoy it solely as a photo-book. Most of the pictures come from the mid-70s to mid-80s, an era not typically embraced by the group when celebrating their history or promoting their image. Hence, quite a lot of these are rare and not often seen. There are several photos from a concert by Celebration, in a line-up that included Brian, Carl and Dean Torrence. There’s also several from The Beach Boys’ 4^th July 1984 concert and it’s only slightly jarring to find yourself looking at full-page photos of Ringo Starr, Julio Igelsias and Hank Williams Jr. The photos don’t appear in any logical order, and often the text and imagery rarely sync up (for example, the collapse of Smile and subsequent recording and release of Smiley Smile in 1967 are covered on a double page spread of Carl Wilson’s solo band performing in the early ‘80s.

One of my favourite photos in the book is one I’ve genuinely never seen before, of the group somewhere on their 1968 European tour, taken from the back of the stage looking out to the crowd. The touring brass ensemble is captured, alongside a Beach Boys-eye view of the audience.

Objectively, this seems like a hastily written and slapped-together cash-grab, probably published to coincide with anticipated silver jubilee celebrations. It's really only of value to Beach Boys nuts, and even then really only those wanting to go deep down the somewhat morbid rabbit hole of obscure photos from the band’s most troubled and creatively bankrupt eras.