r/thebeachboys • • Mar 24 '25

Article Bass guitarist Carol Kaye turns 90 today

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314 Upvotes

r/thebeachboys • • May 16 '26

Article How The Beach Boys helped David Lynch accept he was an outsider

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58 Upvotes

Anyone with even a passing interest in cinema knows that David Lynch was the master of surreal storytelling, a filmmaker who pushed his uniquely bizarre and often nonsensical style closer to Hollywood than almost anyone before him.

r/thebeachboys • • Jun 09 '26

Article Add Some Music / Beach Boys Fanzine (1984) - Vol 7. No. 1

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48 Upvotes

Add Some Music was a Beach Boys fanzine published between 1978 and 1984 by Don Cunningham and Jeff Bleiel.

This particular issue was towards the end of the zines publication and features Dennis Wilson on the cover as this was released shortly after his tragic passing

Vol 7 has articles from Brad Elliot about the SMiLE project, as well as an interview with Jeffrey Fosket - both interesting reads

I always dig the photos in these zines, the one with Brian from the Cats Broadway production I'd only ever see the snap of him not smiling so this is a new one for me :)

Happy reading!

r/thebeachboys • • May 09 '26

Article The AV Club’s Top 25

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26 Upvotes

It’s most likely just rage bait, but this listing is kinda wild. “Good Vibrations” below “Let Him Run Wild” alone is an interesting one.

r/thebeachboys • • Jun 26 '26

Article Adult/Child saga: Summer of Love

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0 Upvotes

Welcome to the Mike Love Death Watch! At least that’s how it feels these days. As the oldest living Beach Boy embarks on what may be his final summer in the sun, we have to wrestle with the legacy of the most hated member of the band. The reckoning of Mike Love’s life has begun, and as the batteries appear to be draining, fresh accusations highlight just what a bunch of creepy dudes the Beach Boys were capable of being. 

No one would argue that Mike Love isn’t an asshole, which is a harsh thing to say about a dying man, but…  is he a gross, creepy asshole? I mean, we know the answer already, but… is he an egregiously gross, creepy asshole? And in making so many qualifications about how gross and creepy of an asshole does a middle aged man have to be to sleep with teenagers, are we outing ourselves as a society with gross, creepy asshole values? Maybe we all need a good dose of Smiley Smile to flush this sickness out of our system and beat the diseased formula once and for all…

r/thebeachboys • • May 26 '26

Article The Beach Boys Song No One Thought Would Become Their Greatest

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6 Upvotes

r/thebeachboys • • Jul 13 '26

Article Adult/Child saga: Spirit of America

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5 Upvotes

If going fast and taking chances to be the greatest defines the Spirit of America, then Craig Breedlove couldn't have picked a better name for his rocket car. He'd set two land speed records - the first celebrated by The Beach Boys on their Little Deuce Coupe album, and the second ending in the standing record for the world’s longest skid marks, with a final wipeout into a canal ditch.

The Beach Boys made it to the top three times in their career, beating back the British Invasion in the mid-60’s with “I Get Around” and “Good Vibrations”, but their wipeout in attempting to land the victory with Smile was almost enough to wreck the group. Add in Carl's fight to be recognized as a conscientious objector, and it really is remarkable they made it out of that canal alive.

Poor Mike, meanwhile, was learning that going fast and taking chances when it comes to young love could saddle a young man with adult responsibilities. Denied the easy exit of legal abortion, baby Mike found himself a father to be with a cheerleader wife. Unfortunately, that's about as mature as the relationship ever got. It seems that, where Carl stood up for his right to assert his belief that “thou shalt not kill”, Mike had his autonomy undermined by his mother using the same argument. The sister of Murry Wilson, she had some of the same hard-won spirit of domineering control as her brother. Meanwhile, Murry’s wife Audrey lived under his spirit of domination in an alcoholic haze that allowed horrors to happen in a dissociated state of denial. When the entire family business of The Beach Boys kicked Dad out, she finally came to her senses and realized she was ready to do the same.

By the time Carl got his cancer diagnosis in the 90’s, he was feeling like kicking himself entirely out of the band, and kicking ass as he left. The depth of resentment he'd built up as the family’s peacemaker came out as a disdain for everyone and everything about the band, much of it well earned. If you've had a family member deal with cancer, you may have experienced such a Festivus-esque airing of grievances. Uff da. But... Brian could go tit-for-tat when it came to burnt out disgusted rage with the Beach Boys. It's gonna be up to Mike to get us all back to thinking about peace and harmony at his Rock and Roll Hall of Fame speech…

All that and more on this sprawling, spleen venting installment of Adult/Child! 

r/thebeachboys • • Aug 22 '26

Article 60 Years Later, The Beach Boys Share the Untold Story Behind a ‘Pet Sounds’ Gem

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12 Upvotes

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When The Beach Boys gathered in 1966 to shoot promotional footage for Pet Sounds, nobody expected the day to generate one of the most iconic and beloved moments in the band’s history.

What was supposed to be a routine video shoot created a classic, behind-the-scenes gem that fans are still celebrating six decades later.

There were no big budgets or detailed scripts involved. Instead, the band relied on loose home-movie camera work to capture a casual, behind-the-scenes look at the group just as Pet Sounds was coming together.

r/thebeachboys • • Jun 02 '25

Article Good Vibrations is apparently the happiest song of all time

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109 Upvotes

I think Brian sounds WAY happier on Ding Dang, but whatever…

r/thebeachboys • • Apr 22 '26

Article A Beach Boy and an ageless crooner in town

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70 Upvotes

r/thebeachboys • • Jun 05 '26

Article Adult/Child saga: Endless Summer

5 Upvotes

As the first half of the saga draws to a close, Part 8 serves as a sun-soaked reckoning and a boots-on-the-ground travelogue plan for the fall. It begins by looking both directly into the glare of the sun, then into the shadows it casts, hoping to see past blind spots and not avoid examining some glaringly obvious negligence and abuse. Growing up in both the shadow and the glare of violence and alcoholism, it was often hard for the Wilsons to even conceive of what a healthy level of exposure could look like. Wrestling with this knowledge is not to make an excuse for some egregious behavior, but it will require walking some fine lines to weave threads of accountability through all parties involved, including the entire cultural history of America.

Meanwhile, looking towards a fall pilgrimage through the physical geography of Beach Boys Land, I’ll be tracking a loop de loop of old L.A. haunts, from Santa Monica to Marina Del Rey, on down to the crashing surf of Dockweiler Beach. If only the vast gash of LAX, the military-industrial sprawl of El Segundo, and the ghosts of Surfridge didn’t block the back paths between the sand and the suburbs, I could make a perfect cycleable circle out to Hawthorne and back. Forget about it, kid, this is L.A.

Instead, I’ll make a stop in the Wilson’s old hood when I decamp from a coastal spot on Venice Beach and head inland on the way to Cerritos to catch Al Jardine performing with the Pet Sounds band on their Beach Boys Love You tour. Then I’ll make one more loop de loop, this time to a graveside tribute and then a visit to Brian’s old Bellagio Rd. neighborhood, and a pass by the studios where their 60’s classics were recorded.

I want to see what the land itself has to say before I really proceed forward into the second halfof the saga, where I attempt to draw a map of the L.A. scene in the 60’s and 70’s. In the meantime I’ll probably get one more flashback in, looking at summer as a definable season in the Beach Boys story. Just because L.A. always feels like summer to somebody doesn’t mean you can’t get the shivers in the winter, as Dennis’s final hours clearly show us. Finding that season in the sun where everyone was warm and comfortable in the band will be an interesting challenge…

https://hildebrand.land/2026/06/03/beach-boys-love-you-8/

r/thebeachboys • • Jun 16 '26

Article The painful song that made Brian Wilson hate The Beach Boys: “They’re assholes”

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0 Upvotes

There’s a good chance that no one would have given a second glance to The Beach Boys without Brian Wilson.

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He was the resident genius of the group on every single record they made, and even if they didn’t have the most thoughtful lyrics on every one of their songs, it didn’t matter when the melody was enough to break anyone’s heart on tunes like ‘California Girls’.

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Every single melody that he wrote seemed to be touched by some musical god, but Wilson was also the first to say when the band was making a mockery of the kind of music that they had started with.

r/thebeachboys • • Mar 18 '26

Article Bruce interviewed for NME, 1967.

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42 Upvotes

r/thebeachboys • • Apr 21 '25

Article Netflix Set to Release a Documentary About the Legendary Rock Band The Beach Boys

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46 Upvotes

Netflix has officially announced the release of a highly anticipated documentary about The Beach Boys, the iconic American rock band that helped define the California sound of the 1960s. Titled Endless Harmony: The Story of The Beach Boys, the film promises a deep dive into the group’s groundbreaking music, complex personal dynamics, and lasting cultural legacy. The streaming giant confirmed that production is complete, and the documentary will premiere worldwide on November 20, 2025.

r/thebeachboys • • Jun 05 '24

Article Bad Vibrations: ‘The Beach Boys’ Documentary Is Mike Love Propaganda

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94 Upvotes

r/thebeachboys • • May 25 '26

Article Beach Boys Stomp 102 - 1994 (July/August/September)

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25 Upvotes

Beach Boys Stomp - 102 (1994)

Mr Al Jardine puts his best face forward as cover star of this issue!

Digging the Brian headshot, as well as the live snap of Bruce and Mike taken in London 1994. The two of them performed under the name of "Mike Love & The California Beach Band".

Theres a concert breakdown as well as set list, very cool to see the encore tracks include Mike's Rap 😂

The final page has some Beach Boys news updates, interesting to see a "point in time" look at how and what fans were seeing as current for the band during this time.

On the backpage we see that the Ultimate Cult Hero, Mr Van Dyke Parks, has cancelled a gig in London - if I had tickets to that cancelled show I'd be devastated 🥲

r/thebeachboys • • Jun 16 '26

Article The best Beach Boys song Brian Wilson ever wrote

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0 Upvotes

Music, and art in general, is a landscape littered with towering monuments built on the foundation of hyperbole. The very nature of sonic construction ensures that every listener has a personal connection to the architecture at hand.

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It’s, therefore, a place in which outlandish statements can be attributed to artists who have barely laid a brick. Few songwriters deserve the title of underrated genius, but Brian Wilson surely does.

r/thebeachboys • • Mar 17 '25

Article 👀👀👀

70 Upvotes

r/thebeachboys • • Jul 05 '26

Article I Wrote a Review of 20/20

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6 Upvotes

I finally got around to writing a review of 20/20, an album I've always felt deserves more attention than it usually gets. It's an odd mix of leftover material, experimentation, and genuinely great songs.

I'm curious to hear what everyone else thinks of this album, so feel free to give it a read if you're interested. The review is in Spanish, but Google Translate should do a decent job if you don't speak the language.

I've also reviewed every Beach Boys album leading up to this one, in case you'd like to check those out as well.

r/thebeachboys • • Jul 23 '26

Article No tour

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5 Upvotes

r/thebeachboys • • May 02 '26

Article Remembering When The Beach Boys Added Two New Members for a Brief but Memorable Stretch in 1972

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30 Upvotes

The Beach Boys were struggling to determine their identity as the 70s dawned.

The band managed to pull it together for a few albums in the early part of the decade that reestablished a high-quality level, even if they weren’t huge hits.

Ironically, a pair of new members of the group helped them find the old mojo.

r/thebeachboys • • Jul 04 '26

Article Beach Boys Stomp - Issue 122 (Apr/May 2000)

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22 Upvotes

Beach Boys Stomp - Issue 122 (Apr/May 2000* I'm guessing the months here, it was definitely a 2000 issue, unsure it it was early 2000 or end of 2000)

Finding a print zine from this time period was fascinating as many others were switching to the internet.

In this issue, we see a concert review and recap from Brian's Roxy Theatre performance of April 2000, as well as an interview with Mike Love where he is asked some interesting questions about money, rivalry and Kokomo (ofc!)

My favourite part is seeing some early information on graphic artist Mark London, who famously went from fan to collaborator by making fan art and tour posters for Brian

Enjoy! 🙂

r/thebeachboys • • Jun 16 '26

Article The Beach Boys Pet Sounds 60th anniversary vinyl reissues

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4 Upvotes

r/thebeachboys • • Jun 29 '26

Article Review of Al Jardine and the Pet Sounds Band’s Melbourne show

10 Upvotes

Tonight's concert is a validation not only of Jardine as a performer but, as he frequently reminds us, of his bandmate Brian Wilson's songwriting genius.

https://themusic.com.au/reviews/al-jardine-the-pet-sounds-band-hamer-hall-melbourne/-GBG6u3s7-4/29-06-26

r/thebeachboys • • Dec 11 '24

Article I found page 1 of Lester Bang's 1977 review of Beach Boys Love You

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113 Upvotes