The Beach Boys
As long as bleach-blond beach bums ride the waves and lonely geeks fantasize of romance, the Beach Boys will blare from car radios into America's psyche. Emerging from Southern California in the early 1960s, the Beach Boys became the quintessential American teen band, their innocent songs of youthful longing, lust, and liberation coming to define the very essence of white, suburban teenage life. At the same time, they mythologized that life through the sun-kissed prism of Southern California's palm trees, beaches, and hot rods, much like the civic boosters and Hollywood moguls who preceded them. From 1962 to 1966, the Beach Boys joined Phil Spector and Berry Gordy as the most influential shapers of the American Top 40. But like the California myth itself, the Beach Boys' sunny dreams were tempered by an underlying darkness, born of their tempestuous personal and professional lives. That darkness sometimes fueled the group's greatest work. It also produced tragedy for the band's members, especially resident genius Brian Wilson, and by the 1980s the band collapsed into self-parody.
The nucleus of the Beach Boys was the Wilson family, which lived in a simple bungalow in the Los Angeles suburb of Hawthorne. At home, brothers Brian (1942—), Dennis (1944-1983), and Carl (1946-1998) were introduced to music by their temperamental father, Murry Wilson, whose rare displays of affection were usually accompanied by the purchase of musical instruments, records, or lessons.
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