Beach Boys biographies

Timothy White's The Nearest Faraway Place tends to skim my fave period of the band but as a social history of the Wilson family forebears as well as the 'concept' of California and youth culture it's pretty great.

The scope of White's book goes further than merely the BBs; further than music, even, summarizing SoCal culture in its multifaceted beauty. If you want to read about the music, Kingsley Abbott's collection of articles is pretty good
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/1900924021/qid=1110814956/sr=1-3/ref=sr_1_2_3/026-0652137-4131666

But then, so is Paul Williams'
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0711991030/qid=1110815018/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_2_1/026-0652137-4131666

As for a band history, Steven Gaines' book is probably the best, including as it does the dirt & the triumphs
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0306806479/qid=1110815720/sr=1-4/ref=sr_1_10_4/026-0652137-4131666

haha I just picked up a copy of Heroes and Villains last weekend in Portland - really shittily researched and written but very entertaining. The music/albums are almost a complete afterthought - he gets all kinds of details wrong (even tracklistings!) and then inexplicably praises stuff like the Beach Boys "Party!" album and the Mt. Vernon and Fairway single while deriding Carl and the Passions and Holland as crap, etc.

Leaf, Gaines, Williams books in that order.

Big ups too for one of the Denny books, but I can't remember which. Great story in it about some guy who partied w him for a full day and couldn't handle it at ALL.

But c'mon, Party's great!
xpost

I know, it is, but he effusively praises it in the same paragraph where he calls "Today!" a pile of shit because it has the Earl Leaf "comedy routine" track on it - his opinions are just very wtf, and his summation of the music is really sloppy.

I haven't read any of these others, but I just finished Catch A Wave: The Rise, Fall, and Redemption of the Beach Boys' Brian Wilson by Peter Ames Carlin. I liked it, it seemed like a pretty thorough history, but it, as expected, focused more on Brian than anything else - particularly as the 80s and 90s came around. But it did delve enough into the other guys' lives to be of interesst.

got the Leaf book for father's day. only read the first few pages so far but man the exhaustion/cynicism of the 70s just oozes from it

i guess i've never seen this thread before and wasn't aware of that book... very interested in hearing how it is.

Well just flipping through it its kinda worth it for the photos alone

so is the Leaf book back in print?

no

Somebody bought you a used book as a present?

It's been on my want list for years and it's out of print, how else am I going to get it

j/k. It sounds like a pretty nice gift, actually.

she gave me that and Malzberg's Breakfast in the Ruins

so weird that this thread popped up! I just finished the Gaines book after finding it on a stoop.

a little too much of "and then they made THIS investment ... and the signed THAT contract"

but yeah lots of sleaze

The Gaines book was reviled during its day for muckraking but it's pretty clear in retrospect that that's pretty much exactly how things happened.

The stuff from/about Brian's late 70s bodyguards seems the most questionable but yeah a huge amount of it seems pretty legit in retrospect.

finished the Leaf book. Loads of great pictures and tidbits - Brian claiming to be brought to tears by Jack Rieley's vocal on Day in the Life of a Tree, Mike Love approaching Korthof about building a floating hospital off the coast of Florida in the shape of a pyramid, the story (also repeated in the Gaines book iirc) about a prank involving Brian being pissed on in the high school locker room after pretending to pass out. Gets a bit repetitive with the "omg when will the group/family just let Brian BE Brian". And he has some funny opinions. I mean, he was *really* into "Lazy Lizzie" (and the fairy tale EP!)

The stuff from/about Brian's late 70s bodyguards seems the most questionable but yeah a huge amount of it seems pretty legit in retrospect.

I pretty much believe all of that stuff. These guys were a complete wreck in the late 70s.

I don't have the book at hand and was not referring to specific details, I just remember that towards the end there's a lot of minutiae centered around Rocky and Stan(?) and sundry hijinks involving their trying to keep a handle on Brian and when reading it a lot of it seemed fairly incidental and uncorroborated

had to revive just for this one-line review:

9. Steven Gaines, Heroes and Villains—The True Story of the Beach Boys (NAL)
Disgusting, repulsive, hateful—also pointless, save as the last word anyone will need on these cretins.

http://greilmarcus.net/2015/02/24/real-life-rock-top-10-0187/

That's funny--I was just coming on to alert you to that.

Ha!

The Gaines book was reviled during its day for muckraking but it's pretty clear in retrospect that that's pretty much exactly how things happened.

"Mike was carrying a two-gallon glass jug of apple juice everywhere he went," said Vail, "kind of like a security blanket. Apparently the doctor realized Mike was right on the edge, and he was about to give him a sedative when Mike saw what was coming and became very neurotic. He jumped up and fled the room." When he came out into the reception room, where Vail was waiting, he threw the jug of apple juice at him, and it smashed against the wall. A second later Mike was gone. He leaped into his car and took off with Fred Vail following him. "He was flipping out, and we went everywhere; it was like the Steve McQueen chase in Bullitt..."

He jumped up and fled the room

... not forgetting to take the two-gallon glass jug of apple juice with him, of course.

I've heard some Beach Boys fans rave about this series of podcasts. I don't have time to check it out myself, but just looking over the guest list, it's an impressive array of people they've interviewed - this is hours and hours of info so I don't doubt there's new information as some suggested, but it will take a while to get through:

http://www.youtube.com/@discograffitipodcast2872

That guy's podcast got mentioned on some other thread a while back and I listened to a few of them... I remember the David Marks ones being interesting.

Here it was:
Yet Another Beach Boys Thread - The Best of the Pre-"Pet Sounds" albums