Did The Beach Boys actually like surfing?
The original and most memorable lineup of The Beach Boys consisted of the brothers Brian, Dennis, and Carl Wilson, their cousin Mike Love, and close friend Al Jardine. As a family unit, this remarkable band popularised surf-rock in the early 1960s and brought their rich, harmonious sound to psychedelia later in the decade for a friendly spar with British rivals The Beatles.
Highly associative with garage rock and rockabilly, surf rock – or surf music – is a sub-genre indigenous to America’s West Coast. Emerging from the sunny scapes of Southern California, surf rock began as instrumental surf as pioneered by Dick Dale and the Del-Tones, identified by heavily reverberated electric guitars. Later, The Beach Boys and Jan and Dean used vocal harmonies to spearhead vocal surf, a similarly shimmering sound evocative of the ocean.
In John Blair’s 2015 book Southern California Surf Music, 1960-1966, Dale described the difference between his instrumental-led surf music and The Beach Boys’ vocal-led variant: “They were surfing sounds [with] surfing lyrics,” he said. “In other words, the music wasn’t surfing music. The words made them surfing songs. … That was the difference … the real surfing music is instrumental.”
Before The Beach Boys surged to stardom in 1963 with their first hit single, ‘Surfin’ USA’, Dick Dale whetted the appetite with the first national hit for the subgenre, ‘Let’s Go Trippin”. Needless to say, he had a monumental impact on The Beach Boys’ early surf material; they even covered Dale’s 1961 hit on their second album, Surfin’ USA.
Given surf rock’s association with the Californian beach scene and the constant mention of surfing in the band’s first three studio albums, it’s fair to assume The Beach Boys enjoyed riding waves in the Pacific during their downtime. However, as it transpires, the co-founding drummer Dennis Wilson was the only member who surfed.
Brian, the early band leader and principal songwriter, once recalled Dennis’ excitement about California’s burgeoning surf culture. “One day, my brother Dennis came home from the beach and said, ‘Hey, surfing’s getting really big,” Brian Wilson recalled in the Surfin’ Safari liner notes. “You guys should write a song about it.” Shortly after, the band recorded its first single, 1961’s ‘Surfin”.
Despite singing and writing about the sport a hell of a lot, it seems Brian wasn’t particularly interested in surfing. Over the years, music became his all-consuming obsession, leaving very little time for coastal leisure. If one offered him a free surfing lesson in 1965, he would have retorted, explaining that he was far too busy composing contrapuntal harmonies for the band’s forthcoming masterpiece, Pet Sounds.
While Brian Wilson was a stranger to California’s surf culture, he was asked to pick up a board in 1976. As Brian returned to The Beach Boys following a lengthy struggle with drug addiction, the band contacted Lorne Michaels, the producer of Saturday Night Live, to request a special celebratory feature.
On August 5th, 1976, NBC broadcast the special The Beach Boys: It’s O.K., during which comedy actors John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd coax a reluctant Brian to go surfing.
“Brian, we have a citation here for you, sir, under Section 936A of the California Catch a Wave Statute,” says Aykroyd, dressed as a police officer. “Brian, you’re in violation of Paragraph 12: failing to surf, neglecting to use a state beach for surfing purposes, and otherwise avoiding surfboards, surfing and surf.”
“Surfing? I don’t wanna go surfing,” Wilson replies. “Look, guys, I’m not going to get my hair wet. You get sand in your shoes. I’m not going.”
Despite Brian’s protests, he submits to the call of the sea to practise what he preached in the early ’60s. “He was not happy about it,” Michaels told Rolling Stone, reflecting on the sketch in 2006. “It was almost a baptism.”
Watch the clip from The Beach Boys: It’s O.K. below.
