The strange time when The Beach Boys were banned from Washington
Beware of a government that bullies its artists, it’s like the seasons censoring summer, quashing growth and light in favour of the stronghold of winter’s austere darkness. President John F Kennedy even spelt out that very message during a speech at Amherst College, a matter of weeks before he was assassinated. He explained, “If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him.”
Sadly, within 20 years, that liberated message had been scrapped in favour of banning The Beach Boys from Washington, DC. How?
Well, on the surface, the Beach Boys seem entirely like the sort of band any government would do well to advocate. The wholesome family group embody the American dream, escaping the harsh circumstances of their youth to fill the world with a balm of musical love that pioneered a new marriage between art and technology through Brian Wilson’s revolutionary use of the studio as an instrument.
The band battled against the British Invasion with an upbeat brand of polished pop. They were seemingly a force for America to be immensely proud of. But they also arose as a pillar of the counterculture movement. This was a period when the left had a firm grasp on culture and utilised it to present progressive messages to the masses. So, even though the group’s messaging was largely apolitical, they still drew the ire of the government.
J Edgar Hoover, the late former FBI head, positively hated the ‘left’ and vowed to quash the counterculture movement during his reign. He wasn’t alone, either. When Ronald Reagan rose to power, he famously made a proclamation as good as a declaration of war against the left, stating: “If it takes a bloodbath, let’s get it over with”. This made artists definitive targets of government scrutiny, and The Beach Boys almost inadvertently gave them cause for concern.
In the late 1960s, the clean-cut surfing family became embroiled in LSD controversy and unfortunate ties to Charles Manson. So, despite their songs being drenched in Factor 50 as opposed to subversion, they were tarred with the same suspicious brush as the rest of the counterculture movement. In fact, any art that was vaguely left-leaning drew the ire of the government following the Manson Family’s heinous deeds.
Sensing this, the group looked to clean up their image, and Mike Love took hold of the band. Steadily, the singer asserted his rather more centralist dominance, and one of his ideas aimed to fall back in favour with the American powers that be was to put on free Independence Day shows in Washington, DC. From 1980 to ’82, the band drew huge family crowds to the National Mall alongside The Grass Roots. The concerts were a proud celebration of the country’s finest culture. That is, until James Gaius Watt became US Secretary of the Interior.
In a flash, the politician who was never more than five feet away from a faux pas, cancelled all future free concerts and banned The Beach Boys and The Grass Roots from performing in Washington, DC. “We’re not going to encourage drug abuse and alcoholism,” he proclaimed, accusing previous performances of being overrun by miscreants. There was no evidence whatsoever of such behaviour being widespread at the concerts, prompting a whopping 40,000 complaints to be launched against Watt.
However, he insisted that ”the wrong element” was taking root at these free concerts, and thieves would become pervasive in the crowd. Nobody was entirely sure how he had arrived at these conclusions, especially President Ronald Reagan. As it transpired, pretty much everyone in the White House claimed to be huge fans of The Beach Boys, and Watt was summoned for a dressing down over his strange error of judgement. The Beach Boys were also invited to the White House for whatever the inverse of a dressing down is; posing for proud photographs with the powers that be.
In the end, alleged ties to the mafia brought about the demise of Watt’s political career. Only a matter of months after he banned The Beach Boys, he was dismissed from his position. And a decade on from that, he was summoned to court to face 26 counts of perjury and obstruction of justice. Meanwhile, the Beach Boys went on a campaign of their own, making a splash about how they had received unchecked creative license during their recent invitation to Leningrad. They insisted that they sang ”about patriotic themes” and sold themselves as an American underdog once more—proving as much on Independence Day in 1985 when they played to a record-breaking crowd of 1.75 million people across two shows at the Washington Mall and a matinee in Philadelphia.
If anything, being banned from Washington was the carwash that their career required. Tragedy would strike the band in other forms with the death of Dennis Wilson and Brian Wilson’s documented decline, but they were back in public favour in another sense, met with a commercial upsurge while Watt was finding his name in public polls on the worst cabinet members in American history. So, it’s not just a case of ‘Beware of a government that bullies its artists’, the inverse is true, ‘Governments, beware of bullying artists, too’.
