I was perusing the bootleg section of a small record store on the last day of 2013 (the same day that I bought Talking Heads' Fear of Music album) when I came across a curious-looking artifact: a CD with the same color scheme and design of the Beach Boys' landmark 1966 album Pet Sounds, but by Charles Manson (he of the "Manson Family murders of 1969" fame). The "album" was a collection of songs old Charlie did in the pen (namely, San Quentin) where he's been locked up since the Nixon administration.
Of course, anyone who knows their pop-culture history should know that Manson and the Beach Boys intersected oh-so-briefly during the late Sixties, and that Manson harbored dreams of being a folksinger or rock star (when he wasn't harboring dreams of race war and mass murder). Dennis Wilson, the free-spirited drummer of the group, even let Manson and his "kin" crash at his home for a time. Fortune did not favor the insane, however, and the Beach Boys were not on Manson's hit list when the shit hit the fan.
For my money, this is just one of the many aspects of the Beach Boys' collected history that make them the most interesting band in American musical history. Not the most important, mind you (that honor belongs to the Velvet Underground), but the most tabloid-friendly of the whole Sixties bunch. Brian Wilson may get the biopic treatment soon, and I imagine a whole new generation may be exposed to his brilliant pop melodies and songwriting prowess. Or they may be scared off by the Reagan-era "Kokomo," which led to recurring guest-starring roles for the BB's on temporary drummer John Stamos' Full House.
In fact, I first heard about the Boys in the late Eighties, when they always seemed to crop up on TV shows singing about fun in the sun and the girls they saw on the beach (though at this point in time, they were already pushing fifty as the median age for their individual ages). There was nothing cool about the Beach Boys twenty years ago, when as all aging rock stars of the Sixties they were still striving to be "relevant" by jumping on the synthesizer train to Hitsville, USA. If you can remember Starship's "We Built This City," you know what I'm talking about. I've always been a narrative junky, however, and as I read more about pop music and the Beach Boys in particular, I had to admit that Brian Wilson and company were compelling even when a lot of their music might not be.
The Wilson brothers, cousin Mike "No, I just like wearing hats, my hairline isn't receding" Love, and high school pal Al Jardine first made music together in 1962, and from the outset they were managed by Murray Wilson, the tyrannical father of brothers Brian, Dennis, and Carl. Brian Wilson couldn't handle the fame that engulfed the group and, on the verge of a European tour in 1964, had a mental breakdown and had to go into seclusion (leading years later to his manipulation at the hands of a glory-hound psychiatrist who surprisingly enough isn't named "Dr. Drew."). The group turned to Brian as songwriter and arranger, and the situation worked for quite a while. There was Pet Sounds, "Good Vibrations" (salvaged from the abortive SMiLE sessions of 1967), and countless other hits. But the Sixties passed the group by, and the Seventies weren't much better. By 1983, Dennis Wilson was dead, and Carl would follow in 1998. Last year the Beach Boys reconfigured because "hey, fifty years have passed and we need to make money" (I'm sure that was the sole reason to force poor Brian Wilson back out onstage). They've been riding the nostalgia gravy train for so long, even the hipster ironists who "embrace" them can't tell if they're the ones being ironic or if the band is.
A few years ago, during my "everything I write must be GENIUS" phase, I penned a slightly bizarre hard-boiled mystery short story for National Lampoon which featured Brian Wilson (circa 1966) as a special helper to the LAPD, with Darryl Gates (the police chief at the time of the Rodney King beating, but in my story a lowly detective) as his reluctant sidekick. They were on the trail of what was going to turn out to be the Manson Family, if I'd seen the story through (I was so pleased with myself over the execution of the detective noir set-up that I didn't bother to think ahead to how to make it convincing. This might be why I don't write mysteries). It never got beyond the rough, rough draft stage, and on some level I'm fine with that. But when I read Thomas Pynchon's Inherent Vice, it occurred to me that maybe there had been something in that idea (at least the burnt-out detective, though in Pynchon's case, Doc Sportello had nothing to do with pop music except as a listener). I might try and revisit that someday, or at least leave it up to someone who can take the idea further than I could.
Like a lot of people, I wish the Beach Boys had never recorded "Kokomo," and if you ask anyone with half a brain if they like that song you'd be hard-pressed to find a fan of it even then. I love Pet Sounds, I love the version of Smile that Brian Wilson released a few years back, and I like "Darlin'," a song about which I know very little. But it's a good one, and the best Beach Boys songs help you forget the endless cash-grabs, the nauseating association with Reagan's "Morning in America" crap, and Mike Love's seemingly endless collection of baseball caps that don't actually feature team logos on them (always seems to be some fishing buddy's savings and loans or something). Then again, we're talking about Brian Wilson, the man who penned "Don't Worry, Baby." I guess he can do whatever the hell he wants.
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