Behind a cover that shamelessly mimics the typography and colour scheme of Pet Sounds lies the best book on The Beach Boys I have read since Timothy White’s The Nearest Faraway Place in 1994. This is not to disparage the work of David Leaf, whose closeness to the group, and Brian Wilson in particular, gives him an insider’s edge, or Steven Gaines, whose flair for drama made his 1986 biography Heroes & Villains a page-turner, just that Peter Doggett mixes precise literacy and in-depth research with an impartial critical assurance that previous books have lacked. Moreover, it’s my guess that he has spent much of his adult life considering what he wants to say about a group whose music he clearly adores, before finally settling down to write the book that might well be the last word on the subject.
First, an acknowledgement. I have known Peter Doggett since the 1980s when, as editor at Omnibus Press, I commissioned him on a fairly regular basis to produce discographies for inclusion in the music books we published. At the time Peter was the editor of Record Collector magazine whose discographies, I had noted, were the most comprehensive and accurate to be found anywhere. I wanted the best and found it, and as we got to know one another I commissioned him to write several books for Omnibus, some of them published under the pseudonym John Robertson, taken from the Byrds song, because the powers-that-be at Record Collector took a dim view of their staff moonlighting elsewhere.
But I digress. Although Surf’s Up begins more or less at the beginning (after Peter’s coverage of an astonishing, unexpected appearance by Brian Wilson at a London fan club event in 1988) and ends with Brian’s passing, this is not a linear biography that follows the career of The Beach Boys year by year, song by song or trauma by trauma. Instead it jumps around, artfully leaping from key issues into subsidiary areas, the sum of which leads to a greater understanding of the progressive forces and, perhaps more importantly, malign undercurrents that shaped the group’s career. Among them are razor-sharp profiles of the widely contrasting personalities involved, the power struggles between them, anecdotes galore, many of them unflattering, and, of course, plenty about the mental health of Brian Wilson, their in-house maestro who wrote and arranged all their best songs.
To this end, Surf’s Up is a jigsaw with 59 pieces, each one a shortish, unnumbered chapter, or essay, on some aspect of The Beach Boys. In a book of 382 pages (discounting end matter), that works out at about six a half pages per bite-sized chapter, which makes it more of a compendium than a biography; an easy read then, and, for that matter, one you can dip into here and there without losing the plot, complex as it is. This structure might not suit newcomers to the saga of The Beach Boys’ but, by now, it’s unlikely that those interested in the group, this book’s core market, will be unfamiliar with the lurid details of what went on behind the scenes. Nevertheless, at the start Peter helpfully proffers potted biographies of the dramatis personae, all 41 of whom in some way or other play a role in the story, from Brian and his brothers right down to management, auxiliary musicians and even a few in-laws.
Let’s pick a random essay. “Why do people hate Mike Love?” begins one. “Let me count the ways.” Plenty of them follow, though Peter does recognise that, obnoxious as he can be, without Love’s energy the group might never have got off the ground in the first place. The relatively long chapter on Pet Sounds emphasises how so many of its songs laid bare Brian’s insecurities yet doesn’t quite nail what everyone thought about the LP at the time, not Peter’s fault of course, just that mixed messaging over the years and, quite possibly, fake news reportage, has blurred reality. Keith Moon, however, hated it, probably for the same reasons that Mike Love may or may not have hated it too. Among the many others, therapist Dr Eugene Landy’s influence on Brian gets two chapters, and there’s plenty about deaths in the family, relatives galore, surfing as a sport, the joys of California, dietary and spiritual matters, Dennis’ indiscretions with Charles Manson (and 17 naked girls), Mike Love’s money-making schemes and whatever rivalry existed between The Beach Boys and The Beatles.
What else have I learned? Dean Torrence of Jan & Dean sang uncredited lead on ‘Barbara Ann’; Al Jardine is a bit dull; ‘Good Vibrations’ lost out to ‘Winchester Cathedral’ by The New Vaudeville Band for Best Contemporary Song at the Grammys in 1966 (what were they thinking?); ‘Heroes And Villains’ was re-written after Brain’s Rolls Royce was nicked from a cinema car park; supplementary Beach Boy Bruce Johnson, born Benjamin Baldwin as the son of a single mother from Illinois, had the enormous good fortune to be adopted by an uber-wealthy LA family. No wonder he always looked so laid-back.
There’s almost 30 pages of reference notes at the end, a reflection of the author’s dedicated research, a three-page bibliography but no index which would have appalled at least one mutual friend of ours. Neither are there any pictures, no doubt because no new ones could be found and, in any case, everyone knows what The Beach Boys look like. It’s what they sound like that really matters, and Peter Doggett’s deft musical analysis sent me back to the music, specifically my Good Vibrations box set and a CD of remasters called Summer Love Songs, time and again over the past week, the only trusted and true factor in judging the merits of a music book.
“The music survives best in the hearts and souls of everyone who has been touched by it, enriched by it, opened themselves to all its emotional ambiguities and riches,” writes Peter at the close of his book. “Nobody else made music like Brian Wilson; nobody ever could.”
I couldn’t agree more.
1 comment:
It is excellent.
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