The Beach Boys and the California Myth

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The Beach Boys and the California Myth
BeachBoysCaliforniaMyth.jpg
AuthorDavid Leaf
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
SubjectThe Beach Boys
PublisherGrosset & Dunlap
Publication date
1978
Pages192
ISBN978-0448146256
OCLC4333916

The Beach Boys and the California Myth is a 1978 biography of the Beach Boys that was authored by American writer David Leaf, editor and creator of the Pet Sounds fanzine. It was the first full-length book written about the band,[1] and an early piece of writing that revealed much of their internal conflicts and family history.[2] The book was influential in cementing a popular narrative of the band – one that caricatured Brian Wilson as a tortured genius.[3][4]

Background[]

While living in New Rochelle, New York, Leaf developed a fascination with the Beach Boys after reading Tom Nolan and David Felton's 1971 Rolling Stone cover story on the band, "The Beach Boys: A California Saga".[5][6] Following his college graduation in 1975, Leaf moved to Los Angeles with the ambition of authoring a book about Brian Wilson.[5] After forming connections with the group, in 1977, he started a fanzine named after their 1966 album Pet Sounds.[7] The fanzine led to a publishing contract with Grosset & Dunlap to write The Beach Boys and the California Myth.[5][7]

Content[]

I came to California to test the myth, to meet the Beach Boys, looking for symbols. It wasn't long before my journey went too far. My journalistic investigations and excavations discovered more human suffering than I really wanted to know.

—Excerpt from the book's introduction[5]

The book marked the first "serious study" devoted to Wilson's music,[8] with photos and clippings interspersed throughout.[9] Substantial coverage is devoted to the Wilson brothers' upbringing and Brian's formative musical influences.[10] Leaf characterizes Brian during his adolescence as an affable personality who was popular with his schoolmates, although shy and prone to follow the crowds to avoid social conflicts.[11]

Throughout the book, Leaf advances the argument that Brian had been victimized and artistically stifled by his record company and his bandmates.[12] He writes, "If Brian sought refuge within drugs, in reaction to all the pressure, then everybody must share the blame—the record company, the family, the Beach Boys, and Brian’s entourage."[13] The book contains negative depictions of Mike Love[14] and Wilson's first wife Marilyn,[13] as well as details concerning the odd circumstances surrounding the band's Smile sessions.[5] Leaf draws upon new interviews with former Brother Records president David Anderle and many others who were quoted anonymously.[15]

Reception[]

Mike Love (pictured 1983) criticized the book's negative depiction of himself and Wilson's family and friends.

Rock critic Richie Unterberger decreed, "If there is a flaw to Leaf's writing, it's that its praise of Brian Wilson is often unabashed, and his dominant creative role in the group arguably overstated."[2] Music historian Luis Sanchez argued that Leaf's book presented a reductive view of the band's music being "meaningful exclusively in terms of Brian Wilson's genius."[16] In its significance to the band's mythology, he referred to it as the first work that "put the 'Brian Wilson is a genius' trope into perspective", especially by emphasizing a "dynamic of good guys and bad guys."[4] Sanchez concludes, "What we end up with is an image of young Brian as something of a Norman Rockwell cipher—essentially suburban yet somewhat inscrutable."[11]

In the revised 1985 edition of his book, Leaf penned an essay titled "Shades of Grey" in which he wrote that he "no longer indict[s] the world of 'being bad to Brian,' when it's apparent that Brian has been hardest on himself."[16] According to Sanchez, "It adds some valuable insight to Leaf's original narrative, allowing it some breathing room where it seemed stifled and strict before."[16]

Leaf added in the 1985 appendix that when he later saw Mike Love at a Beach Boys fan convention, Love "tried to burn a hole in my head with an endless, icy stare, and began his speech with acerbic remarks so obviously aimed at me that all heads in the room turned to see my reaction."[2] Love referred to the biography in his 2016 memoir, Good Vibrations, where he criticized it for solidifying a narrative that vilified himself, his bandmates, and other members of Wilson's family.[3] He named Leaf "the first" in a line of Wilson's "awestruck biographers".[17]

Biographer Mark Dillon wrote that while the book remained "long out-of-print and succeeded by other bios about Brian and the group, its shadow looms over them all."[12] Steven Gaines' 1986 biography Heroes and Villains drew heavily on Leaf's book.[18] In Peter Ames Carlin's 2006 book about Brian Wilson, Catch a Wave, he described California Myth as "near-Shakespearean" in its telling of "innocence, hope, greed, and brutality",[5] and an enlightenment of "the depth and wonder of Brian's work".[19]

References[]

  1. ^ Waller, Don (February 5, 1995). "California Boys". The New York Times.
  2. ^ a b c Unterberger, Richie. "David Leaf". AllMusic.
  3. ^ a b Love 2016, pp. 160–163.
  4. ^ a b Sanchez 2014, pp. 24, 99.
  5. ^ a b c d e f Carlin 2006, p. 275.
  6. ^ Dillon 2012, p. 196.
  7. ^ a b Dillon 2012, p. 197.
  8. ^ Granata 2003, p. 224.
  9. ^ Sanchez 2014, p. 24.
  10. ^ Sanchez 2014, p. 42.
  11. ^ a b Sanchez 2014, p. 43.
  12. ^ a b Dillon 2012, p. 198.
  13. ^ a b Love 2016, p. 162.
  14. ^ Carlin 2006, p. 289.
  15. ^ Love 2016, p. 161.
  16. ^ a b c Sanchez 2014, p. 25.
  17. ^ Love 2016, p. 164.
  18. ^ Waller, Don (December 28, 1986). "NONFICTION: HEROES AND VILLAINS: THE TRUE STORY OF THE BEACH BOYS by Steven Gaines (New American Library: $17.95; 374 pp., black-and-white photographs)". Los Angeles Times.
  19. ^ Carlin 2006, p. iv.

Bibliography[]

External links[]

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