Post by Kapitan on Jul 4, 2021 17:42:13 GMT
The Beach Boys are America’s band, an American band. Maybe the American band.
When was it that the Beach Boys became “America’s Band?”
In 1976 they released an album, 15 Big Ones capitalizing on the Olympic logo and the American bicentennial as well as covers of pop hits that were once considered threatening but had come to be known as Americana itself during that first wave of ‘50s nostalgia.
It was 1980 when they began their series of annual 4th of July concerts on the National Mall, famously almost interrupted in 1983 when Sec. Watt indicated (not incorrectly) that the shows drew a crowd of people abusing drugs and alcohol.
As time went on, the national impression of the Beach Boys became one of wholesome oldies, of “Happy Days” and American Graffiti, of a Reagan-era America’s band. Going forward, especially the Mike Love-led touring band seemed affiliated with a conservative, golden-era obsessed group of aging Boomers and a very specific version of America.
But the Beach Boys also recorded “4th of July” in early 1971, a song unreleased in its time but eventually put forward on the 1993 on the Good Vibrations box set. That song, sung by Carl Wilson and written by brother Dennis, mingles patriotic imagery with disappointed and cynical language, sentiments of a generation jaded by a war not only going badly, but with no clear objective involved. It’s not irrelevant that Carl had been a conscientious objector and had legal squabbles related to his opposition to the war.
Early Beach Boys songs gave no hints toward any such minority or countercultural positions. Those celebrations of middle class southern California in some ways served as evidence of the golden era of America that the Reaganite America eventually praised. Cars, girls, beaches, and fun: that was the postwar American optimism the band represented.
Even that same early ‘70s era shows the splintering of vision. Bruce Johnston’s “Disney Girls” is an entirely different perspective, or at least emphasis, than Dennis’s “4th of July.” Rather than finding fault with the status quo, it simply ignores it, looking back to what Johnston finds to be a better time. It doesn’t offer a solution to the troubles of the day, it just daydreams to happier, simpler times.
But that image of a lily-white, middle class, WASP America was even at that time not something that the Beach Boys themselves represented. Forget Vietnam, but the band was incorporating two black South Africans by then. Billy Hinsche, a part of their extended family and a supporting musician, was Filipino. Whatever the band’s reputation, the reality wasn’t just a bunch of stereotypical blonde surfer dudes.
The world went on to splinter again and again. The Beach Boys played different roles to different people. Oldies, sure, but collaborators with the Fat Boys, too. Fans envisioned that the foil to commercially crass Republican Mike Love must be a progressive Democrat Brian Wilson, right? Alas, Wilson supported John McCain because of his great smile, for one example of the narrative just not working…
Many of the band members have supported ecological causes to preserve the diversity and majesty of nature as it appears throughout America. This—the support of the “right wing” and “left wing” factions of the band—is yet another complication in how this is an American band, America’s band.
When was it that the Beach Boys became “America’s Band?”
In 1976 they released an album, 15 Big Ones capitalizing on the Olympic logo and the American bicentennial as well as covers of pop hits that were once considered threatening but had come to be known as Americana itself during that first wave of ‘50s nostalgia.
It was 1980 when they began their series of annual 4th of July concerts on the National Mall, famously almost interrupted in 1983 when Sec. Watt indicated (not incorrectly) that the shows drew a crowd of people abusing drugs and alcohol.
As time went on, the national impression of the Beach Boys became one of wholesome oldies, of “Happy Days” and American Graffiti, of a Reagan-era America’s band. Going forward, especially the Mike Love-led touring band seemed affiliated with a conservative, golden-era obsessed group of aging Boomers and a very specific version of America.
But the Beach Boys also recorded “4th of July” in early 1971, a song unreleased in its time but eventually put forward on the 1993 on the Good Vibrations box set. That song, sung by Carl Wilson and written by brother Dennis, mingles patriotic imagery with disappointed and cynical language, sentiments of a generation jaded by a war not only going badly, but with no clear objective involved. It’s not irrelevant that Carl had been a conscientious objector and had legal squabbles related to his opposition to the war.
Early Beach Boys songs gave no hints toward any such minority or countercultural positions. Those celebrations of middle class southern California in some ways served as evidence of the golden era of America that the Reaganite America eventually praised. Cars, girls, beaches, and fun: that was the postwar American optimism the band represented.
Even that same early ‘70s era shows the splintering of vision. Bruce Johnston’s “Disney Girls” is an entirely different perspective, or at least emphasis, than Dennis’s “4th of July.” Rather than finding fault with the status quo, it simply ignores it, looking back to what Johnston finds to be a better time. It doesn’t offer a solution to the troubles of the day, it just daydreams to happier, simpler times.
But that image of a lily-white, middle class, WASP America was even at that time not something that the Beach Boys themselves represented. Forget Vietnam, but the band was incorporating two black South Africans by then. Billy Hinsche, a part of their extended family and a supporting musician, was Filipino. Whatever the band’s reputation, the reality wasn’t just a bunch of stereotypical blonde surfer dudes.
The world went on to splinter again and again. The Beach Boys played different roles to different people. Oldies, sure, but collaborators with the Fat Boys, too. Fans envisioned that the foil to commercially crass Republican Mike Love must be a progressive Democrat Brian Wilson, right? Alas, Wilson supported John McCain because of his great smile, for one example of the narrative just not working…
Many of the band members have supported ecological causes to preserve the diversity and majesty of nature as it appears throughout America. This—the support of the “right wing” and “left wing” factions of the band—is yet another complication in how this is an American band, America’s band.
All of the above and more has been going through my mind today on the 4th of July.
The Beach Boys, it seems to me, aren’t just “America’s Band” (though they are that), but a truly American band. They grow out of that particular postwar moment of optimism; they rebel against the nation’s failures to live up to its ideals; they battle amongst themselves over issues through the years, they split and reconvene and split and regroup again and again. They haven't been, and are not to this day, a single thing, a single entity, with a specific point of view. Neither are they an obvious tale of good versus evil. Instead they are a long-running, sometimes incoherent collection of people weaving in and out of this or that trend, style, or ideology.
If that isn't America, I don't know what is.