“It was this whiny, cornball music, and we stated hissing and hooting, saying ‘What a rip-off!’
The only surprise surrounding the death of ol Brian Wilson yesterday was that he was still alive.
Politely described as “fragile”, Brian Wilson was tortured by a schizoaffective disorder, which included hallucinations and hearing voices, and which was not improved by how hard he hit LSD, pills and booze.
Amid all the praise yesterday, and justified ‘cause Wilson could write a tune, Big Sur my fav, not many outlets touched on how unpopular the Beach Boys were with actual surfers.
Which led me to dive into the Encyclopedia of Surfing for Warshaw’s take. He didn’t disappoint.
Surfers never embraced the Beach Boys, Jan and Dean, or any of the other one-hit-wonder vocal surf music groups. Surf shop managers politely accepted Beach Boys promo LPs from traveling Capital Records marketers, then sidearmed the records out the back door toward the dumpster. Bruce Brown, John Severson, Bud Browne—nobody used Jan and Dean songs on their surf movie soundtracks. Surf magazine editors aggressively ignored both groups, even though the music and image was perfectly aligned with the clean-cut, USSA-supported view of the sport everybody was pushing.
Surfers themselves had invented the Stomp, brought the Rendezvous back to life, and named Dick Dale’s new style of music. The Beach Boys and the rest, on the other hand—this was being foisted on them by outsiders, like the beach movies. Exasperated surfers didn’t know where to start with their complaints. Jan and Dean at least looked the part—tan, thin, blond, barefoot; T-shirts and white jeans—but the Beach Boys were soft and chubby and fully geeked out in their matching candy-stripe button-down shirts. Both groups were in magazines like Teen Talk and 16. Plus all that falsetto. And the ballads. Put a gun to his head, and Dick Dale still wouldn’t sing a ballad.
More than anything, surfers’ disregard for the Beach Boys and Jan and Dean came down to authenticity—or lack thereof.
“I was riding in a car with a friend when we first heard ‘Surfer Girl,’” Los Angeles surfer and 1964 world championship finalist Mike Doyle once recalled. “It was this whiny, cornball music, and we stated hissing and hooting, saying ‘What a rip-off!’ Years later I realized how good the Beach Boys’ songs actually are. But at the time, it was like they were pretending they’d made it down the stairs at Malibu and were part of the crew—except they couldn’t even surf, and everyone knew it.”
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