The Beach Boys: An American Band

This documentary on "The Beach Boys" may become more valuable as the years pass. Time has a way of allowing us to separate the sporadic and superficial from the genuine and great.

Now that we have some space since the group's "big years," namely the 60s and 70s, we can benefit from an enhanced perspective. What's beginning to emerge is that this group is a major popular music institution of the past century.

Much has been written and talked about Brian Wilson. In my estimation, within the context of the 60s/70s youth music genre, Wilson is a titanic talent, displaying often breathtaking creativity in the genre of "basic" or "classic rock."

The vintage footage here may be grainy and flawed, yet it's invaluable as a historic legacy we can actually view, as well as hear, as clips from "The Beach Boys'" tv specials are lovingly preserved. It would be great to have this material formally restored; however, the group's full value may yet to be appreciated. We may need a few more years for their extraordinary work to "kick in" for total recognition.

Their career is filled with all the joy and anguish one would typically expect. Starting off as healthy, normal American kids-on-the-block, wanting just to have fun, their youthful purity was touching. Yet much more was happening here: some extraordinary harmonizations were shaping up, with lead pitted against close three-part harmonic background (an early a cappella number was reminiscent of the historic "troubadour" tradition).

What was even more impressive was their actually embodying their main theme of surfing, sunning, "twisting," "digging cars and chicks" . . . in other words, "becoming" the "beach generation mystique," immortalized in song.

Just when you think you're going to hear a conventional phrase or harmonic structure, Wilson throws in a "curve": a fresh turn of phrase, chord, modulation, lyric--elevating it to a heightened plane of expression. Suddenly the predictable becomes startling, even breathtaking.

This documentary features Brian commenting everything while lying in bed, with covers pulled up to neck. Undoubtedly during one of his frequent health-challenge periods, Wilson speaks clearly and cohesively. It's as though Wilson in any form is a "boon." And it well may be.

This presentation also gives hints of some of the group's career challenges: while it's one thing to perform for fun, it's quite another to have a professional career. Indeed, with the latter comes management, contracts, travel, recording sessions, tv specials, live concerts, p/r and the like.

It also involves, in time, problems with the individual ego. This documentary delineates dealings with the father as initial manager ("How can one dispute one's dad?" asks one member) problems with sibling rivalry ("bloodline challenges") and with Brian increasingly placed in the "starring role."

In time, all of these factions took their toll, and "The Beach Boys" found there's a big difference between singing and playing in home and neighborhood, and being placed in the international spotlight.

What we're left with, though, are ingenious [Wilson] compositions in which arrangement is often as integral as conception . . . great tunes, rhythms, lyrics, normal and falsetto vocals, and sparkling instrumentals.

We can be grateful to Malcolm Leo for co-producing, writing and directing this movie/video tribute to a most noteworthy 20th century American band, "The Beach Boys."

(*Lyrics excerpt*) - "Do you love me?... Do you, surfer girl?"

If you really dig the "California/Surfer Sound" of The Beach Boys, then here's a super-duper documentary that's sure to please.

Aptly titled "An American Band". This entertaining, 100-minute program (from 1985) features lots'n'lots of music-videos (from the 1960s and 70s) of The Beach Boys.... As well - There are interviews with each of the band members, too.

What's great about this film, is that it doesn't just show you a series of little fifteen second sound-bites of vintage performances, but lets each clip run it's course, so you get to hear the entire song. Although many of them are obviously lip-synched (most notably "California Girls" from the Bob Hope special), there are enough rarities here to satisfy even the hardest of hard-core fans. The highlight of the movie, for me at least, was "In My Room" with a full orchestral backing from 1963, that must have been Al Jardine's very first filmed performance with the group. If only all musical documentaries were this good!

This movie contains some amazing footage and it goes from the beginning of the band until the mid 80's when Dennis Wilson passed away. It's a bit of a flaw that the live performances are sometimes out of sync making the whole thing look a bit ridiculous. In between the concert footage the band members tell their story by some scripted lines, which is more than just a bit silly, but still fun to look at.

Above all, this movie is not to be viewed as a factual documentary. Most of the band's conflicts and troubles are only addressed shortly if they are addressed at all and the movie tries to paint a picture of endless harmony between all the band members, which wasn't there for most of the time. It's like watching a propaganda movie from a time of war, where most facts have been spun around. In hindsight, if you look at such movies and you know how things really went down, it's still very intriguing to see how they have been presented at the time. That's the main fascination of "The Beach Boys: An American band".

There is some very intimate footage in this movie. We actually get to see Brian lying in his bed with the blanket up to his chin as he did for most of the late 60's and early 70's. He is giving interviews without leaving the bed, trying to act as if this behavior was completely normal. We're at Brian's 34th anniversary party with Paul McCarntey. We see the press conference the Beach Boys gave after Dennis had passed away and somehow you get more information if you read between the lines than from listening to the things the band members say in interviews.

The most amazing thing to look at is Brian, who does seem uncomfortable for most of the time, but not exactly deranged. He could actually speak fluently up until the 80's, so even though he probably feels better now he somehow seemed healthier back then than he does when he's babbling on stage these days.

It's been a long way for Brian and the band and this movie covers most of it. "It's a dramatic story! It's the story of the Beach Boys", as Brian puts it at one point in the movie.

I was expecting the standard 90% obscure people who think they are experts talking to themselves and 10% sound bites through the years.

What we get is 90% songs (Most complete) and 10 of the Beach Boys themselves giving insights as to production and their personal struggles.

I realize that a lot of their later songs such as "Sloop John B," the seventh track on The Beach Boys' Pet Sounds album, were my favorites; however, I did not associate them with what I think of as the California surfer set.

All in all, the whole presentation is pretty professional and thorough. I hope your favorite songs were displayed.

Makes you want to retire in Capitola.