Why the Beach Boys Matter

Tom Smucker

Published by University of Texas Press 2018

Why the Beach Boys Matter

Tom Smucker

In the series Music Matters

https://doi.org/10.7560/318720

Overview
Contents

About this book

Of all the white American pop music groups that hit the charts before the Beatles, only the Beach Boys continued to thrive throughout the British Invasion to survive into the 1970s and beyond. The Beach Boys helped define both sides of the era we broadly call the sixties, split between their early surf, car, and summer pop and their later hippie, counterculture, and ambitious rock. No other group can claim the Ronettes and the Four Seasons as early 1960s rivals; the Mamas and the Papas and Crosby, Stills and Nash as later 1960s rivals; and the Beatles and the Temptations as decade-spanning counterparts.

This is the first book to take an honest look at the themes running through the Beach Boys’ art and career as a whole and to examine where they sit inside our culture and politics—and why they still grab our attention.

Author / Editor information

Tom Smucker has written rock criticism for Creem, Fusion, Rolling Stone, and the Village Voice.

Reviews

Smucker’s mix of unabashed fanboy enthusiasm with razor-sharp analysis makes him the perfect teller of this story.

— Marc Ribot, guitarist

Having spent a lifetime digging into everything the Beach Boys have recorded, Smucker knows it to be fun fun fun, great art, and a barometer of our class, race, and gender politics since World War II.

— Robert Christgau, author of Is It Still Good to Ya? Fifty Years of Rock Criticism, 1967-2017

Smucker perfectly captures the world the Beach Boys made. This is the band in full career ricochet, summing up and summoning a whole way of life.

— Eric Lott, author of Black Mirror: The Cultural Contradictions of American Racism

Tom Smucker pointed me in the right direction for what became my life’s journey.

— David Leaf, writer, director, and producer of Beautiful Dreamer: Brian Wilson and the Story of "Smile"

Why the Beach Boys Matter provides an excellent introduction to the band that might have evolved, Smucker suggests, into the Beatles…We were ready to abandon the Beach Boys. Now, with Smucker's book, we can reconnect to them.

— New York Journal of Books

Smucker's book on Why The Beach Boys Matter tells us exactly that, and quite evocatively.

— Critics At Large

It's a pretty tall order to tell the Beach Boys' oft-confusing, decades-long history in a 176-page, 5" x 7" book, but Tom Smucker does an admirable job in Why the Beach Boys Matter.

— Comics Worth Reading

Smucker is a long-time fan of the Beach Boys, and his passionate defense of their importance is carefully thought out…Why The Beach Boys Matter packs a lot of content into a short volume. Smucker does an excellent job summarizing the Beach Boys' long career, examining their influences and their place in American pop culture.

— Mark My Words

Rather than land on a single thesis in answer to the book’s title, Smucker gives the reader myriad starting points for determining why the Beach Boys matter...While the rhizomatic nature of the book’s short, chronologically nonlinear chapters may frustrate some academic readers, others will find that the structure is a perfect metaphor for the answer to the problem posed by the book’s title. There is a multiplicity of reasons for the importance of the Beach Boys, musically and historically, and to say otherwise for the sake of a central thesis would be to attempt to insert an intellectual square into an intellectual circle...the arguments...[are] just right.

— Journal of Popular Culture

[Why the Beach Boys Matter] is one of the great books for anybody who likes to think about pop music (or the USA). Smucker efficiently shares fresh sociocultural thinking right along with answering the crucial "but is it good listening?" questions.

— Rock Critics

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
1. Harmony and Discord Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	7
2. Cars and Guitars Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	16
3. Suburbs and Surf Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	26
4. Studio and Stage Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	44
5. Fathers, Shrinks, and Gurus Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	60
6. Girlfriends, Wives, and Mothers Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	66
7. When Did the Early Sixties End? Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	70
8. Jan and Dean Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	73
9. Innocence and the Second- Best Pop Album Ever Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	77
10. Hip and White Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	90
11. The Best Unreleased Pop Album Ever Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	94
12. The Beatles Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	104
13. Into the Genres Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	106
14. Dennis Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	111
15. Carl Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	114
16. Al, Bruce, and David Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	117
17. Mike Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	120
18. Brian Solo Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	124
19. Storytellers, Historians, and Fans Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	129
20. Summer’s Gone, the Endless Summer Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	145
Epilogue: Suggestions Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	148
Acknowledgments Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	155
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	157
Discography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	165
A Chronological Listing of DVDs Mentioned in the Book Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	171
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	173

Language: English
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Audience: General/trade;
Pages
- Main content: 192

eBook

Published: October 2, 2018
ISBN: 9781477318768