I like some of Selvin's books but he was clueless about Dennis. "snubbed by fans"...guess he never saw the TAMI Show, or heard about the girls storming the stage and knocking the other band members aside to get to Dennis (just ask Brian), or the lines of fans outside his hotel room wherever they stayed. Selvin didn't do enough research to know that Dennis got more fan mail than all of the others combined. His whole premise is incredibly flawed. Read his Rick Nelson book, but ignore his take on the Beach Boys because he's miles off.
I' ve only read portions of the Rick Nelson book and am just a middling Nelson fan, but I know that a lot of his fans were not happy with Selvin's slightly tabloid approach to Nelson's life, including implying that his twin sons had an incestuous relationship. As a resident of the Bay Area and years-long reader of the SF Chronicle, I have to say that Selvin has always seemed slightly out of touch. He became a rock writer after dropping out of high school and writing about the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival. He's always seemed stuck in that time and oriented towards the hippie Bay Area rock bands from that era. His writing about Dennis and the Beach Boys may reflect the attitude of Northern Californians of that era.
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