The Smiley Smile Message Board

Over the Christmas holidays this VDP thread was active

http://smileysmile.net/board/index.php/topic,24713.msg599276.html#msg599276 (http://smileysmile.net/board/index.php/topic,24713.msg599276.html#msg599276)

and I found out about a book I should probably get my hands on. Well, the deed has been done, I found and ordered Look, Listen, Vibrate, Smile from ebay earlier this week for a decent price (the revised edition, as was recommended). Looking forward to finding that in my mailbox soon!

And it got me wondering what other books are highly recommended, and which ones are stinkers to avoid. Biographies, autobiographies, whatever. What did you like/dislike based on enjoyability, quality/accuracy of information, that kind of thing.

I don't have a top 5 list to kick this thread off... I have read both Brian's and Mike's recent memoirs and enjoyed both for different reasons (even if Mike's book did get thrown across the room a few times... I did run back over and pick it up again, LOL).

I'm really interested to find out your recommended BB/BW reading :)

In many ways, you can't beat The Beach Boys and the California Myth ... but I think my favorite is actually the 1979 Byron Priess book, which is a more lighthearted chronicle, but chock full of good info (some of which is not available elsewhere).

Mine (in no particular order) would probably be Abbott's Back to the Beach, Surf's Up (Elliott), Doe & Tobler's Little Blue Book, Lambert's Inside the Music of BW and (primarily for the ecstatic review of the 30 Years box set) How Deep Is the Ocean? (Paul Williams)...

1. Jan & Dean Record by Mark Moore (I know technically not BBs, but has a lot of BW popping up)
2. I Am Brian Wilson by Brian Wilson & Ben Greenman
3. The Beach Boys FAQ by Jon Stebbins
4. The Beach Boys: The Definitive Diary... by Keith Badman
5. The Beach Boys In Concert Ian Rusten and Jon Stebbins

omg the bb in concert  !!! get that one everyone ! its awesome ! also, stebbins' the real bb.

Yes! That one too. I'm still out on live BB (as a listening experience) but it's great reading about their gigs, certainly in such detail.

And Catch A Wave. Priore's Smile "scrapbook" is a blast as well...

Thanks for the suggestions so far :) I mean, jeebus, there are SO MANY Beach Boys books out there! Is it possible they are the most written-about band in history (apart from the Beatles)?

For me, "How Deep is the Ocean?" by the great Paul Williams.

No particular order:

Catch a Wave - Peter Carlin

Beach Boys FAQ - John Stebbins

The Complete Guide to the Music of - Doe / Tobler

Good Vibrations - Mike Love

I Am Brian Wilson - Brian Wilson

Look Listen Vibrate Smile - Priore

Inside the Music of Brian Wilson - Lambert

Catch A Wave - Carlin

The Nearest Faraway Place - White

Beach Boys FAQ - Stebbins

Brian's autobio would probably be on there but I haven't read the whole thing yet. I've owned it for months now and really need to start over and finish it. Love what I have read of it though.

Can you elaborate more on this book? I haven't even heard of it actually.

I agree with Thorgill. I should add that it's not for the casual fan. Williams's ecstatic review of the 30 Years box set will leave you breathless!

https://www.amazon.com/Brian-Wilson-Beach-Boys-Ocean/dp/0711961972

The second customer review is the one you want. These two made me laugh:

"A large part of the book centers around the Smile album years when Brian got away from the music that he wrote that made the Beachboys [sic] so well-liked. Just putting together articles written for music publications over time didn't play well. Narrow focus and repetitive, doesn't work under one cover. Many better choices to read about Brian and the Beachboys, including his own writing, Wouldn't It Be Nice."

"What I thought would be a story about the Beach Boys turned out to be a book of piano music. I have no piano, can't read music, so therefore, it was very disappointing."  :lol

One factor is whether one is looking for a solid overall biography, or if we're talking more what we all personally like the most.

The on-topic portions of Timothy White's book "Nearest Faraway Place" are good. Peter Ames Carlin's "Catch a Wave" is one of the better overall bios (it's about Brian but serves to some degree as a BB bio), though you can probably skip Carlin's McCartney bio that doesn't really tread any new ground.

All of the Jon Stebbins books are great. "FAQ" is a good primer, and fun for ever hardcore fans to read, a good mixture of raw data and good opinion-based work as well.

For the early years of the band, the two go-to books would be the Stebbins/Marks "Lost Beach Boy" book, and James Murphy's "Becoming the Beach Boys." Ever since Mark Lewisohn blew everyone away with his first volume of his Beatles biography, I think I and many BB fans have hoped something like that would be done with the BBs. Unfortunately, I doubt that will ever happen. But Murphy's "Becoming the Beach Boys" *is* essentially a Lewisohn-level volume on those first few years.

It has a very narrow focus, but McParland's "The Wilson Project" (look for the latest 2013 version) covering Brian's mid-late 80s work with Gary Usher is revelatory. It's basically a super-detailed biography covering just a short time in Brian's life.

Already mentioned Stebbins, but his and Ian Rusten's "In Concert" book is a must-have. Tons of great details, and a format that works both as a reference guide and a regular front-to-back biographical reading experience.

For better or worse, the Steven Gaines "Heroes and Villains" book has a lot of core important info.

The Keith Badman book reminds me a bit of the "An American Band" film. There's a lot of interesting info and pictures contained in it, but as an overall biography it has a lot of faults (and I'm not even talking about the book infamously printing the Social Security numbers of everyone in and around the band!). I always felt like Badman came at his BB book from a very mechanical point of view rather than a huge love of the band.

The "authorized" Byron Preiss book has some cool pictures and some good raw info and quotes buried in there, but it's obviously not going to be as honest as one would like. I have the 1978 version and the updated 1983 version, but the updated version adds mere paragraphs to cover those additional years.

"Add Some Music To Your Day", a compilation of articles from an old BB fanzine, is a great shapshot into the late 70s and early 80s. I think that one might be out of print, though.

Thanks for this! To your point about favourites vs. those that are just technically accurate/complete or whatever, I realize my request was a bit on the vague side. I guess I didn't want to limit the scope too much. Obviously everyone will have their own favourites, with some shared agreement about the "best" titles on a more technical level. It's always interesting to see what titles recur, and uncover some of the lesser known ones, and it looks like that is happening :) I'm thinking about how I would narrow the scope but I like where this is going, even if it's a bit of a mess, LOL.

There are so many great BB books that it is actually quite difficult to narrow it down to five.

I would vote for (in no particular order):

Look, Listen, Vibrate, Smile
Back to the Beach (later edition with extensive Carl Wilson interview)
In Concert
How Deep Is the Ocean?
Inside the Music of Brian Wilson

Is it OK to include Whale Music by Paul Quarrington?  It hasn't yet been mentioned. It's fiction but it is so obviously based on Brian and seems amazingly insightful, funny and ultimately moving.

Yeah, if one is looking for solely a bio on the band then this book isn't your best option. But if you are looking for a book that perfectly paints a picture of the Wilson heritage, the industry and culture of Southern California in the 50s/60s, as well as a bio on the band (and the influences), then this book is 100% for you.

It's a long haul (edit, I should say it's tedious in some places) but it will give one a lasting impression of the setting that the Beach Boys created their music in (both culturally and musically). I think it should be on every fan's reading bucket list. But again, if one is just looking for a bio of the band there are better options (like Carlin's book).

Thanks much for this! I can't believe I'd never heard of it before. Will snag a copy on my next Amazon order.

Ooooh interesting! Absolutely :) Could probably start an entirely new thread just for fiction based on the Beach Boys/Brian Wilson. I will definitely check this out!

Thanks JK for answering the question much better than I could have done. :)
Want only to add that there are two reasons I like that "collection of articles" so much: one, it's firmly focused on music, second I love Paul's very passionate, and in imho not so much rambling, style.
Of very little interest, of course, if one is looking mainly for biographical news.  

Did you read it, Ang? I read "Glimpses" by Lewis Shiner and found it good, with a great part about Brian and Smile. His description of the finished 1967 Smile (in an alternate world) is short but very impressive. Didn't know much about "Whale Music."

Lewis Shiner graciously made his book freely available digitally (thanks a lot!), here:
http://www.fictionliberationfront.net/glimpses.pdf

P.S.
A quich search about "Whale Music" revealed (as it often happens) much more than I expected!
In 1989 Paul Quarrington published the book, and the Canadian band "Rheostatics" made an album inspired by the book, with the same title, in 1992.
Then, in 1994, a movie based on the book (of course, again same title) was released, and Paul Quarrington himself chose the Rheostatics as composers and performers of the movie's soundtrack, which was released in 1994 with the title "Music from the Motion Picture Whale Music".
Really intriguing, thanks for bringing it up... :)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rheostatics

Wow. Thank you, Thorgill. :=)

"Claire" is one of my all time favourite songs. It's like the one song by the Rheostatics that everyone (in Canada, anyway) knows. As a band they're generally more unconventional than that particular song, but I've always meant to give them a chance. Might be time to get them off the back burner.

My ebay-sourced copy of Look! Listen! Vibrate! Smile! arrived last week and of course, things got crazy at work and I've had no opportunity to start poring through its pages until today. It has pulled me right in and the only reason I'm "out" right now is because I've been called upon to assist with the reattachment of a kitchen cupboard door, lol.  But before I jump back in, I just wanted to comment on something that's blowing my mind at the moment.

I've never known life without Good Vibrations. I've never lived in a Good Vibrations-less universe. I was born into a world where it already existed, and was no longer in regular airplay. I remember the 30th anniversary in 1996 when it was re-released. I was in university at the time, and I remember going oh yeah, I know that song, frig, that's a really great song, and adding it to a mix tape and feeling really cool about it. But being born in 1975 and having heard what came after and continues to come after has sort of made it more a part of a vast ocean of great music, rather than the life altering new discovery of a species, if that makes any sense. It's like the discovery of the octopus. Octopii are great! They're the best! I think most people would agree. Imagine what it was like to discover THE OCTOPUS? Right now it's like... knowing that octopiii exist, thinking they're the best thing in the ocean, but now just seeing one in person for the first time. Or something. (Suddenly feel like googling the discovery of the octopus, but I digress...)

I'll never fully understand the impact that song made on popular music and culture, because I wasn't there to witness it. And that sucks! And I'm loving that this book exists, because I get to have a tiny sliver of a glimpse of what it was like to hear it for the first time, and compare it to what was also popular and available at that time, and realize just how special it was then and is now.

I dunno... I'm saying something that has obviously been said a million times but I think everyone can relate. When you have this feeling and it just kind of oofs you in the pit of your stomach and you wish you could have been born in different time...

Back down the rabbit hole I go.

Rheostatics are one of the all time greatest bands. I have been talking about them on this board for many a-year now. I have also always said they do as good of a job in creating the Canadian myth as The Beach Boys do in creating the Californian myth. Definitely worth checking out.

Maybe just to get an idea of what they were all about, see this concert: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQSEhbmx7aY

Aha. It was late 1966 when I arrived home after a day's work, made my way upstairs, turned on the radio and turned off the light to hear the first UK airing of "Good Vibrations". No obtrusive videos to influence what you saw in your mind's eye, just the music...

I've never understood the connection between "Good Vibrations' and summer. This was October and it had been dark for a few hours already. This was around eight in the evening. I can't even remember which station played it. A comment by AGD makes me suspect that it was Radio London, one of the handful of "pirate" stations active in those years. But I do remember the dark glowing colours I imagined while I was listening, spellbound.

Anyway, gotta find my own rabbit hole now. ;D 

Ahhh thanks for this, the description of your actual first hearing of GV is magical. I can't get enough of it, trying to put myself in 1966 with everyone else who was there...