The Beach Boys apparently played some private party events in their very early years…
My friend Elizabeth has told me about her older sister having a birthday party in the family’s backyard, and The Beach Boys playing a show as a private event. She recalls this being before they were properly “famous”, and in the summer, so I’d almost have to date this as being summer of 1962. She doesn’t think there are any existing pics taken from the show, but I tried to get as much info as I could about the show, here’s what she said:
“Weeell, let's see if this helps. We were members of Bel Air Bay Club where they played in the early summer I guess. We lived in Hancock Park on McCadden, the 4th house above 6th St (right near the LaBrea Tar Pits and LACMA). My Dad was the Producer of Topper, Mr & Mrs North, Dickens and Fenster among others (one of his radio shows, The Shadow (he was director) is about to come out as a film). They were a local band which was not all that common then, as garage bands had yet to become a common sight! It was a party for my sis who graduated that year from Marlboro (a very exclusive all girl school in HP).
My older bro put himself through USC as a golfer and also doing extra work on Dobie Gillis and lots of work on Ozzie and Harriet. Ricky Nelson came to our house a couple of times but I was already in bed and my brother never did wake me so I missed out
He may have been at that party. My family took very few pics through out my entire childhood for some strange reason so alas none of the "event". At the time it was not really all that special. My parents and their friends threw parties frequently as was expected in the day. The Beach Boys had yet to be famous. We had a huge "entertaining" back yard with layered paved concrete decks, outside bar, olympic size pool, etc. They probably sold that house for the price of a decent car today!”
Yes- I am aware of one played for the head of their fan club that summer and another for a local debutante in Sept 62. Also they played at Milton Berle's daughter's party as mentioned in the Stebbins-Marks book
Presuming it's not the debutante or Milton Berle's daughter, It would help if you could get the date of her sister's Birthday, and maybe talk to her sister and brother? One of them might remember the exact day or at least the day of the week, which would help narrow it down, and it would be nice to have the date, and any other information they might remember, like, do they remember talking to any of the band? How many people were in the band? "Not many electrics" could still mean a couple of guitars, bass and microphones?
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