Beach Boys regional popularity

[Magic Transistor Radio]

It's interesting to me how the Beach Boys were big in England at times when they were neglected in America. Were their any areas of America from 68 -71 that continued to support the Beach Boys at a high rate? Like say Salt Lake City?

[KDS]

I can't speak for the UK as I'm not from there, and wasn't around during the Beach Boys peak. 

But from what I've read, it seems like the UK didn't fully embrace The Beach Boys until they moved past the surf/car era.  In the US at the time, it seemed to be the opposite that the US kind of turned their back to The Beach Boys once they moved past the surf/car songs. 

Am I right when I say that the Beach Boys' post surf/car material (ie. Pet Sounds, Sunflower, Holland) is far more celebrated now than at the time they were released?

[Emily]

It's interesting to me how the Beach Boys were big in England at times when they were neglected in America. Were their any areas of America from 68 -71 that continued to support the Beach Boys at a high rate? Like say Salt Lake City?

I don't know but probably AGD could make a strong theory based on concert locations, size, and ticket sales.

[37!ws]

(and the fact that he, uhmm....is from the UK.    )

[drbeachboy]

Am I right when I say that the Beach Boys' post surf/car material (ie. Pet Sounds, Sunflower, Holland) is far more celebrated now than at the time they were released?

Yes, you would be correct in assuming that, at least here in the U.S. Those three albums fared much better overseas at time of release.

[clack]

In fact, the Beach Boys were more successful in the US post-surf/car than they were as a surf act.


Chart placement for surf songs :

Surfin' #75
Surfin' Safari #14
Surfin' USA #3
Surfer Girl #7

Car songs :

Shutdown #23
Little Deuce Coupe #15

Transitional car/romance/life style songs (1964):

Fun Fun Fun #5
I Get Around #1
Don't Worry Baby #24

Non-surf/car (1963-66):

Be True to Your School #6
In My Room #23
When I Grow Up #9
Dance Dance Dance #8
Do You Wanna Dance #12
Help Me Rhonda #1
California Girls #3
The Little Girl I Once Knew #20
Barbara Ann #2
Caroline No #32
Sloop John B #3
Wouldn't It Be Nice #8
God Only Knows #39
Good Vibrations #1

[Lee Marshall]

Canadians in general and Torontonians in particular were strong supporters even after the glory days.  At the concerts too.

[MikestheGreatest!!]

I think in more politically and culturally conservative areas in the U.S. that the BBs somewhat maintained their popularity longer than in more culturally liberal areas.

They were perceived as more traditional, wore the unis late in the game, still had relatively short hair and lets face it, still had some of that surf hot rod hangover which was still popular, lots of those songs weren't derided yet and were still cherished as somewhat recent golden oldies.

Time period I'm talking about is 67 to 70.

I distinctly remember hearing such singles as Bluebirds Over the Mountain being played on KAAY, Little Rock and also hearing Do It Again winning the nightly callers poll for favorite song on WHB Kansas City.  Also remember The Monkees' Mommy and Daddy and Tear Drop City singles winning that nightly call in poll also.

Breakaway being played on WLS, Chicago, hearing that unexpectedly played quite a bit.

Some loon DJ in Springfield Mo playing Sunflower in its entirety upon its release on a 250 watt easy listening AM station.

So not to bash any area of the country, just my personal impression that maybe in the south and Midwest people back then did hang on to acts a little longer and weren't quite so eager to just toss them out for the next new thing.  My examples are anecdotal for sure, but I think there may be some truth to my contention.  As opposed perhaps to on the coasts.

[Emily]

Anecdotally, I can say that in a Northeastern mainly progressive graduate school, then in a northeastern mainly progressive university town, the post smiley smile through surfs up or holland or around there were popular but not the earlier stuff at that time. It's almost like two bands and two audiences, even then it seems.

[GhostyTMRS]

The Northeast has always been big Beach Boys country, but like so much of the country checked out around 1967 and then eventually came back in the early 70's when the established "rock" magazines started picking up on the Beach Boys again.

I think this has less to do with the quality of the music and more to do with marketing, what was consider "hip" at the time, etc.

The best anecdotal evidence I can offer is via what listeners to my oldies radio show have told me over the years. For many in the "class of 64" (as an example) The Beach Boys were popular with jocks and the crewcut set who instantly became 'uncool' once the Beatles arrived. It was like the entire class structure in High School shifted and the quirky, weird guys who combed their hair forward after the Beatles hit and seemed "sensitive" were suddenly deemed cool. I will say, however, that the Doo Wop fans in this area today (New Jersey/Philadelphia) have sort of grandfathered the Beach Boys into their Doo Wop world, and the band is accepted in a way that the British Invasion groups will never be.

For the 'class of 67' (as an example) The Beach Boys weren't even thought about. The months between "Good Vibrations" and the release of Smiley Smile were like an eternity. Even the ones who picked up on the so-called hipness of Holland didn't think they were all that special compared to CSNY or the scores of blues boogie bands out there. They sort of grudgingly accepted them as part of the rock scene. Today, some of those same fans have been turned around. They didn't 'get' Pet Sounds when it came out because they ignored it or pre-judged it, and now they've gone back and rediscovered it.   

[GhostyTMRS]

As for the issue of two different audiences, those who dig the car/surf stuff and those who dig the 'mind garden' era (to use a Byrds line), I've never understood why there had to be a division. "Ballad of Ol' Betsy" is just as transcendent to me as "Wonderful". There's nothing for anyone to be embarrassed about and if you are embarrassed....grow up.   

[Emily]

As for the issue of two different audiences, those who dig the car/surf stuff and those who dig the 'mind garden' era (to use a Byrds line), I've never understood why there had to be a division. "Ballad of Ol' Betsy" is just as transcendent to me as "Wonderful". There's nothing for anyone to be embarrassed about and if you are embarrassed....grow up.   

Certainly there doesn't have to be a division but you can find really different sounds in the BBs from era to era, so it's not surprising that different people like different bits more or less. There's some stuff over the course of the last 50 years that I don't really get in to. Some stuff I like, but it's not amazing. Some that's amazing.

[Magic Transistor Radio]

There are some great points here. Doesn't surprise me that more conservative parts of the country continued to accept their early hits and probably bought a lot of the singles like Do it Again and Darlin. Not sure they would buy stuff like Smiley and Friends though.

But here is a thought: I would like to see from album to album and singles as well what states bought the most and least. And which cities bought the most of each. I wonder if such info exists. I have seen charts for different countries posted on here before.

[Emily]

That would be interesting. I have no idea if data like that is published. Will google.

[The Cincinnati Kid]

There are some great points here. Doesn't surprise me that more conservative parts of the country continued to accept their early hits and probably bought a lot of the singles like Do it Again and Darlin. Not sure they would buy stuff like Smiley and Friends though.

But here is a thought: I would like to see from album to album and singles as well what states bought the most and least. And which cities bought the most of each. I wonder if such info exists. I have seen charts for different countries posted on here before.

I've read on different sites where they'll list cities where a single did really well and list the chart position, but I can never find where that info came from.

[guitarfool2002]

The info came from radio station survey sheets that were published weekly, and were usually available at the local record shops. They'd list either the top 30 or 40 singles for the week, along with new releases that were getting airplay, and called these new entries "Hitbounds" or something similar. Those were some of my sources for comparing how certain Beach Boys singles like Heroes or Wild Honey did in certain regions versus others, and it was possible to forget the most often referred source of the "Billboard" national charts (which was in part a sampling of the regional surveys anyway), and go right to the specific cities the weeks any given single was being playing on those stations. So you'd see how Wild Honey, for example, hit top-5 in more R&B leaning markets like Philly and DC, yet the overall impression is still that the single didn't do too well because people only see the Billboard lists and rankings.

AM radio in the 60's was such a regional thing, it's a fact that's lost to history how different some of the cities' reactions to songs could be. As far as finding out how a specific band or song did across the US, good luck with finding survey sheets covering the weeks or months when a single was hot for all 50 states and tracing the singles. Some of the stations' survey sheets can be very difficult to track down in sequence, and thanks to the collectors who actually did that where possible and made their collections available for research.

[Emily]

The info came from radio station survey sheets that were published weekly, and were usually available at the local record shops. They'd list either the top 30 or 40 singles for the week, along with new releases that were getting airplay, and called these new entries "Hitbounds" or something similar. Those were some of my sources for comparing how certain Beach Boys singles like Heroes or Wild Honey did in certain regions versus others, and it was possible to forget the most often referred source of the "Billboard" national charts (which was in part a sampling of the regional surveys anyway), and go right to the specific cities the weeks any given single was being playing on those stations. So you'd see how Wild Honey, for example, hit top-5 in more R&B leaning markets like Philly and DC, yet the overall impression is still that the single didn't do too well because people only see the Billboard lists and rankings.

AM radio in the 60's was such a regional thing, it's a fact that's lost to history how different some of the cities' reactions to songs could be. As far as finding out how a specific band or song did across the US, good luck with finding survey sheets covering the weeks or months when a single was hot for all 50 states and tracing the singles. Some of the stations' survey sheets can be very difficult to track down in sequence, and thanks to the collectors who actually did that where possible and made their collections available for research.

Wow. Good answer. You are a fount of information.

[The Cincinnati Kid]

Yeah, good to know.  I've seen plenty of local survey sheets, but always assumed they were just copies of the billboard chart not knowing the exact dates of a song's chart position.  I'll have to take a look at them again.

[feelsflow]

It's interesting to me how the Beach Boys were big in England at times when they were neglected in America. Were their any areas of America from 68 -71 that continued to support the Beach Boys at a high rate? Like say Salt Lake City?

I don't know but probably AGD could make a strong theory based on concert locations, size, and ticket sales.

I don't know about ticket sales.  They were doing real well in Europe/UK in the late 60's from what I've seen and read.  But, I am sure that the reason the Beach Boys became so popular in 1965 and 1966 in the UK was from flooding the market with product.  They were getting the singles, but not all the albums.  Just like we in America were not getting the "real" Beatles albums, but we were getting all the songs eventually.

1965: Beach Boys Concert, All Summer Long, Surfin' USA, Little Deuce Coupe.  1966:  Party!, Today!, Pet Sounds, Summer Days (and Summer Nights).  By 1967 they were caught up, and the Beach Boys landed in Europe to screaming fans.  And not so different than the way you younger fans now get everything dumped on you all at the same time.

If the Beach Boys would have played more of the smaller markets in the late 60's (under 10,000 seat arenas), then they would have been more popular in the States.  It was always hard to break America without extensive touring.  British bands had this problem playing only in the big market cities.  Radio was only part of the game.  If they would have come to my home town in the late 60's I would have been there.  I was in Northern Louisiana in the 60's, and they would only play Memphis, Dallas, Houston, ect.  In Monroe we had a Civic Center arena that topped out at around 7,000 seats.  Many bands/artists would come (Turtles, Three Dog Night, Eric Burdon, Association, Steppenwolf, all the Dick Clark Caravan and Concerts West package tours).  Some of my very favorites were The Turtles and The Grass Roots.  Eric Burdon was the Sky Pilot tour (wow, that was the most psychedelic show), Strawberry Alarm Clock and The Box Tops (have to mention them).  The closest 10,000 seat arena was in Memphis.  I had a car, but my parents weren't about to let me go off overnight to Memphis.  I was Class of 1970.  I was on the road by July.  I was at the 2nd Atlanta Pop.  The Beach Boys were no where to be found.  I would have loved to see them in 1970.  Just as Sunflower was coming out, I was in California and in Hawaii for about five months.  Nope.  No Beach Boys shows.  I missed the Big Sur Folk Festival (3 October 1970) by a week.  When they played the Whiskey A Go Go dates in November, I was Hawaii.  Using Ian and Jon's In Concert book, you can map how little they did to promote Sunflower in America.  They took the shows to Europe beginning in late November.  By Christmas they had played London over and over.  They came back to America, and didn't play another show til 20 February 1971.  Then proceeded to play only New York, California, Philadelphia, you know, the big markets.  One of the surprising listings in the In Concert book, is that they played at the Celebration of Life Festival 24 June.  Me and some friends got there on Thursday at around 5pm.  The promoters promised many acts that didn't show.  They had Big money problems.  From what I was told, they didn't even have the stage set-up finished til Thursday, so nobody played the first few days.  The festival was very disorganized.  The Beach Boys would have had to play earlier in the day, and there's the fact nobody told me when I questioned folks that had been there from the beginning.  I've spent a lot of time researching this festival.  Some cat claims he recorded much of it, and will one day release the tapes.  He says he has every band that was there.  It was a great time.  I got to see some of my favorites for the fist time over the course of the week-end, Steve Stills, Delaney and Bonnie, Boz Scaggs, The Youngbloods, the Ides of March did a great set, and a couple of the guys from the Buckinghams... but not The Flying Burrito Bros. (one of the top reasons I went), Pink Floyd, Ravi, Miles Davis, Sly and the Family Stone or The Beach Boys.  Please note, this is not a slight on Ian and Jon's excellent book.  I love it and study it.  It's just, if they had played, the guys were still popular enough that people would have been talking about it.  And why would they not have been the headliner that Thursday night?  Or at least played at night.  Chuck Berry closed the show on Thursday.

Moving on... I see the boys were giving in to smaller theaters in the 70's, but still in the bigger markets.  The Fillmore and university shows...  But one of my points is that they had given up on the South.  I was in Louisiana most of 1971 thru late 1973.  They played some shows in the South in 1972, but mostly what you had back then was word of mouth.  Not like it is now with the internet or fan magazines listing tour dates, not that I was aware of.  In the very late 60's Rolling Stone would have been listing some of them I guess.  I had a six day a week job anyway.  Those dates in March 1972, in Atlanta and Auburn, Alabama - if I had of heard about them, I would have figured out a way to be there.  Same with the April 1973 dates in Atlanta, Alabama, Dallas and Houston.  I didn't hear about them.  Even if you knew about a show, you couldn't be sure tickets were still available by the time you drove there.  The only way to get advance tickets was through the mail.  That took advance information of addresses and sending off money orders.  Even in 1976.  I did everything I could to get a ticket to Wing's crawl across America, only to have my unopened letter returned.  Left you feeling defeated.  Florida or Kentucky would have been too far to go tho.  They sure did a good job of covering the Northeast.  I then moved to Northern California in September.  I moved to the big market.  I lived in the Santa Cruz mountains, but had no trouble getting up to San Francisco to see both of the Winterland shows in November.  It was a long road for me.  A true fan since 1964.  I saw them again in 1974 at the San Francisco Civic.  I had to be in Louisiana from mid-1975 to late 1978.  I lived in Baton Rouge and New Orleans, big markets.  No Beach Boys shows.  I moved to San Francisco in 1978, stayed there til 1998.  I saw many many shows.  You just had to be in the "right regional" to see them.

As far as radio and records, MikestheGreatest!! has it about right.  It was WLS we had under the covers all night on our portable transistor radios, especially in the late 60's.  Where you heard groups like Led Zeppelin for the first time.  It was the station where, in the middle of the night, learned Robert Kennedy was shot.  I went to concerts in Little Rock, Shreveport and Jackson (Mississippi) in the early-to-mid 70's if I was living near home.  As I said, Monroe got big acts - Blood, Sweat and Tears, Chicago - bands willing to stay on the road.  I don't see why the Beach Boys didn't promote themselves more.  Just didn't want to stay on the road like many other acts of the day would.  Records?  The Beach Boys were still my favorite American group.  I really became a bigger fan as they went into the late 60's and early 70's.  And though it's unpopular around this forum, I Loved 1976 and 1977.  I didn't care what radio or my friends thought.  If you came to my house, you were getting a dose of the Beach Boys.  I knew a lot of people who liked them, maybe not as their favorite band, but records like Wild Honey went over big at parties.  It's like the "was there a void" or "were they replaced by some other group" threads.  Well, no.  The only void was when they were not putting out more product for me to buy.

[mojoman3061]

Billboard used to run regional charts in the '50s.  John Goldrosen mentions them in his book The Buddy Holly Story.  I don't have my copy handy, but one of the regions was Northern NY State.