All Summer Long: Conversations with the Beach Boys from Surfin’ to SMiLE

Interviews with the Beach Boys and the producers, musicians, managers, and promoters who helped them refine and popularize their Southern California surfer sound comprise this superficial oral history. Beard, drawing partly from conversations he collected as longtime editor of Beach Boys fanzine Endless Summer Quarterly, captures the apex of the band’s success, from their 1961 founding to 1967. Among the episodes examined are the band’s 1961 signing with Capitol Records; their whirlwind early recording efforts (“within two-and-a-half-year period we did four albums,” David Marks recalled); the fraught 1964 firing of manager Murray Wilson, Brian Wilson’s father; and Brian’s decision to stop touring in 1964 following a nervous breakdown. Unfortunately, aside from one satisfying chapter where candid, introspective songwriter Tony Asher narrates the making of the highly successful album Pet Sounds, these flimsy conversations leave much to be desired. Approaching the history from the perspective of a reverential fan rather than a journalist, Beard surrenders responsibility for structuring a solid framework, contextualizing the interviews, or offering much narrative insight, leaning instead on prosaic summaries and grandiose pronouncements (“Even in its incomplete form, SMiLE is the greatest rock ’n’ roll album of the twentieth century”). This falls short of its potential. (June)