The Art of the Beach Boys

Next Saturday, the Boston Book Print and Ephemera Fair will present a comprehensive overview of the visual side of the Beach Boys with more than 200 artifacts related to the band which date from approximately 1910 to the present. Curators Brian Chidester and Domenic Priore aim to both contextualize and celebrate this classic American band.

“Appeal to the Great Spirit: Designing the Beach Boys” begins with an exploration of the roots of surf culture in the media (dating back to the early 20th century). “It’s important that people understand surfing firstly as a Hawaiian tradition,” Chidester explains. Missionaries caused a decline in the pastime, says the curator, during the 18th and 19th centuries; yet the practice enjoyed a renaissance in the early 20th century thanks in large part to the popularity of Hawaiian beachboys like Duke Kahanamoku.

By the 1950s the image of the Hawaiian beachboy—a surfing instructor and hotel entertainer in the Waikiki district of Honolulu—had transformed from the native Hawaiian male to the blue eyed, blonde haired Californian. Chidester says this calculated move brought surf culture into middle America. By the late fifties a number of bands calling themselves "The Beach Boys" appeared in Caribbean and Hawaiian record albums. It was the 1962 single on Candix Records, however, by the Beach Boys from Hawthorne, CA, which made both the "Beach Boy" moniker and surf culture a household entity.

The group was actually first called “The Pendletones” in honor of their preferred après-surf shirt company: Pendleton. Candix label reps Russ Reagan and Joe Saraceno rebranded the Pendletones as "The Beachboys" without their having been informed and the rest is history. Many of the band’s album initial song titles were also inspired by the surf movies of the 1950s, e.g. their debut album on Capitol Records, Surfin' Safari (1962), took its name from the 1960 John Severson film Surf Safari. 

While the Beach Boys’ roots lie in the history and culture of surfing, their most iconic stage uniforms—blue and white striped button-down shirts and gray slacks—were influenced by the barbershop quartets and singing groups of the 1950s. The Kingston Trio and Jan & Dean were especially influential as they represented both professionality in the music biz and were popular with rock 'n' roll teens at the time. “The Beach Boys were always taking freely from other artists and other genres and mashing them together to create something new,” Chidester explains.

From 1966 to 1974, the band continuously experimented with both their sound and look, focusing variously on subjects related to the Civil Rights movement, global peace, the ecology, and the treatment of the American Indians. When this period of experimentation ended, around the time of Happy Days and the American Bicentennial, the group abandoned its progressive course and became a nostalgia act.

There can be little doubt that this return to tried-and-true formulae after 1976 was financially successful for the Beach Boys. Yet the hardcore fans were not yet ready to give up on the band's more experimental side; and as a result a plethora of underground zines, bootleg albums of psychedelic-era recordings and live shows, and punk-rock tributes emerged during the mid-to-late seventies. By the eighties and nineties, interest in the Beach Boys, and particularly in leader Brian Wilson's darker material, began to percolate into the mainstream consciousness via covers by prominent alternative acts such as XTC, Frank Black of the Pixies, and Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore (among others).

Though “Appeal to the Great Spirit” will feature early items, such as a 1910 photograph of the original Waikiki Beachboys and one of the Beach Boys’ original Pendleton shirts from 1961, the exhibit also focuses heavily on the later years wherein underground, unsanctioned art proliferated and forced the band to release material that it had previously sequestered.

Over 40 examples of fan publications produced in England, Japan, Sweden, and Germany will be on display, as well as an original collage by Will Cullen Hart (of nineties psych act the Olivia Tremor Control) titled "Sound Toys/Brian Wilson, the Pied Piper, Emerges from a Magic Radio." There will also be rare bootleg LPs and a bevy of Beach Boys tribute albums featuring those covers mentioned by Sonic Youth, Frank Black, et al.

In a time when so much media is defined by passionate fandoms—e.g. those dedicated habitués of Star Trek, Star Wars, and Stranger Things come readily to mind—Chidester believes “the Beach Boys were one of the first clear examples of fans taking an outsized role in the outcome of their heroes' visual media.” He also sees these fan publications and artistic efforts as noble efforts that encouraged and supported the band’s musical and artistic experimentation. 

Come hang ten at the fair on Saturday, November 16th, from 8am-4pm. Free afternoon pass is available here.

Elisa Shoenberger is a historian, journalist, and curator. She has published articles at the Boston Globe, the Rumpus, Deadspin, Syfy, Inside Philanthropy, and other outlets. She is a regular contributor to Book Riot and is the co-editor and co-founder of The Antelope: A Journal of Oral History and Mayhem.