In addition to the documentary, there is also a new book, “The Beach Boys by the Beach Boys,” that covers the same ground as the feature, but in greater detail.
Instigation of project?
Marshall: And now there’s a book, and everything’s coming together to celebrate this music that had such impact on the world for so many years.
Big Book
Love: The big one is, like, literally 11 pounds. I weighed it with my little weighing thing because, you know, if you go on Southwest Airlines, you can only have 50 pounds.
Looking at the book, there are thousands of pictures
Marshall: It’s always challenge because there have been so many articles, books, movies, and I always try to find stuff that’s never been seen before. But once I got to know everybody, I said, “Have you got any home movies under (the bed)?” Sure enough, there’d be a shoebox with 8mm film, and that’s how we got Dennis. Both Carl and Dennis’s families helped us represent their dad and their husband.
Love: It’s wonderful that everybody was represented. David Marks was in the group for a while, right at the beginning. Blondie (Chaplin)and Ricky (Fataar) from South Africa were in our group. It’s really been nice to see that everybody’s talents and contributions were recognized.
Jardine: Glen had burgeoning career about ready to happen, so he had to leave the band early. I think he only did one summer with us while Brian was out of action.
Love: We called 12 people to find somebody who could play bass. Bruce could sing high, but he didn’t play bass and we needed the bass player, so he said, “Oh, I play bass.” And he went and learned it.
Anything surprising?
Love: I hadn’t seen certain people’s home movies. The Wilson stuff, the Love stuff. But the Jardines, the Marks, the other people involved…The photo of Bruce and Keith Moon? Those are the ones I went, “I can’t believe that.” And you know, nobody knows that story, really.
Love: Derek Taylor, the Beatles’ publicist who came to America and became our publicist, actually set up Bruce with about 15 interviews in England and introduced him to Keith Moon, who introduced Bruce to Paul McCartney and John Lennon. They were in Bruce’s suite, and Bruce was able to play them the “Pet Sounds” album before it even came out in Britain, and they played it through twice. So those guys became our promotion men.
The Beatles/Beach Boys “rivalry” in 1966?
Jardine: It was mutual adoration. And they inspired each other, because I don’t think we’d have “Sgt. Pepper’s” without “Pet Sounds,” and I don’t think we’d have “Pet Sounds” without “Rubber Soul.”
Growing up in Newport helped your love of Beach Boys
Marshall: My dad was a guitarist [jazz guitarist and TV-film composer Jack Marshall], and we played guitar at home with him. But I also grew up as a surfer, so we did “The Surfer Stomp” at the Rendezvous Ballroom [on the Balboa beach in Orange County]. But all the music was instrumental; it was the Ventures or Dick Dale. Then suddenly there were lyrics and harmonies, and I was keenly interested because my dad was so sophisticated with his music, and also at Capitol Records [the label that both the Bach Boys and Jack Marshall were signed to]. And I thought, “Wow, they’re writing about this lifestyle and this culture” — which was very small at the time; surfing was very small — “but they put words to it.” And that just exploded out, because people started thinking: That’s what I want to do. It created a lifestyle that people envied and wanted to be a part of, and it was music that made people feel good and want to come to sunny Southern California
Dennis Wilson was the only real surfer in the group
Love: A couple of the guys never surfed at all. A few of us tried to do it. But it’s harder than Chinese arithmetic. I really appreciate the fact that those guys would get up and before class go surfing and then go to school and then after school they’d surf until it got dark. That was a way of life.
Jardine: I used to take Dennis to the beach surfing. I had an old ‘49 or ’50 Ford, and he needed wheels. So we went down to El Porto in Manhattan Beach, and he taught me how not to surf. I hit the sand straight, the very first wave, right down to the bottom. That was probably my last experience. He was a natural athlete. He knew how to do it. And he wrote the story on surfing.
Love: We may not have been great surfers, but we sang about it really well.
Picking interview subjects?
Marshall: One of the things I love about documentaries is the freedom. In my day job [producing dramatic feature films], I get a script and I know exactly where I am all the time. But it’s a team effort. I have archivists and I put it out there: OK, who’s talked about being influenced and inspired by the Beach Boys’ music? And then I’d have to narrow ’em down depending on where they were (growing up)–Don Was was in Detroit, and Janelle Monae was in Kansas City, and Ryan Tedeer was in Oklahoma, and he wanted to go someplace where it was warm. So they had different areas of influence, but they recognized the power and how brilliant the music was. So Thom and I split it up. Thom did a lot of the audio interviews, and then I came in with the camera and did the on-camera stuff.
Good archival interviews
Love: We sang together. We talked together. He was 100% present with the long-term memory. He’s just not physically as well as he could be, and he does need help and supervision, particularly health-wise, and it’s challenging. But he remembered stuff from our childhood and teenage years that I had forgotten, and so we could sing together. We sang “Their Hearts Were Full of Spring.” We sang “Fun, Fun, Fun.” Sang “Surfin’ Safari” together. All that was fantastic.
Story you wanted to tell with this film
Love: People don’t know the Beach Boys’ story, because it hasn’t been told comprehensively enough, giving enough attribution to various individual members and experiences. At one time we had two jets on tour, the non-smoking jet and the smoking jet, going on tour. Alan and I, along with Bruce, were on the non-smoking, and the Wilson boys were on the smoking, and that may be euphemism for certain lifestyle choices. I mean, there was division, schism, and all that stuff. But when it came time to get on stage together or get around the microphone together, then all those things disappeared. And what manifested was that harmony and blend and sound that’s known around the world.
Marshall: Brian didn’t like touring and came back to L.A. and was just able to create, with none of the pressures of touring, and then their touring energy would come back and sing these parts, and that’s something that no other group did.
Love: There’s a huge amount of information, from pre-group to early group to Brian leaving, and then the two groups, the recording group and the touring group.
Marshall: They’ve adapted at every turn. But then, losing Carl and Dennis, it was a different sound.
Love: When people ask me, how do you feel (watching it)? I felt nostalgic, and I felt sad that a couple of the guys aren’t with us.
The film ends in the mid-‘70s, after the comeback with “Endless Summer” greatest-hits album
