The Beach Boys: The Definitive Diary of America's Greatest Band on Stage and in the Studio

Brian Wilson
"It's great to see the details of the best years of our career collected with such love in one place."


Book Description
Beginning their career as a popular surf band, the Beach Boys had emerged by 1966 as America's preeminent pop group, the only act able to challenge the success of the Beatles with both mainstream listeners and the critical community. The Beach Boys tracks every move in this great band's career. With the help of band members, the author has reconstructed their evolution into one of the best-produced groups of the '60s, exemplified by their 1966 peak with the Pet Sounds LP and the number-one single Good Vibrations. The book also profiles Brian Wilson, one of the most gifted songwriters, producers, and arrangers in popular music, whose 1967 nervous breakdown required the band to carry on without his full participation. The book's easy-to-browse, day-by-day format details the group's entire concert history, all known recording sessions, their broadcast history, and all records issued in the U.S. and the U.K. The book also includes 100 photographs, many of which have never been published.


About the Author
Keith Badman is a regular contributor to Record Collector and Mojo magazines, and writer of three groundbreaking works on the Beatles, one of which (‘The Beatles After The Break Up’, was voted in the top ten essential Beatles book by Q magazine). Badman has also co-authored definitive works on The Rolling Stones and The Small Faces and been a film and video archive consultant for the BBC and others.


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The Beach Boys by Keith Badman is a detailed study - a quarter of a million words with reams of rare pictures - that brings together for the first time in one publication a complete guide to the group's musical career, from 1961 to 1976. Blow-by-blow accounts finally set the record straight for every recording session for legendary albums such as Pet Sounds, Surf's Up and the famously unreleased Smile, as well as classic singles like 'Good Vibrations' and 'Heroes and Villains.' Concert appearances around the world are highlighted with long-lost press reviews, and there are impressive details of every Beach Boys television appearance. Rare archive interviews with the group and their close associates stand alongside a wealth of unseen photographs and a cache of original studio logs from classic recording sessions.


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