The Beach Boys

The Beach Boys' sunny vocal harmonies are one of the signatures sounds of the modern era. Among rock and roll groups of the Sixties, the California quintet place second only to the Beatles in terms of their overall impact on the Top Forty. They were the Fab Four's only serious competition on a creative level, too. Paul McCartney has allowed that the Beatles' masterpiece, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, was their attempt to rise to the challenge of the Beach Boys' magnum opus, Pet Sounds (which itself was inspired by the Beatles' first self-contained album, Rubber Soul). This creative dialogue between the two biggest bands of the Sixties pushed rock and roll to its artistic apex. Recently, Paul McCartney noted that "both [Pet Sounds and Sgt. Pepper] have more than held up. To me it's like, ‘What have people been doing in the meantime? Where's the progress?' I can't see anything as modern as that around at the moment." The Beach Boys were largely a family affair that came together in the Los Angeles suburb of Hawthorne, California, in 1961. Three brothers, Brian, Carl and Dennis Wilson were joined by their cousin, Mike Love, and a friend, Alan Jardine (who was replaced for a time by David Marks, before rejoining). Brian Wilson, who demonstrated an aptitude for music at an early age, was the group's leader, orchestrating their harmonies, writing the music, producing the recording sessions. One of the few undisputed geniuses in popular music, Brian possessed an uncanny gift for harmonic invention and complex vocal and instrumental arrangements. Initially, the magnitude of that genius was overlooked owing to the subject matter of the band's early hits, surfing, hot rods, girls. But even the lyrics are celebrated today for their deft use of technical lingo, on the one hand, and youthful naivete, on the other.

The Beach Boys's Website