The Beach Boys

The Beach Boys, American rock group, known for its rich vocal harmonies and for songs about cars, love, and surfing in the California sun. The band was formed in 1961 by three brothers from Hawthorne, California—Brian, Carl, and Dennis Wilson—their cousin Mike Love, and a friend, Al Jardine. The Beach Boys moved quickly from local to national fame with a run of hit songs during the mid-1960s, including “Surfin' U.S.A.” (1963), “Fun, Fun, Fun” (1964), “I Get Around” (1964), “Help Me, Rhonda” (1965), and “California Girls” (1965). Based largely on an ideal of California adolescence, the group's records helped define a style known as surf music.

As songwriter and producer, Brian Wilson shaped the group's sound. In late 1964 he suffered a nervous breakdown and decided to quit performing publicly. In 1966—spurred, as he said, by an ambition to outdo the Beatles—Wilson produced Pet Sounds, a deeply original Beach Boys album that never gained commercial success, though it is regarded by critics as the group's masterpiece and one of the most impressive records in rock and roll history. Wilson subsequently grew more troubled and eventually withdrew from recording.

By the 1980s, the remaining Beach Boys had become essentially a nostalgia group. Brian lived under the care of a controversial therapist and, in 1983, Dennis Wilson drowned off the California coast. In 1988, Brian released a solo album, Brian Wilson, which was well-received by critics but not by the public. That same year, the Beach Boys were elected to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and, without Brian's participation, scored another hit with their Caribbean-tinged novelty song “Kokomo,” from the soundtrack of the motion picture Cocktail (1988). In 1998 Carl Wilson died and the remaining band members split up into several different groups.