The Beach Boys vs. The Beatles – My Take

Is it a decades-old question?

Is it the debate to end all debates in the world of music?

One thing is for certain… I haven’t heard the end of it for years, and I’m not very old.

I’m, in fact, a 25-year-old music lover. Who am I to talk about the music of the 1960s, my favorite decade for the art form?

The other day, the social media account for The Beach Boys enterprise posted this. Written by Tim Sommer, the headline posits that the band is superior to that of their colleagues, The Beatles. Less a one-on-one piece and more a celebration of the overlooked qualities of The Beach Boys, it did indeed inspire some heated debate here and there. Sentences like “The Beatles, precise and witty geniuses, never made anything quite like this. The Beatles made amazing wedding cakes, startling architecture that reached for the sky in crystalline spires and sugary crenellations; they scraped the clouds but they rarely touched heaven. The Beach Boys touched heaven again and again” likely tingled some. Beatles fans puzzled as to how those surfers could be better than their four Liverpudlian lads, Beach Boys fans insisting that the music of the Brothers Wilson, Mike Love, Al Jardine, and Bruce Johnston is just on a whole other level that The Beatles never reached. Back and forth, back and forth, I’ve seen this debate for years…

I’m tired of it, honestly. It’s all silly.

The Beach Boys and The Beatles are two equally amazing bands who have shaped the whole landscape of music. I know, that’s the boring answer to the question. I have to pick a side and rally against the other. No can do. Instead, I will talk about why I love both…

As a child, I was raised on my parents’ music. I’d say when I was 6, my musical diet was a small variety: Some current pop, some mom and dad stuff, some soundtrack stuff, classical, TV show theme songs, that’s about it. My mother was perhaps the bigger Beatle fan than my father, and that’s probably because my uncle is a Beatlemaniac through and through. He witnessed the band’s debut in the US at the right age, and knows the catalogue off the back of his head along with numerous amounts of the post-breakup work. As such, a lot of Beatles albums were embedded into my brain at such a young age.

At such a young age, while I enjoyed pop music and other things, I was in a whole other world with The Beatles. On rotation in my house were Magical Mystery Tour, Abbey Road, and sometimes 1967-1970. Magical Mystery Tour was the soundtrack to a psychedelic, homemade, critically-disparaged telefilm that was released as a double-EP set in England, here it was combined with all the singles the band released in 1967, which turned it into a full-on and strangely very cohesive LP. Abbey Road of course is their revered masterpiece, their final bang, if you will. 1967-1970 collected various hits and album cuts from the later period into one excellent display. Once in a blue moon, I had heard cuts off of Help! and The Beatles, the latter having the iconic nickname “The White Album.”

My Beach Boys diet, however, was rather scant. My mother had one CD, and it was the mid-90s compilation 20 Good Vibrations: The Best of The Beach Boys. This collection chronicled, no shock, the band’s early years. The time when they sang songs about surfing, beachside fun, cars, girls, the sun. Everything they’re known for! The collection contains all the perennial favorites, ‘Surfin’ USA,’ ‘Little Deuce Coupe,’ ‘California Girls,’ ‘Surfer Girl,’ ‘Fun, Fun, Fun,’ and a couple of Pet Sounds‘ most well-known tracks. The collection also includes ‘Good Vibrations,’ obviously, and also… Erm… ‘Kokomo.’

Yet as a kid, I only remember hearing a few. I remembered ‘Surfin’ USA,’ ‘Fun, Fun, Fun,’ ‘Little Deuce Coupe,’ ‘Help Me, Rhonda’ (Which, before I learned the name, I assumed was called “Get Her Out Of My Heart”), and ‘Kokomo.’ (Which I also only knew as the “Aruba, Jamaica” song.) I never really gave the band much thought as a kid, but The Beatles always stuck. I’d say I really got into The Beatles by around 2002, at age 11. I played Magical Mystery Tour and Abbey Road nonstop. Also in rotation was Boz Scaggs’ Silk Degrees and Some Change. These were albums I heard a lot as a kid, and I had recently found the CDs of these albums… So I played, played, and played them on my  cheap little CD-playing radio that was in my room. I scoffed at whatever was current… Eminem or No Doubt or whatever the heck was on the radio. Hated that stuff, my older sister loved it.

So, roughly around July 2004, something changed.

My father – realizing he didn’t have any Beach Boys CDs to play in his car – bought a then-newly released compilation titled Sounds of Summer: The Very Best of The Beach Boys. This is often regarded as one of the better compilations out there, and a good disc to play for a newbie like my 11 1/2-year-old self was at the time. You see, I wasn’t like other people my age. I wasn’t listening to Maroon 5 or Avril Lavigne or Jessica Simpson or any of those hit-makers, I was mostly into The Beatles and older stuff. With that, I was welcoming to the Californian sounds of the 1960s, even if I was staying at a summer beach house at the time that wasn’t to my liking.

So, the track listing…

1. ‘California Girls’
2. ‘I Get Around’
3. ‘Surfin’ Safari’
4. ‘Surfin’ U.S.A.’
5. ‘Fun, Fun, Fun’
6. ‘Surfer Girl’
7. ‘Don’t Worry Baby’
8. ‘Little Deuce Coupe’
9. ‘Shut Down’
10. ‘Help Me, Rhonda’
11. ‘Be True to Your School’
12. ‘When I Grow Up (To Be a Man)’
13. ‘In My Room’
14. ‘God Only Knows’
15. ‘Sloop John B’
16. ‘Wouldn’t It Be Nice’
17. ‘Getcha Back’
18. ‘Come Go with Me’
19. ‘Rock and Roll Music’
20. ‘Dance, Dance, Dance’
21. ‘Barbara Ann’
22. ‘Do You Wanna Dance?’
23. ‘Heroes and Villains’
24. ‘Good Timin”
25. ‘Kokomo’
26. ‘Do It Again’
27. ‘Wild Honey’
28. ‘Darlin”
29. ‘I Can Hear Music’
30. ‘Good Vibrations’

One thing to keep in mind… iPods were certainly around and big in 2004, but I was oblivious to them. I didn’t know anyone who had one until roughly mid-2005, so CD listening was something else. On a car ride, hearing a whole 30-track album was a journey as long as the car ride! Back then, things seemed longer, nowadays they seem like nothing. Just a good 20-30 minutes and you’re there! So this compilation certainly felt epic to my 11 1/2-year-old ears in the summer of 2004.

So the first track came on… ‘California Girls.’ I had no memory of hearing this one as a little kid. Within the first 30 seconds of the symphonic sunshiny pop song, I was enraptured. ‘I Get Around’ blared on after that, I was blown away… But the car rides would often end at tracks 12-15, so I still had half an album to explore. Eventually, I started hearing those tracks…

This is a very weirdly-sequenced compilation. Very little is in chronological order here, and the CD jumps around quite a bit. The first ten tracks or so paint a consistent picture of the early days, then we sail into Pet Sounds for three tracks in the middle… Then after the dreamy ‘Wouldn’t It Be Nice’ ends, we jump right from 1966 to… 1985?! Yes, the rather cynical, new wave-sounding ‘Getcha Back’ booms in after ‘Wouldn’t It Be Nice.’ To 12-year-old me, this wasn’t a big deal. Nowadays, I see that as a jarring transition if there ever was one!

Then we slip backwards, into the mid-to-late 1970s, with two covers of rock ‘n’ roll standards: ‘Come Go With Me’ (from 1978) and ‘Rock and Roll Music’ (from 1976). Again, jarring! Then we go all the way back to the mid-1960s, but then we’re thrown through the psychedelic whirlpool of ‘Heroes and Villains’ and then we’re thrust all the way up to 1979 for a slice of harmonic adult contemporary (‘Good Timin”) and then into schlockville with 1988’s ‘Kokomo’… And then to the late 1960s, during the band’s creative period, we get ‘Do It Again’, then two (yes, *two*) tracks from Wild Honey, and then ‘I Can Hear Music’… The collection closes off with none other than ‘Good Vibrations.’

Now again, to very young me, that was just something! I played and played and re-played this CD all throughout the rest of the year, and I dug up my mother’s Beach Boys CD and started playing the heck out of that, too, hearing things that weren’t on my dad’s comp: ‘Catch a Wave,’ the Today! version of ‘Help Me, Ronda,’ the album version of ‘Be True to Your School,’ and ‘409.’

That 2003 Beach Boys collection left out a lot of material from different periods. This wasn’t like The Beatles, where there was a break-up and there weren’t many compilations that tried to include so much from so many eras. See, the largest scope of The Beatles I had in 2004 was the compilation 1, which contained their hit singles released from 1962 to 1970. That at least painted a beginning, middle, and end. Sounds of Summer was out of order and all over the place.

Sounds of Summer includes nothing from the early 1970s. Nothing from Sunflower, Surf’s Up, Carl and the Passions, and Holland was on there. So in 2004, I still didn’t have a great idea of who The Beach Boys were. I still had exploring to do, but… I drifted away from The Beach Boys for some reason. Maybe it was me attempting to block certain memories from 2004 out? I don’t know, but I revisited The Beach Boys full stop in 2008, when I was nearing junior year in high school. Two particular tracks off of Wild Honey, which appear on the 2003 CD, and the legacy of Pet Sounds, helped me look closer… Along with my growing record collection at the time, which I started in mid-2007.

So by early 2008, I was collecting LPs and 45 7-inch singles. I made sure to stock up on Beatles. Beatles, Beatles, Beatles. My collection was mainly older Disneyland records and Beatles albums, no matter what kind: Studio albums, hacked up US versions of studio albums, schlocky compilations, you name it! Soon, everybody else had to come into the picture… Whatever my mom, my dad, my stepdad, his parents, my aunts, my uncles had… It was in my collection, in my brain, I wanted to absorb it all. I slowly became the musical omnivore that I am. Soon, The Beach Boys came back in.

So what did I find in early 2008? My dad got a box of records from a friend, and I was obviously geared up because of Beatles stuff, but in the box was The Beach Boys In Concert. A live album. A *double* live album? With those weirder 1967-1969 era songs I liked back then? I was in, and soon I little by little discovered other gems of the era, I listened to all of Pet Sounds and Wild Honey, and explored other areas. Around mid-2008, I was slowly breaking out of a depression. My Beatles obsession had switched over to the blues-based sound of The Rolling Stones, soon I became big on blues music. By the time all the sorrow and misery was ending, I was exploring The Beach Boys… By fall 2008, a good chunk of my world was The Beach Boys – their music was instrumental in my “snap out” of my depression, alongside many other things.

From there on ward, I had a whole treasure trove to explore… A big one that I’m still navigating. Getting The Beatles’ treasure was easy to do given their short time together. The Beach Boys? Not so much! By the time I graduated, I had sought out all their studio albums and was opened up… Like I had discovered with The Beatles as a kid/preteen/teen, The Beach Boys showed me a whole new world of music… It was indeed heavenly.

So what act is better?

No one is.

John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr made amazing music together in the span of seven years. Brian Wilson and his two brothers Dennis and Carl, alongside cousin Mike Love, family friend Al Jardine, and stand in-turned-member Bruce Johnston made amazing music over the course of two decades.

Pet Sounds is as essential to one’s life as Abbey Road is. Sunflower is a required listen, as is Revolver. ‘Good Vibrations’ is very much a song you must hear before you die, ditto ‘Hey Jude.’ The SMiLE sessions should go into your ear, and so should Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

What do I love about The Beach Boys? Let’s go in order, shall we?

The early surf and cars and girls stuff is genuinely fun, the rock n’ roll energy of the 1950s and early 1960s dialed up with beautiful production and exquisite harmonies. The Beach Boys’ early hits paint a dreamlike portrait of the era, an idealistic past far removed from the harsh realities. Almost utopian in a way. It’s sunny, bright, cheerful, has some realism in its bouts of youth angst. You can almost feel the beach breeze in some songs, and the smell of drag race cars in another set. Very few rock songs could achieve those kinds of atmospheres back then.

After doing this sort of thing for a couple of years, the band, under Brian Wilson’s stewardship, made a slow move towards more sophisticated pop. Those formerly-occasional emotional moments started taking the center, through beautiful pieces like ‘Please Let Me Wonder’ and ‘She Knows Me Too Well.’ In early 1965, the band finally released a truly great LP called The Beach Boys Today! On side A was their poppy side at its then-highest level, the second side was a resonating powerhouse. The one last goodbye to the innocent days – mid-1965’s Summer Days (And Summer Nights!!) – is a sonically-exciting, near-bittersweet bang. The gimmicky gap-filler LP Beach Boys Party! is accidentally a proto-unplugged album.

I could squabble on and on about how perfect Pet Sounds is. It’s the whole package. Brian’s innovative production meets a thematic set of songs about the hardships of young adulthood. I could also talk about how ‘Good Vibrations’ is also everything, Brian’s pocket symphony that’s a unique trip into the psychedelic portal. I could exhaust myself gabbing about the sessions for the ill-fated opus SMiLE, how it truly is a masterpiece in its unfinished, put-together form. It needs to be heard to be believed…

Smiley Smile, which was the result of SMiLE‘s cancellation and where Brian’s mind was at the time, is perhaps the strangest psychedelic album to come out of the Summer of Love’s tail end. Raw, stripped down, and so batshit oddball in its own way, you’ll hear very few things like it. Wild Honey is also minimalistic, and also sexy, more rocking, beautifully straightforward, nuanced, fun, and indescribably perfect-sounding. Friends concludes this sort of – as others have called it – “lo-fi trilogy,” a lush and relaxing platter that ends before you know it. Perhaps it was Friends that fully realized the world that The Beach Boys had captured through sound in their early days.

20/20 is the rest of the band picking up the slack, having to supply material as Brian’s mental health was at stake. Going through various sessions and some singles and some label troubles, The Beach Boys finally put out a great band effort with Sunflower, a near-perfect mix of everything I love about them: The production, the harmonies, the innovation, the heart. Nearly every second of the album is melted gold. Surf’s Up is almost like the sequel, though a little disjointed, its highs are among The Beach Boys’ highest. Surf’s Up began a trilogy of its own, a trio of albums spearheaded by a manager named Jack Rieley, who tried to make the band “cool” again to an audience that was perhaps not ready for their true potential. Carl and the Passions – “So Tough” is interesting ride down another road, bringing roots rock and country and funk into one weird smorgasbord. Holland refines most of that album’s tricks, and is a solidly-crafted, contemporary but nonetheless lovely pop album.

From here on out, it gets a little hard to talk about. A lot of fans seem to agree that once The Beach Boys enterprise succumbed to the 1950s nostalgia craze of the mid-1970s, and consequently becoming what the American public always perceived them to be, the output got worse and worse. While 15 Big Ones is undone by gimmicky, uninteresting covers of oldies, its original Brian Wilson-penned material was something else. These compositions paved the way for one last burst of excitement, and one of the weirdest things put out by a mainstream band: Love You. After Love You, it was the end… M.I.U. Album, L.A. (Light Album), and Keepin’ the Summer Alive have their moments and shreds of brilliance. After that, there’s scattered goodies amidst a seabed of junk. Brian’s solo stuff, however, kept the spirit alive from the late 1980s onward…

Now, across the Atlantic to Liverpool!

Before The Beatles officially began, the four lads and other lads had some impressive work on hand. On Anthology 1, you can hear lots of scrappy recordings from a bunch of Liverpudlian boys with a lot of potential. Soon, after they were signed on by EMI/Parlaphone, it all began… ‘Love Me Do,’ a perfectly solid pop single with touches of the rock greats and contemporary hits, really started it all – like how Mickey Mouse did for Walt Disney.

Spring 1963, combining the first singles and a whole line-up of material recorded in a single day, The Beatles release an LP that doesn’t feel like it’s full of filler, unlike many a pop album released at the time. This wasn’t “Two great hits and some songs,” Please Please Me was an all-around knockout pop, rock, and beat platter. With The Beatles took this formula and sharpened it, along with a universal single in ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand.’ The original material from John Lennon and Paul McCartney that surfaced throughout 1963 showed that they were great songwriters in the making.

In contrast to the Beach Boys’ sunshiny universe that their early 1960s songs conjure up, the early Beatles have a bit of a rough sound, definitely less paradise and more rocking inner city. I feel the busy streets and sidewalks more than the boardwalks and sand dunes. This is of course visually told through their joyous film debut A Hard Day’s Night, and its accompanying soundtrack/studio album. Beatles for Sale captures a more burnt out Beatles, as constant touring and work wore them out. The drab autumnal cover and general mood of some of the songs highlight the more sensitive side of the band, but little tricks and surprises lay within the production of the numbers. The single ‘I Feel Fine’ also had a little thing or two, and was quite rocking.

The next film brought a soundtrack that sounds as if it’s at the crossroads. Help! is less an on-the-move satire of Beatlemania and more a goofy, giddy adventure movie with some spy elements thrown in. Admittedly “shot in a haze,” the music reveals slow changes within the band’s sound, some few months after the release of The Beach Boys Today! in the colonial land. Exercises in straight-up folk and quirkier pop sensibilities are frequent… Then by Christmas of 1965, The Beatles stepped it up… Rubber Soul was mostly made up of original songs, many of which displayed a level of sophistication hitherto unheard of in both pop and in The Beatles’ oeuvre. Rubber Soul, in a butchered form presented by the band’s US distributor, inspired Brian Wilson to take the “album” more seriously. To make more than just a collection of songs…

Of course, this is where things escalate… If Rubber Soul was a comfortable climb to a higher territory, Revolver bangs – like a revolver blast – into the sky, a psychedelic explosion filled to the brim with breathtaking innovation and outlandish songwriting. George Harrison begins to really show his chops as a writer, too, through a whopping three tracks that are album highlights. Despite all of this, 1966 proved to be a tough year for the band, as they attracted major controversy in the US for various reasons and snubbed the Philippines’ First Lady… Touring ended, and they decided to lay low as Beatlemania began to simmer.

Having much more time to let ideas stew, the four got to work. Not dissimilar to how Brian Wilson operated after bowing out of touring in the mid-1960s, the Fab Four now had much more creative freedom and a cultural landscape that was ready for their best. Work quietly begins on an ambitious LP, the first two tracks recorded for this project were pulled from it and instead released as perhaps the world’s greatest 45rpm record in early 1967: ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ and ‘Penny Lane.’ Taking the exciting sounds of Revolver and bringing them into a territory that was beyond comprehension, they had arguably reached their peak. The song had even shocked Brian, he had to pull over when it had come on the radio! The other side of this record was a wonderfully old-fashioned baroque pop masterpiece, and both songs were thematically connected trips down a sort-of psychedelic and fantastical memory lane: John’s ominous and compelling, Paul’s welcoming and friendly. Perhaps leaving them off of the forthcoming album was the best decision the late great producer Sir George Martin had made, even if he had regretted it.

Finally, in June of 1967, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was released. A whirlwind musical odyssey of fantasy and color, this seemed to click. Often called the greatest album of all-time, Paul McCartney himself had said many times that Pet Sounds was a major influence on the record. This was followed up by the anthemic single ‘All You Need Is Love,’ and later the soundtrack to a much-derided telefilm, Magical Mystery Tour. Despite the sour reception of the film, nothing stopped the soundtrack – chock full of weirdo psychedelic songs – from scoring big. Put together with the 1967 non-Pepper singles – which the US version of the soundtrack did, you have one hell of a repertoire. It was enough to get me into the band, for sure.

Before a new album surfaced, work on other projects took place. An animated feature based on their music was well underway by late 1967. Though the band had little interest in being actively involved in the project, they dusted off some outtakes and a couple other odds and ends and gave them to the producers for the soundtrack. The four, in post-production, eventually filmed a live-action scene that closed out the film. Yellow Submarine, one of the greatest achievements in the animated art form, came out in mid-1968 and dazzled the world over for generations. Early 1968’s ‘Lady Madonna’ was a great back-to-basics single, and ‘Hey Jude’ would forever go down as one of the all-time greats, its raucous B-side ‘Revolution’ another classic. Then…

Instead of topping Sgt. Pepper and what had come before, The Beatles went in another direction altogether… A self-titled album in a plain white jacket, a musical buffet that spanned two LPs, The Beatles was it. Who cares if it’s 5-7 songs too long? Who cares if it’s just solo numbers strung together? Who cares if it has some really off-putting detours? It’s the whole package, it was… The Beatles. Few double-albums, and even triple-albums, released since then were quite like this. While progressive rock 2-LP sets doubled down on epics and themes, this was beautifully all over the place and messy: Rock ‘n roll, music hall, folk, blues, honky-tonk country, psychedelia, blistering hard rock, lovely ballads, lullabies, and freakish avant-garde. All in one place. The bloody WHITE ALBUM.

The Get Back sessions. Paul wants to keep the show going, despite the tensions brought on by the White Album sessions. Next on his list of grand ideas is this: Scale down and make a raw rock and roll record like the old days, and film it! The Get Back sessions commenced in January of 1969, which had an impromptu rooftop concert! Ultimately, the material – which is the music equivalent of The Beatles in “f*** it!” mode, which still sounds lovely – is abandoned. An attempt to make an album out of the recordings yields no success, and the project is shelved. The sessions were fraught with arguing and just a generally bad mood all around, exacerbating previous issues within the group that had festered after the mid-1967 death of their manager, Brian Epstein. The dream slowly but surely was coming to an end…

So, to top it all off… The Beatles go into the studio one last time, they bang out an album in the way they used to do it. No gimmicks, no new themes, no Paul escapades… Just an album… And what an album it was… The cover of Abbey Road really does sum it all up perfectly. The Beatles heading across the crosswalk on the road where their go-to studio was based. “This is us, now.” Everyone is in peak form here, the entirety of the album feels like an encore. This was the end, and what a glorious end it is. Not a single dull moment on the LP, Abbey Road. What more is there to really say that hasn’t been said before?

John Lennon leaves the group by the time it’s released, various problems ensue, a scheming new business manager wants more. It is decided that the Get Back sessions should be released alongside the documentary film, so another attempt is made at finishing the album, with an all-new recording of ‘I Me Mine,’ the last-ever Beatles recording session – though John was absent. Klein ultimately got legendary producer Phil Spector to produce the album, the results had been divisive for years and a major thorn in Paul McCartney’s side, leading him to public announce his exit from The Beatles in April 1970. The resulting album and film are titled Let It Be. Kick all of the baggage aside, Let It Be‘s production preserves the rawness of Get Back and its additions are really far from being awful. The majority of the songs and the fun little bits of session material make for a pleasant and consistent listening experience. While not the true closing to the saga, it was and is more than a worthy release.

In short… I love both bands for different reasons. The Beach Boys’ music knocks me out in ways The Beatles’ music doesn’t, and The Beatles’ music knocks me out in ways The Beach Boys’ music does not.

Carry on!