Analysis of De Forest's Beach Boys versus Beatles comparison

Beach Boys vs. The Beatles

Synthesis

The first chapter of De Forest's work of non-fiction entitled Beach Boys vs. Beatlemania: Rediscovering Sixties Music, is ambitious in scope. Within this chapter the author attempts to reconstruct the context of the Beach Boys' career as it took place in a zeitgeist that spanned from the early 60s to the end of the 1980s (De Forest, 2007, p. 2). His main argument is that the Beach Boys created an indelible imprint on both popular music and on popular culture. He does not argue that they spawned rock and roll, but that they helped to reshape it into the format that a number of other bands in the 60's typified.

In chapter four, De Forest attempts to explicate the popularity of the Beatles. He does so from a binary perspective that both includes the band's popularity during the 1960's and the almost mythic status that they have enjoyed ever since their untimely breakup in 1970. In providing this explanation, the author makes it quite clear that their approbation is not as deserved as that which he believes the Beach Boys are worthy of having. Essentially, he attributes their success in the 1960's to savvy marketing and management, as well as their ability to mimic trends. Their legacy, meanwhile, was solidified by their early breakup which rendered them unassailable -- particularly for those still marketing their music.

The seventh chapter allows De Forest an opportunity to fully flesh out his primary theme for this work -- a comparison between the efforts of the Beatles and the Beach Boys, which primarily favors the latter. A good deal of this chapter details the reasons that the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds was an adequate response to the musical stylings and ubiquity of Rubber Sould, which was released by the The Beatles. Still, the author points out that for the immediate time afterwards, the Beatles were able to trump the Beach Boys with the relatively rapid release of Revolver, which certainly bested Rubber Soul in the process.

Chapter 8 functions very similarly to the preceding chapter. However, the two bodies of work that the author compares in this chapter are Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and Smile, the latter of which was an unreleased album by Beach Boys. Due to the fact that Smile was not released during the 1960's, De Forest is able to romanticize and even mythologize the projected impact that it would have. However, he is also able to discuss the very real impact that the foregoing work from the Beatles produced. At the time it was released, this album perhaps did more to solidify the band's reputation -- while embracing the countercultural elements of rock and roll -- than any others at the time.

In the ninth chapter, the author makes a point of comparing the legacy of the Beach Boys to that of the Beatles. This comparison is critical to the overall theme of this book. Moreover, there are vital points of distinction in those legacies. Multiple members of the Beatles have died; their last recordings took place decades before some of those deaths. Because of the finality of their sundering (which was reinforced by the aforementioned fatalities), the legacy of the Beatles is well protected and based on their work when they were young men. The situation is contrasted with the legacy of the Beach Boys, who recorded for much longer.

Tie It All Together

The main point that the author made was that the Beach Boys helped to popularize rock and roll music, although they did so in a context in which the world at large seemed to innately respect the efforts of the Beatles. It is difficult for me to accept this fact, simply for the reality that the Beach Boys seemingly did little to every embody the countercultural elements for which rock and roll was initially known. One can argue that the Beatles did more to achieve this end, as their embrace of poetry, psychedelic drugs, and other tangible aspects of the countercultural movement unequivocally denotes. In this regard, it is difficult to conceive of either group truly embodying the true elements of the original representation of rock and roll, in which young people were actively seeking a new way of life and looking to the music to help them find it. One can argue that both groups had far too much commercial success to achieve that aim. Forsooth, this sentiment appears to apply much more to the Beach Boys than it does to the Beatles. Some of the most well-known efforts of the Beach Boys have very little to do with true rock and roll. An excellent example of this fact is what the author seems to regard as their magnum opus, Pet Sounds, which liberally employed a copiously populated orchestra while focusing on songs that were more folksy in nature than some of their other works were.

Regardless as to the true impact upon rock and roll that both of these bands had, one of the most salient points of interest in this work was the influence of the media -- as powered by corporate politics -- in determining elements of popular culture. The author gives a lot of due emphasis to the hype surrounding the so-called British invasion which certainly propelled The Beatles to success. However, that same sort of hype seemingly relegated other bands, American bands in general and the Beach Boys in particular, to a secondary status which may or may not have been deserved. Nonetheless, the truly piquant point about this reality is that it was media-inspired, and reinforced by the record companies -- if not the other way around.