Hawthorne’s Wilson brothers sold over a hundred million records
The Beach Boys formed in Hawthorne, California, in 1961 around brothers Brian, Dennis, and Carl Wilson, cousin Mike Love, and friend Al Jardine. Brian’s writing and studio craft defined early surf-pop; worldwide sales later topped 100 million records.
Father Murry managed early years; David Marks briefly replaced Jardine in 1962–63. After shelving Smile and launching Brother Records in 1967, U. S. commercial heat cooled as Brian ceded control. Critics still rank the band among rock’s most acclaimed acts for expanding what popular music could arrange and produce.
Bedroom rehearsals in the Wilson Hawthorne house—Brian turning sixteen in June 1958 with younger brothers thirteen and eleven—seeded the family blend of harmony and cars-and-surf imagery.
Brian and Carl absorbed rhythm and blues from Johnny Otis's KFOX radio show, and family gatherings drew in cousin Mike Love. Murry, an occasional songwriter, steered the group, then called the Pendletones, to his publisher Hite Morgan, and they cut Surfin'. Candix released it on 27 November 1961, and only then did the band find they had been renamed the Beach Boys. Their first paid show, worth $300, was the Ritchie Valens Memorial Dance in Long Beach on New Year's Eve 1961.
Capitol signed them to a seven-year deal, and Surfin' Safari reached number 14 in 1962. During the January 1963 sessions for Surfin' U.S.A., their first top-ten single, Brian began double-tracking the vocals for a fuller sound, and that September's Surfer Girl leaned heavily on outside session players, many drawn from Phil Spector's Wall of Sound team. Marks quit that autumn after disputes with Murry. By 1964 the British Invasion was eroding surf music, and Capitol's backing tilted toward their labelmates the Beatles.
Source: The Beach Boys
