The Beach Boys Will Tell Their Own Story in New Documentary
A new Beach Boys documentary featuring a plethora of previously unreleased footage, plus new interviews with the band, will arrive on Disney+ on May 24.
Directed by Frank Marshall and Thom Zimny, The Beach Boys will chronicle the California outfit’s singular sound and career as they evolved from a family band to one of pop and rock’s most revolutionary acts. Members Brian Wilson, Mike Love, Al Jardine, David Marks, and Bruce Johnston all sat for new interviews for the film, as did Blondie Chaplin, who was part of the band during the Seventies; the film will also include archival audio of Carl and Dennis Wilson (who died in 1998 and 1983, respectively), as well as audio of Ricky Fataar, another member in the Seventies.
Additionally, The Beach Boys will boast interviews with the band’s contemporaries and artists they went on to inspire, like Lindsey Buckingham, Janelle Monáe, Ryan Tedder, and Don Was. There’ll also be an official soundtrack featuring songs from the film, which will hit streaming services on May 24.
Prior to the doc’s release, the Beach Boys will offer another comprehensive look at their history in their first official book, The Beach Boys by The Beach Boys, which will be published on April 2. It’s unclear if the book’s scope will be the same as the documentary’s, but the former will trace the band’s history from their beginnings and signing to Capitol Records through their famous 1980 Independence Day concert at the National Mall in Washington, D.C.
The Beach Boys book will similarly center around interviews with the surviving members of the band, plus archival text from Carl and Dennis Wilson, plus ephemera from the archives like lyric and chord sheets, live photographs, handwritten notes, studio documents, tape boxes, tour posters, and more. It’ll also contain contributions from an array of artists like Thom Yorke, Elvis Costello, Ray Davies, Bob Dylan, Def Leppard, David Lee Roth, the Jesus and Mary Chain, Carly Simon, and more.
While there’s certainly a celebratory air inherent in the Beach Boys doc and book, both do arrive in the wake of the news that Brian Wilson is suffering from dementia at the age of 81. Back in February, Rolling Stone obtained court documents petitioning to place the musician in a conservatorship because he is “unable to properly provide for his own personal needs for physical health, food, clothing, or shelter.” The request came after the January death of Wilson’s wife, Melinda Ledbetter Wilson, who’d been the musician’s primary caregiver. The conservatorship would be overseen by Wilson’s longtime publicist and manager, Jean Sievers, as well as his longtime business manager, LeeAnn Hard.