- published: 02 Sep 2015
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The Beach Boys are an American rock band formed in Hawthorne, California in 1961. The group's original lineup consisted of brothers Brian, Dennis, and Carl Wilson, their cousin Mike Love, and their friend Al Jardine. They emerged at the vanguard of the "California Sound", performing original surf songs that gained international popularity for their distinct vocal harmonies and lyrics exploring a southern California youth culture of surfing, cars, and romance. Influenced by jazz-based vocal groups, 1950s rock and roll, and doo-wop, Brian led the band in devising novel approaches to music production, arranging his compositions for studio orchestras, and experimenting with several genres ranging from pop ballads to psychedelic and baroque.
The group began as a garage band managed by the Wilsons' father Murry, with Brian's creative ambitions and sophisticated songwriting abilities dominating the group's musical direction. After 1964, their albums took a different stylistic path that featured more personal lyrics, multi-layered sounds, and recording experiments. In 1966, the Pet Sounds album and "Good Vibrations" single vaunted the group to the top level of rock innovators and established the band as symbols of the nascent counterculture era. Following the dissolution of Smile, Brian gradually ceded control to the rest of the band, reducing his input because of mental health and substance abuse issues. Though the more democratic incarnation of the Beach Boys recorded a string of albums in various music styles that garnered international critical success, the group struggled to reclaim their commercial momentum in America. Since the 1980s, much-publicized legal wrangling over royalties, songwriting credits and use of the band's name transpired.
Born of the age
Flagged hopes
Censored rage
The black clad box
Bombs bursting in air
Bleed white red and blue
Cried dawn's early light
For the hope
Oh where has it gone
Brothers sisters stand firmly and try
Reaching the spacious ski-ies
Fourth of July
Lie by the sword
Black times
False reward
The greetings of doom
So proudly they hail
Lost fortune of free
The stripes and bright stars
Promise lost
Oh where has it gone
Brothers sisters stand firmly and try
Reaching the spacious ski-ies
Fourth of July
Brothers sisters stand firmly and try
Reaching the spacious ski-ies
Fourth of July