The Nearest Faraway Place: Brian Wilson, the Beach Boys, and the Southern California Experience - Hardcover

White, Timothy

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 080502266X ISBN 13: 9780805022667

Publisher: Henry Holt & Co, 1994

Synopsis

Offers an intimate portrait of the group along with a social history of the LA area celebrated in its music, tracing the evolution of Southern California after World War I, its youth culture, and its music industry. 75,000 first printing. $75,000 ad/promo. Tour.

About this title

About the Author:

Timothy White is the editor in chief of Billboard magazine. Formally senior editor of Rolling Stone magazine.

From Booklist:

The Beach Boys have come to be considered "America's band," but rock journalist White shows that that appellation is rather an affront to the nation. For the band, originally made up of the three Wilson brothers and a cousin, is nearly the ultimate in dysfunctional families. Its members' troubled personal relationships add poignancy to the story of how leader Brian Wilson turned his idyllic childhood of cars, surf, girls, and sports into fodder for a string of hits celebrating a romantic conception of California. Drawing on his long acquaintance with the Beach Boys and interviews with three generations of the Wilson family, White makes his band chronicle also function as a social history of modern California as he tells how the brothers' grandfather was lured from Kansas by Sunkist advertising and as he interpolates vivid descriptions of California culture into the account of the group's long passage from teen-idol status to played-out oldies vendor. There are already several Beach Boys books, but White's is the best researched and the most insightful on the music and its cultural significance. Gordon Flagg

About this edition

• Publisher: Henry Holt & Co
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 080502266X
• ISBN 13: 9780805022667
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 416