<b>Surf Aces Resurfaced: The Beach Boys and the Greening of the American Counter-Culture, 1963-1973</b> // Los Beach Boys y el ecologismo en la contracultura americana, 1963-1973

Authors

  • Dale Carter Department of Aesthetics and Communication, Aarhus University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.37536/ECOZONA.2013.4.1.499

Keywords:

popular music, ecology, counter-culture, Beach Boys, música popular, ecología, contracultura

Abstract

Abstract

 

The rise of the American counterculture between the early- to mid-1960s and early- to mid-1970s was closely associated with the growth of environmentalism. This article explores how both informed popular music, which during these years became not only a prominent form of entertainment but also a forum for cultural and social criticism. In particular, through contextual and lyrical analyses of recordings by The Beach Boys, the article identifies patterns of change and continuity in the articulation of countercultural, ecological, and related sensibilities. During late 1966 and early 1967, the group’s leader Brian Wilson and lyricist Van Dyke Parks collaborated on a collection of songs embodying such progressive thinking, even though the music of The Beach Boys had previously shown no such ambitions. In the short term, their efforts floundered as the risk-averse logic of the commercial music industry prompted group members to resist perceived threats to their established profile. Yet in the long term (and ironically in the name of commercial survival), The Beach Boys began selectively to adopt innovations they had previously shunned. Shorn of its more controversial associations, what had formerly been considered high risk had by 1970 become good business as once-marginal environmentalism gained broader acceptability: thus did ‘America’s band’ articulate the flowering, greening, and fading of the counterculture.

 

 

Resumen

 

El auge de la contracultura americana entre principios y mediados de las décadas de 1960 y 1970 guarda una estrecha relación con la expansión del movimiento ecologista. Este artículo explora el modo en que ambas corrientes dieron forma a la música popular, un medio de expresión que se convirtió en una destacada forma de entretenimiento y un foro de crítica cultural y social durante el período analizado. Más específicamente, se emplea el análisis contextual y lírico de las grabaciones de los Beach Boys para identificar patrones de cambio y continuidad en los movimientos contracultural y ecologista, y otros afines a ellos. Entre finales de 1966 y principios de 1967, Brian Wilson (el líder del grupo) y el letrista Van Dyke Parks colaboraron en un variado conjunto de canciones que encarnaban tales ideas progresistas, aun cuando la música de los Beach Boys nunca había puesto de manifiesto este tipo de ambiciones hasta entonces. A corto plazo, sus esfuerzos fueron en vano, ya que la lógica conservadora de la industria discográfica comercial instó a los miembros del grupo a resistir ante las amenazas que recibía su perfil. Más a largo plazo (e, irónicamente, en nombre de la supervivencia comercial) los Beach Boys comenzaron a adoptar, de un modo más bien escrupuloso, novedades que antes habían evitado debido a las controvertidas asociaciones que permitían establecer. En 1970, lo que antes se consideraba de alto riesgo se había convertido en un gran negocio debido en buena medida a que el ecologismo, otrora marginal, había ganado en aceptación popular; ello llevó a la “Banda de América” a expresar el florecimiento, la madurez y el desvanecimiento de la contracultura.

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Author Biography

Dale Carter, Department of Aesthetics and Communication, Aarhus University

Aarhus University, Denmark

engdc@hum.au.dk

Dale Carter is Associate Professor of American Studies and Director of the American Studies Center, Aarhus University, Denmark. He is author and editor of a number of books dealing mainly with aspects of 20th century American history, society and culture, and has published a variety of scholarly articles on Brian Wilson, Van Dyke Parks and The Beach Boys.

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Published

2013-04-25

Issue

Section

Green Countercultures