The Beach Boys epitomised surf music in 1965, but they also went on to outgrow the genre in spectacular fashion.
Surf music is a style of rock’n’roll that developed in the early 1960s in celebration of the California surfing culture. Using the location, clothes and gear of the sport for its lyrics, surf music underscored the surfing experience. The style is characterised by driving rhythms, a reverberating guitar, close-harmony vocals, and a verse-chorus song form.
In the late 1950s, surf music began as an instrumental sub-genre that emerged from rock’n’roll. One of the earliest examples was the Ventures’ recording “Walk, Don’t Run,” (1960) in which the conventional tension between melody, beat, and riff is broken. Such instrumental hits quickly moved up the charts, and in coastal towns throughout California instrumental bands performed to the wildly enthusiastic young surfing crowd.
Although many musicians claim to have invented surf music, Dick Dale actually deserves the credit. The frontman of a band called the Deltones, Dale achieved the “surf sound” through staccato picking on a Fender Stratocaster, with heavy use of reverberation accompanied by a pounding rhythm. To Dale, this sound captured the same vibration as riding the surf.
As a result of Dale’s popularity, imitators began popping up. Instrumental groups geared their style toward the recognisable surf sound, characterised by pounding drums and frequent Latin touches in rhythm and percussion, while focusing on the reverb or echo of the lead guitar.
Dale and the Deltones, however, remained a local band, and it wasn’t until another Southern California group, the BEACH BOYS, hit the scene, that the music gained a national following.
The Beach Boys had formed as part of the instrumental surfing scene. Yet they were innovators in the genre because they added surfing-related lyrics to the music. Band member Brian Wilson began writing songs celebrating not only surfing but also the whole young Californian lifestyle. Soon other acts began emulating the Beach Boys’ style and a whole new genre began to develop, using their music as its roots. Another surf group, Jan and Dean, also made it to the U.S. charts with the song “Surf City,” co-written by Wilson and Jan Berry, which became the first surf-oriented U.S. No. 1 hit, in 1963.
The Beach Boys epitomised surf music in 1965, but they also went on to outgrow the genre in spectacular fashion.
Several other instrumental surf bands also managed to achieve national hits, notably the Chantays, with “Pipeline” (1963), and the Surfaris, with the best-known surf guitar song of all: “Wipe Out” (1963).
By the mid-1960s the “British invasion” led Californian groups to imitate the English sound, and surf music died out. However, in the early 1980s, a revival of the original surfing sound took place, led by “surf punk” groups such as the Forgotten Rebels, who recorded “Surfin' on Heroin” in 1983.
Judi Gerber
SEE ALSO:
BRITISH BEAT MUSIC; POP MUSIC; ROCK’N’ROLL.
FURTHER READING
Blair, John. The Illustrated Discography of Surf Music,
1961–1965 (Ann Arbor, MI: Popular Culture Ink, 1995);
Wood, Jack. Surf City: The California Sound
(New York: Friedman/Fairfax Publishers, 1995).
SUGGESTED LISTENING
Beach Boys: Summer Days (and Summer Nights!);
Surfin’ Safari; Surfing USA;
Jan and Dean: Dead Man’s Curve; Surf City.