On Tuesday, Disney released a trailer for the upcoming documentary, The Beach Boys, set to stream on Disney+ in May. The documentary will be released at the beginning of Memorial Day weekend, May 24, 2024.
According to a release, the film will celebrate the band and its influence on pop culture, the band’s iconic sound, and how the music grew to personify “the California dream.” It will feature interviews with, “The Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson, Mike Love, Al Jardine, David Marks, Bruce Johnston, plus other luminaries in the music business, including Lindsey Buckingham, Janelle Monáe, Ryan Tedder, and Don Was.”
“I’m super happy with the way the documentary turned out, they did an amazing job,” Brian Wilson said in a statement. “It really brought me back to those days with the boys, the fun and the music. And of course those incredible harmonies.”
According to Variety, a soundtrack from the film will also be made available. The Beach Boys: Music From The Documentary, will start streaming the same day the documentary is released.
Long considered music’s most iconic “surf-themed” band, The Beach Boys formed in the late 1950s. Originating in Hawthorne, California, the band was just a short drive from Los Angeles’ South Bay surf scene and the Beach Boys’ rise to stardom in the 60s came right as the Gidget era caught steam in pop culture. The Beach Boys’ sound is heavily influenced by legendary guitarist Dick Dale, the “King of the Surf Guitar.”
“Well what it is, is the meaning of the sounds of the waves, like the echo and the sounds of the tube and my finger would be in the wall and I could hear it go chhhhhhhhhhh!” Dale told The Inertia before his passing, describing the sound that would define his music and influence the Beach Boys. “And I’d take my strings and go weeeeeeer! Up high and then you get that rumble just before you’re going to be flung over, you know right before you’re going to go over the fucking falls and get slammed down, all that rumbling and all that stuff like that they associated the heavy Dick Dale staccato picking tk-tk-tk-tk-tk-tk on those strings, it sounded like the barrel of a goddamn wave.”
