PHIL >>> Gary, what inspired you to collect and publish these archival materials? Was there a particular moment, or gap in Beach Boys history that made you think “these artifacts need to be preserved and shared”?
GARY >>> I have been collecting Beach Boys related music and artifacts since 1976 (I was 14 at the time). The music was great and the "Brian is back" marketing was in full swing. They were being featured in mainstream magazines like People and Circus, and other music mags. The BBFUN fan club was active and was probably the only consistent source of information for fans. It seemed natural to collect print items and things related to the band.
Over time, I ended up with boxloads of stuff I never looked at, an archive. I thought it would be nice if I had them as a book on a shelf, where I could easily pull them out and look at them. There was a Beach Boys and a Jan & Dean book where they did that ... it was nice in scrapbook kind of format. Alan Clark did them I think. That stuck in my head.
There was an east coast Beach Boys convention coming up and I tried to figure how I could make a book to offer there, as well as for my own use. At the time an offset printer had a Docutech machine of some type that used a tape binding. I made a volume one in an edition of 75 and sold most of them either at the convention or by mail. John Porteous may have bought several copies for resale, I forget. I did a second and third edition, and then reprinted them all with color covers. All of those were done by local printers. Somehow I sold most of them, I don't even remember.
When I discovered Amazon as an on-demand printer, I revised the volumes a bit, changing the content order and designing better matching covers. They are available now in that format for a total of 8 Beach Boys Volumes (and four Jan & Dean volumes, plus other artists as well)
PHIL >>> How did you choose which artifacts to include (ads, photos, tour books, etc.)? ... What criteria determined that something was archival-worthy? ... Were there difficult choices: things you wanted to include but didn’t (or couldn't, perhaps due to rights issues)?
GARY >>> To start, I scanned ALL my personal items in high res - 300 to 600 dots per inch - on a flatbed scanner. Sometimes if the copy I had was a copy of a copy, it didn't make much difference in quality. But for other items where I had the original it made a huge difference. Other people were taking pictures with a camera (you'd see weird angles to pieces or poor quality) and I wanted to make sure mine were the cleanest reproductions possible. Later, when I used pieces sourced from the web, the quality was quite variable. But not having originals, I only had these to use.
There was indeed stuff I chose not to use. I always looked for items where the copyrights could be unclear or mired by the original publication being sold over and over, or being out of business. Or something where fair use might apply. It's tricky.
In two cases I went to the original publisher or editor. For BB Vol 4, I went to Alice Lilly, the original BBFUN editor and she gave me permission to reprint them, even supplied copies of some issues I was missing. I also went to Doc Rock Myke Kelly for permission to reprint his Jan and Dean Fanzine but had to use what I had or could find. Some other super fans like Frank Kisko helped me find issues I was missing. It wasn’t always easy to track people down, but I was able to do it in those two cases.
PHIL >>> Please identify a few items that you would rank as the:
Most difficult to find >>> I still haven’t found copies or high res scans of most of the tour books. I’d like to find more of those. You would think that would be easy but some of these items are larger that 8 ½ by 11, and most people don’t have home scanners with the ability to scan them in one pass.
Most rare items >>> The actual contract to appear in Wilmington Delaware with newspaper clipping was supplied by a friend Steve Harvey, who is a collector of Beach Boys memorabilia and many other band items.
Surprising discoveries >>> I liked the printed brochure for the Mike & Dean Florida Sprint Break concert a friend brought home from the concert for me. Super fun. Reading about it in detail in Dean’s autobiography was super interesting and a perspective not offered anywhere else.
GARY >>> Early pieces are often just puff pieces, designed as fluff PR for the band. Is it true? Is it based on truth? I have no idea. That's par for the course for the early- to mid-sixties, especially with those teen magazines.
After that, you started seeing real serious journalists and different quality magazines covering the band, and saw more interesting interviews that revealed more about the band members. Much more satisfying to read. More insightful.
The Beach Boys didn’t help themselves, what with the Band’s association with Charles Manson (as involuntary as it became) and Brian’s idiosyncrasies made for great (!?) reading…they both became permanent elements of any discussion of the band after that was part of their story.
PHIL >>> How do these archival items help us understand the Beach Boys not just as musicians, but as cultural figures — influences on surf culture, youth culture, media, etc.?
GARY >>> That's a great question. Any entertainer reflects culture…or helps create it. The Beach Boys certainly were the primary creators of a California culture, musically and otherwise. The early magazine articles and Capitol records marketing shows it in so many ways. Positioning of the music and the guys themselves. And the changes. Growing beards is just one example, much like the Beatles did. Small in one way, but a huge change from their “kids next store” wholesome appearance. A reflection of the changing times. Their clothing selection for studio photos and their attire at concerts. Again, small and late, but look at Mike in 1976, or the Beach Boys parachute suits later.
And the on and off and on-again, off-again popularity of the band. There’s a lot of cultural significance there…the slide out of favor and into nostalgia in the mid-seventies. It wasn’t just them, it was all of America at the bicentennial celebration. The Beach Boys and American culture reflecting back and forth.
PHIL >>> If someone only knew the Beach Boys via their most well-known hits, what new understanding do these archival materials offer?
GARY >>> Well, first, I think my collections are fanboy and fangirl collections more than a social commentary on the band. If it's the latter at all, it's a secondary discovery.
Remember that any article is, intentionally or unintentionally, biased. What you put in, what you leave out, the way the interviewer or narrator describes an encounter, or an event. Most people revere Brian as a genius, accommodating him and treating him gently and positively, no matter what. They seem to treat Dennis with reverence but for different reasons, I guess. Other band members are treated less so. So even the more thoughtful stories tell a narrative that doesn't contain the whole story, the whole truth. You can't truly know the Beach Boys from Brian's perspective unless you are Brian; you can't know Mike Love's perspective unless you lived through what Mike lived through.
The articles aren't all inclusive or in a proper reading order to offer the understanding a biography might offer. But it could offer a supplement to any of those. That could be the understanding you might gain from the book contents.
So, all that as a preface, I think the materials show you how a band is “handled” by a PR group, and what happens when the times change and reporting changes. The curtain is pulled up and you see personalities and people apart from their music. You see how reviewers and critics react and how their reactions change over time, having their own agendas. But things like ads and tour posters are often pure commercial efforts to sell, leaning more heavily on the stereotype than any real growth story.
PHIL >>> What challenges did you encounter in locating, securing, or restoring some of the older or rarer materials? ... What is your perspective on the importance of preserving musical history in this way, especially for younger generations or scholars?
GARY >>> To keep book prices reasonable, these are black and white reprint volumes. You already lose something impactful when you switch from color to black and white. I do try to add contrast to make text more readable, but it's a time-consuming process.
All that said: reprinting an article in a slightly reduced size in black and white on white copy paper that formerly appeared in a full music magazine printed on pulp newsprint loses the context of the article among other rock stories of the time and how it really appeared and felt to the reader. You get all of the content but not the feeling of a fifteen-year-old picking up the magazine.
You have a lot more background on the band and knowledge of their future history noone reading the piece would have had at the time they were issued. Who in the seventies would guess that Brian would tour solo, recreate SMILE, or that he would outlive his two brothers?
My sources came from all over: pieces I collected, copies of pieces given to me by others, trips to Rockaway Records and their “Dollar bins,” photos I took myself in concert, scans I found online, etc.
There are lots of pieces I wish I had scans of: other tourbooks (there are many). There are tons of articles I am sure that I have never even seen or known about. It’s impossible to have an all-inclusive collection, but I am always interested in people who are willing to send me things I have never seen.
PHIL >>> As you were compiling these volumes, what patterns did you see that might hint at where Beach Boys scholarship or interest is heading? What stories seem under-told and ripe for deeper exploration?
GARY >>> I don’t think that there’s any great statement to be made here on that front. Although I have seen some younger collectors, I do believe that there are a lot of older collectors that are paring down their collections, which also may mean paring down their interest.
It’s great seeing someone like David Leaf update and reissue his seminal volume, and David Beard’s Endless Summer Quarterly offers amazing access to both band members and insights into the band through an excellent publication and phenomenal insights to both the music and the surrounding mythos. On the web, I am particularly taken with Steve Lewis’s basement podcast covering the music and so much more. These guys all have a long history relating to their Beach Boys interest, which is a treat for someone who is way past Beach Boys 101 and “first listen” reactions..
Not coincidentally, I like them because they stay clear of vilifying individual members. I see too much of that in comments from fans. Have any of those fans lived through the ups and downs of the band members? Have any of them written lyrics to or sung on a hit song?
I’d personally like to see more interviews with people who worked with the band. I don’t want gossip, just interesting stories.
PHIL >>> How do you see digital media and online archiving affecting the preservation and accessibility of materials like these going forward?
GARY >>> Beach Boys fans have been especially active in archiving materials (if not in the quality of the images themselves.) I've looked for similar archives for other artists and much of it is limited to the covers of magazines they appeared in or very low res scans not suitable for physical printing. Sometimes they aren’t even readable on the screen.That's been disappointing to see.
A successful digital archive depends on someone taking the time to find or scan it, organize it, create an online offering and host the site. I’ve also seen online archives disappear and their source content lost. Most people aren’t capable or interested in doing all of that, and then paying for the hosting and updating as they find more materials. If that doesn’t exist, it requires a lot of hop-skip-jumping around and knowing where to look. It should be a golden time for archives, but….that’s a lot of things that need to come together for success. And for older artists, their fanbase dwindles, as does the interest in creating and maintaining an archive.
PHIL >>> Which artifact or page in this volume stands out to you as personally meaningful — maybe unexpected, emotional, or revelatory — and why? ... How has working on this project changed or deepened your own understanding of the Beach Boys and their place in music history?
GARY >>> I was able to share my 1964 tour book signed by the Beach Boys while at a concert I attended in 1980. That's MY book with signatures that I know are real. That's a source of pride. My collection was built with the help of friends like Rick Smith and Andrew Doe, and others. A photo of Dean Torrence taken by my parents in 1978 at his working desk at Kittyhawk,the cover of one of my Jan & Dean volumes, was recently used in a Dean documentary. The producer said it is the only photo he ever found of Dean in the office. That’s another proud moment to share with others, that he found because of my books.
My own understanding of the Beach Boys is enhanced when I read the opinions of other writers and read the interviews. The band members are real people…all musically talented, all with distinct personalities, and all of whom have grown throughout their lives. They have flaws like any human beings. It’s important to read anything in that context to understand them and their contribution.
PHIL >>> You have a score of other volumes from other bands - How was your experience different/similar to compiling the Beach Boys volumes. Any stories/surprises/finds you can share with us?
GARY >>> So far, I've done a volume each for Linda Ronstadt, the Carpenters (featuring their fan newsletter), and the Beatles; three for the Monkees, four for Jan & Dean David Cassidy, eight for the Bay City Rollers and 8 reprinting the entire run of the KFRC newsletter/magazine.
I only had large volumes of original materials for the Beach Boys and Jan & Dean volumes; the rest were from materials sourced from the internet. There would be more volumes but finding great quality full scans for other artists is hard and super time-consuming. They have been much harder to put together. A lot of it isn’t in the resolution that would be best to print physical books…so I did the best I could do. And it's been much harder to find those materials.
No real surprises or interesting stories to reveal, sadly. I’ve discovered there is lots of material that I can’t find access to. It’s frustrating. It’s time consuming. There are so many bands I would love to put out a trio of volumes on…I just can’t find enough good quality material. That includes Jim Croce, Harry Chapin, and others who are underrepresented and have both talent and an interesting story.
PHIL >>> Thanks Gary ... before we conclude, please clear up the mystery - - who is Torrence Berry
GARY >>> Torrence Berry was an obvious pseudonym I used on the first volume or two when I wasn't sure I should use my real name in publishing the volumes. Just a wink and a joke to Jan & Dean.
Gary Zenker
Zenker Marketing
610.883.2346
Thanks for publishing this interview, Phil. I hope that my books made collecting the Beach Boys and/or Jan & Dean a fun and less expensive experience.
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