Cultural impact of the Beach Boys

The Beach Boys performing "I Get Around" on The Ed Sullivan Show and wearing their iconic striped shirts and white pants, 1964.

An exhibit showcasing an original "God Only Knows" lyric manuscript at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio

The cultural impact of the Beach Boys had many effects on popular music, artists, and studio recording. While they were at the vanguard of the "California Sound", the Beach Boys helped spur many trends and various musical genres and movements. This includes being one of the first rock groups to exert studio control; inspiring a higher craft in popular music; advancing the field of music production; serving as a primary influence for many punk, alternative, and independent musicians; and being progenitors for a variety of pop/rock subgenres including vocal surf, psychedelic rock, experimental pop, art rock, progressive rock, power pop, and indie rock.

The Beach Boys are one of the most critically acclaimed, commercially successful, and widely influential bands of all time. With record sales estimated at over 100 million, they were one of the few American bands formed prior to the 1964 British Invasion to continue their success, and among artists of the 1960s, they are one of few central figures in the histories of rock. They are considered the most iconic American band while AllMusic stated that their "unerring ability ... made them America's first, best rock band".

Their co-founder and principal composer, Brian Wilson, is widely considered one of the most innovative and significant songwriters of the late 20th century. In 1976, journalist Robin Denselow wrote: "With the 1966 Pet Sounds album and then songs like 'Good Vibrations' and 'Heroes and Villains', Wilson ... [gained the] ability to expand the limits of popular taste." Professor of American history John Robert Greene stated that, along with remaking the ideal of the popular love song, the Beach Boys broke new ground and took rock music away from its casual lyrics and melodic structures into what was then uncharted territory – a principal catalyst for the majority of trends in post-1965 rock music. In 1971, Cue magazine reflected: "In the year and a half that followed Pet Sounds, the Beach Boys were among the vanguard in practically every aspect of the counter culture – psychedelia, art rock, a return to roots, ecology, organic food, the cooled-out sound – anticipating changes that rock didn't accomplish until 1969–1970."

Throughout their career, the Beach Boys struggled with their reputation and audiences, often being dismissed as a superficial pop group due to their initial target demographic, early songs which celebrated a politically unconscious youth culture, and failure to blend in with the hippie movement. In later years, some have reassessed the band, believing that their musical contributions are undervalued.

Overview

Retrospective assessment

The Beach Boys in a promotional shot used for their 1965 single "California Girls"

Professor of cultural studies James M. Curtis wrote in 1987,

… we can say that the Beach Boys represent the outlook and values of white Protestant Anglo-Saxon teenagers in the early sixties. Having said that, we immediately realize that they must mean much more than this. Their stability, their staying power, and their ability to attract new fans prove as much.

Historian Darren R. Reid added in 2013, "Imagine, if you will, a world in which the Beatles were known only for their early hits whilst The White Album or Abbey Road were of interest, or even known, only to the group’s biggest fans, and you will have some grasp of how the Beach Boys’ distorted public image has helped to bury their most important artistic works." In 1967, Lou Reed famously wrote, "Will none of the powers that be realize what Brian Wilson did with the chords?" Pitchfork Media posited, "At some point, you learn that the Beach Boys weren't just a fun 1960s surf band with a run of singles that later came to be used in commercials; at their best, they were making capital-A Art. … Once you've absorbed [Pet Sounds], you find yourself going back through songs like "Don't Worry Baby", "The Warmth of the Sun", and "I Get Around", finding a deeper brilliance where you once heard only pop craftsmanship." Discussing the 2011 release of The Smile Sessions, The Los Angeles Times wrote, "…certainly every library of American recording history needs this; university composition departments, music professors, budding recording engineers and composers should study it."

Online publication NewMusicBox—which normally covers new American music outside the commercial mainstream—argued that the Beach Boys could never earn themselves "the same pride of place in American music history held by other great innovators" because of their mistaken reputation as a "light-hearted party band that drooled over California Girls while on a Surfing Safari," hampered not only by the over-saturation of their early songs being used in film, commercials, and other media, but also "...their latter-day cover-band-version-of-their-former-selves concert appearances." Music theorist Daniel Harrison contests that the group produced work that could "almost" be considered art music in the Western classical tradition, and that group's innovations in the musical language of rock can be compared to those that introduced atonal and other nontraditional techniques into that classical tradition. He explains, "The spirit of experimentation is just as palpable in Smiley Smile as it is in, say, Schoenberg's op. 11 piano pieces." While the group "went into the great void beyond", such notions were not widely acknowledged by rock audiences nor by the classically minded at the time. Harrison concludes: "What influences could these innovations then have? The short answer is, not much. Smiley Smile, Wild Honey, Friends, and 20/20 sound like few other rock albums; they are sui generis. … It must be remembered that the commercial failure of the Beach Boys' experiments was hardly motivation for imitation. In the end, we must conclude that the Beach Boys' late-1960s experiments were not reproducible."

Criticism and rejection

Throughout their career, the Beach Boys struggled with their public image and audiences. Kenneth Partridge blamed the lack of "edginess" on the group's early records for why they're "rarely talked about in the same breath as the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, and when they are, it’s really only because of two albums". Musicologist Charlie Gillett explains, "By 1965, the Beach Boys had become an American pop institution, but although they continued to cultivate a visual image in line with their name and early repertoire, there was a limit to how many different ways Wilson could celebrate the wonders of living in Southern California … Originally, many serious pop fans dismissed the group as trashy pop for kids." Former band publicist Derek Taylor later recalled a conversation with Brian and Dennis where they denied that the group had ever written surf music or songs about cars, and that the Beach Boys had never been involved with the surf and hot rod fads, as Taylor claimed, "…they would not concede." As a result of their initial target demographic and subsequent failures to blend with the hippie movement, the group was viewed as unhip relics, even though they had once been, as biographer Peter Ames Carlin wrote, "the absolute center of the American rock ’n’ roll scene".

I think rock n' roll–the pop scene–is happening. It’s great. But I think basically, the Beach Boys are squares. We’re not happening.

—Brian Wilson in an interview for the failed live album Lei'd in Hawaii, August 1967

Their public image took a cataclysmic hit following their withdrawal from the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival for the reason that they had no new material to play while their forthcoming single and album lay in limbo. Biographer David Leaf explained: "Monterey was a gathering place for the 'far out' sounds of the 'new' rock, and the Beach Boys in concert really had no exotic sounds (excepting 'Good Vibrations') to display. The net result of all this internal and external turmoil was that the Beach Boys didn't go to Monterey, and it is thought that this non-appearance was what really turned the 'underground' tide against them." Author Steven Gaines expressed that their cancellation was seen as "a damning admission that they were washed up [and] unable to compete with the new music." This notion was exacerbated by Rolling Stone writer Jann Wenner, who in contemporary publications criticized Brian Wilson for his oft-repeated "genius" label, which he called a "promotional shuck" and an attempt to compare him with the Beatles.

The Beach Boys with President Ronald Reagan and First Lady Nancy Reagan at the White House, June 12, 1983

The growing complexity of the band's music caused their live performances to suffer in the mid 1960s, when the group began to be derided by audiences for their uniformed striped shirts compounded by low key reproductions of songs that required complicated orchestrations. Because of their early hits, which celebrated a politically unconscious youth culture, the group's legitimacy in rock music became an oft-repeated criticism toward the band. In 1970, the group ceased wearing matching uniforms on stage and began emphasizing political and social awareness. Drawing from their associations with Charles Manson and Ronald Reagan, Erik Davis observed, "The Beach Boys may be the only bridge between those deranged poles. There is a wider range of political and aesthetic sentiments in their records than in any other band in those heady times—like the state [of California], they expand and bloat and contradict themselves." Carlin summarized the group's various phases: "Once surfin' pin-ups, they remade themselves as avant-garde pop artists, then psychedelic oracles. After that they were down-home hippies, then retro-hip icons. Eventually they devolved into none of the above: a kind of perpetual-motion nostalgia machine."

Referring to the groups' reaction to the commercial success of their 1974 greatest hits compilation Endless Summer, Harrison writes, "they returned to the beach, knowing they would never leave it again." Erik Davis wrote that by 1990, "the Beach Boys are either dead, deranged, or dinosaurs; their records are Eurocentric, square, unsampled; they've made too much money to merit hip revisionism." From the same period, Jim Miller wrote, "They have become a figment of their own past, prisoners of their unflagging popularity—incongruous emblems of a sunny myth of eternal youth belied by much of their own best music. … The group is still largely identified with its hits from the early Sixties." Speaking to the Houston Chronicle in August 1982, band member Bruce Johnston said:

I think a lot of critics punish the band for not going beyond "Good Vibrations" ... I think they love the band so much that they get crazy because we don't top ourselves. ... every time there's a new Beach Boy record it competes with so many old Beach Boy records on the radio. ... the audience is so young and they're reacting more to the Beach Boys sound-alike commercials on TV and the three or four really big, quadruple platinum repackage albums. I'm not down on any of that stuff, but ... growth in this business is tough.

California Myth

Main article: California Myth

The 1932 Ford that appeared on the cover to the platinum certified album Little Deuce Coupe (1963).

Their early hits helped raise the profile of the state of California, creating its first major regional style with national significance, and establishing a musical identity for Southern California, as opposed to Hollywood. This also associated the band with surfing, hot-rod racing, and a contemporaneous teenage lifestyle and fantasy.

Influence on music

Recording, composition, and songcraft

Main article: Musicianship of Brian Wilson

Further information: Record producer

Wilson in 2009

Brian Wilson is widely considered one of the most innovative and significant songwriters of the late 20th century, and his work is credited as a major innovation in the field of music production. Through the Beach Boys, "[he] pretty much single-handedly raised the craft of pop songwriting from the awkwardly sub-lunar to the gracefully sublime," writes Jeff Miers of The Buffalo News. According to Erik Davis, "Not only did the Beach Boys write a soundtrack to the early '60s, but Brian let loose a delicate and joyful art pop unique in music history and presaged the mellowness so fundamental to '70s California pop." The A.V. Club wrote that Brian was among "studio rats ... [that] set the pace for how pop music could and should sound in the Flower Power era: at once starry-eyed and wistful."

As one of the first music producer auteurs, he (along with George Martin) popularized the idea of the recording studio as a compositional tool. Only 21-years-old when he received the freedom to produce his own records with total creative autonomy, Wilson ignited an explosion of like-minded California producers, supplanting New York as the center of popular records, and becoming the first rock producer to use the studio as a discrete instrument. The Beach Boys were thus one of the first rock groups to exert studio control. Brother Carl Wilson explained the significance of Brian's control over the group's productions: "Record companies were used to having absolute control over their artists. It was especially nervy, because Brian was a 21-year-old kid with just two albums. It was unheard of. But what could they say? Brian made good records. Music producers after the mid 1960s would draw on Wilson's influence, setting a precedent that allowed bands and artists to enter a recording studio and act as producers, either autonomously, or in conjunction with other like minds. In the late 1960s, Wilson also started a trend of "project" recording, where an artist records by himself instead of going into an established studio.

Professor of American history John Robert Greene stated that "God Only Knows" (co-written with Tony Asher) remade the ideal of the popular love song, while "Sloop John B" and "Pet Sounds" broke new ground and took rock music away from its casual lyrics and melodic structures into what was then uncharted territory. He furthermore called it one factor which spawned the majority of trends in post-1965 rock music, the only others being the Beatles' Rubber Soul (1965) and Revolver (1966), and the 1960s folk movement. "When I Grow Up (To Be a Man)" was one of the first rock songs to explore the subject of impending adulthood. A 1966 article discussing new trends in rock music writes that the Beach Boys popularized a type of drum beat heard in "Surf City", which sounds like a "a locomotive getting up speed", in addition to the method of "suddenly stopping in between the chorus and verse". However, "the more obvious elements of the Beach Boys' style — the nasal quality of their singing voices, their use of a falsetto harmony over a driving, locomotive-like melody, and the sudden chiming in of the whole group on a key line — these characteristic elements were not absorbed into the genre."

Album format

See also: Album Era and Concept album

The dominance of the single as the primary medium of music sales changed with the release of several iconic concept albums in the 1960s, such as A Christmas Gift for You from Phil Spector (1963), the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds (1966), the Mothers of Invention's Freak Out! (1966), and the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967). Music journalist Stephen Davis believed Pet Sounds to be the first rock concept album for its "trenchant cycle of love songs [that] has the emotional impact of a shatteringly evocative novel, and by God if this little record didn't change only the course of popular music, but the course of a few lives in the bargain." The New York Observer wrote that "Pet Sounds proved that a pop group could make an album-length piece comparable with the greatest long-form works of Bernstein, Copland, Ives, and Rodgers and Hammerstein."

Experimentation and pioneering

See also: Experimental pop and Experimental rock

Ethnomusiclogist David Toop posited that the Beach Boys' effect on sound pioneering could be related with the pioneering of Les Baxter, Aphex Twin, Herbie Hancock, King Tubby, and My Bloody Valentine. In 1997, Sean O'Hagan of the High Llamas named Wilson "the most experimental pop pioneer of our time ... The same way Sun Ra was utilizing those ideas in the '60s, those guys [Wilson and collaborator Van Dyke Parks] were actually playing around with pop experimental music". Professor Bill Martin states that the Beach Boys opened a path in rock music "that went from Sgt. Pepper's to Close to the Edge and beyond". He argues that the advancing technology of multitrack recording and mixing boards were more influential to experimental rock than electronic instruments such as the synthesizer, allowing the Beatles and the Beach Boys to become the first crop of non-classically trained musicians to create extended and complex compositions.

Pet Sounds is stated to have expanded the field of music production. Sound engineer Eugene Gearty called "God Only Knows" a perfect example of "how much [Brian] modulated from key to key. He was far more complex than the Beatles and mostly like [Igor] Stravinsky in orchestral music where the key changes and key centers change four or five times within a pop tune, which is unheard of." "Good Vibrations" is acknowledged to have further developed the use of recording studios as a musical instrument. When Pet Sounds was released to a four-month chart stay in the British Top 10, many British groups responded to the album by making more experimental use of recording studio techniques.

According to Domenic Priore, the making of "Good Vibrations" was unlike anything previous in the realms of classical, jazz, international, soundtrack, or any other kind of recording. Author Mark Brend summarized: "Other artists and producers, notably the Beatles and Phil Spector, had used varied instrumentation and multi-tracking to create complex studio productions before. And others, like Roy Orbison, had written complicated pop songs before. But 'Good Vibrations' eclipsed all that came before it, in both its complexity as a production and the liberties it took with conventional notions of how to structure a pop song." AllMusic's John Bush wrote that "Good Vibrations" "announced the coming era of pop experimentation with a rush of riff changes, echo-chamber effects, and intricate harmonies."

Use of theremin

See also: Good Vibrations § Use of theremin, and Electro-Theremin

Further information: Theremin

Their song "I Just Wasn't Made for These Times" is credited for being the first in popular music to feature the Electro-Theremin (Tannerin) and the first in rock music to feature a theremin-like instrument. When the instrument was reused in "Good Vibrations" and released as a single several months later, it prompted an unexpected revival in theremins while increasing awareness of analog synthesizers, leading Moog Music to produce their own brand of ribbon-controlled instruments.

Genres and movements

The Beach Boys and the Beatles are often stated to have directly reciprocated each other's musical developments during the 1960s. Echoing this, Beatles producer George Martin said, "No one made a greater impact on the Beatles than Brian [Wilson]."

The group was among early (or earliest) instigators of hot rod rock, psychedelic rock, acid rock, art rock, art pop, progressive rock, and sunshine pop.

Contributed by the Beach Boys

Vocal surf and hot rod music

Main articles: Vocal surf and Hot rod rock

Surf bands existed prior to the Beach Boys, but none projected a world view the way the Beach Boys did. Cars were also not central to a genre of music until the Beach Boys' success, releasing a string of early hit singles with a surf song on the A-side and a car song on the B-side. The single "409" (1962) is often credited with starting the hot rod music craze which lasted until 1965.

California Sound

Main article: California Sound

Beginning as an extension of the California Myth, the "California Sound" later morphed itself to reflect a more musically ambitious and mature world view, becoming less to do with surfing and cars and more about social consciousness and political awareness. Between 1964 and 1969, it fueled innovation and transition, inspiring artists to tackle largely unmentioned themes such as sexual freedom, black pride, drugs, oppositional politics, and war.

Baroque pop

Main article: Baroque pop

Starting in the 1960s, pop musicians and record producers like Phil Spector and Brian Wilson began placing the harpsichord in the foreground of their arrangements. Slate's Forrest Wickman credits Wilson and Martin as some of the men "most responsible" for the move into baroque pop. Among the orchestral arrangements appearing on Pet Sounds (1966), "God Only Knows" is considered "exquisite baroque pop" by The Sydney Morning Herald.

Psychedelic and progressive

Main articles: Psychedelic music and Progressive music

See also: Psychedelic era, Psychedelic rock, Acid rock, Progressive rock, Progressive pop, and Art rock

The Beach Boys are credited for helping to usher the psychedelic era. They, along with the Beatles, were the only acts to have high-charting psychedelic rock songs at the end of 1967. On "Good Vibrations", Popmatters stated: "Its influence on the ensuing psychedelic and progressive rock movements can’t be overstated, but its legacy as a pop hit is impressive as well." Former Atlantic Records executive Phillip Rauls is quoted saying, "I was in the music business at the time, and my very first recognition of acid rock — we didn't call it progressive rock then — was, of all people, the Beach Boys and the song 'Good Vibrations'."

In the mid-1960s, British newspapers were referring to Pet Sounds as "the most progressive pop album ever". Writing about progressive rock, Bill Martin said: "Many groups and musicians played important roles in this development process, but none more than the Beach Boys and the Beatles ... [They] brought expansions in harmony, instrumentation (and therefore timbre), duration, rhythm, and the use of recording technology. Of these elements, the first and last were the most important in clearing a pathway toward the development of progressive rock." Pet Sounds inspired many progressive rock bands, and in 2010 was listed in Classic Rock's "50 Albums That Built Prog Rock".

Power pop

Main article: Power pop

When Pete Townshend coined power pop, he mentioned the Beach Boys' "Fun, Fun, Fun" as an archetypal example of the genre. Nancy Miler of Spin defined power pop: "that ringing, often melancholic, always melodic music inspired by the Beatles, the Beach Boys, and the Who." AllMusic defines power pop: "the sweet melodicism of the Beatles and the Beach Boys, with the ringing guitars of the Byrds thrown in for good measure."

Anticipated by the Beach Boys

Sunshine pop

Main article: Sunshine pop

Concerning the Beach Boys' involvement with sunshine pop, the orchestral style of Pet Sounds (1966) was imitated by many Los Angeles record producers in the 1960s, but as The A.V. Club notes: "Though [they] ... were hugely influential on the sunshine pop acts that followed, the Beach Boys' music was rarely in step with the genre."

Punk and post-punk

Main articles: Punk rock and Post-punk

Ramones in 1977

In the 1970s, they were paid homage by punk rockers such as Ramones, Patti Smith, and Lester Bangs. Partly due to the Ramones, many acts that Stereogum called "punk or punk-adjacent" showed influence from the Beach Boys: Slickee Boys, Agent Orange, Bad Religion, Shonen Knife, the Queers, Hi-Standard, the Donnas, M.O.D.. and the Vandals. In 2015, Wilson was asked about punk rock and responded: "I don’t know what that is. Punk rock? Punk? What is that? ... Oh yeah. I never went for that. I never went for the fast kind of music. I go for the more medium tempo. Spencer Davis, I liked that."

Writer Carl Wilson (no relation) wrote: "For the artier branches of post-punk, Wilson’s pained vulnerability, his uses of offbeat instruments and his intricate harmonies, not to mention the Smile saga itself, became a touchstone, from Pere Ubu and XTC to REM and the Pixies to U2 and My Bloody Valentine – and any band that’s ever been called 'chamber pop'."

Synthpop and new wave

Main articles: Synthpop and New wave music

Heavily reliant on 1970s analog synthesizers, the Beach Boys' album Love You (1977) has been recognized as an early work of synthpop. Adam Theisian wrote: "What’s especially amazing about Love You, though, is its prescience. It totally anticipates new wave experiments, arty bands like Talking Heads and synth-pop in general years before they hit the mainstream."

Independent music, indie rock, and alt-rock

Main articles: Independent music, indie rock, and alternative rock

The Olivia Tremor Control in 2005

The group eventually bore a strong influence on indie rock, which Smile was a progenitor of. In the 1990s, the Beach Boys received a resurgence of popularity with alternative rock groups and young record-buyers of independent music. According to Sean O'Hagan of the High Llamas, "[they] stopped listening to indie records" in favor of the Beach Boys. Bands who advocated for the band included founding members of the Elephant 6 Collective: Neutral Milk Hotel, the Olivia Tremor Control, the Apples in Stereo, and of Montreal. United by a shared love of the Beach Boys' music, they named Pet Sounds Studio in honor of the group. In Japan, their music affected the work of noise rock bands Seagull Screaming Kiss Her Kiss Her and Melt-Banana.

Chamber pop

Main article: Chamber pop

Chamber pop was influenced by the lush orchestrations of Brian Wilson, Lee Hazlewood, and Burt Bacharach.

Bootlegs

Main article: The Beach Boys bootleg recordings

Further information: Smile (The Beach Boys album) § Bootlegs

In 2003, Stylus Magazine named the Beach Boys' unreleased albums Smile, Landlocked, Adult Child, and Dennis Wilson's Bambu "A Lost Album Category Unto Themselves". In 2011, Smile was voted by Uncut as the number one "greatest bootleg recording of all time". Because of its amorphous nature, Smile inspired a community of fans who create, exchange and disseminate innumerable versions of the album. As visual artist Jeremy Glogan writes: "Smile and conceptual art both emerged from the same Era. Each signaled a radical from what had preceded in popular music and art respectively, and each heralded a shift away from 'the art object', whether LP record or formal art object, as a definitive self-referential statement. ... Smile was to dematerialize only to instantaneously rematerialize with new signification as bootleg, as MP3, as rumor and as myth." Van Dyke Parks has since attributed Smile to be a "pioneering event" for interactive record design.

In popular culture

Main article: The Beach Boys in popular culture

Cover versions

Main article: List of cover versions of Beach Boys songs

Over the years, the group's songs have been the subject of many tribute albums, some of which are contributed by various artists from a wide range of backgrounds including Japanese noise, pop punk, rockabilly, and trip hop.

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• Sanchez, Luis (2014), The Beach Boys' Smile, Bloomsbury Publishing, ISBN 978-1-62356-799-6
• Schinder, Scott (2007). "The Beach Boys". In Schinder, Scott; Schwartz, Andy (eds.). Icons of Rock: An Encyclopedia of the Legends Who Changed Music Forever. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press. ISBN 978-0313338458. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Shephard, Tim; Leonard, Anne, eds. (2013). The Routledge Companion to Music and Visual Culture. New York, NY: Routledge. ISBN 9781135956462. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Stebbins, Jon (2011). The Beach Boys FAQ: All That's Left to Know About America's Band. Backbeat Books. ISBN 9781458429148. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Stebbins, Jon; Rusten, Ian (2013). The Beach Boys in Concert!: The Complete History of America's Band On Tour and Onstage. Backbeat Books. ISBN 978-1617134562. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Pinch, T. J; Trocco, Frank (2009). Analog Days: The Invention and Impact of the Moog Synthesizer. Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-04216-2. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Priore, Domenic (2005). Smile: The Story of Brian Wilson's Lost Masterpiece. London: Sanctuary. ISBN 1860746276. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Shuker, Roy (1994). Understanding Popular Music. Psychology Press. ISBN 978-0-415-10722-8. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Turner, Katherine L. (2015). This is the Sound of Irony: Music, Politics and Popular Culture. Ashgate Publishing Limited. ISBN 978-1-4724-4261-1. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Unterberger, Richie (2009). White Light/White Heat: The Velvet Underground Day by Day. Jawbone. ISBN 978-1-906002-22-0. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Zager, Michael (2011). Music Production: For Producers, Composers, Arrangers, and Students (2nd ed.). Scarecrow Press. ISBN 0-8108-8201-9. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)

Further reading

• Rogers, Jude (June 12, 2008). "The lure of the beach". New Statesman.