Heroes And Villains: The True Story Of The Beach Boys Review

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Heroes And Villains: The True Story Of The Beach Boys ReviewAfter seeing all of the criticisms here, I was surprised to find that the Gaines book is very skillfully written. I don't think Gaines is a hack, and this is not merely a sloppy expose. In fact, I found it to be more readable than Tim White's bio ("The Nearest Faraway Place"), and not merely because it's more scandalous. By focusing more on the (often sordid) details of the Beach Boys' personal lives, Gaines gives us a much stronger feel for their actual personalities than White.
Nor do I think that Gaines is unsympathetic. For example, he details Dennis' problems, but he also reminds us repeatedly of Dennis' love for his children, and recounts details of Dennis' touching reconnection with his father before he died. He portrays Dennis as a charismatic individual who simply can't control his impulses. And by all accounts, that's what Dennis was. Gaines is sympathetic, but neither does he flinch from the truth.
I've been around musicians and I can tell you that Gaines' portrayals, sordid as they may seem, probably aren't far off the mark. If the book often seems sordid, it's largely because the subjects' lives were often sordid (Uh . . . how many times have they been married? How many times have they been in rehab? Did Dennis really marry Mike's illegitimate daughter? Afraid so).
I can't vouch for Gaines' accuracy, or the veracity of his sources, but it appears to me that Gaines tries to be even-handed. When an allegation is contested, he seems to take pains to point this out.
White's book is more of a broad social history (it's subtitled "The Beach Boys and the Southern California Experience"). He goes into great detail about the Wilson geneology (all the way back to Ohio and Kansas), about their migration to California, about the settlement and development of LA, and about the evolution of the surf and car subcultures that the Beach Boys so beautifully evoked. It's a well-written and worthwhile account. However, one gets the impression that White may be too loyal to his subjects (perhaps because he wants to maintain access - he has a longstanding relationship with the family). When he writes of their darker moments, he usually does so with a great sense of detachment, as though he would rather not have to mention them at all. For example, he glosses over Dennis' involvement with Charles Manson, not even mentioning that Manson and his crew had lived in Dennis' house not long before the murders. Now, it may seem kind of him to avoid the sordid details, but if you're going to write credibly about "The Southern California Experience", you can't very well avoid exploring darker subjects like Manson, especially when one of your subjects became intimately involved in that scene.
While I recommend the White book, it left me with the feeling that I hadn't really gotten to know the characters as flesh and blood individuals. Gaines may overdo it at times, but I like the more intimate feel of his book.
I would note that Gaines' book ends just after Landy has resumed his treatment of Brian, and Gaines suggests that this is a positive thing. It may have seemed so at the time, but I imagine that Gaines would like to revisit that topic.
Ideally, one would have time to read both books - Gaines for his details about the individuals, and White for his details about the milieu in which The Beach Boys first flowered.Heroes And Villains: The True Story Of The Beach Boys Overview

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