Surf Rock

Surf rock grew from the Southern California beach culture of the early 1960s — a world of surfboards, convertibles and teenage leisure that had no prior soundtrack. Dick Dale, the “King of Surf Guitar,” established the instrumental template: heavily reverbed Fender Stratocaster, fast tremolo picking, middle-Eastern scales influenced by his Lebanese heritage, and a guitar technique developed to fill large dance halls without PA systems.

The Beach Boys added the other half of the equation: Brian Wilson’s close four-part harmonies over Chuck Berry-derived guitar rhythms produced “Surfin’ U.S.A.,” “Fun, Fun, Fun” and “I Get Around” — songs that sold the California lifestyle as pop mythology to listeners who had never seen the Pacific. The Ventures contributed instrumental hits (“Walk Don’t Run,” “Wipe Out” with the Surfaris).

The British Invasion of 1964 effectively ended surf rock’s commercial dominance — the Beatles simply absorbed the attention of American teenagers. But the Beach Boys absorbed the Beatles in turn: Brian Wilson heard Rubber Soul and began making Pet Sounds, taking the harmonics and emotional ambition of surf’s vocal tradition into the studio and pushing it as far as pop music had ever gone.