Episode
Good ViBritons: How The Beach Boys Changed British Beat
- Published
- Jul 10, 2025
- Duration seconds
- 569
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Summary
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit tonyfletcher.substack.com Welcome to the 18th episode of the CROSSED CHANNELS podcast — a.k.a. the podcast in which music journalists/obsessives Dan Epstein (the Yank) and Tony Fletcher (the Brit) clash and connect over music from either side of the pond. The Beach Boys fit in quite nicely with our whole CROSSED CHANNELS concept, as they were a quintessentially American band that was both profoundly impacted by the British Invasion and hugely influential on a number of British artists. And when their immense US popularity began to decline as Brian moved the band’s music away from surfing and hot rod songs, The Beach Boys experienced a new wave of popularity in the UK — a wave set in motion in May 1966, when The Who’s Keith Moon personally insisted that Beach Boy Bruce Johnston (then visiting London to promote the newly-released Pet Sounds ) join him for an interview segment on ITV’s Ready Steady Go! Of course, The Beatles also show up in this CROSSED CHANNELS episode. The competition between Britain’s biggest import and America’s biggest homegrown band produced incredible music from both camps, at least before the May 1967 release of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band caused Brian Wilson to scrap The Beach Boys’ ambitious Smile project. But even with Brian on the ropes, his band’s post- Pet Sounds output continued to sell remarkably well in the UK, where the influence of Pet Sounds itself also manifested in Billy Nicholls’ remarkable 1968 album Would You Believe , which Dan recently wrote about at his Substack: As always, this full CROSSED CHANNELS episode is only available to paid subscribers of Jagged Time Lapse and/or Tony Fletcher, Wordsmith , though a short preview of the episode is available above f…