by Kevin Cody
Mike Purpus wasn’t happy when surf shop owner Gene Cidello handed him the new Beach Boys album, “Surfer Girl,” in September 1963. The now iconic album cover showed the band from Hawthorne High barefoot in the surfline, wearing matching blue Pendletons and khaki pants. Under their arms was an unwaxed 9-foot surfboard with a one-inch redwood stringer bordered by blue panels that matched their Pendletons.
The 15-year-old Purpus had waited all summer for a new board from Cidello.
“Gene kept telling me the board was coming, and it would be worth the wait. Then I saw why he said that. He loaned my board out to the Beach Boys.”
The future pro surfer acknowledged he was stoked to have his board on the album cover but it didn’t make up for having missed a summer surfing the board.
Purpus had a similarly ambivalent experience a few months later when he met Dennis Wilson, the only member of the Beach Boys who surfed.
“I wanted to hit the surf that morning right away because it was good. But my friend, Sparky Hudson, said we had to wake somebody up first. He took me to an apartment up the stairs behind the Green Store, on 22nd Street. After Sparky banged on the door for about five minutes, a very hung over college looking guy came out and said, “Sparky. It’s early. What do you want?”
“Sparky said, ‘You told me when it’s good to wake you up. It’s good.’ The guy said thanks, and closed the door. As we walked down the stairs, Sparky asked if I knew that was Dennis Wilson. I couldn’t believe a Beach Boy was living in a funky Hermosa apartment. But it turned out to be true. A few days later I wanted to go back, but Sparky said he got in trouble for taking me there and not to tell anyone where Dennis lived.”
An equally iconic Beach Boys album cover, for the myth shrouded “Smile” album, also has a Hermosa origin.
The cartoonish cover shows a couple in the windows of a brick storefront jewelry store that looks like downtown Hermosa Beach.
The artist, Frank Holmes, had been working as a doorman at the Insomniac Coffee House in downtown Hermosa for four years when his friend Van Dyke Parks, who performed at the Insomniac, began collaborating with Wilson on the lyrics for “Smile.”
Parks recommended Holmes to Wilson to do the album’s cover.
“In 1966, at the invitation of Brian Wilson,” Holmes told Brian Chidester, co-author of “Pop Surf Culture” (Santa Monica Press). “I created album cover art and seven booklet illustrations of lyrics for ‘Smile.’”
Four decades later, in November 2009, the Hermosa Historical Society hosted “Insomniac Night II,’ during which Holmes and Insomniac owner Bob Hare were honored. The museum exhibited the cover art and the cartoons Holmes did for “Smile,” which had achieved legendary status, but was not released, except as a bootleg, until 2003.
Beach Boy lead guitarist and vocalist Al Jardine also lived in Hermosa Beach during the band’s formative years, when they played locally. In April, 1962, they played at Redondo High with the Bel-Airs and the Vibrants, and the following month at Mira Costa, just months before their first album, Surfin’ Safari, was released, on October 1, 1962, on Capitol Records. At Mira Costa they opened for a “Variety Revue,” headlined by KTLA kids show magician Skipper Frank. Manhattan Beach Police officers also performed, in a skit titled “Coffee Break, P.D. Style.” The revue was a fundraiser in memory of Manhattan Beach motorcycle officer Richard Giles, who died the preceding month in a traffic accident while pursuing a speeding driver.
In the month after “Surfin’ Safari’s” release, the Beach Boys played the ballroom of the Hermosa Biltmore Hotel for the Omega Fraternity “Thanksgiving Eve Dance and Stomp.”
Wilson appeared without his bandmates at the Redondo Beach Performing Arts Center on New Year’s Eve, 1999, backed by a 17 piece orchestra. But bandmembers did not perform together again in the Beach Cities until six decades after their founding. In May 2019, the Beach Boys headlined the inaugural BeachLife Music Festival, with their equally legendary contemporaries Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead, and Willie Nelson.
That same weekend the Beach Boys were inducted into the Hermosa Beach Surfer Walk of Fame.
Wilson and Jardine were the only founding bandmembers to perform at BeachLife. But they were accompanied by Blondie Chaplin, who joined The Beach Boys in 1972, when he was 21, after moving from Durban, South Africa to Manhattan Beach.
In a story by Jeff Vincent for BeachLife magazine, and Easy Reader, Wilson recalled, “The first song I ever wrote, ‘Surfer Girl,’ was with these beaches in mind… Dennis [Brian’s brother] surfed in Redondo.”
Jardine told Vincent, “Dennis suggested we write a song about surfing, the latest wave-like phenomenon sweeping the Southland, and Brian was waiting in the wings with about 400 songs yet to be written.”
“I caught my first wave in Redondo Beach and shared a flat in Hermosa [Beach] with my high school buddy Gary Winfrey,” Jardine said. “Our passion was folk music, especially the music of the Kingston Trio. We formed a group called The Islanders with his brother Don. I decided to rent some gear and record the group. Later, I rented the same gear to make our first Beach Boy recordings… The Islanders morphed into The Beach Boys…”
In a review of The Beach Boys’ performance at BeachLife, Easy Reader editor Mark McDermott wrote, “Wilson, a famously reticent artist who has bravely weathered an array of health issues for decades, took his place behind a large white piano Saturday night in an unusually ebullient mood.
“It’s good to be back home again,” he said, before the band launched into a set jam-packed with a lot of the music that helped define beach life — including “Surfing U.S.A.” with its Redondo Beach and Haggerty’s references (“Tell the teacher we’re surfin’/Surfin’ U.S.A./Haggerty’s and Swamis/Pacific Palisades/San Onofre and Sunset/Redondo Beach, L.A….”), and a particularly poignant rendition of “Do It Again.” Wilson, who received help from Al Jardine’s son Matt on the high notes for most songs, took “Do It Again” himself. It was clear that the song meant something special to the 76-year-old musical genius:
“It’s automatic when I
Talk with old friends
The conversation turns to
Girls we knew when their
Hair was soft and long and the
Beach was the place to go
With suntanned bodies and
Rays of sunshine the
California girls and a
Beautiful coastline….
Well I’ve been thinking ’bout
All the places we’ve surfed and danced and
All the faces we’ve missed
So let’s get back together
and do it again…” ER
Brian Wilson was born in Inglewood. He lived in Hawthorne. He hated Lennox!