Let Them Run Wild

“It was funny. That image we were trying to get away from—it’s what saved us,” says Al Jardine, one of the founders of the Beach Boys, at the very end of the new Disney+ documentary about his band. “And that reenergized our career. We got a second chance.” The image is sun, surfing, hot rods, and the California myth, and the context is the summer of 1974: less than two months before Richard Nixon resigned, a Beach Boys greatest hits record known as Endless Summer was delivered to record stores, transforming a wondrous, volatile, and commercially-suspect rock band into the greatest nostalgia venture anyone had ever seen. Endless Summer climbed the charts to number one; the Beach Boys, left for dead as a 60s relic, were back.