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After recording over 30 different songs and going through several album titles, their first LP for Reprise, "Sunflower", was released on August 31, 1970. "Sunflower" featured a strong group presence with significant writing contributions from all six band members. Brian was active during this period, writing or co-writing seven of "Sunflower"'s 12 songs and performing at half of the band's domestic concerts in 1970. The album received critical acclaim in both the US and the UK. This was offset by the album reaching only number 151 on US record charts during a four-week stay, becoming one of the worst-selling of the Beach Boys' albums at that point. Fans generally regard the LP as the Beach Boys' finest post-"Pet Sounds" album. In 2003, it placed at number 380 on "Rolling Stone"s "Greatest Albums of All Time" list. In mid-1970, the Beach Boys hired radio presenter Jack Rieley as their manager. One of his initiatives was to encourage the band to record songs featuring more socially conscious lyrics. He also requested the completion of "Smile" track "Surf's Up" and arranged a guest appearance at a Grateful Dead concert at Bill Graham's Fillmore East in April 1971 to foreground the Beach Boys' transition into the counterculture. During this time, the group ceased wearing matching uniforms on stage, while Dennis took time to star alongside James Taylor, Laurie Bird, and Warren Oates in the cult film "Two-Lane Blacktop", released in 1971. Later in 1971, Dennis injured his hand, leaving him temporarily unable to play the drums. He continued in the band, singing and occasionally playing keyboards, while Ricky Fataar, formally of the Flames, took over on drums. In July, the American music press rated the Beach Boys "the hottest grossing act" in the country, alongside Grand Funk Railroad. The band filmed a concert for ABC-TV in Central Park, which aired as "Good Vibrations from Central Park" on August 19.
On August 30, the band released "Surf's Up", which was moderately successful, reaching the US top-thirty, a marked improvement over their recent releases. While the record charted, the Beach Boys added to their renewed fame by performing a near-sellout set at Carnegie Hall; their live shows during this era included reworked arrangements of many of their previous songs, with their set lists culling from "Pet Sounds" and "Smile". On October 28, the Beach Boys were the featured cover story on that date's issue of "Rolling Stone". It included the first part of a lengthy two-part interview, titled "The Beach Boys: A California Saga", conducted by Tom Nolan and David Felton. Bruce Johnston left the Beach Boys in early 1972, with Fataar and another ex-Flames member, singer and guitarist Blondie Chaplin, becoming official members of the band. The new line-up released "Carl and the Passions – "So Tough"" in May 1972. The original US release was a double album, the second disc being a reissue of "Pet Sounds". After the upswing of "Surf's Up", "Carl and the Passions" was relatively unsuccessful in the US, charting at number 50. It was more successful in the UK, where it was issued as a single album without "Pet Sounds", peaking at number 25. The next album, "Holland", was released in January 1973. Reprise initially rejected the album, feeling it lacked a strong single. Following the intervention of Van Dyke Parks, this resulted in the inclusion of "Sail On, Sailor". Reprise approved, and the resulting album peaked at number 37. Brian's musical children's story, "Mount Vernon and Fairway", was included with the album as a bonus EP.
Greatest hits LPs, touring resurgence, and Caribou sessions. After "Holland", the group maintained a touring regimen, captured on the double live album "The Beach Boys in Concert" released in November 1973, but recorded very little in the studio through 1975. Several months earlier, they had announced that they would complete "Smile", but this never came to fruition, and plans for its release were once again abandoned. Following Murry's death in June 1973, Brian retreated into his bedroom and withdrew further into drug abuse, alcoholism, chain smoking, and overeating. In October, the band dismissed Rieley as manager and appointed Mike Love's brother, Stephen, and Chicago manager James William Guercio. Chaplin and Fataar left the band in December 1973 and November 1974, respectively, with Dennis returning to drums following Fataar's departure. The Beach Boys' greatest hits compilation album "Endless Summer" was released in June 1974 to unexpected success, becoming the band's second number 1 US album in October. The LP had a 155-week chart run, selling over 3 million copies. The Beach Boys became the number-one act in the US, propelling themselves from opening for Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young in the summer of 1974 to headliners selling out basketball arenas in a matter of weeks. Guercio prevailed upon the group to swap out newer songs with older material in their concert setlists, partly to accommodate their growing audience and the demand for their early hits. Later in the year, members of the band appeared as guests on Chicago's hit "Wishing You Were Here". At the end of 1974, "Rolling Stone" proclaimed the Beach Boys "Band of the Year" based on the strength of their live performances.
To capitalize on their sudden resurgence in popularity, the Beach Boys accepted Guercio's invitation to record their next Reprise album at his Caribou Ranch studio, located around the mountains of Nederland, Colorado. These October 1974 sessions marked the group's return to the studio after a 21-month period of virtual inactivity, but the proceedings were cut short after Brian had insisted on returning to his home in Los Angeles. With the project put on hold, the Beach Boys spent most of the next year on the road playing college football stadiums and basketball arenas. The only Beach Boys recording of 1974 to see release at the time was the Christmas single "Child of Winter", recorded upon the group's return to Los Angeles in November and released the following month. Over the summer of 1975, the touring group played a co-headlining series of concert dates with Chicago, a pairing that was nicknamed "Beachago". The tour was massively successful and restored the Beach Boys' profitability to what it had been in the mid-1960s. Although another joint tour with Chicago had been planned for the summer of 1976, the Beach Boys' association with Guercio and his Caribou Management company ended in early 1976. Stephen Love subsequently took over as the band's "de facto" business manager.
"15 Big Ones", "Love You", and "Adult/Child". Early in 1975, Brian signed a production deal with California Music, a Los Angeles collective that included Bruce Johnston and Gary Usher, but was drawn away by the Beach Boys' pressing demands for a new album. In October, Marilyn persuaded Brian to admit himself to the care of psychologist Eugene Landy, who kept him from indulging in substance abuse with constant supervision. Brian was kept in the program until December 1976. At the end of January 1976, the Beach Boys returned to the studio with Brian producing once again. Brian decided the band should do an album of rock and roll and doo wop standards. Carl and Dennis disagreed, feeling that an album of originals was far more ideal, while Love and Jardine wanted the album out as quickly as possible. To highlight Brian's recovery and his return to writing and producing, Stephen launched a media campaign and paid the Rogers & Cowan publicity agency $3,500 per month to implement it. The band also commissioned an NBC-TV special, later known as "", that was produced by "NBC's Saturday Night" creator Lorne Michaels.
Released on July 5, 1976, "15 Big Ones" was generally disliked by fans and critics, as well as Carl and Dennis, who disparaged the album to the press. The album peaked at number 8 in the US, becoming their first top-ten album of new material since "Pet Sounds", and their highest-charting studio album since "Summer Days (And Summer Nights!!)". Lead single "Rock and Roll Music" peaked at number 5 – their highest chart ranking since "Good Vibrations". From late-1976 to early-1977, Brian made sporadic public appearances and produced the band's next album, "The Beach Boys Love You". He regarded it as a spiritual successor to "Pet Sounds", namely because of the autobiographical lyrics. Released on April 11, 1977, "Love You" peaked at number 53 in the US and number 28 in the UK. Critically, it was widely praised, though it initially met with polarized reactions from the public. Numerous esteemed critics penned favorable reviews, but casual listeners generally found the album's idiosyncratic sound to be a detriment.
"Adult/Child", the intended follow-up to "Love You", was completed, but the release was vetoed by Love and Jardine. According to Stan Love, when his brother Mike heard the album, Mike turned to Brian and asked: "What the fuck are you doing?" Some of the unreleased songs on "Adult/Child" later saw individual release on subsequent Beach Boys albums and compilations. Following this period, his concert appearances with the band gradually diminished and their performances were occasionally erratic. CBS signing and "M.I.U. Album". At the beginning of 1977, the Beach Boys had enjoyed their most lucrative concert tours ever, with the band playing in packed stadiums and earning up to $150,000 per show. Concurrently, the band was the subject of a record company bidding war, as their contract with Warner Bros. had been set to expire soon. Stephen Love arranged for the Beach Boys to sign an $8 million deal with CBS Records on March 1. Numerous stipulations were given in the CBS contract, including that Brian was required to write at least four songs per album, co-write at least 70% of all the tracks, and produce or co-produce alongside his brothers. Another part of the deal required the group to play thirty concerts a year in the U.S., in addition to one tour in Australia and Japan, and two tours in Europe.
Within weeks of the CBS contract, the band dismissed Stephen, with one of the alleged reasons being that Mike had not permitted Stephen to sign on his behalf while at a TM retreat in Switzerland. For Stephen's replacement, the group hired Carl's friend Henry Lazarus, an entertainment business owner that had no prior experience in the music industry. Lazarus arranged a major European tour for the Beach Boys, starting in late July, with stops in Germany, Switzerland, and France. Due to poor planning, the tour was cancelled shortly before it began. The band dismissed Lazarus and were sued by many of the concert promoters, with losses of $200,000 in preliminary expenses and $550,000 in potential revenue. In July, the Beach Boys played a concert at Wembley Stadium that was notable for the fact that, during the show, Mike attacked Brian with a piano bench onstage in front of over 15,000 attendees. In August, Mike and Jardine persuaded Stephen to return as the group's manager, a decision that Carl and Dennis had strongly opposed. By this point, the band had effectively split into two camps; Dennis and Carl on one side, Mike and Jardine on the other, with Brian remaining neutral. These two opposing contingents within the group – known among their associates as the "free-livers" and the "meditators" – were traveling in different planes, using different hotels, and rarely speaking to each other. According to Love, "the terms 'smokers' and 'nonsmokers' were also used".
On September 3, after completing the final date of a northeastern US tour, the internal wrangling came to a head. Following a confrontation on an airport apron – a spectacle that a bystanding "Rolling Stone" journalist compared to the ending of "Casablanca" – Dennis declared that he had left the band. The group was broken up until a meeting at Brian's house on September 17. In light of the lucrative CBS contract, the parties negotiated a settlement resulting in Love gaining control of Brian's vote in the group, allowing Love and Jardine to outvote Carl and Dennis on any matter. The group had still owed one more album for Reprise. Released in September 1978, "M.I.U. Album" was recorded at Maharishi International University in Iowa at the suggestion of Love. The band originally attempted to record a Christmas album, to be titled "Merry Christmas from the Beach Boys", but this idea was rejected by Reprise. These Christmas recordings would eventually be released in 1998 as part of the "Ultimate Christmas" compilation album. Dennis and Carl made limited contributions to "M.I.U. Album"; the album was produced by Jardine and Ron Altbach, with Brian credited as "executive producer". Dennis started to withdraw from the group to focus on his second solo album, "Bambu", which was shelved just as alcoholism and marital problems overcame all three Wilson brothers. Carl appeared intoxicated during concerts (especially at appearances for their 1978 Australia tour) and Brian gradually slid back into addiction and an unhealthy lifestyle. After the tour, Stephen was dismissed in part due to an incident in which Brian's caregivers, Rocky Pamplin and Stan Love, physically assaulted Dennis. 1978–1998: Continued recording and Brian's estrangement.
"L.A. (Light Album)" and "Keepin' the Summer Alive". The group's first two albums for CBS, 1979's "L.A. (Light Album)" and 1980's "Keepin' the Summer Alive", struggled in the US, charting at 100 and 75 respectively, though the band did manage a top-forty single from "L.A." with "Good Timin'". The recording of these albums saw Bruce Johnston return to the band, initially solely as a producer and eventually as a full-time band member. In-between the two albums, the group contributed the song "It's a Beautiful Day" to the soundtrack of the film "Americathon". In an April 1980 interview, Carl reflected that "the last two years have been the most important and difficult time of our career. We were at the ultimate crossroads. We had to decide whether what we had been involved in since we were teenagers had lost its meaning. We asked ourselves and each other the difficult questions we'd often avoided in the past." By the next year, he left the touring group because of unhappiness with the band's nostalgia format and lackluster live performances, subsequently pursuing a solo career. He stated: "I haven't quit the Beach Boys but I do not plan on touring with them until they decide that 1981 means as much to them as 1961." Carl returned in May 1982, after approximately 14 months of being away, on the condition that the group reconsider their rehearsal and touring policies and refrain from "Las Vegas-type" engagements.
On June 21, 1980, the Beach Boys performed a concert at Knebworth, England, which featured a slightly intoxicated Dennis. The concert would later be released as a live album titled "" in 2002. In 1981, the band scored a surprise US top-twenty hit when their cover of the Del-Vikings' "Come Go with Me", from the three year old "M.I.U. Album", was released as a single from "Ten Years of Harmony", a double compilation album focusing on the Reprise and CBS years. In late 1982, Eugene Landy was hired once more as Brian's therapist. This involved removing him from the group on November 5, 1982, at the behest of Carl, Love, and Jardine, in addition to putting him on a strict diet and health regimen. Coupled with counseling sessions that retaught him basic social etiquette, this therapy restored Brian's physical health, slimming down from to . Death of Dennis, "The Beach Boys", and "Still Cruisin". By the late 1970s and early 1980s, Dennis had been embroiled in successive failed romantic relationships, including a tense and short-lived relationship with Fleetwood Mac's Christine McVie, and found himself in severe economic trouble resulting in the sale of Brother Studios, established by the Wilson brothers in 1974 and where "Pacific Ocean Blue" was produced, and the forfeiture of his beloved yacht. To cope with the combination of devastating losses, Dennis heavily abused alcohol, cocaine, and heroin and was, by 1983, homeless and lived a nomadic lifestyle. He was often seen spending much of his time wandering the Los Angeles coast and often missed Beach Boys performances. By this point, he had lost his voice and much of his ability to play drums.
That year, tensions between Dennis and Love escalated to the point that each filed a restraining order against the other. Following Brian's readmission for Landy's treatment, Dennis was given an ultimatum after his last performance in November to check into rehab for his alcohol problems or be banned from performing live with the band again. Dennis checked into rehab for his chance to get sober, but on December 28, he drowned at the age of 39 in Marina del Rey while diving from a friend's boat trying to recover items that he had previously thrown overboard in a fit of rage. The Beach Boys spent the next several years touring, often playing in front of large audiences, and recording songs for film soundtracks and various artists compilations. One new studio album, the self-titled "The Beach Boys", appeared in 1985 and proved a modest success, becoming their highest-charting album in the US since "15 Big Ones". "The Beach Boys" was the group's final album for CBS. The following year they returned to Capitol with a 25th anniversary greatest hits album "Made in U.S.A", which featured two new tracks, "Rock 'n' Roll to the Rescue" and a cover of the Mamas and the Papas' "California Dreamin'", with the latter featuring Roger McGuinn of the Byrds on lead guitar. "Made in U.S.A" eventually went double platinum.
Commenting on his relationship to the band in 1988, Brian said that he avoided his family at Landy's suggestion, adding that "Although we stay together as a group, as people we're a far cry from friends." Mike denied the accusation that he and the band were keeping Brian from participating with the group. In 1987 the band scored a top-twenty single in collaboration with rap group the Fat Boys, on their cover of the Surfaris' "Wipeout!". The following year, the Beach Boys unexpectedly claimed their first US number 1 single in 22 years with "Kokomo", which topped the chart for one week. The track was featured in the film "Cocktail". Both "Wipeout!" and "Kokomo" were included on the band's next album, 1989's "Still Cruisin"', which went platinum in the US. During 1990 and 1991, the group's original Capitol-era albums ("Surfin' Safari" through "Live in London") were released on CD for the first time, with "The Beach Boys' Christmas Album" and "Pet Sounds" being individual titles, and the remaining albums issued as two-fers (two albums on one CD). The Reprise and CBS albums ("Sunflower" through "The Beach Boys") would eventually receive the same treatment in 2000. In 1991 the band contributed a cover of "Crocodile Rock" to the Elton John and Bernie Taupin tribute album "".
Lawsuits, "Summer in Paradise", and "Stars and Stripes, Vol. 1". Carlin summarized: "Once surfin' pin-ups, they remade themselves as avant-garde pop artists, then psychedelic oracles. After that they were down-home hippies, then retro-hip icons. Eventually they devolved into none of the above: a kind of perpetual-motion nostalgia machine." Music journalist Erik Davis wrote in 1990: "the Beach Boys are either dead, deranged, or dinosaurs; their records are Eurocentric, square, unsampled; they've made too much money to merit hip revisionism". In 1992, critic Jim Miller wrote: "They have become a figment of their own past, prisoners of their unflagging popularity—incongruous emblems of a sunny myth of eternal youth belied by much of their own best music. ... The group is still largely identified with its hits from the early Sixties." Love filed a defamation lawsuit against Brian due to how he was presented in Brian's 1992 memoir "". Its publisher HarperCollins settled the suit for $1.5 million. He said that the suit allowed his lawyer "to gain access to the transcripts of Brian's interviews with his [book] collaborator, Todd Gold. Those interviews affirmed—according to Brian—that I had been the inspiration of the group and that I had written many of the songs that [would soon be] in dispute." Other defamation lawsuits were filed by Carl, Brother Records, and the Wilsons' mother Audree. With Love and Brian unable to determine exactly what Love was properly owed in royalties and songwriting credits, Love sued Brian in 1992, awarding him $5 million and a share of future royalties from Wilson. Thirty-five of the group's songs were then amended to credit Love. He later called it "almost certainly the largest case of fraud in music history".
After dissolving his relationship with Landy, Brian phoned Sire Records staff producer Andy Paley to collaborate on new material tentatively for the Beach Boys. After losing the songwriting credits lawsuit with Love, Brian told "MOJO" in February 1995: "Mike and I are just cool. There's a lot of shit Andy and I got written for him. I just had to get through that goddamn trial!" In April, it was unclear whether the project would turn into a Wilson solo album, a Beach Boys album, or a combination of the two. The project ultimately disintegrated. Instead, Brian and his bandmates recorded "Stars and Stripes Vol. 1", an album of country music stars covering Beach Boys songs, with co-production helmed by River North Records owner Joe Thomas. Afterward, the group discussed finishing the album "Smile", but Carl rejected the idea, fearing that it would cause Brian another nervous breakdown. 1997 saw the release of the critically-acclaimed 4-CD box set "The Pet Sounds Sessions". A further archival release, "Ultimate Christmas", followed in 1998. 1998–present: Love-led tours and brief reunion.
Carl's death and band name litigation. Early in 1997, Carl was diagnosed with lung and brain cancer after years of heavy smoking. Despite his terminal condition, Carl continued to perform with the band on its summer tour (a double-bill with the band Chicago) while undergoing chemotherapy. During performances, he sat on a stool and needed oxygen after every song. Carl died on February 6, 1998, at the age of 51, two months after the death of the Wilsons' mother, Audree. After Carl's death, Jardine left the touring line-up and began to perform regularly with his band "Beach Boys: Family & Friends" until he ran into legal issues for using the name without license. Meanwhile, Jardine sued Love, claiming that he had been excluded from their concerts, BRI, through its longtime attorney, Ed McPherson, sued Jardine in Federal Court. Jardine, in turn, counter-claimed against BRI for wrongful termination. Courts ruled in Love's favor, denying Jardine the use of the Beach Boys name in any fashion. However, Jardine proceeded to appeal this decision in addition to seeking $4 million in damages. The California Court of Appeal proceeded to rule that "Love acted wrongfully in freezing Jardine out of touring under the Beach Boys name", allowing Jardine to continue with his lawsuit. The case ended up being settled outside of court with the terms not disclosed. BRI ultimately prevailed.
Jardine's final appearance with the band for more than a decade occurred on May 9, 1998, which was the final official Beach Boys show performed before the license dispute. During the license dispute, Love (with Marks) toured as "The California Beach Band"; it was previously believed he did so "America's Band", but this has since been disproven. Love then continued touring with Johnston (and David Marks, until he left the band again in 1999, due to health issues when he was diagnosed with hepatitis C), after securing a license from BRI, with the first performance of the 'reorganized' Love and Johnston-led touring band on July 4, 1998. In 2000, ABC-TV premiered a two-part television miniseries, "", that dramatized the Beach Boys' story. It was produced by "Full House" actor John Stamos, and was criticized by numerous parties, including Brian Wilson, for historical inaccuracies. "", a greatest hits compilation, was released in 2003, eventually going multi-platinum. In 2004, Wilson recorded and released his solo album "Brian Wilson Presents Smile", a reinterpretation of the unfinished "Smile" project. That September, Wilson issued a free CD through the "Mail On Sunday" that included Beach Boys songs he had recently rerecorded, five of which he co-authored with Love. The 10 track compilation had 2.6 million copies distributed and prompted Love to file a lawsuit in November 2005; he claimed the promotion hurt the sales of the original recordings and that his image was used for the CD. Wilson's wife Melinda alleged that, during the deposition, Love turned to Wilson and remarked: "you better start writing a real big hit because you're going to have to write me a real big check". Love's suit was dismissed in 2007 when a judge determined that there were no triable issues and that the case was without merit.
In 2006, Brian Wilson, Love, Jardine, Marks, and Johnston participated in a non-performing reunion on the rooftop of the Capitol Records building in Los Angeles to celebrate that "Sounds of Summer" had been certified double-platinum. Later that year, Jardine joined Brian Wilson and his band for a short tour celebrating the 40th anniversary of "Pet Sounds". In 2008, Marks briefly reunited with Love and Johnston's touring band for a tour of Europe. In 2010, Jardine released "A Postcard from California", his solo debut, in June 2010 (re-released with two extra tracks on April 3, 2012). The album features contributions from Beach Boys Brian Wilson, Carl Wilson (posthumously), Bruce Johnston, David Marks, and Mike Love. Other guests with Beach Boys connections included Glen Campbell, Scott Mathews, Stephen Kalinich, and Gerry Beckley and Dewey Bunnell of America. Also in 2010, Brian Wilson and Jardine sang on "We Are the World 25: for Haiti", a new recording of "We Are the World" (with partially revised lyrics), which was released as a charity single to benefit the population of Haiti.
Jardine made his first appearance with the Beach Boys touring band in more than 10 years in 2011 at a tribute concert for Ronald Reagan's 100th birthday; at this concert, he sang lead on "Help Me, Rhonda" and "Sloop John B". He made a handful of other appearances with Love and Johnston's touring band in preparation for a reunion. "The Smile Sessions", "That's Why God Made the Radio", and 50th anniversary reunion tour. On October 31, 2011, Capitol released a double album and box set dedicated to the "Smile" recordings in the form of "The Smile Sessions". The album garnered universal critical acclaim and charted in both the US "Billboard" and UK top-thirty. It went on to win Best Historical Album at the 2013 Grammy Awards. On December 16, 2011, it was announced that Wilson, Love, Jardine, Johnston, and David Marks would reunite for a new album and 50th anniversary tour. On February 12, 2012, the Beach Boys performed at the 2012 Grammy Awards, in what was billed as a "special performance" by organizers. It marked the group's first live performance to include Wilson since 1996, Jardine since 1998, and Marks since 1999. Released on June 5, "That's Why God Made the Radio" debuted at number 3 on the US charts, expanding the group's span of "Billboard" 200 top-ten albums across 49 years and one week, passing the Beatles with 47 years of top-ten albums. Critics generally regarded the album as an "uneven" collection, with most of the praise centered on its closing musical suite.
During the tour, in May 2012, when asked about the future held for the band and its reunion after the scheduled end of the tour in September, Love stated that "We're looking at our present and future. I think we're going to be doing this again with Brian for a long time." Wilson said that he had begun planning for another Beach Boys album for the band would record after the tour. On June 1, 2012, Love received an e-mail from Ledbetter stating "no more shows for Wilson". Love then began accepting invitations for when the reunion was over. Johnston told reporter Mark Dillon in mid-June that the current tour was "a one-time event. You're not going to see this next year. I'm busy next year doing my thing with Mike." On June 25, Ledbetter sent another e-mail asking to disregard her last message, but by then, Love claimed that "it was too late. We had booked other concerts, and promoters had begun selling tickets." Despite this, in July, Love stated: "There's talk of us going and doing a return to the Grammys next year, and there's talk about doing another album together. There's nothing in stone, but there's a lot of ideas being floated around. So after this year, after completing the 50th anniversary reunion, we'll entertain doing some more studio work and see what we can come up with and can do in the future." Love said that Wilson and producer Joe Thomas had over 80 hours of material recorded, much of it culled from material they were working on around the time of Wilson's 1998 "Imagination" album that "were always songs he had earmarked for the Beach Boys" and that their label Capitol Records was excited by the band's reunion and was encouraging the band for more new music and more tour dates.
Ultimately, the reunion tour ended in September 2012 as planned, after a final show on September 28, but amid erroneous rumors that Love had dismissed Wilson from the Beach Boys. At this time, Love and Johnston had announced via a press release that following the end of the reunion tour the Beach Boys would revert to the pre-reunion tour Love/Johnston lineup, without Brian, Jardine, or Marks, all of whom expressed surprise. Although such dates were noted in a late June issue of "Rolling Stone", it was widely reported that the three had been "fired". Love later wrote that the end of the reunion came partly as a result of 'interference' from Brian's wife and manager Melinda Ledbetter-Wilson and that he (Love) "had wanted to send out a joint press release, between Brian and me, formally announcing the end of the reunion tour on September 28. But I couldn't get Brian's management team on board..." On October 5, Love responded in a self-written press release to the "Los Angeles Times" stating he "did not fire Brian Wilson from the Beach Boys. I cannot fire Brian Wilson from the Beach Boys ... I do not have such authority. And even if I did, I would never fire Brian Wilson from the Beach Boys." He claimed that nobody in the band "wanted to do a 50th anniversary tour that lasted 10 years" and that its limited run "was long agreed upon". On October 9, Wilson and Jardine submitted a written response to the rumors stating: "I was completely blindsided by his press release ... We hadn't even discussed as a band what we were going to do with all the offers that were coming in for more 50th shows."
From late September, Love and Johnston continued to perform under the Beach Boys name, while Wilson, Jardine, and Marks toured as a trio in 2013, and a subsequent tour with guitarist Jeff Beck also included Blondie Chaplin at select dates. Wilson and Jardine continued to tour together in 2014 and following years, often joined by Chaplin; Marks declined to join them after 2013. Copyright extension releases and occasional partial reunions. Responding to a new European Union copyright law that extended copyright to 70 years for recordings that were published within 50 years after they were made, Capitol began issuing annual 50-year anniversary "copyright extension" releases of Beach Boys recordings, starting with "The Big Beat 1963" (2013). In June 2013, Wilson's website announced that he was recording and self-producing new material with Jardine, Marks, Chaplin, Don Was, and Jeff Beck. It stated that the material might be split into three albums: one of new pop songs, another of mostly instrumental tracks with Beck, and another of interwoven tracks dubbed "the suite" which initially began form as the closing four tracks of "That's Why God Made the Radio". In January 2014, Wilson declared in an interview that the Beck collaborations would not be released. Released in April 2015, "No Pier Pressure" marked another collaboration between Wilson and Joe Thomas, featuring guest appearances from Jardine, Marks, Chaplin, and others.
Jardine, Marks, Johnston and Love appeared together at the 2014 Ella Awards Ceremony, where Love was honored for his work as a singer. In 2015, "Soundstage" aired an episode featuring Wilson performing with Jardine, Chaplin, and Ricky Fataar at The Venetian in Las Vegas. In April, when asked if he was interested in making music with Love again, Wilson replied: "I don't think so, no", adding in July that he "doesn't talk to the Beach Boys [or] Mike Love". In 2016, Wilson and Jardine embarked on the Pet Sounds 50th Anniversary World Tour, promoted as Wilson's final performances of the album, with Chaplin appearing as a special guest at all dates on select songs. That same year, Love and Wilson each published memoirs, "" and "I Am Brian Wilson", respectively. Asked about negative comments that Wilson made about him in the book, Love challenged the legitimacy of statements attributed to Wilson in the book and in the press. In an interview with "Rolling Stone" conducted in June 2016, Wilson said he would like to try to repair his relationship with Love and collaborate with him again. In January 2017, Love said: "If it were possible to make it just Brian and I, and have it under control and done better than what happened in 2012, then yeah, I'd be open to something."
In July 2018, Wilson, Jardine, Love, Johnston, and Marks reunited for a one-off Q&A session moderated by director Rob Reiner at the Capitol Records Tower in Los Angeles. It was the first time the band had appeared together in public since their 2012 tour. That December, Love described his new holiday album, "Reason for the Season", as a "message to Brian" and said that he "would love nothing more than to get together with Brian and do some music". In 2019, Wilson and Jardine (with Chaplin) embarked on a co-headlining tour with the Zombies, performing selections from "Friends" and "Surf's Up". In February 2020, Wilson and Jardine's official social media pages encouraged fans to boycott the band's music after it was announced that Love's Beach Boys would perform at the Safari Club International Convention in Reno, Nevada on animal rights grounds. The concert proceeded despite online protests, as Love issued a statement that said his group has always supported "freedom of thought and expression as a fundamental tenet of our rights as Americans". In October, Love and Johnston's Beach Boys performed at a fundraiser for Donald Trump's presidential re-election campaign; Wilson and Jardine again issued a statement that they had not been informed about this performance and did not support it.
Selling of the band's intellectual property and 60th anniversary. In March 2020, Jardine was asked about a possible reunion and responded that the band would reunite for a string of live performances in 2021, although he believed a new album was unlikely. In response to reunion rumors, Love said in May that he was open to a 60th anniversary tour, although Wilson has "some serious health issues", while Wilson's manager Jean Sievers commented that no one had spoken to Wilson about such a tour. In February 2021, it was announced that Brian Wilson, Love, Jardine, and the estate of Carl Wilson had sold a majority stake in the band's intellectual property to Irving Azoff and his new company Iconic Artists Group; rumors of a 60th anniversary reunion were again discussed. In April 2021, Omnivore Recordings released "California Music Presents Add Some Music", an album featuring Love, Jardine, Marks, Johnston, and several children of the original Beach Boys (most notably on a re-recording of The Beach Boys' "Add Some Music to Your Day" from 1970's "Sunflower"). In August, Capitol released the box set "Feel Flows: The Sunflower & Surf's Up Sessions 1969–1971". In 2022, the group was expected to participate in a "60th anniversary celebration". Azoff stated in an interview from May 2021: "We're going to announce a major deal with a streamer for the definitive documentary on The Beach Boys and a 60th anniversary celebration. We're planning a tribute concert affiliated with the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and SiriusXM, with amazing acts. That's adding value, and that's why I invested in The Beach Boys."
On Mike Love's 81st birthday, Jardine once again hinted at a possible reunion on his Facebook page by stating that he was "looking forward" to seeing Love at the "reunion". However, while a reunion ultimately did not occur in 2022, Capitol released the "Sail On Sailor – 1972" box set in December; following on from the "Feel Flows" box set, which focused on "Sunflower" and "Surf's Up", "Sail On Sailor" focused on "Carl and the Passions" and "Holland". In January 2023, the tribute concert mentioned by Azoff in 2021 was announced as being part of the "Grammys Salute" series of televised tribute concerts. On February 8—three days after the 2023 Grammy award ceremonies, "A Grammy Salute to the Beach Boys" was recorded at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, California and subsequently aired as a two-hour special on CBS on April 9. Present for the taping were Wilson, Jardine, Marks, Johnston, and Love—this time not as performers but as featured guests, seated in a luxury box at the theatre, overlooking tribute performances covering the gamut of their catalog by mostly contemporary artists. According to "Billboard", the program had 5.18 million viewers.
In July 2023, the Beach Boys announced a limited edition to their book, "The Beach Boys by The Beach Boys", set to be released in 2024. It will feature exclusive interviews, archived photos, live shots, as well as archived texts from late members Carl and Dennis Wilson. In March 2024, the band announced the release of a self-titled documentary which would be released by streaming service Disney+, which includes new and archived interviews from various members of the band and their inner circle, including Brian Wilson, Love, Jardine, Marks, Johnston, Carl Wilson, Dennis Wilson, Chaplin, Fataar, Brian Wilson's ex-wife Marilyn, and Don Was, among others. The documentary was directed by Frank Marshall and Thom Zimny and was released on May 24, 2024. The documentary included some footage from a private reunion of Brian Wilson, Love, Jardine, Marks, and Johnston at Paradise Cove, where the "Surfin' Safari" album cover photo was taken in 1962. Brian Wilson, Love, Jardine, Marks, Johnston, and Blondie Chaplin also participated in a non-performing reunion at the documentary's premiere on May 24, 2024.
By their 2024 tour, the Beach Boys had played nearly 7,300 concerts. Musical style and development. In "Understanding Rock: Essays in Musical Analysis", musicologist Daniel Harrison writes: The Beach Boys began as a garage band playing 1950s style rock and roll, reassembling styles of music such as surf to include vocal jazz harmony, which created their unique sound. In addition, they introduced their signature approach to common genres such as the pop ballad by applying harmonic or formal twists not native to rock and roll. Among the distinct elements of the Beach Boys' style were the nasal quality of their singing voices, their use of a falsetto harmony over a driving, locomotive-like melody, and the sudden chiming in of the whole group on a key line. Brian Wilson handled most stages of the group's recording process from the beginning, even though he was not properly credited on most of the early recordings. Early on, Mike Love sang lead vocals in the rock-oriented songs, while Carl contributed guitar lines on the group's ballads. Jim Miller commented: "On straight rockers they sang tight harmonies behind Love's lead ... on ballads, Brian played his falsetto off against lush, jazz-tinged voicings, often using (for rock) unorthodox harmonic structures." Harrison adds that "even the least distinguished of the Beach Boys' early uptempo rock 'n' roll songs show traces of structural complexity at some level; Brian was simply too curious and experimental to leave convention alone". Although Brian was often dubbed a perfectionist, he was an inexperienced musician, and his understanding of music was mostly self-taught. At the lyric stage, he usually worked with Love, whose assertive persona provided youthful swagger that contrasted Brian's explorations in romanticism and sensitivity. Luis Sanchez noted a pattern where Brian would spare surfing imagery when working with collaborators outside of his band's circle, in the examples "Lonely Sea" and "In My Room".
Brian's bandmates resented the notion that he was the sole creative force in the group. In a 1966 article that asked if "the Beach Boys rely too much on sound genius Brian", Carl said that although Brian was the most responsible for their music, every member of the group contributed ideas. Mike Love wrote: "As far as I was concerned, Brian "was" a genius, deserving of that recognition. But the rest of us were seen as nameless components in Brian's music machine ... It didn't feel to us as if we were just riding on Brian's coattails." Conversely, Dennis defended Brian's stature in the band, stating: "Brian Wilson "is" the Beach Boys. He is the band. We're his fucking messengers. He is all of it. Period. We're nothing. He's everything." Influences. The band's earliest influences came primarily from the work of Chuck Berry and the Four Freshmen. Performed by the Four Freshmen, "Their Hearts Were Full of Spring" (1961) was a particular favorite of the group. By analyzing their arrangements of pop standards, Brian educated himself on jazz harmony. Bearing this in mind, Philip Lambert noted: "If Bob Flanigan helped teach Brian how to sing, then Gershwin, Kern, Porter, and the other members of this pantheon helped him learn how to craft a song." Other general influences on the group included the Hi-Los, the Penguins, the Robins, Bill Haley & His Comets, Otis Williams, the Cadets, the Everly Brothers, the Shirelles, the Regents, and the Crystals.
The eclectic mix of white and black vocal group influences – ranging from the rock and roll of Berry, the jazz harmonies of the Four Freshmen, the pop of the Four Preps, the folk of the Kingston Trio, the R&B of groups like the Coasters and the Five Satins, and the doo wop of Dion and the Belmonts – helped contribute to the Beach Boys' uniqueness in American popular music. Carl remembered that Love was "really immersed in doo-wop" and likely "influenced Brian to listen to it", adding that the "black artists were so much better in terms of rock records in those days that the white records almost sounded like put-ons". Another significant influence on Brian's work was Burt Bacharach. He said in the 1960s: "Burt Bacharach and Hal David are more like me. They're also the best pop team – per se – today. As a producer, Bacharach has a very fresh, new approach." Regarding surf rock pioneer Dick Dale, Brian said that his influence on the group was limited to Carl and his style of guitar playing. Carl credited Chuck Berry, the Ventures, and John Walker with shaping his guitar style, and that the Beach Boys had learned to play all of the Ventures' songs by ear early in their career.
In 1967, Lou Reed wrote in "Aspen" that the Beach Boys created a "hybrid sound" out of old rock and the Four Freshmen, explaining that such songs as "Let Him Run Wild", "Don't Worry Baby", "I Get Around", and "Fun, Fun, Fun" were not unlike "Peppermint Stick" by the Elchords. Similarly, John Sebastian of the Lovin' Spoonful noted: "Brian had control of this vocal palette of which we had no idea. We had never paid attention to the Four Freshmen or doo-wop combos like the Crew Cuts. Look what gold he mined out of that." Vocals. Brian identified each member individually for their vocal range, once detailing the ranges for Carl, Dennis, Jardine ("[they] progress upwards through G, A, and B"), Love ("can go from bass to the E above middle C"), and himself ("I can take the second D in the treble clef"). He declared in 1966 that his greatest interest was to expand modern vocal harmony, owing to his fascination with a voice to the Four Freshmen, which he considered a "groovy sectional sound". He added: "The harmonies that we are able to produce give us a uniqueness which is really the only important thing you can put into records – some quality that no one else has got. I love peaks in a song – and enhancing them on the control panel. Most of all, I love the human voice for its own sake." For a period, Brian avoided singing falsetto for the group, saying: "I thought people thought I was a fairy ... the band told me, 'If that's the way you sing, don't worry about it.'"
In the group's early recordings, from lowest intervals to highest, the group's vocal harmony stack usually began with Love or Dennis, followed by Jardine or Carl, and finally Brian on top, according to Jardine, while Carl said that the blend was Love on bottom, Carl above, followed by Dennis or Jardine, and then Brian on top. Jardine explains: "We always sang the same vocal intervals. ... As soon as we heard the chords on the piano we'd figure it out pretty easily. If there was a vocal move [Brian] envisioned, he'd show that particular singer that move. We had somewhat photographic memory as far as the vocal parts were concerned so that [was] never a problem for us." Striving for perfection, Brian insured that his intricate vocal arrangements exercised the group's calculated blend of intonation, attack, phrasing, and expression. Sometimes, he would sing each vocal harmony part alone through multi-track tape.
Use of studio musicians. Biographer James Murphy said: "By most contemporary accounts, they were not a very good live band when they started. ... The Beach Boys learned to play as a band in front of live audiences", eventually to become "one of the best and enduring live bands". With only a few exceptions, the Beach Boys played every instrument heard on their first four albums and first five singles. It is the belief of Richie Unterberger that "Before session musicians took over most of the parts, the Beach Boys could play respectably gutsy surf rock as a self-contained unit." As Wilson's arrangements increased in complexity, he began employing a group of professional studio musicians, later known as "the Wrecking Crew", to assist with recording the instrumentation on select tracks. According to some reports, these musicians then completely replaced the Beach Boys on the backing tracks to their records. Much of the relevant documentation, while accounting for the attendance of unionized session players, had failed to record the presence of the Beach Boys themselves. These documents, along with the full unedited studio session tapes, were not available for public scrutiny until the 1990s.
Wilson started occasionally employing members of the Wrecking Crew for certain Beach Boys tracks during the 1963 "Surfer Girl" sessions – specifically, on two songs, "Hawaii" and "Our Car Club". The 1964 albums "Shut Down Volume 2" and "All Summer Long" featured the Beach Boys themselves playing the vast majority of the instruments while occasionally being augmented by outside musicians. It is commonly misreported that Dennis in particular was replaced by Hal Blaine on drums. Dennis's drumming is documented on a number of the group's singles, including 1964's "I Get Around", "Fun, Fun, Fun", and "Don't Worry Baby". Starting with the 1965 albums "Today!" and "Summer Days", Brian used the Wrecking Crew with greater frequency, "but still", Stebbins writes, "the Beach Boys continued to play the instruments on many of the key tracks and single releases". Overall, the Beach Boys played the instruments on the majority of their recordings from the decade, with 1966 and 1967 being the only years when Wilson used the Wrecking Crew almost exclusively. "Pet Sounds" and "Smile" are their only albums in which the backing tracks were largely played by studio musicians. After 1967, the band's use of studio musicians was considerably reduced. Wrecking Crew biographer Kent Hartman supported in : "Though [Brian Wilson] had for several months brought in various session players on a sporadic, potluck basis to supplement things, the other Beach Boys generally played on the earliest songs, too."
The source of the longstanding controversy regarding the Beach Boys' use of studio musicians largely derives from a misinterpreted statement in David Leaf's 1978 biography "The Beach Boys and the California Myth", later bolstered by erroneous recollections from participants of the recording sessions. Starting in the 1990s, unedited studio session tapes, along with American Federation of Musicians (AFM) sheets and tape logs, were leaked to the public. Music historian Craig Slowinski, who contributes musician credits to the liner notes of the band's reissues and compilations, wrote in 2006: "[O]nce the vaults were opened up and the tapes were studied, the true situation became clear: the Boys themselves played "most" of the instruments on their records until the "Beach Boys Today!" album in early 1965." Slowinski goes on to note: "when painting a picture of a Beach Boys recording session, it's important to examine "both" the AFM contracts and the session tapes, either of which may be incomplete on their own". During the period when Brian relied heavily on studio musicians, Carl was an exception among the Beach Boys in that he played alongside the studio musicians whenever he was available to attend sessions. In Slowinski's view, "One should not sell short Carl's own contributions; the youngest Wilson had developed as a musician sufficiently to play alongside the horde of high-dollar session pros that big brother was now bringing into the studio. Carl's guitar playing [was] a key ingredient."
Spirituality. The band members often reflected on the spiritual nature of their music (and music in general), particularly for the recording of "Pet Sounds" and "Smile". Even though the Wilsons did not grow up in a particularly religious household, Carl was described as "the most truly religious person I know" by Brian, and Carl was forthcoming about the group's spiritual beliefs stating: "We believe in God as a kind of universal consciousness. God is love. God is you. God is me. God is everything right here in this room. It's a spiritual concept which inspires a great deal of our music." Carl told "Rave" magazine in 1967 that the group's influences are of a "religious nature", but not any religion in specific, only "an idea based upon that of Universal Consciousness. ... The spiritual concept of happiness and doing good to others is extremely important to the lyric of our songs, and the religious element of some of the better church music is also contained within some of our new work." Brian is quoted during the "Smile" era: "I'm very religious. Not in the sense of churches, going to church; but like the essence of "all" religion." During the recording of "Pet Sounds", Brian held prayer meetings, later reflecting that "God was with us the whole time we were doing this record ... I could feel that feeling in my brain." In 1966, he explained that he wanted to move into a white spiritual sound, and predicted that the rest of the music industry would follow suit. In 2011, Brian maintained the spirituality was important to his music, and that he did not follow any particular religion.
Carl said that "Smile" was chosen as an album title because of its connection to the group's spiritual beliefs. Brian referred to "Smile" as his "teenage symphony to God", composing a hymn, "Our Prayer", as the album's opening spiritual invocation. Experimentation with psychotropic substances also proved pivotal to the group's development as artists. He spoke of his LSD trips as a "religious experience", and during a session for "Our Prayer", Brian can be heard asking the other Beach Boys: "Do you guys feel any acid yet?". In 1968, the group's interest in transcendental meditation led them to record the original song, "Transcendental Meditation". Legacy. Achievements. The Beach Boys are one of the most critically acclaimed, commercially successful, and influential bands of all time. They have sold over 100 million records worldwide. The group's early songs made them major pop stars in the US, the UK, Australia and other countries, having seven top 10 singles between April 1963 and November 1964. They were one of the first American groups to exhibit the definitive traits of a self-contained rock band, playing their own instruments and writing their own songs, and they were one of the few American bands formed prior to the 1964 British Invasion to continue their success. Among artists of the 1960s, they are one of the central figures in the histories of rock. Between the 1960s and 2020s, they had 37 songs reach the US Top 40 (the most by an American group) with four topping the "Billboard" Hot 100; they also hold Nielsen SoundScan's record as the top-selling American band for albums and singles.
Brian Wilson's artistic control over the Beach Boys' records was unprecedented for the time. Carl Wilson elaborated: "Record companies were used to having absolute control over their artists. It was especially nervy, because Brian was a 21-year-old kid with just two albums. It was unheard of. But what could they say? Brian made good records." This made the Beach Boys one of the first rock groups to exert studio control. Music producers after the mid-1960s would draw on Brian's influence, setting a precedent that allowed bands and artists to enter a recording studio and act as producers, either autonomously, or in conjunction with other like minds. In 1988, the original five members (the Wilson brothers, Love, and Jardine) were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Ten years later, they were selected for the Vocal Group Hall of Fame. In 2004, "Pet Sounds" was preserved in the National Recording Registry by the Library of Congress for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". Their recordings of "In My Room", "Good Vibrations", "California Girls" and the entire "Pet Sounds" album have been inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.
The Beach Boys are one of the most influential acts of the rock era. In 2017, a study of AllMusic's catalog indicated the Beach Boys as the 6th most frequently cited artist influence in its database. In 2021, the staff of "Ultimate Classic Rock" ranked the Beach Boys as the top American band of all time; the publication's editor wrote in the group's entry that "few bands ... have had a greater impact on popular music". California sound. Professor of cultural studies James M. Curtis wrote in 1987: "We can say that the Beach Boys represent the outlook and values of white Protestant Anglo-Saxon teenagers in the early sixties. Having said that, we immediately realize that they must mean much more than this. Their stability, their staying power, and their ability to attract new fans prove as much." Cultural historian Kevin Starr explains that the group first connected with young Americans specifically for their lyrical interpretation of a mythologized landscape: "Cars and the beach, surfing, the California Girl, all this fused in the alembic of youth: Here was a way of life, an iconography, already half-released into the chords and multiple tracks of a new sound." In music critic Robert Christgau's opinion, "the Beach Boys were a touchstone for real rock and rollers, all of whom understood that the music had its most essential roots in an innocently hedonistic materialism".
The group's "California sound" grew to national prominence through the success of their 1963 album "Surfin' U.S.A.", which helped turn the surfing subculture into a mainstream youth-targeted advertising image widely exploited by the film, television, and food industry. The group's surf music was not entirely of their own invention, being preceded by artists such as Dick Dale. However, previous surf musicians did not project a world view as the Beach Boys did. The band's earlier surf music helped raise the profile of the state of California, creating its first major regional style with national significance, and establishing a musical identity for Southern California, as opposed to Hollywood. California ultimately supplanted New York as the center of popular music thanks to the success of Brian's productions. A 1966 article discussing new trends in rock music writes that the Beach Boys popularized a type of drum beat heard in Jan and Dean's "Surf City", which sounds like "a locomotive getting up speed", in addition to the method of "suddenly stopping in between the chorus and verse". Pete Townshend of the Who is credited with coining the term "power pop", which he defined as "what we play—what the Small Faces used to play, and the kind of pop the Beach Boys played in the days of 'Fun, Fun, Fun' which I preferred".
The California sound gradually evolved to reflect a more musically ambitious and mature worldview, becoming less to do with surfing and cars and more about social consciousness and political awareness. Between 1964 and 1969, it fueled innovation and transition, inspiring artists to tackle largely unmentioned themes such as sexual freedom, black pride, drugs, oppositional politics, other countercultural motifs, and war. Soft pop (later known as "sunshine pop") derived in part from this movement. Sunshine pop producers widely imitated the orchestral style of "Pet Sounds"; however, the Beach Boys themselves were rarely representative of the genre, which was rooted in easy-listening and advertising jingles. By the end of the 1960s, the California sound declined due to a combination of the West Coast's cultural shifts, Wilson's professional and psychological downturn, and the Manson murders, with David Howard calling it the "sunset of the original California Sunshine Sound ... [the] sweetness advocated by the California Myth had led to chilling darkness and unsightly rot". Drawing from the Beach Boys' associations with Manson and former California governor Ronald Reagan, Erik Davis remarked: "The Beach Boys may be the only bridge between those deranged poles. There is a wider range of political and aesthetic sentiments in their records than in any other band in those heady times—like the state [of California], they expand and bloat and contradict themselves."
During the 1970s, advertising jingles and imagery were predominately based on the Beach Boys' early music and image. The group also inspired the development of the West Coast style later dubbed "yacht rock". According to "Jacobin"s Dan O'Sullivan, the band's aesthetic was the first to be "scavenged" by yacht rock acts like Rupert Holmes. O'Sullivan also cites the Beach Boys' recording of "Sloop John B" as the origin of yacht rock's preoccupation with the "sailors and beachgoers" aesthetic that was "lifted by everyone, from Christopher Cross to Eric Carmen, from 'Buffalo Springfield' folksters like Jim Messina to 'Philly Sound' rockers like Hall & Oates". Innovations. "Pet Sounds" came to inform the developments of genres such as pop, rock, jazz, electronic, experimental, punk, and hip hop. Similar to subsequent experimental rock LPs by Frank Zappa, the Beatles, and the Who, "Pet Sounds" featured countertextural aspects that called attention to the very recordedness of the album. Professor of American history John Robert Greene stated that the album broke new ground and took rock music away from its casual lyrics and melodic structures into what was then uncharted territory. He furthermore called it one factor which spawned the majority of trends in post-1965 rock music, the only others being "Rubber Soul", the Beatles' "Revolver", and the contemporary folk movement. The album was the first piece in popular music to incorporate the Electro-Theremin, an easier-to-play version of the theremin, as well as the first in rock music to feature a theremin-like instrument. With "Pet Sounds", they were also the first group to make an entire album that departed from the usual small-ensemble electric rock band format.
According to David Leaf in 1978, "Pet Sounds" and "Good Vibrations" "established the group as the leaders of a new type of pop music, Art Rock". Academic Bill Martin states that the band opened a path in rock music "that went from "Sgt. Pepper's" to "Close to the Edge" and beyond". He argues that the advancing technology of multitrack recording and mixing boards were more influential to experimental rock than electronic instruments such as the synthesizer, allowing the Beatles and the Beach Boys to become the first crop of non-classically trained musicians to create extended and complex compositions. In "Strange Sounds: Offbeat Instruments and Sonic Experiments in Pop", Mark Brend writes: The making of "Good Vibrations", according to Domenic Priore, was "unlike anything previous in the realms of classical, jazz, international, soundtrack, or any other kind of recording", while biographer Peter Ames Carlin wrote that it "sounded like nothing that had ever been played on the radio before". It contained previously untried mixes of instruments, and was the first successful pop song to have cellos in a juddering rhythm. Musicologist Charlie Gillett called it "one of the first records to flaunt studio production as a quality in its own right, rather than as a means of presenting a performance". Again, Brian employed the use of Electro-Theremin for the track. Upon release, the single prompted an unexpected revival in theremins while increasing awareness of analog synthesizers, leading Moog Music to produce their own brand of ribbon-controlled instruments. In a 1968 editorial for "Jazz & Pop", Gene Sculatti predicted that the song "may yet prove to be the most significantly revolutionary piece of the current rock renaissance ... In no minor way, 'Good Vibrations' is a primary influential piece for all producing rock artists; everyone has felt its import to some degree".
Discussing "Smiley Smile", Daniel Harrison argues that the album could "almost" be considered art music in the Western classical tradition, and that the group's innovations in the musical language of rock can be compared to those that introduced atonal and other nontraditional techniques into that classical tradition. He explains: "The spirit of experimentation is just as palpable ... as it is in, say, Schoenberg's op. 11 piano pieces." However, such notions were not widely acknowledged by rock audiences nor by the classically minded at the time. Harrison concludes: "What influences could these innovations then have? The short answer is, not much. "Smiley Smile", "Wild Honey", "Friends", and "20/20" sound like few other rock albums; they are "sui generis". ... It must be remembered that the commercial failure of the Beach Boys' experiments was hardly motivation for imitation." Musicologist David Toop, who included the "Smiley Smile" track "Fall Breaks and Back to Winter" on a companion CD for his book "Ocean of Sound", placed the Beach Boys' effect on sound pioneering in league with Les Baxter, Aphex Twin, Herbie Hancock, King Tubby, and My Bloody Valentine.
"Sunflower" marked an end to the experimental songwriting and production phase initiated by "Smiley Smile". After "Surf's Up", Harrison wrote, their albums "contain a mixture of middle-of-the-road music entirely consonant with pop style during the early 1970s with a few oddities that proved that the desire to push beyond conventional boundaries was not dead", until 1974, "the year in which the Beach Boys ceased to be a rock 'n' roll act and became an oldies act". Punk, alternative, and indie. In the 1970s, the Beach Boys served a "totemic influence" on punk rock that later gave way to indie rock. Brad Shoup of Stereogum surmised that, thanks to the Ramones' praise for the group, many punk, pop punk, or "punk-adjacent" artists showed influence from the Beach Boys, noting cover versions of the band's songs recorded by Slickee Boys, Agent Orange, Bad Religion, Shonen Knife, the Queers, Hi-Standard, the Descendents, the Donnas, M.O.D., and the Vandals. "The Beach Boys Love You" is sometimes considered the group's "punk album", and "Pet Sounds" is sometimes advanced as the first emo album.
In the 1990s, the Beach Boys experienced a resurgence of popularity with the alternative rock generation. According to Sean O'Hagan, leader of the High Llamas and former member of Stereolab, a younger generation of record-buyers "stopped listening to indie records" in favor of the Beach Boys. Bands who advocated for the Beach Boys included founding members of the Elephant 6 Collective (Neutral Milk Hotel, the Olivia Tremor Control, the Apples in Stereo, and of Montreal). United by a shared love of the group's music, they named Pet Sounds Studio in honor of the band. "Rolling Stone" writer Barry Walters wrote in 2000 that albums such as "Surf's Up" and "Love You" "are becoming sonic blueprints, akin to what early Velvet Underground LPs meant to the previous indie peer group". The High Llamas, Eric Matthews and Saint Etienne are among the "alt heroes" who contributed cover versions of "unreleased, overlooked or underappreciated Wilson/Beach Boys obscurities" on the tribute album "Caroline Now!" (2000). The Beach Boys remained among the most significant influences on indie rock into the late 2000s. "Smile" became a touchstone for many bands who were labelled "chamber pop", a term used for artists influenced by the lush orchestrations of Brian Wilson, Lee Hazlewood, and Burt Bacharach. "Pitchfork" writer Mark Richardson cited "Smiley Smile" as the origin point of "the kind of lo-fi bedroom pop that would later propel Sebadoh, Animal Collective, and other characters". The "Sunflower" track "All I Wanna Do" is also cited as one of the earliest precursors to chillwave, a microgenre that emerged in 2009. Further reading. Articles Books
BCE (disambiguation) BCE is an abbreviation meaning Before Common Era, an alternative to the use of BC. BCE, B.C.E. or bce may also refer to:
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Beatrix Potter Helen Beatrix Heelis (; 28 July 186622 December 1943), usually known as Beatrix Potter ( ), was an English writer, illustrator, natural scientist, and conservationist. She is best known for her children's books featuring animals, such as "The Tale of Peter Rabbit", which was her first commercially published work in 1902. Her books, including "The Tale of Jemima Puddle Duck" and "The Tale of Tom Kitten", have sold more than 250 million copies. An entrepreneur, Potter was a pioneer of character merchandising. In 1903, Peter Rabbit was the first fictional character to be made into a patented stuffed toy, making him the oldest licensed character. Born into an upper-middle-class household, Potter was educated by governesses and grew up isolated from other children. She had numerous pets and spent holidays in the Lake District, developing a love of landscape, flora and fauna, all of which she closely observed and painted. Potter's study and watercolours of fungi led to her being widely respected in the field of mycology. In her thirties, Potter self-published the highly successful children's book "The Tale of Peter Rabbit". Following this, Potter began writing and illustrating children's books full-time.
Potter wrote over sixty books, with the best known being her twenty-three children's tales. In 1905, using the proceeds from her books and a legacy from an aunt, Potter bought Hill Top Farm in Near Sawrey, a village in the Lake District. Over the following decades, she purchased additional farms to preserve the unique hill country landscape. In 1913, at the age of 47, she married William Heelis (1871–1945), a respected local solicitor with an office in Hawkshead. Potter was also a prize-winning breeder of Herdwick sheep and a prosperous farmer keenly interested in land preservation. She continued to write, illustrate, and design merchandise based on her children's books for British publisher Warne until the duties of land management and her diminishing eyesight made it difficult to continue. Potter died of pneumonia and heart disease on 22 December 1943 at her home in Near Sawrey, England at the age of 77, leaving almost all her property to the National Trust. She is credited with preserving much of the land that now constitutes the Lake District National Park. Potter's books continue to sell throughout the world in many languages with her stories being retold in songs, films, ballet, and animations, and her life is depicted in two films – "The Tales of Beatrix Potter" (1983) and "Miss Potter" (2006).
Biography. Early life. Potter's family on both sides were from the Manchester area. They were English Unitarians, associated with dissenting Protestant congregations, influential in 19th-century Britain, that affirmed the oneness of God and that rejected the doctrine of the Trinity. Potter's paternal grandfather, Edmund Potter, from Glossop in Derbyshire, owned what was then the largest calico printing works in England, and later served as a Member of Parliament. Potter's father, Rupert William Potter (1832–1914), was educated at Manchester College by the Unitarian philosopher James Martineau. He then trained as a barrister in London. Rupert practiced law, specialising in equity law and conveyancing. He married Helen Leech (1839–1932) on 8 August 1863 at Hyde Unitarian Chapel, Gee Cross. Helen was the daughter of Jane Ashton (1806–1884) and John Leech, a wealthy cotton merchant and shipbuilder from Stalybridge. Helen's first cousins were siblings Harriet Lupton ("née" Ashton) and Thomas Ashton, 1st Baron Ashton of Hyde. It was reported in July 2014 that Potter had personally given a number of her own original hand-painted illustrations to the two daughters of Arthur and Harriet Lupton, who were cousins to both Beatrix Potter and Catherine, Princess of Wales.
Potter's parents lived comfortably at 2 Bolton Gardens, West Brompton, London, where Helen Beatrix was born on 28 July 1866 and her brother Walter Bertram on 14 March 1872. The house was destroyed in the Blitz. Bousfield Primary School now stands where the house once was. A blue plaque on the school building testifies to the former site of the Potter home. Both parents were artistically talented, and Rupert was an adept amateur photographer. Rupert had invested in the stock market, and by the early 1890s, he was extremely wealthy. Beatrix Potter was educated by three governesses, the last of whom was Annie Moore ("née" Carter), just three years older than Potter, who tutored Potter in German as well as acting as lady's companion. She and Potter remained friends throughout their lives, and Annie's eight children were the recipients of many of Potter's picture letters. It was Annie who later suggested that these letters might make good children's books.
At about the age of 14, Potter began to keep a diary, written in a simple substitution cipher of her own devising. Her "Journal" was important to the development of her creativity, serving as both sketchbook and literary experiment. In tiny handwriting, she reported on society, recorded her impressions of art and artists, recounted stories and observed life around her. The "Journal", deciphered and transcribed by Leslie Linder in 1958, does not provide an intimate record of her personal life, but it is an invaluable source for understanding a vibrant part of British society in the late 19th century. It describes Potter's maturing artistic and intellectual interests, her often amusing insights into the places she visited, and her unusual ability to observe nature and to describe it. Started in 1881, her journal ends in 1897 when her artistic and intellectual energies were absorbed in scientific study and in efforts to publish her drawings. Precocious but reserved and often bored, she was searching for more independent activities and wished to earn some money of her own while dutifully taking care of her parents, dealing with her especially demanding mother, and managing their various households.
Scientific illustrations and work in mycology. In the Victorian era, women of her class were privately educated and rarely went to university. Potter's parents encouraged her higher education, but the social norms of the time limited her academic career within Britain's institutions. Beatrix Potter was interested in every branch of natural science except astronomy. Botany was a passion for most Victorians, and nature study was a popular enthusiasm. She collected fossils, studied archaeological artefacts from London excavations, and was interested in entomology. In all these areas, she drew and painted her specimens with increasing skill. By the 1890s, her scientific interests centred on mycology. First drawn to fungi because of their colours and evanescence in nature and her delight in painting them, her interest deepened after meeting Charles McIntosh, a revered naturalist and amateur mycologist, during a summer holiday in Dunkeld in Perthshire in 1892. He helped improve the accuracy of her illustrations, taught her taxonomy, and supplied her with live specimens to paint during the winter. <onlyinclude></onlyinclude>
Rebuffed by William Thiselton-Dyer, the Director at Kew, because of her sex and amateur status, Potter wrote up her conclusions and submitted a paper, "On the Germination of the Spores of the Agaricineae", to the Linnean Society in 1897. It was introduced by Massee because, as a woman, Potter could not attend proceedings nor read her paper. She subsequently withdrew it, realising that some of her samples were contaminated, but continued her microscopic studies for several more years. Her work is only now being properly evaluated. Potter later gave her other mycological and scientific drawings to the Armitt Museum and Library in Ambleside, where mycologists still refer to them to identify fungi. There is also a collection of her fungus paintings at the Perth Museum and Art Gallery in Perth, Scotland, donated by Charles McIntosh. In 1967, the mycologist W. P. K. Findlay included many of Potter's beautifully accurate fungus drawings in his "Wayside & Woodland Fungi", thereby fulfilling her desire to one day have her fungus drawings published in a book. In 1997, the Linnean Society issued a posthumous apology to Potter for the sexism displayed in its handling of her research.
Artistic and literary career. Potter's artistic and literary interests were deeply influenced by fairy tales and fantasy. She was a student of the classic fairy tales of Western Europe as well as stories from the Old Testament, John Bunyan's "The Pilgrim's Progress" and Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin". She grew up with "Aesop's Fables", the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen, Charles Kingsley's "The Water Babies", the folk tales and mythology of Scotland, the German Romantics, Shakespeare, and the romances of Sir Walter Scott. As a young child, before the age of eight, Edward Lear's "", including the much-loved "The Owl and the Pussycat", and Lewis Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland" had made their impression, although she later said of "Alice" that she was more interested in Tenniel's illustrations than what they were about. The "Brer Rabbit" stories of Joel Chandler Harris had been family favourites, and she later studied his "Uncle Remus" stories and illustrated them. She studied book illustration from a young age and developed her own tastes, but the work of the picture book triumvirate Walter Crane, Kate Greenaway and Randolph Caldecott, the last an illustrator whose work was later collected by her father, was a great influence. Her earliest illustrations focused on traditional rhymes and stories like "Cinderella", "Sleeping Beauty", "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves", "Puss in Boots", and "Little Red Riding Hood". However, most often her illustrations were fantasies featuring her own pets: mice, rabbits, kittens, and guinea pigs.
In her teenage years, Potter was a regular visitor to the art galleries of London, particularly enjoying the summer and winter exhibitions at the Royal Academy in London. Her "Journal" reveals her growing sophistication as a critic as well as the influence of her father's friend, the artist Sir John Everett Millais, who recognised Potter's talent of observation. Although Potter was aware of art and artistic trends, her drawing and her prose style were uniquely her own. As a way to earn money in the 1890s, Potter printed Christmas cards of her own design, as well as cards for special occasions. These were her first commercially successful works as an illustrator. Mice and rabbits were the most frequent subject of her fantasy paintings. In 1890, the firm of Hildesheimer and Faulkner bought several of the drawings of her rabbit Benjamin Bunny to illustrate verses by Frederic Weatherly titled "A Happy Pair". In 1893, the same printer bought several more drawings for Weatherly's "Our Dear Relations", another book of rhymes, and the following year Potter sold a series of frog illustrations and verses for "Changing Pictures", a popular annual offered by the art publisher Ernest Nister. Potter was pleased by this success and determined to publish her own illustrated stories.
Whenever Potter went on holiday to the Lake District or Scotland, she sent letters to young friends, illustrating them with quick sketches. Many of these letters were written to the children of her former governess Annie Carter Moore, particularly to Moore's eldest son Noel, who was often ill. In September 1893, Potter was on holiday at Eastwood in Dunkeld, Perthshire. She had run out of things to say to Noel, and so she told him a story about "four little rabbits whose names were Flopsy, Mopsy, Cottontail, and Peter". It became one of the most famous children's letters ever written and the basis of Potter's future career as a writer-artist-storyteller. In 1900, Potter revised her tale about the four little rabbits, and fashioned a dummy book of it – it has been suggested, in imitation of Helen Bannerman's 1899 bestseller "The Story of Little Black Sambo". Unable to find a buyer for the work, she published it for family and friends at her own expense in December 1901. It was drawn in black and white with a coloured frontispiece. Rawnsley had great faith in Potter's tale, recast it in didactic verse, and made the rounds of the London publishing houses. Frederick Warne & Co had previously rejected the tale but, eager to compete in the booming small format children's book market, reconsidered and accepted the "bunny book" (as the firm called it) following the recommendation of their prominent children's book artist L. Leslie Brooke. The firm declined Rawnsley's verse in favour of Potter's original prose, and Potter agreed to colour her pen and ink illustrations, choosing the new Hentschel three-colour process to reproduce her watercolours.
On 2 October 1902, "The Tale of Peter Rabbit" was published and became an immediate success. It was followed the next year by "The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin" and "The Tailor of Gloucester", which had also first been written as picture letters to the Moore children. Working with Norman Warne as her editor, Potter published two or three little books each year: 23 books in all. The last book in this format was "Cecily Parsley's Nursery Rhymes" in 1922, a collection of favourite rhymes. Although "The Tale of Little Pig Robinson" was not published until 1930, it had been written much earlier. Potter continued creating her little books until after the First World War when her energies were increasingly directed toward her farming, sheep-breeding, and land conservation. The immense popularity of Potter's books was based on the lively quality of her illustrations, the non-didactic nature of her stories, the depiction of the rural countryside, and the imaginative qualities she lent to her animal characters. Potter was also a canny businesswoman. As early as 1903, she made and patented a Peter Rabbit doll. It was followed by other merchandise over the years, including painting books, board games, wall-paper, figurines, baby blankets and china tea-sets. All were licensed by Frederick Warne & Co and earned Potter an independent income, as well as immense profits for her publisher.
In 1905, Potter and Norman Warne became unofficially engaged. Potter's parents objected to the match because Warne was "in trade" and thus not socially suitable. The engagement lasted only one month—Warne died of pernicious anaemia at age 37. That same year, Potter used some of her income and a small inheritance from an aunt to buy Hill Top Farm in Near Sawrey, located west of Lake Windermere in the English Lake District. Potter and Warne may have hoped that Hill Top Farm would be their holiday home, but after Warne's death, Potter went ahead with its purchase as she had always wanted to own that farm and live in "that charming village". Country life and marriage. The tenant farmer John Cannon and his family agreed to stay on to manage the farm for her while she made physical improvements and learned the techniques of fell farming and of raising livestock, including pigs, cows and chickens; the following year she added sheep. Realising she needed to protect her boundaries, she sought advice from W.H. Heelis & Son, a local firm of solicitors with offices in nearby Hawkshead. With William Heelis acting for her, she bought contiguous pasture, and in 1909 the Castle Farm across the road from Hill Top Farm. She visited Hill Top at every opportunity, and her books written during this period (such as "The Tale of Ginger and Pickles", about the local shop in Near Sawrey and "The Tale of Mrs. Tittlemouse", a wood mouse) reflect her increasing participation in village life and her delight in country living.
Owning and managing these working farms required routine collaboration with the widely respected William Heelis. By the summer of 1912, Heelis had proposed marriage and Potter had accepted; although she did not immediately tell her parents, who once again disapproved because Heelis was only a country solicitor. Potter and Heelis were married on 15 October 1913 in London at St Mary Abbots in Kensington. The couple moved immediately to Near Sawrey, residing at Castle Cottage, the renovated farmhouse on Castle Farm, which was large. Hill Top remained a working farm but was now remodelled to allow for the tenant family and Potter's private studio and workshop. At last her own woman, Potter settled into the partnerships that shaped the rest of her life: her country solicitor husband and his large family, her farms, the Sawrey community and the predictable rounds of country life. "The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck" and "The Tale of Tom Kitten" are representative of Hill Top Farm and her farming life and reflect her happiness with her country life.
Her father, Rupert Potter, died in 1914, and with the outbreak of World War I, Potter persuaded her mother to move to the Lake District, renting her a property in Sawrey. Finding life in Sawrey dull, Helen Potter soon moved to Lindeth Howe (now a 34-bedroomed hotel), a large house the Potters had previously rented for the summer in Bowness, on the other side of Lake Windermere. Potter continued to write stories for Frederick Warne & Co and fully participated in country life. She established a nursing trust for local villages and served on various committees and councils responsible for footpaths and other rural issues. Sheep farming. Soon after acquiring Hill Top Farm, Potter became keenly interested in the breeding and raising of Herdwick sheep, the indigenous fell sheep. In 1923 she bought a large sheep farm in the Troutbeck Valley called Troutbeck Park Farm, formerly a deer park, restoring its land with thousands of Herdwick sheep. This established her as one of the major Herdwick sheep farmers in the county. She was admired by her shepherds and farm managers for her willingness to experiment with the latest biological remedies for the common diseases of sheep, and for her employment of the best shepherds, sheep breeders, and farm managers.
By the late 1920s, Potter and her Hill Top farm manager Tom Storey had made a name for their prize-winning Herdwick flock, which took many prizes at the local agricultural shows, where Potter was often asked to serve as a judge. In 1942 she became President-elect of the Herdwick Sheepbreeders' Association, the first time a woman had been elected, but died before taking office. Welsh language. In one of her diary entries whilst travelling through Wales, Potter complained about the Welsh language. She wrote "Machynlleth, wretched town, hardly a person could speak English", continuing "Welsh seem a pleasant intelligent race, but I should think awkward to live with... the language is past description." Lake District conservation. Potter had been a disciple of the land conservation and preservation ideals of her long-time friend and mentor, Canon Hardwicke Rawnsley, the first secretary and founding member of the National Trust. According to the National Trust, "she supported the efforts of the National Trust to preserve not just the places of extraordinary beauty but also those heads of valleys and low grazing lands that would be irreparably ruined by development." Potter was also an authority on the traditional Lakeland crafts and period furniture, as well as local stonework. She restored and preserved the farms that she bought or managed, making sure that each farm house had in it a piece of antique Lakeland furniture. Potter was interested in preserving not only the Herdwick sheep but also the way of life of fell farming. In 1930 the Heelises became partners with the National Trust in buying and managing the fell farms included in the large Monk Coniston Estate.
The estate was composed of many farms spread over a wide area of north-western Lancashire, including the Tarn Hows. Potter was the "de facto" estate manager for the Trust for seven years until the National Trust could afford to repurchase most of the property from her. Potter's stewardship of these farms earned her full regard, but she was not without her critics, not the least of which were her contemporaries who felt she used her wealth and the position of her husband to acquire properties in advance of their being made public. She was notable in observing the problems of afforestation, preserving the intact grazing lands, and husbanding the quarries and timber on these farms. All her farms were stocked with Herdwick sheep and frequently with Galloway cattle. Later life. Potter continued to write stories and to draw, although mostly for her own pleasure. In 1922, "Cecily Parsley's Nursery Rhymes", a collection of traditional English nursery rhymes, was published. Her books in the late 1920s included the semi-autobiographical "The Fairy Caravan", a fanciful tale set in her beloved Troutbeck fells. It was published only in the US during Potter's lifetime, and not until 1952 in the UK. "Sister Anne", Potter's version of the story of Bluebeard, was written for her American readers, but illustrated by Katharine Sturges. A final folktale, "Wag by Wall", was published posthumously by "The Horn Book Magazine" in 1944. Potter was a generous patron of the Girl Guides, whose troops she allowed to make their summer encampments on her land, and whose company she enjoyed as an older woman.
Potter and William Heelis enjoyed a happy marriage of thirty years, continuing their farming and preservation efforts throughout the hard days of World War II. Although they were childless, Potter played an important role in William's large family, particularly enjoying her relationship with several nieces whom she helped educate, and giving comfort and aid to her husband's brothers and sisters. Potter died of complications from pneumonia and heart disease on 22 December 1943 at Castle Cottage, and her remains were cremated at Carleton Crematorium, Blackpool. She left nearly all her property to the National Trust, including over of land, sixteen farms, cottages and herds of cattle and Herdwick sheep. Hers was the largest gift at that time to the National Trust, and it enabled the preservation of the land now included in the Lake District National Park and the continuation of fell farming. The central office of the National Trust in Swindon was named "Heelis" in 2005 in her memory. William Heelis continued his stewardship of their properties and of her literary and artistic work for the twenty months he survived her. When he died in August 1945, he left the remainder to the National Trust.
Legacy. Potter left almost all the original illustrations for her books to the National Trust. The copyright to her stories and merchandise was then given to her publisher Frederick Warne & Co, now a division of the Penguin Group. On 1 January 2014, the copyright expired in the UK and other countries with a 70-years-after-death limit. Hill Top Farm was opened to the public by the National Trust in 1946; her artwork was displayed there until 1985 when it was moved to William Heelis's former law offices in Hawkshead, also owned by the National Trust as the Beatrix Potter Gallery. Potter gave her folios of mycological drawings to the Armitt Library and Museum in Ambleside before her death. "The Tale of Peter Rabbit" is owned by Warne, "The Tailor of Gloucester" by the Tate Gallery, and "The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies" by the British Museum. In 1903, Potter created the first Peter Rabbit soft toy and registered him at the Patent Office in London, making Peter the oldest licensed fictional character. Merchandise of Peter and other Potter characters have been sold at Harrods department store in London since at least 1910 when the range first appeared in their catalogues. Along with her writing Potter would continue to oversee merchandising and licensing opportunities for her characters. On her legacy, Nicholas Tucker in "The Guardian" writes, "she was the first author to license fictional characters to a range of toys and household objects still on sale today". In an article by the "Smithsonian" magazine titled, "How Beatrix Potter Invented Character Merchandising", Joy Lanzendorfer writes, "Potter was also an entrepreneur and a pioneer in licensing and merchandising literary characters. Potter built a retail empire out of her “bunny book” that is worth $500 million today. In the process, she created a system that continues to benefit all licensed characters, from Mickey Mouse to Harry Potter."
The largest public collection of her letters and drawings is the Leslie Linder Bequest and Leslie Linder Collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. (Linder was the collector who—after five years of work—finally transcribed Potter's early journal, originally written in code.) In the United States, the largest public collections are those in the Rare Book Department of the Free Library of Philadelphia, and the Cotsen Children's Library at Princeton University. In 2015, a manuscript for an unpublished book was discovered by Jo Hanks, a publisher at Penguin Random House Children's Books, in the Victoria and Albert Museum archive. The book "The Tale of Kitty-in-Boots", with illustrations by Quentin Blake, was published 1 September 2016, to mark the 150th anniversary of Potter's birth. Also in 2016, Peter Rabbit was depicted on the reverse of a British fifty pence coin, and Peter along with other Potter characters featured on a series of UK postage stamps issued by the Royal Mail. In 2017, "The Art of Beatrix Potter: Sketches, Paintings, and Illustrations" by Emily Zach was published after San Francisco publisher Chronicle Books decided to mark the 150th anniversary of Beatrix Potter's birth by showing that she was "far more than a 19th-century weekend painter. She was an artist of astonishing range."
In December 2017, the asteroid 13975 Beatrixpotter, discovered by Belgian astronomer Eric Elst in 1992, was renamed in her memory. In 2022, an exhibition, "Beatrix Potter: Drawn to Nature", was held at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Research for the exhibition identified the man's court waistcoat c. 1780s, which inspired Potter's sketch in "The Tailor of Gloucester". Analysis. There are many interpretations of Potter's literary work, the sources of her art, and her life and times. These include critical evaluations of her corpus of children's literature and Modernist interpretations of Humphrey Carpenter and Katherine Chandler. Judy Taylor, "That Naughty Rabbit: Beatrix Potter and Peter Rabbit" (rev. 2002) tells the story of the first publication and many editions. Potter's country life, her farming and role as a landscape preservationist are discussed in the work of Matthew Kelly, "The Women Who Saved the English Countryside" (2022). See also Susan Denyer and authors in the publications of The National Trust, such as "Beatrix Potter at Home in the Lake District" (2004).
Potter's work as a scientific illustrator and her work in mycology are discussed in Linda Lear's books "Beatrix Potter: A Life in Nature" (2006) and "Beatrix Potter: The Extraordinary Life of a Victorian Genius" (2008). Adaptations. In 1971, a ballet film was released, "The Tales of Beatrix Potter", directed by Reginald Mills, set to music by John Lanchbery with choreography by Frederick Ashton, and performed in character costume by members of the Royal Ballet and the Royal Opera House orchestra. The ballet of the same name has been performed by other dance companies around the world. In 1992, Potter's children's book "The Tale of Benjamin Bunny" was featured in the film "Lorenzo's Oil". Potter is also featured in Susan Wittig Albert's series of light mysteries called "The Cottage Tales of Beatrix Potter". The first of the eight-book series is "Tale of Hill Top Farm" (2004), which deals with Potter's life in the Lake District and the village of Near Sawrey between 1905 and 1913. In film. In 1982, the BBC produced "The Tale of Beatrix Potter". This dramatization of her life was written by John Hawkesworth, directed by Bill Hayes, and starred Holly Aird and Penelope Wilton as the young and adult Potter, respectively. "The World of Peter Rabbit and Friends", a TV series based on nine of her twenty-four stories, starred actress Niamh Cusack as Beatrix Potter.
In 1993, Weston Woods Studios made an almost hour non-story film called "Beatrix Potter: Artist, Storyteller, and Countrywoman" with narration by Lynn Redgrave. In 2006, Chris Noonan directed "Miss Potter", a biographical film of Potter's life focusing on her early career and romance with her editor Norman Warne. The film stars Renée Zellweger as Beatrix Potter, Ewan McGregor as Norman Warne, and Emily Watson as Warne's sister. On 9 February 2018, Columbia Pictures released "Peter Rabbit", directed by Will Gluck, based on the work by Potter. The character Bea, played by Rose Byrne, is a re-imagined version of Potter. A sequel to the film titled " was released in 2021. On 24 December 2020, Sky One premiered ", a made-for-television drama film inspired by the true story of a six-year-old Roald Dahl meeting his idol Potter. Set in 1922, the movie was written by Abigail Wilson, directed by David Kerr and starred Dawn French as Beatrix Potter, Rob Brydon as William Heelis and Jessica Hynes as Sofie Dahl. Filming took place in Wales, the birthland of Dahl, French and Brydon. This production incorporates live action, stop motion, and puppetry. The DVD was released on 26 April 2021.
Liberal Party (UK) The Liberal Party was one of the two major political parties in the United Kingdom, along with the Conservative Party, in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Beginning as an alliance of Whigs, free trade–supporting Peelites, and reformist Radicals in the 1850s, by the end of the 19th century, it had formed four governments under William Ewart Gladstone. Despite being divided over the issue of Irish Home Rule, the party returned to government in 1905 and won a landslide victory in the 1906 general election. Under prime ministers Henry Campbell-Bannerman (1905–1908) and H. H. Asquith (1908–1916), the Liberal Party passed reforms that created a basic welfare state. Although Asquith was the party leader, its dominant figure was David Lloyd George. Asquith was overwhelmed by his wartime role as prime minister and Lloyd George led a coalition that replaced him in late 1916. However, Asquith remained as Liberal Party leader. The split between Lloyd George's breakaway faction and Asquith's official Liberal faction badly weakened the party. The coalition government of Lloyd George was increasingly dominated by the Conservative Party, which finally ousted him as prime minister in 1922. The subsequent Liberal collapse was quick and catastrophic. With 400 MPs elected in the 1906 election; they had only 40 in 1924. Their share of the popular vote plunged from 49% to 18%. The Labour Party absorbed most of the ex-Liberal voters and then became the Conservatives' main rival.
By the 1950s, the party had won as few as six seats at general elections. Apart from a few notable by-election victories, its fortunes did not improve significantly until it formed the SDP–Liberal Alliance with the newly formed Social Democratic Party (SDP) in 1981. At the 1983 general election, the Alliance won over a quarter of the vote, but won only 23 of the 633 seats it contested. At the 1987 general election, its share of the vote fell below 23%. Further, the Liberals and the SDP merged in 1988 to form the Social and Liberal Democrats (SLD), who the following year were renamed the Liberal Democrats. A splinter group reconstituted the Liberal Party in 1989. The Liberals were a coalition with diverse positions on major issues and no unified national policy. This made them repeatedly liable to deep splits, such as that of the Liberal Unionists in 1886 (they eventually joined the Conservative Party); the faction of labour union members that joined the new Labour Party; the split between factions led by Asquith and that led by Lloyd George in 1918–1922; and a three-way split in 1931. Many prominent intellectuals were active in the party, including philosopher John Stuart Mill, economist John Maynard Keynes, and social planner William Beveridge. Winston Churchill during his years as a Liberal (1904–1924) authored "Liberalism and the Social Problem" (1909).
History. Origins. The Liberal Party grew out of the Whigs, who had their origins in an aristocratic faction in the reign of Charles II and the early 19th century Radicals. The Whigs were in favour of reducing the power of the Crown and increasing the power of Parliament. Although their motives in this were originally to gain more power for themselves, the more idealistic Whigs gradually came to support an expansion of democracy for its own sake. The great figures of reformist Whiggery were Charles James Fox (died 1806) and his disciple and successor Earl Grey. After decades in opposition, the Whigs returned to power under Grey in 1830 and carried the First Reform Act in 1832. The Reform Act was the climax of Whiggism, but it also brought about the Whigs' demise. The admission of the middle classes to the franchise and to the House of Commons led eventually to the development of a systematic middle-class liberalism and the end of Whiggery, although for many years reforming aristocrats held senior positions in the party. In the years after Grey's retirement, the party was led first by Lord Melbourne, a fairly traditional Whig, and then by Lord John Russell, the son of a Duke but a crusading radical, and by Lord Palmerston, a renegade Irish Tory and essentially a conservative, although capable of radical gestures.
As early as 1839, Russell had adopted the name of "Liberals", but in reality, his party was a loose coalition of Whigs in the House of Lords and Radicals in the Commons. The leading Radicals were John Bright and Richard Cobden, who represented the manufacturing towns which had gained representation under the Reform Act. They favoured social reform, personal liberty, reducing the powers of the Crown and the Church of England (many Liberals were Nonconformists), avoidance of war and foreign alliances (which were bad for business) and above all free trade. For a century, free trade remained the one cause which could unite all Liberals. In 1841, the Liberals lost office to the Conservatives under Sir Robert Peel, but their period in opposition was short because the Conservatives split over the repeal of the Corn Laws, a free trade issue; and a faction known as the Peelites (but not Peel himself, who died soon after) aligned to the Liberal side on the issue of free trade. This allowed ministries led by Russell, Palmerston and the Peelite Lord Aberdeen to hold office for most of the 1850s and 1860s. A leading Peelite was William Gladstone, who was a reforming Chancellor of the Exchequer in most of these governments. The formal foundation of the Liberal Party is traditionally traced to 1859 when the remaining Peelites, Radicals and Whigs agreed to vote down the incumbent Conservative government. This meeting was held at the Willis' rooms in London on 6 June 1859. This led to Palmerston's second government.
However, the Whig-Radical amalgam could not become a true modern political party while it was dominated by aristocrats and it was not until the departure of the "Two Terrible Old Men", Russell and Palmerston, that Gladstone could become the first leader of the modern Liberal Party. This was brought about by Palmerston's death in 1865 and Russell's retirement in 1868. After a brief Conservative government (during which the Second Reform Act was passed by agreement between the parties), Gladstone won a huge victory at the 1868 election and formed the first Liberal government. The establishment of the party as a national membership organisation came with the foundation of the National Liberal Federation in 1877. The philosopher John Stuart Mill was also a Liberal MP from 1865 to 1868. Gladstone era. For the next 30 years, Gladstone and Liberalism were synonymous. William Gladstone served as prime minister four times (1868–74, 1880–85, 1886, and 1892–94). His financial policies, based on the notion of balanced budgets, low taxes and "laissez-faire", were suited to a developing capitalist society, but they could not respond effectively as economic and social conditions changed. Called the "Grand Old Man" later in life, Gladstone was always a dynamic popular orator who appealed strongly to the working class and to the lower middle class. Deeply religious, Gladstone brought a new moral tone to politics, with his evangelical sensibility and his opposition to aristocracy. His moralism often angered his upper-class opponents (including Queen Victoria), and his heavy-handed control split the Liberal Party.
In foreign policy, Gladstone was in general against foreign entanglements, but he did not resist the realities of imperialism. For example, he ordered the occupation of Egypt by British forces in the 1882 Anglo-Egyptian War. His goal was to create a European order based on co-operation rather than conflict and on mutual trust instead of rivalry and suspicion; the rule of law was to supplant the reign of force and self-interest. This Gladstonian concept of a harmonious Concert of Europe was opposed to and ultimately defeated by a Bismarckian system of manipulated alliances and antagonisms. As prime minister from 1868 to 1874, Gladstone headed a Liberal Party which was a coalition of Peelites like himself, Whigs and Radicals. He was now a spokesman for "peace, economy and reform". One major achievement was the Elementary Education Act 1870 (33 & 34 Vict. c. 75), which provided England with an adequate system of elementary schools for the first time. He also secured the abolition of the purchase of commissions in the British Army and of religious tests for admission to Oxford and Cambridge; the introduction of the secret ballot in elections; the legalization of trade unions; and the reorganization of the judiciary in the Judicature Act.
Regarding Ireland, the major Liberal achievements were land reform, where he ended centuries of landlord oppression, and the disestablishment of the (Anglican) Church of Ireland through the Irish Church Act 1869. In the 1874 general election, Gladstone was defeated by the Conservatives under Benjamin Disraeli during a sharp economic recession. He formally resigned as Liberal leader and was succeeded by the Marquess of Hartington, but he soon changed his mind and returned to active politics. He strongly disagreed with Disraeli's pro-Ottoman foreign policy and in 1880 he conducted the first outdoor mass-election campaign in Britain, known as the Midlothian campaign. The Liberals won a large majority in the 1880 election. Hartington ceded his place and Gladstone resumed office. Ireland and Home Rule.
The result was a catastrophic split in the Liberal Party, and heavy defeat in the 1886 election at the hands of Lord Salisbury, who was supported by the breakaway Liberal Unionist Party. There was a final weak Gladstone ministry in 1892, but it also was dependent on Irish support and failed to get Irish Home Rule through the House of Lords. Newcastle Programme. Historically, the aristocracy was divided between Conservatives and Liberals. However, when Gladstone committed to home rule for Ireland, Britain's upper classes largely abandoned the Liberal party, giving the Conservatives a large permanent majority in the House of Lords. Following the Queen, High Society in London largely ostracized home rulers and Liberal clubs were badly split. Joseph Chamberlain took a major element of upper-class supporters out of the Party and into a third party called Liberal Unionism on the Irish issue. It collaborated with and eventually merged into the Conservative party. The Gladstonian liberals in 1891 adopted The Newcastle Programme that included home rule for Ireland, disestablishment of the Church of England in Wales, tighter controls on the sale of liquor, major extension of factory regulation and various democratic political reforms. The Programme had a strong appeal to the nonconformist middle-class Liberal element, which felt liberated by the departure of the aristocracy.
Relations with trade unions. A major long-term consequence of the Third Reform Act was the rise of Lib-Lab candidates. The Act split all county constituencies (which were represented by multiple MPs) into single-member constituencies, roughly corresponding to population patterns. With the foundation of the Labour Party not to come till 1906, many trade unions allied themselves with the Liberals. In areas with working class majorities, in particular coal-mining areas, Lib-Lab candidates were popular, and they received sponsorship and endorsement from trade unions. In the first election after the Act was passed (1885), thirteen were elected, up from two in 1874. The Third Reform Act also facilitated the demise of the Whig old guard; in two-member constituencies, it was common to pair a Whig and a radical under the Liberal banner. After the Third Reform Act, fewer former Whigs were selected as candidates. Reform policies. A broad range of interventionist reforms were introduced by the 1892–1895 Liberal government. Amongst other measures, standards of accommodation and of teaching in schools were improved, factory inspection was made more stringent, and ministers used their powers to increase the wages and reduce the working hours of large numbers of male workers employed by the state.
Historian Walter L. Arnstein concludes: After Gladstone. Gladstone finally retired in 1894. Gladstone's support for Home Rule deeply divided the party, and it lost its upper and upper-middle-class base, while keeping support among Protestant nonconformists and the Celtic fringe. Historian R. C. K. Ensor reports that after 1886, the main Liberal Party was deserted by practically the entire whig peerage and the great majority of the upper-class and upper-middle-class members. High prestige London clubs that had a Liberal base were deeply split. Ensor notes that, "London society, following the known views of the Queen, practically ostracized home rulers." The new Liberal leader was the ineffectual Lord Rosebery. He led the party to a heavy defeat in the 1895 general election. Liberal factions. The Liberal Party lacked a unified ideological base in 1906. It contained numerous contradictory and hostile factions, such as imperialists and supporters of the Boers; near-socialists and laissez-faire classical liberals; suffragettes and opponents of women's suffrage; antiwar elements and supporters of the military alliance with France. Nonconformists – Protestants outside the Anglican fold – were a powerful element, dedicated to opposing the established church in terms of education and taxation. However, the non-conformists were losing support amid society at large and played a lesser role in party affairs after 1900. The party, furthermore, also included Irish Catholics, and secularists from the labour movement. Many Conservatives (including Winston Churchill) had recently protested against high tariff moves by the Conservatives by switching to the anti-tariff Liberal camp, but it was unclear how many old Conservative traits they brought along, especially on military and naval issues.
The middle-class business, professional and intellectual communities were generally strongholds, although some old aristocratic families played important roles as well. The working-class element was moving rapidly toward the newly emerging Labour Party. One uniting element was widespread agreement on the use of politics and Parliament as a device to upgrade and improve society and to reform politics. All Liberals were outraged when Conservatives used their majority in the House of Lords to block reform legislation. In the House of Lords, the Liberals had lost most of their members, who in the 1890s "became Conservative in all but name." The government could force the unwilling king to create new Liberal peers, and that threat did prove decisive in the battle for dominance of Commons over Lords in 1911. Rise of New Liberalism. The late nineteenth century saw the emergence of New Liberalism within the Liberal Party, which advocated state intervention as a means of guaranteeing freedom and removing obstacles to it such as poverty and unemployment. The policies of the New Liberalism are now known as social liberalism.
The New Liberals included intellectuals like L. T. Hobhouse, and John A. Hobson. They saw individual liberty as something achievable only under favourable social and economic circumstances. In their view, the poverty, squalor, and ignorance in which many people lived made it impossible for freedom and individuality to flourish. New Liberals believed that these conditions could be ameliorated only through collective action coordinated by a strong, welfare-oriented, and interventionist state. After the historic 1906 victory, the Liberal Party introduced multiple reforms on a range of issues, including health insurance, unemployment insurance, and pensions for elderly workers, thereby laying the groundwork for the future British welfare state. Some proposals failed, such as licensing fewer pubs, or rolling back Conservative educational policies. The People's Budget of 1909, championed by David Lloyd George and fellow Liberal Winston Churchill, introduced unprecedented taxes on the wealthy in Britain and radical social welfare programmes to the country's policies. In the Liberal camp, as noted by one study, "the Budget was on the whole enthusiastically received." It was the first budget with the expressed intent of redistributing wealth among the public. It imposed increased taxes on luxuries, liquor, tobacco, high incomes, and land – taxation that fell heavily on the rich. The new money was to be made available for new welfare programmes as well as new battleships. In 1911 Lloyd George succeeded in putting through Parliament his National Insurance Act, making provision for sickness and invalidism, and this was followed by his Unemployment Insurance Act.
Historian Peter Weiler argues: Contrasting Old Liberalism with New Liberalism, David Lloyd George noted in a 1908 speech the following: Liberal zenith. The Liberals languished in opposition for a decade while the coalition of Salisbury and Chamberlain held power. The 1890s were marred by infighting between the three principal successors to Gladstone, party leader William Harcourt, former prime minister Lord Rosebery, and Gladstone's personal secretary, John Morley. This intrigue finally led Harcourt and Morley to resign their positions in 1898 as they continued to be at loggerheads with Rosebery over Irish home rule and issues relating to imperialism. Replacing Harcourt as party leader was Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman. Harcourt's resignation briefly muted the turmoil in the party, but the beginning of the Second Boer War soon nearly broke the party apart, with Rosebery and a circle of supporters including important future Liberal figures H. H. Asquith, Edward Grey and Richard Burdon Haldane forming a clique dubbed the Liberal Imperialists that supported the government in the prosecution of the war.
Asquith, Edward Grey and Richard Burdon Haldane forming a clique dubbed the Liberal Imperialists that supported the government in the prosecution of the war. On the other side, more radical members of the party formed a Pro-Boer faction that denounced the conflict and called for an immediate end to hostilities. Quickly rising to prominence among the Pro-Boers was David Lloyd George, a relatively new MP and a master of rhetoric, who took advantage of having a national stage to speak out on a controversial issue to make his name in the party. Harcourt and Morley also sided with this group, though with slightly different aims. Campbell-Bannerman tried to keep these forces together at the head of a moderate Liberal rump, but in 1901 he delivered a speech on the government's "methods of barbarism" in South Africa that pulled him further to the left and nearly tore the party in two. The party was saved after Salisbury's retirement in 1902 when his successor, Arthur Balfour, pushed a series of unpopular initiatives such as the Education Act 1902 and Joseph Chamberlain called for a new system of protectionist tariffs.
Campbell-Bannerman was able to rally the party around the traditional liberal platform of free trade and land reform and led them to the greatest election victory in their history. This would prove the last time the Liberals won a majority in their own right. Although he presided over a large majority, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman was overshadowed by his ministers, most notably H. H. Asquith at the Exchequer, Edward Grey at the Foreign Office, Richard Burdon Haldane at the War Office and David Lloyd George at the Board of Trade. Campbell-Bannerman retired in 1908 and died soon after. He was succeeded by Asquith, who stepped up the government's radicalism. Lloyd George succeeded Asquith at the Exchequer and was in turn succeeded at the Board of Trade by Winston Churchill, a recent defector from the Conservatives. The 1906 general election also represented a shift to the left by the Liberal Party. According to Rosemary Rees, almost half of the Liberal MPs elected in 1906 were supportive of the 'New Liberalism' (which advocated government action to improve people's lives),) while claims were made that "five-sixths of the Liberal party are left wing." Other historians, however, have questioned the extent to which the Liberal Party experienced a leftward shift; according to Robert C. Self however, only between 50 and 60 Liberal MPs out of the 400 in the parliamentary party after 1906 were Social Radicals, with a core of 20 to 30. Nevertheless, important junior offices were held in the cabinet by what Duncan Tanner has termed "genuine New Liberals, Centrist reformers, and Fabian collectivists," and much legislation was pushed through by the Liberals in government. This included the regulation of working hours, National Insurance and welfare.
A political battle erupted over the People's Budget, which was rejected by the House of Lords and for which the government obtained an electoral mandate at the January 1910 election. The election resulted in a hung parliament, with the government left dependent on the Irish Nationalists. Although the Lords now passed the budget, the government wished to curtail their power to block legislation. Asquith was required by King George V to fight a second general election in December 1910 (whose result was little changed from that in January) before he agreed, if necessary, to create hundreds of Liberals peers. Faced with that threat, the Lords voted to give up their veto power and allowed the passage of the Parliament Act 1911.
Decline. The Liberal Party might have survived a short war, but the totality of the Great War called for measures that the Party had long rejected. The result was the permanent destruction of the ability of the Liberal Party to lead a government. Historian Robert Blake explains the dilemma: Blake further notes that it was the Liberals, not the Conservatives who needed the moral outrage of Belgium to justify going to war, while the Conservatives called for intervention from the start of the crisis on the grounds of "realpolitik" and the balance of power. However, Lloyd George and Churchill were zealous supporters of the war, and gradually forced the old peace-orientated Liberals out. Asquith was blamed for the poor British performance in the first year. Since the Liberals ran the war without consulting the Conservatives, there were heavy partisan attacks. However, even Liberal commentators were dismayed by the lack of energy at the top. At the time, public opinion was intensely hostile, both in the media and in the street, against any young man in civilian garb and labeled as a slacker. The leading Liberal newspaper, the "Manchester Guardian" complained:
Asquith's Liberal government was brought down in , due in particular to a crisis in inadequate artillery shell production and the protest resignation of Admiral Fisher over the disastrous Gallipoli Campaign against Turkey. Reluctant to face doom in an election, Asquith formed a new coalition government on 25 May, with the majority of the new cabinet coming from his own Liberal party and the Unionist (Conservative) party, along with a token Labour representation. The new government lasted a year and a half and was the last time Liberals controlled the government. The analysis of historian A. J. P. Taylor is that the British people were so deeply divided over numerous issues, but on all sides, there was growing distrust of the Asquith government. There was no agreement whatsoever on wartime issues. The leaders of the two parties realized that embittered debates in Parliament would further undermine popular morale and so the House of Commons did not once discuss the war before May 1915. Taylor argues: The 1915 coalition fell apart at the end of 1916, when the Conservatives withdrew their support from Asquith and gave it instead to Lloyd George, who became prime minister at the head of a new coalition largely made up of Conservatives. Asquith and his followers moved to the opposition benches in Parliament and the Liberal Party was deeply split once again.
Lloyd George as a Liberal heading a Conservative coalition. Lloyd George remained a Liberal all his life, but he abandoned many standard Liberal principles in his crusade to win the war at all costs. He insisted on strong government controls over business as opposed to the "laissez-faire" attitudes of traditional Liberals. in 1915–16 he had insisted on conscription of young men into the Army, a position that deeply troubled his old colleagues. That brought him and a few like-minded Liberals into the new coalition on the ground long occupied by Conservatives. There was no more planning for world peace or liberal treatment of Germany, nor discomfit with aggressive and authoritarian measures of state power. More deadly to the future of the party, says historian Trevor Wilson, was its repudiation by ideological Liberals, who decided sadly that it no longer represented their principles. Finally, the presence of the vigorous new Labour Party on the left gave a new home to voters disenchanted with the Liberal performance.
The last majority Liberal Government in Britain was elected in 1906. The years preceding the First World War were marked by worker strikes and civil unrest and saw many violent confrontations between civilians and the police and armed forces. Other issues of the period included women's suffrage and the Irish Home Rule movement. After the carnage of 1914–1918, the democratic reforms of the Representation of the People Act 1918 instantly tripled the number of people entitled to vote in Britain from seven to twenty-one million. The Labour Party benefited most from this huge change in the electorate, forming its first minority government in 1924. In the 1918 general election, Lloyd George, hailed as "the Man Who Won the War", led his coalition into a khaki election. Lloyd George and the Conservative leader Bonar Law wrote a joint letter of support to candidates to indicate they were considered the official Coalition candidates—this "coupon", as it became known, was issued against many sitting Liberal MPs, often to devastating effect, though not against Asquith himself. The coalition won a massive victory: Labour increased their position slightly, but the Asquithian Liberals were decimated. Those remaining Liberal MPs who were opposed to the Coalition Government went into opposition under the parliamentary leadership of Sir Donald MacLean who also became Leader of the Opposition. Asquith, who had appointed MacLean, remained as overall Leader of the Liberal Party even though he lost his seat in 1918. Asquith returned to Parliament in 1920 and resumed leadership. Between 1919 and 1923, the anti-Lloyd George Liberals were called Asquithian Liberals, Wee Free Liberals or Independent Liberals.
Lloyd George was increasingly under the influence of the rejuvenated Conservative party who numerically dominated the coalition. In 1922, the Conservative backbenchers rebelled against the continuation of the coalition, citing, in particular, Lloyd George's plan for war with Turkey in the Chanak Crisis, and his corrupt sale of honours. He resigned as prime minister and was succeeded by Bonar Law. At the 1922 and 1923 elections, the Liberals won barely a third of the vote and only a quarter of the seats in the House of Commons as many radical voters abandoned the divided Liberals and went over to Labour. In 1922, Labour became the official opposition. A reunion of the two warring factions took place in 1923 when the new Conservative prime minister Stanley Baldwin committed his party to protective tariffs, causing the Liberals to reunite in support of free trade. The party gained ground in the 1923 general election but made most of its gains from Conservatives whilst losing ground to Labour—a sign of the party's direction for many years to come. The party remained the third largest in the House of Commons, but the Conservatives had lost their majority. There was much speculation and fear "[by whom?]" about the prospect of a Labour government and comparatively little about a Liberal government, even though it could have plausibly presented an experienced team of ministers compared to Labour's almost complete lack of experience as well as offering a middle ground that could obtain support from both Conservatives and Labour in crucial Commons divisions. However, instead of trying to force the opportunity to form a Liberal government, Asquith decided instead to allow Labour the chance of office in the belief that they would prove incompetent, and this would set the stage for a revival of Liberal fortunes at Labour's expense, but it was a fatal error.
Labour was determined to destroy the Liberals and become the sole party of the left. Ramsay MacDonald was forced into a snap election in 1924 and although his government was defeated, he achieved his objective of virtually wiping the Liberals out as many more radical voters now moved to Labour whilst moderate middle-class Liberal voters concerned about socialism moved to the Conservatives. The Liberals were reduced to a mere forty seats in Parliament, only seven of which had been won against candidates from both parties and none of these formed a coherent area of Liberal survival. The party seemed finished, and during this period some Liberals, such as Churchill, went over to the Conservatives while others went over to Labour. Several Labour ministers of later generations, such as Michael Foot and Tony Benn, were the sons of Liberal MPs.
Splits over the National Government. A group of Liberal MPs led by Sir John Simon opposed the Liberal Party's support for the minority Labour government. They preferred to reach an accommodation with the Conservatives. In 1931 MacDonald's Labour government fell apart in response to the Great Depression. Macdonald agreed to lead a National Government of all parties, which passed a budget to deal with the financial crisis. When few Labour MPs backed the National government, it became clear that the Conservatives had the clear majority of government supporters. They then forced MacDonald to call a general election. Lloyd George called for the party to leave the National Government but only a few MPs and candidates followed. The majority, led by Sir Herbert Samuel, decided to contest the elections as part of the government. The bulk of Liberal MPs supported the government, – the Liberal Nationals (officially the "National Liberals" after 1947) led by Simon, also known as "Simonites", and the "Samuelites" or "official Liberals", led by Samuel who remained as the official party. Both groups secured about 34 MPs but proceeded to diverge even further after the election, with the Liberal Nationals remaining supporters of the government throughout its life. There were to be a succession of discussions about them rejoining the Liberals, but these usually foundered on the issues of free trade and continued support for the National Government. The one significant reunification came in 1946 when the Liberal and Liberal National party organisations in London merged. The National Liberals, as they were called by then, were gradually absorbed into the Conservative Party, finally merging in 1968.
The official Liberals found themselves a tiny minority within a government committed to protectionism. Slowly they found this issue to be one they could not support. In early 1932 it was agreed to suspend the principle of collective responsibility to allow the Liberals to oppose the introduction of tariffs. Later in 1932 the Liberals resigned their ministerial posts over the introduction of the Ottawa Agreement on Imperial Preference. However, they remained sitting on the government benches supporting it in Parliament, though in the country local Liberal activists bitterly opposed the government. Finally in late 1933 the Liberals crossed the floor of the House of Commons and went into complete opposition. By this point their number of MPs was severely depleted. In the 1935 general election, just 17 Liberal MPs were elected, along with Lloyd George and three followers as independent Liberals. Immediately after the election the two groups reunited, though Lloyd George declined to play much of a formal role in his old party. Over the next ten years there would be further defections as MPs deserted to either the Liberal Nationals or Labour. Yet there were a few recruits, such as Clement Davies, who had deserted to the National Liberals in 1931 but now returned to the party during World War II and who would lead it after the war.
Near extinction. Samuel had lost his seat in the 1935 election and the leadership of the party fell to Sir Archibald Sinclair. With many traditional domestic Liberal policies now regarded as irrelevant, he focused the party on opposition to both the rise of Fascism in Europe and the appeasement foreign policy of the National Government, arguing that intervention was needed, in contrast to the Labour calls for pacifism. Despite the party's weaknesses, Sinclair gained a high profile as he sought to recall the Midlothian Campaign and once more revitalise the Liberals as the party of a strong foreign policy. In 1940, they joined Churchill's wartime coalition government, with Sinclair serving as Secretary of State for Air, the last British Liberal to hold Cabinet rank office for seventy years. However, it was a sign of the party's lack of importance that they were not included in the War Cabinet; some leading party members founded Radical Action, a group which called for liberal candidates to break the war-time electoral pact. At the 1945 general election, Sinclair and many of his colleagues lost their seats to both Conservatives and Labour and the party returned just 12 MPs to Westminster, but this was just the beginning of the decline. In 1950, the general election saw the Liberals return just nine MPs. Another general election was called in 1951 and the Liberals were left with just six MPs and all but one of them were aided by the fact that the Conservatives refrained from fielding candidates in those constituencies.
In 1957, this total fell to five when one of the Liberal MPs died and the subsequent by-election was lost to the Labour Party, which selected the former Liberal Deputy Leader Megan Lloyd George as its own candidate. The Liberal Party seemed close to extinction. During this low period, it was often joked that Liberal MPs could hold meetings in the back of one taxi. Liberal revival. Through the 1950s and into the 1960s, the Liberals survived only because a handful of constituencies in rural Scotland and Wales clung to their Liberal traditions, whilst in two English towns, Bolton and Huddersfield, local Liberals and Conservatives agreed to each contest only one of the town's two seats. Jo Grimond, for example, who became Leader of the Liberal Party in 1956, was MP for the remote Orkney and Shetland islands. Under his leadership a Liberal revival began, marked by the Orpington by-election of March 1962 which was won by Eric Lubbock. There, the Liberals won a seat in the London suburbs for the first time since 1935.
The Liberals became the first of the major British political parties to advocate British membership of the European Economic Community. Grimond also sought an intellectual revival of the party, seeking to position it as a non-socialist radical alternative to the Conservative government of the day. In particular he canvassed the support of the young post-war university students and recent graduates, appealing to younger voters in a way that many of his recent predecessors had not, and asserting a new strand of Liberalism for the post-war world. The new middle-class suburban generation began to find the Liberals' policies attractive again. Under Grimond (who retired in 1967) and his successor, Jeremy Thorpe, the Liberals regained the status of a serious third force in British politics, polling up to 20% of the vote, but unable to break the duopoly of Labour and Conservative and win more than fourteen seats in the Commons. An additional problem was competition in the Liberal heartlands in Scotland and Wales from the Scottish National Party and Plaid Cymru who both grew as electoral forces from the 1960s onwards. Although Emlyn Hooson held on to the seat of Montgomeryshire, upon Clement Davies death in 1962, the party lost five Welsh seats between 1950 and 1966. In September 1966, the Welsh Liberal Party formed their own state party, moving the Liberal Party into a fully federal structure.
In local elections, Liverpool remained a Liberal stronghold, with the party taking the plurality of seats on the elections to the new Liverpool Metropolitan Borough Council in 1973. On 26 July 1973, the party won two by-elections on the same day, in the Isle of Ely (with Clement Freud), and Ripon (with David Austick). In the February 1974 general election, the Conservative government of Edward Heath won a plurality of votes cast, but the Labour Party gained a plurality of seats. The Conservatives were unable to form a government due to the Ulster Unionist MPs refusing to support the Conservatives after the Northern Ireland Sunningdale Agreement. The Liberals obtained 6.1 million votes, the most it would ever achieve, and now held the balance of power in the Commons. Conservatives offered Thorpe the Home Office if he would join a coalition government with Heath. Thorpe was personally in favour of it, but the party insisted it would only agree pending a clear government commitment to introducing proportional representation (PR) and a change of prime minister. The former was unacceptable to Heath's cabinet and the latter to Heath personally, so the talks collapsed. Instead, a minority Labour government was formed under Harold Wilson but with no formal support from Thorpe. In the October 1974 general election, the Liberals total vote slipped back slightly (and declined in each of the next three) and the Labour government won a wafer-thin majority.
Thorpe was subsequently forced to resign after allegations that he attempted to have his homosexual lover murdered by a hitman. The party's new leader, David Steel, negotiated the Lib–Lab pact with Wilson's successor as prime minister, James Callaghan. According to this pact, the Liberals would support the government in crucial votes in exchange for some influence over policy. The agreement lasted from 1977 to 1978, but proved mostly fruitless, for two reasons: the Liberals' key demand of PR was rejected by most Labour MPs, whilst the contacts between Liberal spokespersons and Labour ministers often proved detrimental, such as between Treasury spokesperson John Pardoe and Chancellor of the Exchequer Denis Healey, who were mutually antagonistic. Alliance, Liberal Democrats and reconstituted Liberal Party. The Conservative Party under the leadership of Margaret Thatcher won the 1979 general election, placing the Labour Party back in opposition, which served to push the Liberals back into the margins. In 1981, defectors from a moderate faction of the Labour Party, led by former Cabinet ministers Roy Jenkins, David Owen and Shirley Williams, founded the Social Democratic Party (SDP). The new party and the Liberals quickly formed the SDP–Liberal Alliance, which for a while polled as high as 50% in the opinion polls and appeared capable of winning the next general election. Indeed, Steel was so confident of an Alliance victory that he told the 1981 Liberal conference, "Go back to your constituencies, and prepare for government!".
However, the Alliance was overtaken in the polls by the Tories in the aftermath of the Falkland Islands War and at the 1983 general election the Conservatives were re-elected by a landslide, with Labour once again forming the opposition. While the SDP–Liberal Alliance came close to Labour in terms of votes (a share of more than 25%), it only had 23 MPs compared to Labour's 209. The Alliance's support was spread out across the country, and was not concentrated in enough areas to translate into seats. In the 1987 general election, the Alliance's share of the votes fell slightly and it now had 22 MPs. In the election's aftermath Steel proposed a merger of the two parties. Most SDP members voted in favour of the merger, but SDP leader David Owen objected and continued to lead a "rump" SDP. In March 1988, the Liberal Party and Social Democratic Party merged to create the Social and Liberal Democrats, renamed the Liberal Democrats in October 1989. Over two-thirds of Liberal members joined the merged party, along with all sitting MPs. Steel and SDP leader Robert Maclennan served briefly as interim leaders of the merged party.