When Five Summer Stories was in production, in 1971, Beach Boy Bruce Johnston, who is a surfer, saw the ads in SURFER Magazine for what was known to be the last surfing movie of MacGillivray Freeman Films. He and the five other Beach Boys (Brian Wilson, Carl Wilson, Dennis Wilson, Mike Love, and Al Jardine) felt that their music belonged in a movie which would form a conclusion to the early age of surfing. Moreover, The Beach Boys’ sound had matured, as surfing had, through the 60s, and their recent album, Surfs Up, was sophisticated and intelligent–mature–as well as beautiful to listen to. In fact, even the trendy Rolling Stone magazine had picked it as one of the year’s best albums.
So The Beach Boys, the most successful American rock groups of the 60s, offered their entire musical collection to Five Summer Stories–and the combination of this historical and beautifully produced music with the classical images of MacGillivray Freeman Films have new meaning to both the music and to the era.
