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It’s a surreal enough experience to walk into the famous Abbey Road Studios – past the tourists clamouring for a picture on the zebra crossing outside, a la The Beatles on the cover of 1969’s Abbey Road, and up to a relatively unassuming white building that has seen the birth of some of the best musical works of all time – but it’s even more surreal to be there to meet The Beach Boys’ Mike Love and Bruce Johnston.

Contemporaries of The Beatles but representing the other side of the pond, The Beach Boys formed in California in 1961, bringing a revolutionary style of surf rock that cemented their legacy forevermore.

The original line-up consisted of brothers Brian, Dennis and Carl Wilson, their cousin Mike Love and friend Al Jardine. Brian Wilson, Love, Jardine and Bruce Johnston – who has been involved with the band since 1965 – are still official members.

It’s been a winding road for The Beach Boys over the last 60 years, with incredible highs – selling more than 100 million records worldwide and helping to cement popular music as legitimate art – and corresponding lows, including the deaths of brothers Carl and Dennis Wilson, fractious relationships within the band and all the challenges that come with touring and recording.

In a new documentary film for Disney+, titled The Beach Boys, the lifetime and legacy of the band is being told from its humble family beginnings to its immense success, including never-before-seen footage and new interviews with its members.

Going down memory lane for the documentary was “really special”, says 83-year-old vocalist and lyricist Mike Love, partly because it brought the members back together.

“My cousin Brian and I hadn’t been able to spend all that much time together in the last several years,” he says.

“He remembered things that happened during our high school time period, and we go back way before that, because the first memory I have of Brian Wilson singing was on Grandma Wilson’s lap singing Danny Boy.”

While Love has been a Beach Boy from the start, Bruce Johnston joined at the peak of the band’s success in 1965. Having just lost touring member Glen Campbell, who left the band to focus on his solo career, Johnston – who was a producer at Columbia Records at the time – stepped up to the plate and immediately felt his life change.

“I had a sense that the band was having an impact on me instantly,” says Johnston, 81.

“And then, at the speed of light, kept getting better.

“The harmonies, I thought: ‘Now, it sounds simple, but it’s not… I just was amazed.”

“I had a job at a record company, Columbia Records, producing records,” he explains.

“We were knocking off Beach Boys harmonies and stuff – never as good. So I was kind of prepped to maybe have that phone call from Mike, not to have me join the band, (but) to see if I knew anyone who could. And I called 12 people as well… ‘Okay I can come down for the weekend’. That’s how it started.”

Documentary film The Beach Boys is directed by Frank Marshall, who also directed 2020 documentary The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart and 2022’s Jazz Fest: A New Orleans Story.

“I grew up about 25 miles south of them in a place called Newport Beach, and I was a surfer, and I was in a band,” explains Marshall, 77, of his first memories of The Beach Boys.

“But surf music was instrumental… all instrumental, and suddenly, here was this music that was about surfing and had words and lyrics.

“So I remember very early on knowing about the Beach Boys and saying: ‘We have to change things up’.”

When preparing the documentary, Marshall searched far and wide for previously unseen footage that even die-hard The Beach Boys fans won’t have laid eyes on.

“The fun of making a documentary is that you get to go on this little treasure hunt, and try and find little gold nuggets of things,” says the director.

“We started inquiring about any family home movies, eight millimetre in a shoebox under the bed, and we got some! And that’s when it’s most exciting… I tried to try and find things that nobody’s ever seen or heard.”

Sitting in the famous Studio Two at Abbey Road Studios, best known for being the studio in which The Beatles recorded, it seems remiss not to broach the subject of The Beach Boys’ biggest rivals from across the Atlantic.

“The Beatles (and) The Beach Boys have a tremendous amount of hits from that era,” says Love.

“The radio was king, and Top 40 radio was just amazing. It was our lifeblood. I mean, when we heard a Beatles song come on the radio… all their songs were great. And the Beach Boys would have our I Get Around and our Surfin’ Safari and our Surfin’ USA and our California Girls and, you know, Good Vibrations went to number one in 1966.

“And we were voted the top group in Great Britain. Number two? The Beatles. So there was a rivalry. Nobody’s been more successful than Sir Paul and friends, but we were able to do pretty well. And there was a lot of mutual admiration and respect for what each other was doing.”

“For me, it was just absolute pure amazement,” adds Johnston on The Beach Boys coming head-to-head with The Beatles.

“For Brian, he had that, but he also felt healthy competition.”

“The 60s was such a rich time for music,” adds Love.

“I mean, in addition to the Beatles and The Beach Boys, which get a lot of credit for the music of the 60s, how about Motown? I mean, amazing songs, amazing artistry, so many different kinds.”

There’s no denying that The Beach Boys have enduring appeal and popularity with their funky, sunny surf rock and fun relatable lyrics, having tapped into the Californian dreams of people going about their lives all over the world.

“I think the wave they caught is that people wanted to be in sunny Southern California, on the beach with no cares, escape,” says Marshall.

“And for two minutes, or three minutes, their music would take you there. That was something that was true then, and it’s true now.

“I mean, if you want three minutes of happiness, listen to The Beach Boys.”

The Beach Boys is streaming on Disney+ now.

‘If you want three minutes of happiness, listen to The Beach Boys’: Documentary director reflects on surf band’s legacy