The Beach Boys is a group.
The Beach Boys are an American rock band formed in Hawthorne , California , in 1961 . The group 's original lineup consisted of brothers Brian , Dennis , and Carl Wilson ; their cousin Mike Love ; and their friend Al Jardine . In 1966 , the Pet Sounds album and `` Good Vibrations '' single vaulted the group to the top level of rock innovators and established the band as symbols of the nascent counterculture era . The group had over eighty songs chart worldwide , thirty-six of them US Top 40 hits ( the most by an American rock band ) , four reaching number-one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart .