The Beach Boys was a band.
The Beach Boys are an American rock band formed in Hawthorne , California , in 1961 . The Beach Boys began as a garage band managed by the Wilsons ' father Murry , with Brian 's increasingly sophisticated songwriting and recording abilities dominating their creative direction . After Carl 's death , many live configurations of the band fronted by Mike Love and Bruce Johnston continued to tour into the 2000s while other members pursued solo projects . 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 .