Looking at the Covers of All Those Beach Boys Albums

A Complement to Malcolm Searles’ “Back Through the Opera Glass: The Stories Behind the Album Covers”

This photo was cropped from the front cover of the Beach Boys’ first album, SURFIN’ SAFARI, released in late 1962. For more information, refer to the entry for this album below. (Image: personal collection.)

“BACK THROUGH THE OPERA GLASS” is the title of three lengthy articles that review most of the Beach Boys album covers released on major labels in the US. It is subtitled “The Stories Behind the Album Covers” and was written by Malcolm Searles. This massive project covers every important album from 1962 through the present.

Rather than publish it as a book — and a book would be welcome among those of us who like pages that we can flip through — Searles has made this available for free as three PDF files. Searles’ project is broken up into three sections (see below).

The three-part “The Stories Behind the Album Covers” is almost 500 pages long!

The pages are generously illustrated with the front and back covers of each album along with alternative cover art, variations on the cover from countries other than the US, advertisements from magazines from the times, in-house ads from record companies, still photos from publicity shoots, and more.

Beach Boys album covers