Everyone knows the music. No band sells 100 million albums and remains adored for more than four decades without making an impact on the world. So why hasn't anyone got round to telling the real story? Because, as Catch A Wave shows, the story of the Beach Boys and Brian Wilson is about the way the American dream filters through popular culture and how the American appetite (for money and success) can destroy it. And in Catch A Wave the entire tale of Wilson's rise to fame, his battle with mental illness and drugs, and his emergence into a new era of creativity comes straight from the people who actually lived it.

Written with the active cooperation of Brian Wilson, the book includes exclusive interviews with surviving Beach Boys Mike Love and Al Jardine, many of Wilson's childhood friends and schoolmates, a rich variety of family members, all of his surviving collaborators and a vast array of other witnesses. As such, it is the definitive book on the life and career of Brian Wilson.