David Lee Marks

David Marks (2019)

David Lee Marks (born August 22, 1948 ) is an American musician. He is best known for his membership in the Beach Boys .

Life

Marks grew up in Hawthorne, California. He was a neighbor of the Wilson family and was friends with their son Carl Wilson . At the age of 10 he started playing guitar with Carl. They quickly found their own style and played guitar-focused instrumentals and songs by Chuck Berry . When the Pendletones, the predecessor group of the Beach Boys founded, decided to Brian Wilson as the fifth member of the band next to his brothers and Mike Love for the older by four years Al Jardine .

Marks was therefore not a founding member of the group, he was also not there when the Beach Boys recorded their first songs and had their first little hit with "Surfin".

Marks only joined the band when Al Jardine left the band to go back to college in 1962 to study dentistry. Marks was 14 years old when he joined the Beach Boys and signed a record deal with Capitol Records with the band . He took over the rhythm guitar in the band.

He was not insignificant for the band during this time, as his guitar playing complemented itself very well with Carl Wilson and he contributed a lot to the sound. Except for the debut album for the song Summertime Blues, he hardly contributes any vocal passages.

Al Jardine returned to the group as bass player in mid-1963, when Brian Wilson was unable to complete the upcoming tour for health reasons. So there were six Beach Boys for a short time. After a dispute with band manager Murry Wilson , 15-year-old Marks eventually left the band and decided to go back to high school.

That same year he formed his own band, Dave & The Marksmen. Just a year later, the band got a recording deal with A&M Records . Another of his bands, "The Moon", also got a record deal with Warner Bros. Marks began studying jazz in the late 1960s, as well as classical guitar and classical composition. He worked in Los Angeles as a studio musician and went on tour with several formations.

In 1972, when Bruce Johnston was also fired from the Beach Boys, Marks received an offer to return to the band as bassist. However, he refused. It was not until the 1990s that he appeared again sporadically with the Beach Boys and then went on tour with the band again in 1997. However, in 1999 he had to spend 30 days in a rehabilitation clinic due to his drug and alcohol problems and decided not to go on tour anymore. He was also diagnosed with hepatitis C.

At the turn of the millennium he appeared again sporadically in the three Beach Boys-related groups and is also present at official Beach Boys dates. In 2007 Jon Stebbins published the biography "The lost Beach Boy" about David Marks.

In 2012, on the occasion of the Beach Boys' 50th anniversary, Marks played lead guitar on both the studio album That's Why God Made the Radio and on the entire anniversary tour. In 2013 he went on a tour together with his Beach Boys colleagues Brian Wilson and Al Jardine as well as Jeff Beck .

literature

• The Lost Beach Boy , Jon Stebbins with David Marks, Virgin Books 2007

Web links

• Homepage David Lee Marks

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Archive link ( Memento from December 12, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
2. ↑ Archive link ( Memento from July 6, 2015 in the Internet Archive )