Behind the Doomed “Million Dollar Tour” That Saw The Beach Boys Flounder as Social and Political Turmoil Took Over the US

By the time The Beach Boys wrapped their doomed “Million Dollar Tour” in the summer of 1968, the only financial grandeur of note was the sheer amount of money the California pop group lost in their effort to make the tour happen—over three million dollars, by today’s standards. The Beach Boys’ self-funded tour came on the heels of their 1968 release, Friends. This album came two years after the seminal Pet Sounds.

Contrary to what the album and tour names might suggest, the tour was neither fruitful nor full of camaraderie. In fact, the opposite seemed true as political, social, and spiritual turmoil spread throughout The Beach Boys’ tour route and the rest of the world.

Tragedy Struck the Nation Just as The Beach Boys’ Tour Began

The Beach Boys’ first stop on their “Million Dollar Tour” was in Nashville, Tennessee. They flew out to the Volunteer State the night before. This is when they heard that someone gunned down Martin Luther King Jr. on his hotel balcony in Memphis that day. This wasn’t the first time The Beach Boys heard news of an assassination before a show. The same thing happened when President John F. Kennedy was shot, and The Beach Boys followed through with their show that night. They intended to do the same after MLK Jr.’s death. But the rest of the country had other plans.

That first night in Nashville, thousands of Tennessee National Guardsmen roamed the streets to quell protests and riots. The Beach Boys’ show was canceled. Then another, and then another. The tour route slowly fell apart as cities shut down public entertainment events for fear of widespread violence and destruction. Because The Beach Boys funded the tour themselves, they lost all the money they had already invested, plus the money they lost from their canceled shows.

Mike Love Had an Idea To Reinvigorate Public Interest, but It Backfired

With the United States reeling from the death of Martin Luther King Jr., The Beach Boys returned home to regroup briefly and figure out their next steps. They still wanted to get out on the road, but they needed something that would get people’s butts in seats. (Their opening acts, Buffalo Springfield and Strawberry Alarm Clock, might have been able to help. But the multiple cancellations and postponements made it hard to tell.)

Mike Love suggested The Beach Boys invite guru Maharishi to join the tour. Love was a loyal disciple of the spiritual teacher. This was despite the scandals that had caused The Beatles, one of Maharishi’s earliest advocates, to become disillusioned and abandon his teachings. The Fab Four, of course, weren’t shy about sharing their new feelings toward the guru. Given their immense popularity in the late 1960s, these public denunciations inevitably hurt The Beach Boys’ attempt to use the guru as a marketing ploy. Maharishi’s involvement did little to increase ticket sales. If anything, most Beach Boys fans left whenever the guru took the stage—or avoided the show altogether because of him.

The Beach Boys weren’t even able to get through their tour route before the remaining 24 dates were canceled. The total loss in revenue was around $250,000, well over $2 million today. “Our Million Dollar Tour wasn’t worth a plugged nickel,” Love later recalled in Good Vibrations: My Life As A Beach Boy. “We lost whatever money we had already put down, plus another several hundred thousand in forgone revenue.”

Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

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