Brian Wilson, the music genius who passed away this week, was indirectly connected (sort of) to the OCS oil and gas program.
In 1983, Secretary of the Interior James Watt, whose overzealous approach to offshore oil and gas leasing galvanized opposition, bizarrely banned the Beach Boys from performing at the National Mall 4th of July concert. This stunned Nancy Reagan and almost everyone else in Washington. The Washington Post reported, “a ban on apple pie couldn’t have brought a stronger reaction.”
Congressman George Miller, who later restored the OCS civil penalties program, dropped the names of Beach Boys songs while commenting on the House floor:
‘I was sitting ‘in my room’ ‘all summer long’ saying, “‘Do you remem- ber,’ Mr. Watt, ‘Do you remember’ those ‘Good Vibrations’ from the ‘Fourth of July’ when all we did was ‘dance, dance, dance,’ ‘all summer long’ to the Beach Boys in the ‘spirit of Americas?”” Miller said according to Congressional records. “But ‘help me, Ronald, help, help me Ronald,’ ‘don’t let him run wild.’ And if you cannot do it alone, get help from ‘Barbara Ann.'”
The White House gave Watt a plaster foot with a hole as a symbolic gesture of his mistake. The Beach Boys returned to the National Mall the following, playing in front of a crowd of more than half a million people.
The Beach Boys had another indirect connection to the OCS program in that they attended Hawthorne High with Glenn Shackell, one of our top engineers. Glenn served in Vietnam, studied petroleum engineering at USC, and had an outstanding career in our Pacific Region office. He has an encyclopedic knowledge of oil and gas operations in the Pacific.
Here is a video of Brian Wilson returning to Hawthorne High:
Bud's Offshore Energy (BOE) 