If you've ever wondered about the story behind these photos, I did some research and in the process, found a clipping with a first-hand account from one of the five girls pictured in these first few photos, tasked with writing about a day with The Beach Boys for a teen magazine. Here are the relevant parts of that article, typed up from the clipping:
“What do you say when your mother asks you, just as you walk in the front door, ‘How would you like to meet The Beach Boys?’
[…] ‘Louise, I mean it,’ she said. ‘I know somebody who works on TEEN. I always tell her how much you enjoy it. Well, she just called and said they wanted five typical, cute high school girls to take pictures with The Beach Boys for a story.’
Cute, I don’t know about, but when you’re from a high school like mine you feel pretty typical all right — certainly not like someone who will ever have a chance to meet even one of the guys you’ve spent years dreaming about. Could it be for real?
I looked at her. Yes! I could tell, it was! I didn’t know whether to faint or scream, but I ran over to her and threw my arms around her.
You can imagine the rest of the day.
TEEN wanted me to choose four of my friends to go with me on BB-day. First I called Lois — her reaction was the same as mine had been. She shot over to my house and together we called Karen. Lois was standing across the room, but she could still hear Karen screaming when she finally believed me. Then we called Sandee and Marilyn, and everybody came over to my house.
[…]
[When the day at Pacific Ocean Park finally came,] I tried hard not to keep looking at Dennis who’s always been my special favorite and looked so good in Levis and a Levi jacket. Once we were all gathered together in front of POP, Brian announced that he was starving, so everybody trooped along the boardwalk beside the beach to find an open restaurant. […]
Taking pictures around the park was wild — and Denny and Mike really kept us entertained. Denny kept climbing up everything in sight so when you’d look up, there he’d be — sort of like one of those unexpected faces in ‘what’s wrong with this picture.’
[…] Personality experts that we are, we decided that Denny was probably the only one who could have fit into our ‘group’ at school. Because no matter what, Dennis was always Dennis. And he was sort-of a loner. Mike loves an audience and seems to enjoy people more. He’s so carefree, he just kind of bops around instead of walking.
Al is the quiet one and helps keep the guys from clowning around so much that they never get any work done. We thought Carl was rather quiet too, but very nice to talk to while we walked along.
I was afraid when we first met the BB’s they’d be bored and uninterested — like, oh well, here are five more screaming fans to put up with. But it wasn’t like that at all. They all seemed interested in what we had to say — not just because we buy their records, but because we were individuals. We had been so nervous, but they made us feel at ease.” - Louise Copeland, TEEN Magazine (June 1966)
The five girls, from left to right in those first two photos — Karen Frakes (16), Lois Perricone (17), Sandee Hardison (16), Louise Copeland (17), and Marilyn Nelson (17).
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