Dean Torrence of the Jan & Dean band has enjoyed commercial success both in a career as a top selling musician, and as a graphic artist.

Torrence is a legend to millions who grew up with the blonde-haired, clean-cut boy who sang  songs about cars, surfing, skateboarding and girls. Living in California, you discover that Jan & Dean accurately portrayed a lifestyle in their songs, and surely must have taken the material from the streets, themselves.

This video interview of Dean Torrence is difficult to hear. Our videographer had to stay behind the cameraman for the Australian television program who lined up an interview with the Dean.  He had a mic on his subject and was picking up the sound much better. The interview above took place at the Huntington Beach International Surfing Museum.

The interviewer asks Torrence: You started out in rock & roll...how did you end up with a surf band'

Torrence: Out of necessity. We needed subject and we ran out of things to write about. The only other subject matter we knew anything about happened to be California lifestyle. That would be surfing and cars. So It wasn't like we sat around marketing-wise and went hey, this a good idea to write about this stuff because there's somebody else that might be interested. We actually didn't know what else to write about. It's as simple as that. See, you thought there might be some intellectual reason why we did it. There was no intellectual reason at all.

Interviewer: So what were some of the major influences on Jan (Berry), himself, developing the sound you came up with.

Dean: We didn't know anybody else who was doing it other than the Beach Boys. We didn't know anyone else who was doing it so their early stuff sounded more like our stuff.

While the songs are remembered for the lifestyle they portrayed, if you come across Dean Torrence today, you discover that people still line up to talk to him, get his autograph, and attend his concerts.  Jan Berry passed away several years ago, but Dean performs with a band that delivers the Jan & Dean songs with the identical sound that was created decades ago.

His art is quite popular and is sold and represented in galleries, including The HB Gallery. Dean's long, illustrious career that spans decades has included collaboration and affiliation with The Beach Boys and numerous other musical groups.