MADE FOR ALL TIME
Beach Boys legend Brian Wilson may be inscrutable on stage, but his songs are among the most enduring in all of pop music. Bandmate Al Jardine talks to Bernard Perusse about Wilson’s legacy and the current tour.
It’s been five decades since the Beach Boys faced their first big identity crisis.
Cream’s Wheels of Fire and Electric Ladyland by The Jimi Hendrix Experience were released within a few months of each other in 1968 — two double albums filled with extended jams and psychedelic explorations.
That’s the music you’re likely to hear in contemporary films or television series set in the ’60s. What you won’t find on such a soundtrack is anything from the Beach Boys’ Friends, released that summer.
Clocking in at just more than 25 minutes, the entire album was shorter than some self-indulgent marathons finding favour on the then-nascent FM progressive rock radio format.
Friends peaked at No. 126 on the Billboard chart and sold 23,000 copies — quite a comedown for a band that had topped the charts with Good Vibrations less than two years earlier.
Over the years, however, Friends has been embraced by the group’s fans.
“We weren’t always in sync with the times,” Beach Boys founding member Al Jardine acknowledged.
Wake the World, from that charmingly introspective album, was the first songwriting collaboration between Jardine and Brian Wilson, the band’s preternaturally gifted leader and auteur.
And while the song has been sneaking into the set list of Wilson’s Greatest Hits Live! Tour as one of the evening ’s deep tracks, the concert being prepared by Wilson and band (including Jardine) for their Canadian stops are expected to focus on the endless summer hits of the group’s earlier years.
Those bestsellers from Wilson’s well-loved catalogue have not begun to fade in the consciousness of pop music devotees.
In his essential and exhaustive overview Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! The Story of Pop Music From Bill Haley to Beyoncé, Bob Stanley described the Beach Boys’ music as “the most emotionally satisfying in the whole modern pop canon.”
After the Canadian stops, Wilson and his band will begin a Holiday Tour, during which they will perform the entire Beach Boys’ Christmas Album from 1964, along with selections from Wilson’s 2005 disc What I Really Want for Christmas. No Canadian dates for that tour are slated.
Many Beach Boys albums from the 1960s, including cultish gems such as Beach Boys’ Party! and Wild Honey, have been remastered and reissued with extra material from the original sessions, and feature extensive liner notes with scholarly analysis.
Books and box sets have also attempted to record and dissect the group’s every musical moment with obsessive accuracy. Jardine is ambivalent about it all.
“When the vocals-only tracks came out on the Pet Sounds Sessions box set, I was quite amazed at our vocals.
“I couldn’t believe how good they were.
“I was shocked. Crystal clear and clean, they were. That really impressed me, I must say. But otherwise, I’m not interested in crappy outtakes that don’t make the album. Who’s got time?” he said, laughing.
“I don’t know anything about what they do at Capitol (the group’s label). They find things in a vault. I don’t listen to our stuff anymore. I’m more interested in the present.”
Jardine admitted he does have a soft spot for the band’s underappreciated efforts from the 1970s, which he compared to “home movies, as opposed to the carefully created studio stuff. It’s more informal and personal.”
He singled out Holland (1973) and 1972’s Carl and the Passions — So Tough, offering particular praise for the latter’s gospel-flavoured He Come Down, which featured then-member Blondie Chaplin — also in Wilson’s current touring band — among the vocalists.
Hearing He Come Down recently, Jardine said he was astonished.
“I said, ‘Was that us?’ Blondie was singing his tail off on that.
“It was a beautiful spiritual and a gorgeous, gorgeous production.”
At that point in Beach Boys history, Wilson had receded from the group, both as a performer and a composer and was battling his much-chronicled demons.
The rest of the members were forced to come into their own as writers.
“We had to fill the void somehow, and it worked very well,” Jardine said.
Wilson has been back in the public eye for a couple of decades now, and Jardine has been part of his touring and studio life, on and off, since 2006.
“We’re very genuinely fond of each other. There’s a deep connection,” he said.
Jardine appeared on four tracks from Wilson’s 2015 album No Pier Pressure, even taking the lead vocal on The Right Time, as satisfying a slice of sunny pop as Wilson has recorded in many years.
Jardine also sang on the album’s gorgeous, regretful ballad Whatever Happened, on which Wilson sings, tellingly: “Whatever happened to my favourite places/ Nothing’s where it used to be/ Whatever happened/What’s gonna happen to me?”
Wilson’s detached presence on stage adds real-life worry to those lyrics, and there’s no shortage of online speculation about his state of mind. Jardine, who is at his side on stage, seemed unable to offer insight, although he did accentuate the positive.
“Remember, Brian’s the quiet genius. He was never really a performer. He’s probably reimagining stuff and you and I have no idea what it might be. Maybe he’s rearranging it in his head. Who knows? That’s him. He’ll come out and sing a great song and then he’ll go back wherever he goes. That’s all right. He’s the creator of all this stuff. Don’t be alarmed if he’s not always there,” Jardine said, chuckling.
Asked whether the chief Beach Boy still actually enjoys performing, Jardine expressed optimism.
“I think so,” he said. “I hope so. My hope is as much as anybody else’s.
“We share the stage together, but he’s in a different universe.”
Brian’s the quiet genius. He was never really a performer. He’s probably reimagining stuff and you and I have no idea what it might be.