Wilson’s 35 mins. of fun, fun, fun
Life and art share the stage as Beach Boy Brian Wilson and ‘Love & Mercy’ actors perform a short set.
Reality met Hollywood’s version of it for a few minutes Monday night on the dance floor of a posh jazz club in the hills above Beverly Hills, where Beach Boys creative leader Brian Wilson gave a short performance at which he and his wife, Melinda Wilson, were joined by actors Paul Dano and Elizabeth Banks, who portrayed them in Bill Pohlad’s musical biopic “Love & Mercy.”
Pohlad also was on hand at the event organized to mark the release of the film on home video as well as the companion soundtrack album. An invited audience included about 250 members of the motion picture academy, friends and family members as well as several music
writers.
“It was a dream period making this movie,” Pohlad told attendees from the small stage at Vibrato. That stage was crammed not just with Wilson’s keyboard but all the equipment required by his 10-piece Brian Wilson Band — and even that wasn’t enough, as woodwind player and band leader Paul von Mertens had to take up a spot just in front of the stage, on the dance floor.
The band gave its leader the full complement of signature sounds from the recordings on which he built his musical legacy half a century ago, and often blended seven, eight or nine voices in with Wilson’s on his wondrous harmonies.
Wilson and his touring band served up a compact 35-minute set that followed Wilson’s arrival on stage, fulfilling the promise of his own introduction. “Thank you all for coming. We can’t wait to play for you,” Wilson, 73, said. “We’re going to play you a 35-minute set.”
He also was joined for the evening by his fellow founding member of the quintessential fun-in-the-sun band, Beach Boys singer and guitarist Al Jardine. The current lineup of the Brian Wilson Band also includes Jardine’s son, Matt, who handles the stratospheric high notes Brian Wilson once sang effortlessly, in re-creating the richly harmonic sound that Wilson invented with the blending of his voice with those of his two brothers, Carl and Dennis, Jardine’s and the Wilsons’ cousin, singer and Wilson’s frequent songwriting collaborator, Mike Love.
Toward the end of the set, Melinda Wilson took Banks’ hand and led her onto the dance floor while her husband, a few feet away on a stool at his keyboard, led the group through one of the sunniest of his trove of hits, “Fun, Fun, Fun.”
Dano, who handled the role of a 24-year-old Wilson in “Love & Mercy,” joined Wilson on stage and deftly took the lead on one of the most heart-wrenchingly emotional tracks from “Pet Sounds”: “You Still Believe in Me,” which requires a set of elastic vocal cords that Dano seems to have fully inherited through his work on the film. “I was pretty nervous,” Dano said after the set. “But these musicians are all so tremendous. It’s pretty amazing to get to sing with them. Brian knows that song is one of my favorites, and that’s why he asked me to sing it.”
Banks also said she prized the time she spent with the Wilsons to prepare for her performance as the former Cadillac saleswoman who fell in love with Wilson and helped extricate him from the physical and emotional grip of controversial psychologist Eugene Landy and subsequently helped support her husband’s career renaissance.
“What a great family to get to become a part of,” Banks told The Times after the set ended.
Wilson’s set encompassed several Beach Boys cornerstone songs: “California Girls,” “Surfer Girl,” “In My Room, “Good Vibrations” and “God Only Knows.” He closed the regular part of the set with the film’s title track, the winsome ballad that originally appeared on his debut solo album “Brian Wilson” in 1988. Then he cranked the energy up again for the “Fun, Fun, Fun” finale.
Clearly part of the mission of Monday’s event was to jog academy members’ memories about the film now that awards season is about to get underway.
But the reward for pop music aficionados has already manifested in Wilson’s renewal in making music and sharing it the way he always intended it to be played, even if — as “Love & Mercy” so accurately relates — it took him a couple of decades to rediscover his gift.