’83 Beach Boys brought good vibrations to stadium
In April 1983, Interior Secretary James Watts banned the Beach Boys from playing on the National Mall because he said rock bands would attract “the wrong element” to the upcoming Fourth of July concert. The next month, the band at the center of the national controversy appeared in concert after the San Diego Padres and Chicago Cubs game at San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium on May 8, 1983. The sellout crowd saw a Padres win; 41,522 fans stuck around for the Beach Boys’ postgame concert.
From the Tribune, Monday, May 9, 1983: ALL THE VIBRATIONS GOOD AT THE STADIUM By Don Braunagel, Tribune Assistant Entertainment Editor
THE SECOND ANNUAL Padres-Beach Boys collaboration yesterday at the stadium was, if James Watt will excuse the expression, a Grand Ol’ Party.
And this time the Padres even won.
In 1982’s inaugural of this series — which, Beach Boy vocalist Mike Love told the sellout throng yesterday, may well become a yearly event — the Padres lost to the Philadelphia Phillies, 3-0. Yesterday the home team came from behind to beat the Chicago Cubs, 5-3.
Even Brian Wilson — the Beach Boys’ reclusive composer genius who hadn’t played with the group since January, spurring doubts as to whether he would appear — showed up and seemed to have a good time.
He’s reportedly been concentrating on his health, losing weight and quitting smoking. The effort has been successful enough that yesterday his jeans and tucked-in pullover shirt revealed a fairly straight silhouette with a midriff tire, rather than the oval body of previous appearances.
He left his piano bench a couple of times for some perfunctory clapping and tambourine playing, and when the group finished its hour-and-a-quarter set, he joined Love for an upraised-arm acknowledgment of the frenzied cheers.
His presence elicited some awe, with Love repeatedly crediting him for the Beach Boys’ long, wide success. And during the group’s entrance onto the field — with the stars riding in flashy convertibles, the backup band in woodies — the P.A. voice announced Wilson’s name in tones most might save for the second coming.
The concert? It was your standard-issue Beach Boy run-through of most of the group’s lengthy list of hits — nearly all from the ’60s — spiced with a couple of numbers from Carl Wilson’s new solo LP, Youngblood, and some fresh treatments of songs identified with other performers, like John Lennon’s “Imagine” and Del Shannon’s “Runaway.”
The former didn’t fare well, since Love’s thin, nasal tenor doesn’t have the color and depth of Lennon’s voice and the serious theme of the song doesn’t mesh with the Beach Boys’ good-time, surf’s-up rock ’n’ roll.
“Runaway,” however, fit well into the group’s harmonies, as did another oldie, the Del Vikings’ “Come Go With Me.” Both songs came out in the late ’50s, before a good share of yesterday’s crowd was born, and many there were probably hearing the tunes for the first time, but it’s a mark of the Beach Boys’ infectious spirit that the dancing and singing along hardly lagged.