The Beach Boys are touring the UK soon. They’re playing venues in Wolverhampton, Halifax, Southampton, London, Edinburgh and Belfast. As a long-time fan of the band, shouldn’t I be thinking of going to a show? Er, no thanks.
I first became aware of the upcoming tour while listening to Cerys Matthews show on BBC 6 Music, something I rarely choose to do because of the fingernails-down-a-blackboard sound of her voice, but I heard that founder member Mike Love was on so I decided to give it a go. A few minutes in, I wish I hadn’t bothered.
I should not disparage Matthews, I suppose. Her show features mainly what is referred to as ‘world’ music and I suppose as the Beach Boys come from somewhere in the world, they’ve as much right to be on it as anyone else. But right from the start, things started to go downhill.
The host referred to the upcoming 50th anniversary of the band’s – well, Brian Wilson’s – epic Pet Sounds album, indisputably one of the greatest records of all time, adding that the surviving members of the band were touring this summer. Call it nit-picking, if you will, but actually Pet Sounds is 60 years old this year and of the surviving members, only Love is touring in this particular line-up. She then said that the surviving Beach Boys were touring this year. Only one of them, as it turns out.
Formed in 1961, the three Wilson brothers have all died, leaving just Love, Al Jardine, David Marks and Bruce Johnston who, I feel counts as a proper Beach Boy since he joined in 1965 when Brian Wilson no longer wanted to tour. Mike Love has licensed the band’s name so the Beach Boys you will be seeing will be just him, plus a brilliant, long-serving backing band, more a tribute act than THE Beach Boys, I feel. But if you just want to hear the songs, and there are always a lot of them in the setlist, you could do worse than listen along.
Love sounded all of his 85 years, his voice weak and scratchy, and speculation continues that the great man lip-syncs these days, rather than going to the trouble of actually singing the songs. The clips I have seen tends to support that view. At the very least there is autotune at work, but if it is true, Love is in good – or is it bad? – company. Four Seasons legend Frankie Valli still performs and he’s 92 next week and no one seriously believes he is not receiving electronic assistance, the same applies to The Eagles, where the sole surviving member Don Henley, a mere pup at 78, sings not just in the same key as he did back in the 1970s, the performances are exactly the same every night, so much so that experts believe that some form of assistance may be in use. Of course it is. Age waits for no man and woman and more than that, should it matter?
My objection is that this is not really the Beach Boys touring and Don Henley’s shows aren’t the Eagles, either. It is, of course, a matter of opinion what constitutes the real thing. In my opinion, the Beach Boys died in 1998 when Carl Wilson died. He sang God Only Knows, Good Vibrations and so many of their best songs, what followed was not the Beach Boys. Similarly, the Eagles died with Glenn Frey because both he and Henley were the original members. Even though Joe Walsh has been in the band for around 50 years, and I idolise the bloke, I see him as a bloke who joined the band, because he was not an original. The likes of Deacon Frey, Glenn’s modestly talented son, and country singer Vince Gill are 100% not bona fide Eagles. I would not dream of going to see them.
I did see a recent iteration of the Beach Boys sometime in the 2000s at Bristol’s Colston Hall. Love and Bruce Johnston were present and I found it a bland, emotion-free, albeit crowd-pleasing show. That was in contrast to the four shows I saw around the same time with Brian Wilson and his touring band, which were among the most moving shows I ever saw. To a large extent, Wilson was carried by his stellar backing band but it was still incredible to see such a legendary, though hugely damaged, musician in the fresh. But here’s the thing. Love’s band was presented as the Beach Boys. Brian’s show was very clearly a Brian Wilson show. The latter, I felt, was far more authentic.
To me, there is nothing wrong with an artist whose voice isn’t quite what it was. Most singers have a scratchier voice as they get older, many having to sing in a lower register than they used to. Listen to an Elton John show these days, for example. But so what?
Top of my all-time bucket list to see live is Paul McCartney and no one could possibly deny his voice has aged. Approaching 84, he doesn’t pretend it hasn’t either. No pretence, no lip-syncing, no autotune and still singing in the same key, Macca plays a solo show of Beatles classics and solo work. He’s totally honest. Many of us hear his voice in old age as being a rather lovely thing and anyway, he’s a Beatle. He can do what he likes. The coming Beach Boys shows are not the Beach Boys, not really, just a tribute band, with tickets costing around £100 each. I’d much rather it was an evening called “Mike Love sings (lip syncs?) the Beach Boys, or in the case of the Eagles, ‘Don Henley sings (lip-syncs?) the Eagles”. I know there are more tickets to be sold but a Wilson-free Beach Boys, a Frey/Leadon/Meisner Eagles, a Lennon/Starr/Harrison-free Beatles or even a Walter Becker-free Steely Dan are not The Real Thing, so why pretend they are? (Incidentally, Macca is well-aware of that, which is why he never tours as The Beatles, because that would be silly.)
In the end, I suppose it’s up to the individual. Lynyrd Skynyrd continue to tour with no original members, as do Foreigner, the Temptations, Yes and many others. If you love the music, then why not go along? It will surely be well-played and sung. The same goes for the remnants of The Beach Boys, but personally I wouldn’t cross the road to see Mike Love’s current take on the band. I’ll simply play Pet Sounds instead. And the irony of that is that Love didn’t even like Brian’s new music back in 1966 and advised his cousin not to “fuck with the formula”. Luckily for us, Brian did fuck with the formula and went on to make some of the best Beach Boys music, far away from the early sixties cars, girls and surf.
As far as I am concerned, Surf’s Up for Mike Love but I guess if you fancy paying £100 for a high class karaoke show it will still be Fun, Fun, Fun.
