“..It’s hard not to spend the last night of the Beach Boys’ 50th anniversary tour trying to read the runes of the relationship between Mike Love and Brian Wilson.
The former, the owner of the Beach Boys name, has told the latter – his cousin and the genius emeritus of American pop – that as of the end of this show, the Beach Boys reverts to being Mike Love plus hired hands -
- with no room for Wilson, Al Jardine and David Marks.
During Add Some Music to Your Day, when Wilson sings “You can feel it touching your heart,” he looks over his right shoulder, directly at Love -
- who glances back with all the sentiment of a workhouse beadle who has been asked for more food.
And come the end of the show – it is Wilson who seizes Love’s hand for the group bow.
Nevertheless, for more than three hours, these elderly men – backed by an expert group largely comprising the musicians who have played for Wilson over the past decade or so – swallow their differences, and remind all present why they were, as we are told, “America’s greatest rock’n'roll band”.
It doesn’t really matter that four of them look as if they are on their way to the golf club -
- while Love – in an extraordinary silver and black paisley tuxedo and Beach Boys baseball cap –
- looks like he is off to a strip club: -
- once the Beach Boys start singing together – they are irresistible..”
(cont..)
go to source/story>>>
