Endless summer gold for Beach Boys on tour coming to Cedar Rapids

Mike Love is back on the road this summer, leading the Beach Boys around the United States on a tour that will visit some 70 cities, including Cedar Rapids.

Their summer sounds will send good vibrations rippling through the McGrath Amphitheatre on Friday night, and actor/musician John Stamos will join in the fun, fun, fun.

At 83, Love is the last member of the classic 1960s Beach Boys lineup still touring with the group. He owns the Beach Boys name and oversees the band’s business.

The only other touring member with ties to the early edition of the Beach Boys is Bruce Johnston. He joined the group in 1964 as a replacement for Brian Wilson, who had decided to retire from touring to focus on his role as the main songwriter and producer of the Beach Boys music and work exclusively in the studio.

Ostensibly, the Beach Boys are touring to celebrate a pair of projects. One is the 50th anniversary of “Endless Summer,” the greatest-hits album that revived the band’s career in the mid 1970s. The Beach Boys’ popularity had waned in the years following the groundbreaking 1966 album, “Pet Sounds,” and the innovative follow-up single, “Good Vibrations.”

“We probably do 18 of the 20 songs on that album in our concert,” Love said in a late-June phone interview, noting that the tour is titled “Endless Summer Gold” as a nod to that anniversary.

Documentary

The group also is touring behind a new documentary titled simply as “The Beach Boys,” now streaming on Disney+.

Directed by Frank Marshall and Thom Zimny and written by Mark Monroe, the documentary traces the Beach Boys’ career from its inception in 1961 in the Los Angeles suburb of Hawthorne, where Love co-founded the band with his cousins Brian, Carl and Dennis Wilson and friend Al Jardine, mainly through the mid-1970s resurgence of the band.

The documentary has been dinged in some reviews for glossing over or omitting some of the less positive elements of the band’s history, including tensions that existed in the group; several members’ drug use; Brian Wilson’s struggles with drugs and mental health that initially culminated in a breakdown following the completion of the classic 1966 album “Pet Sounds”; and the controversial role psychiatrist Eugene Landy took in the years that followed in managing Wilson’s life.

In addition, the deaths of Dennis Wilson from a drowning accident in 1983 and Carl Wilson from cancer in 1998 are only referenced with a note at the end of the documentary.

But Love likes how the film came out and feels it touches on aspects of the group’s history that some of the many other documentaries on the Beach Boys didn’t highlight.

“I think it showed a bit more of my involvement than has been in other projects, and there have been some fallacies said about me, like I didn't like the ‘Pet Sounds’ album, which was stupid because I named the ‘Pet Sounds’ album and I went with Brian to present it to Capitol Records,” Love said. “And they really didn’t know what to do with it at the time because we had done things like ‘Surfing U.S.A.’ and ‘I Get Around’ and ‘California Girls,’ ‘Fun, Fun Fun.’ They wanted something more along those lines, but ‘Pet Sounds’ was an evolution. Brian was using symphonic instruments on some of the tracks and stuff like that. But I sang on it and was lyricist on a couple of songs.

“I think this documentary really (depicts) how it was, how it really was, with the harmonies and the family connection, and it a bit more accurately told the story of the making of the music.”

What also is memorable for Love is footage from a get-together last summer with all of the surviving band members, including Brian Wilson.

“The surviving members, and David Marks and Al Jardine and Bruce Johnston, we all got together at Paradise Cove, which is where we did our original album cover photo shoot,” Love said, referring to the “Surfin’ Safari” album, which depicted the five band members on a beach in a vintage truck, carrying a surfboard. “So over 60 years later we got together at the same place and we actually sang some songs together, and it was really nice to have that as the final shot of the documentary.”

Wilson recently was placed in a medical conservatorship to manage his health and welfare, but Love said his long-term memory still is intact, and so are his abilities to sing and make music. In interviews following that get-together, Love and Johnston both mentioned the prospect of getting together with Wilson to try writing songs.

“Getting together to do a song, that's not necessarily a priority, but what is necessary is to get together and just to visit and see how he’s doing, and have some positive time together,” Love said. “That was more or less the reason for our get-together at Paradise Cove in the documentary — just to get together and spend some time together and reminisce and see if we can sing together, which we can. So the possibility exists, but there’s no project or focus at the moment. But that could change.”

Touring band

For now, touring is the priority. And the Beach Boys “Endless Summer Gold” tour will celebrate the 1960s hits that had them vying with the Beatles to be pop music’s most popular band, while displaying the sun-kissed, harmony-laden sound (not to mention lyrics about surfing, cars and beautiful girls) that helped create America’s fascination with the idyllic California lifestyle.

The band that performs the music has changed a lot over the years, and the lineup has evolved once again for this tour. Longtime musical director Scott Totten has moved on and guitarist Brian Eichenberger, a touring member since 2015, has taken on that role. The band also has a new lead guitarist in John Wedemeyer and drummer in Jon Bolton.

Love, Johnston, keyboardist Tim Bonhomme, sax/flute player Randy Leago, bassist Keith Hubacher and guitarist Christian Love (son of Mike Love) remain from previous lineups.

Love is pleased with this unit.

“Actually, we sound better than we ever have,” he said.

He noted that Eichenberger, in addition to leading the band, handles the high harmony parts initially sung by Brian Wilson, while Wedemeyer is a “diversified and brilliant” lead guitarist and Bolton is “a show within a show” on drums. What’s more, Bolton’s vocals allow the band to perform a couple of songs Carl Wilson sang that couldn’t be performed with some previous lineups.

“We’re really doing more songs from more years of our band’s existence these days than we ever have,” Love said.

This unit is also focused on faithfully reproducing in concert the original versions of the Beach Boys material.

“We’re obsessed with recreating as close as humanly possible to the recordings, and that means singing the songs in their original keys, not lowering them because you're not able to hit some of the notes anymore. We sing all these songs in their original keys.

“And maybe there’s a little bit of something extra we put in to end some songs, just to be more dynamic because there is a live audience,” he added. “So instead of fading a (song) out like you would on a record or a single, we’ve come up with an actual ending to put a little more oomph into it, a little more pizazz, like the end of ‘Good Vibrations’ or ‘Wouldn't It Be Nice.’

“It is a live concert, so you'll do a little bit of something different on the end that makes it more dynamic.”