CLICK HERE if you are having trouble viewing these photos on a mobile device.
It’s become commonplace for acts to revisit hit albums from the distant past on tour.
But it’s basically unheard of for an artist to celebrate a commercial flop with a road show some 50 years later.
Yet, that’s exactly what Brian Wilson is doing on the Something Great From ’68 tour by focusing on “Friends,” which topped out at No. 126 on the Billboard 200 as it dramatically underscored just how far — and how quickly — Wilson’s Beach Boys had fallen from favor after ruling the charts with such early and mid ’60s classics as “Surfer Girl,” “I Get Around,” “Help Me, Rhonda” and “Good Vibrations.”
The other Beach Boys album that he’s focusing on is 1971’s “Surf’s Up,” which did respectable business on the -charts — peaking at No. 29 — but doesn’t contain any of the songs that draw the casual fan to a Brian Wilson show.
Yet, this tour, which stopped at the Fox Theater in Oakland Friday, Sept. 13, isn’t for the casual fan. It’s for the Beach Boys junkies who want to be able to check off having finally heard “Diamond Head” in concert.
And it’s also for Wilson himself, who has gone on record as saying “Friends” and “Surf’s Up” are his two favorite Beach Boys albums.
Listen to them once, then compare them with what came before, and your conclusion might just be that Wilson has really bad taste in music. Listen to them again, and perhaps again, and you might change your mind and decide that Wilson just has, well, really mediocre taste in music.
The joys of these two albums are certainly not as immediate, dramatic or, for sure, numerous as what’s found on mid-‘60s efforts like “The Beach Boys Today!” and, of course, “Pet Sounds.” Instead, they are subtler, sometimes just plain sillier, but still quite intriguing.
And they’ve been basically ignored on the concert stage for years by both Wilson and Mike Love’s Beach Boys, so it was cool to hear them live at the Fox, mixed in among the usual assortment of big singles.
Wilson and his incredible band — with includes fellow, former Beach Boys Al Jardine and Blondie Chaplin — opened the show with a flurry of classics, including “California Girls,” “I Get Around” and “Don’t Worry Baby,” before turning to the featured albums.
First up was “Friends,” a tranquil yet tumultuous 25-minute snapshot of a band leaving its radio pop days in favor of trying — albeit initially unsuccessfully — to court the counterculture of the time period. The group delivered four consecutive songs from the album — “Meant for You,” the title track, “Wake the World” and “Busy Doin’ Nothing” — thrilling some fans, while perplexing others.
The music was artsy and ambitious, yet pretty much devoid of all the things that usually draw one’s ear — big hooks, memorable melodies, catchy choruses — to Beach Boys songs.
You can tell they are the work of a genius. Yet, for the most part, they come across like interesting missteps rather than undeniable masterworks.
We’d get plenty from of the latter category when Wilson and his band pushed pause on the “Friends” material long enough to deliver three of the greatest songs of all time — “Wouldn’t It Be Nice,” “Sloop John B” and “God Only Knows.”
Chaplin then entered the picture, making it a total of 12 people onstage, and took over at the microphone for a three-song segment that included a pair of “Surf’s Up” offerings — “Feel Flows” and “Long Promised Road.” Yet, the highlight of Chaplin’s time onstage was, as per usual, his high-voltage guitar work on “Sail On, Sailor.”
But whatever excitement Chaplin managed to conjure up soon dissipated as the band went back to visit “Friends” and delivered a pedestrian one-two punch of “Little Bird” and “Diamond Head.”
Then it was time for more “Surf’s Up,” as the group ran through “‘Til I Die,” the title track and “Lookin’ at Tomorrow (A Welfare Song).” The title track, in particular, sounded marvelous, ranking as the only tune performed from the two featured albums that held up in comparison with the hits.
The band stuck with the up-tempo classics — “Help Me, Rhonda,” “Barbara Ann,” etc. — as the show approached the finish line, finally wrapping things up with a sweet “Love and Mercy” closer.
The Zombies, newly inducted into Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, were also on the bill. The English psychedelic-pop band sounded great during a set that featured a performance of the classic 1968 album “Odessey and Oracle” in its entirety.
Brian Wilson set list:
1, “California Girls”
2, “I Get Around”
3, “Don’t Worry Baby
4, “Darlin'”
5, “Meant for You”
6, “Friends”
7, “Wake the World”
8, “Busy Doin’ Nothin'”
9, “Wouldn’t It Be Nice”
10, “Sloop John B”
11, “God Only Knows”
12, “Feel Flows”
13, “Long Promised Road”
14, “Sail On, Sailor”
15, “I Can Hear Music”
16, “Little Bird”
17, “Diamond Head”
18, “‘Til I Die”
19, “Surf’s Up”
20, “Lookin’ at Tomorrow (A Welfare Song)”
21, “Heroes and Villains”
22, “Good Vibrations”
23, “Help Me, Rhonda”
24, “Barbara Ann”
25, “Surfin’ U.S.A.”
26, “Fun, Fun, Fun”
27, “Love and Mercy”
The Zombies set list
1, “Tell Her No”
2, “Merry Go Round”
3, “Edge of the Rainbow”
4, “She’s Not There”
5, “Care of Cell 44”
6, “A Rose for Emily”
7, “Maybe After He’s Gone”
8, “Beechwood Park”
9, “Brief Candles”
10, “Hung Up on a Dream”
11, “Changes”
12, “I Want Her She Wants Me”
13, “This Will Be Our Year”
14, “Butcher’s Tale (Western Front 1914)”
15, “Friends of Mine”
16, “Time of the Season”
