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The night after the Rolling Stones premiered their new film, Shine a Light, the Beach Boys made a considerably less auspicious start to their British tour. The two acts are exact contemporaries, but while the Stones have retained their key players and core vitality, the Beach Boys are a husk of the group they once were. Now led by the only remaining founder member of the band, Mike Love, 67, with the long-serving Bruce Johnston, 66, on keyboards and vocals, the latest touring ensemble consists of an additional six hired hands, all of them capable musicians and harmony singers.
With a vast repertoire of very old material to get through, the band peppered a long show with a succession of themed medleys, an exasperating device much beloved of cabaret acts catering to audiences who want a quick reminder of the best bits without having to devote too much attention to the detail of individual songs. Thus Catch a Wave quickly gave way to Hawaii, then Surf City, Surfin’ Safari, Surfin’ USA and so forth. Eventually they paused long enough for Love to say how happy he was to be in Brighton, despite suffering from the inequity of the dollar/pound exchange rate, and to introduce Surfer Girl as “a slow dance dedicated to the ladies”.
The lead vocals were batted around all the musicians in turn, including John Cowsill, the drummer, who had a particularly pleasing timbre . You could never be sure who was singing what, but as long as they continued to trot out the old favourites it was all pleasant enough, and they wound up the first half of the show with a bunch of lively car songs, including Little Deuce Coup, 409, Shut Down and I Get Around.
But after making a confident start to the second half, with their celebrated cover versions of Why Do Fools Fall in Love and California Dreamin’, they allowed the momentum to drain away as – with a terrible sense of inevitability – the performance morphed into The Mike Love Show. A string of numbers inspired by his visit to the late Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in the 1960s found the singer harnessing some pedestrian tunes to the most wretched doggerel. “You need a cool head and a warm heart/To get you through your day without coming apart,” he sang in a voice that didn’t sound as if it was holding together too well itself.
The slide continued as Johnston chipped in with his party piece, Disney Girls. Luckily, there was another avalanche of hits to come – including God Only Knows, Barbara Ann, Wouldn’t it Be Nice and an
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