Is the 1977 album “The Beach Boys Love You” a classic and essential part of this great American band’s catalog, or a lark? It’s so different from virtually every other album the group ever recorded over a nearly 50-year period, there will always be some split over that — maybe even internally, because even core member Al Jardine says he wasn’t that high on the record until relatively recently. But it’s fair to say that if you are really, really, really into the recorded output of Brian Wilson, there’s an outstanding chance you have consumed whatever Kool-Aid is necessary to have joined the choir of fans who have been singing the praises of “Love You” ever since it came out and flopped.
Now, it’s getting its due and then some. Al Jardine and the Pet Sounds Band — which is essentially the group that toured with Brian Wilson as a solo artist for many years — have been doing tour dates where they’ve performed most of the “Love You” album live. On Friday night, for the very first time ever, the ensemble will play the entire record, not leaving out a single track. Anyone who has heard them perform any of this material live will know it’s well worth the pilgrimage… as is any set of theirs that’s mostly limited to the core canon, given how faithfully they have been bringing any Brian song to full-fleshed life for decades before and months since the pop genius’ death.
Before a different SoCal show recently, Variety caught up backstage with Jardine and one of the key architects of the Brian Wilson/Pet Sounds Band, Darian Sahanaja, who was known as a member of the L.A. group the Wondermints before he began training virtually all his passion onto the Wilson ouevre. Following is an edited version of that conversation.
In the meantime, for anyone reading this before Friday night’s show, it takes place at the United Theater on Broadway in downtown L.A. at 8 p.m. Tickets can be found here. For an itinerary of other upcoming shows, in which a good chunk of “Love You” might still be played, check here.
(For those who can’t make it to a show — or those who can — there is also a new boxed set out from UMe that focuses on the “Love You” album and its outtakes, along with material from right before and after that project. Read more about that collection in Variety‘s previous coverage here.)
Al Jardine: We should bring in some of the fellas in the band, because it’s fascinating from their point of view. They’re the ones that talked me into doing this “Love You” album. It’s a pretty big deal. They call Darian the librarian. He’s got all this stuff in the back of his head, and he wanted to do this in a bad way. And I thought it was a great way to put the band back together, after Brian passed. Well, even before Brian passed, we’d been trying to get the band back together.
Did it help, in reforming Brian’s band, to have kind of an excuse to do something different than what you were doing when he was around?
Jardine: Yeah, it gave us a focus a priority, this long-awaited completion of the idea to do the “Love You” album and bring it to the forefront of our activity, musically. The band hadn’t worked since ’22, and I just wanted to to get it back together. Thanks to Darian, we’d been sharing this idea for quite a while, but for some reason, it just never happened while Brian was with us, even though it was a very personal thing for him, especially. Who knows why. But it’s happening. [To Darian] I’m so glad you convinced me, because we kept going back and forth. He said, “If you do this, if we accomplish this, people are gonna come out of the cities, they’re gonna come out of the woods, Al…”
Darian Sahanaja: Yeah, you were doubtful. I think you were kind of like, “Really? People like that album?”
Jardine: Well, it was very, very understated, and my participation in it was (just) as a vocalist, coming out of the woods in Big Sur to come down to do a session. It was a major thing in itself, just physically and mentally getting into the process of recording it, and it didn’t sound like a Beach Boy album to me. It was great, but it seemed like more of a Brian project, which of course it was. It was dedicated to him by his brothers, and particularly Carl (Wilson). Carl was the de facto producer, really, and pulled us all together so that Brian would be at ease, writing these songs.
Sahanaja: He was coming out of an era when he was sort of hiding out in his room and not really doing much. Well, there was that whole “Brian’s back” campaign, right?
Jardine: With “15 Big Ones” [the album immediately preceding “The Beach Boys Love You”]. And he wasn’t really entirely back. It was a big promotion that Mike (Love) put together with his brother, trying to make something out of nothing, quite honestly.
Sahanaja: But the way you described how Brian put this music together and brought you guys in sort of in the late stage to sing on it, I don’t know why, but I see that as a very similar — maybe in a completely different context —to the way you did “Pet Sounds” [in the mid-‘60s]. Because in the same way, you guys were on tour, so it was very personal for Brian at the time. He put all the tracks together, and then the guys came into town and you laid down the tracks. I almost see that as a similar approach for Brian. And that’s why I consider “Love You” probably Brian’s second-most-personal album, after “Pet Sounds,” because basically, he wrote all the songs. I mean, even more personal in a way, because he wrote most of the lyrics. With “Pet Sounds,” he had Tony (Asher as lyricist), as you know.
Jardine: Of course, Mike and I did write a couple songs, but they pale in comparison to his personal stuff. It’s just remarkable. And I admit I didn’t really appreciate it, because we were in the hit mode. We were on tour all the time. We were like, “We gotta have another hit. We gotta have another single.” And this wasn’t about that.
Sahanaja: Well, that’s why Brian is an artist. He takes risks, he does things… If they fail, they fail. If they’re successful, they’re successful.
Jardine: I mean, I don’t even remember singing some of this stuff. I don’t remember singing on “Solar System,” for instance.
Sahanaja: You are in that vocal stack.
Jardine: Am I? Are you sure? You would know. He (Sahanaja) knows how to pull this stuff out. But who writes a song with that kind of context, about the planets? t’s just beautiful.
Sahanaja: Very sincere, very childlike.
Jardine: You know, “Airplane.” Oh my God. “Airplane” is one of my favorites of all time.Now I’m completely…
Sahanaja: Well, this was my favorite thing in the process of all this, is how he was skeptical at first, and just to watch him become reoriented with this music again and discovering it… maybe because the first time, it wasn’t successful, so onto the next… I love seeing him getting really, really into the music and realizing, “God, these are really, really beautiful songs.” And of course, in the wake of us losing Brian, it’s just his soul and his spirit are with us…
Jardine: He’s right there. He’s right there.
Sahanaja: That’s how we feel on stage. Every time we play these songs. I’m just like, ahhh, you can feel Brian’s soul.
Al Jardine and the Pet Sounds Band at Cerritos Center
Chris Willman/Variety
Jardine: The guys in the band carry these leads really well, and do it justice. You carry Carl’s leads amazingly. How you do that? “God, please let us go on this way…” You won’t believe that, his performance, how he carries the spirit of Carl. Dennis (Wilson)…
Sahanaja: I don’t do Dennis. “I Want to Pick You Up”… I can’t really sing that like Dennis. … To be fair, I’ve met people who maybe are not big fans of the record for one reason or another, but I would imagine a lot of it is because the way it’s executed is very raw…
Jardine: Well, the amazing thing, it’s a synth-driven record, right? And your peers relate to that. Brian was in the forefront of all that stuff. He didn’t use bass guitars on this. He had a Moog synthesizer [as the bass]. It was a different style of production than the Beach Boys were accustomed to. And he literally brought that world to us, and so I’m sitting there with a guitar and going, “What the hell am I supposed to do?” So I really didn’t relate in that sense musically to it at first. Now I get it, because it’s so cleverly written.
Sahanaja: With all the synths and really odd sort of production decision-making on it, I think it appealed to that next generation, especially going into the ‘80s and beyond, because it’s got that synth-pop thing going on. But, typical Brian: he wasn’t intellectualizing it at all. He wasn’t calculating it. He was like, “This sounds good to me and I could do this. I can just grab a keyboard and play these notes, and there it is. I’m happy.” But the way it all came together in that sort of DIY approach, little did he know…
Jardine: But at the same time, he writes a song called “Roller Skating Child,” which is totally Beach Boys. That almost harkens back to the days. And “Honkin’ Down the Highway,” those two that are like that, I could relate to, and I sing the lead on (“Honkin’”). It just feels natural to me when you feel Brian’s.ability to go backwards and forwards, or retro and future. Amazing. I learned a new chord, by the way, the other day, in my book. Did you know there’s a sus4 in “Roller Skating Child”?
Sahanaja: Is there?
Jardine: That’s what it says. I found a little book in my stack of memorabilia called “The Beach Boys: Volume One.” It’s got all the songs that we wrote, and “The Beach Boys Love You” is in it, of all things. So, look at me. showing him some new chords.
Sahanaja: I’ve gotta take a look.I’ll have to check that. Because Brian didn’t like sus; he didn’t like sustained chords.
Jardine: Well, maybe the book’s wrong, then!
Darian Sahanaja
Scott Dudelson
When you guys are playing the “Love You” songs now, have you rearranged it to fit in a little more with the other classic Beach Boys stuff that doesn’t sound anything like that, or are you trying to recreate the original synthy sounds?
Sahanaja: It’s one thing is to say recreating. Another thing is just to embody the spirit and feel of the record, the original sensibilities of the record, which was Brian’s … It’s like when we do “Pet Sounds.” You can cut corners and simplify the chords and all that, but that’s not what Brian wrote, and that’s not what he came up with in the studio. So you can say, “Yeah, let’s get the exact paint-by-numbers thing,” but if you do paint by numbers but if it’s not done with the right feel and the spirit of it…
Jardine: They nail it. This band, they nail it.
Paul Von Mertens (multi-instrumentalist and musical director): I remember during “Pet Sounds” (on a tour performing that entire album), we would even debate in rehearsal … There’s a funny banjo entrance. You know, is that a mistake or intentional? “No, let’s keep it because it’s on there.”
Sahanaja: And even one in this record. How about “Johnny Carson”? It’s so clearly a mistake. There’s this errant symbol crash that’s completely not (right), and we just love it, because, again, I picture Brian just going, “Pssssh, that’s it! That sounds great. Keep it.”
Jardine: Well, how about in the third verse? Is it the third verse where he goes “da-da-da” and he does the resolve.
Sahanaja: Yes, yes, you’re right.
Jardine: And Bob (in the Pet Sounds Band) plays it just like it! He plays the mistake, perfectly.
Sahanaja: I gives it an out-of-the-box feel. It’s just like, what? But when you listen back to even the golden-era Beach Boys recordings of Brian conducting the studio musicians (in the mid-‘60s), many times they’ll play something and say, “Is that right?” And Brian will go, “Yeah, that’s great. Just keep that,” because he just loves the vibe of it.
Al Jardine and the Pet Sounds Band joined by Weird Al Yankovic and Eric Idle in concert in Cerritos, Calif, with Rob Bonfiglio.
Scott Dudelson
It feels like there might be different audiences coming to shows like this. There are some people coming who really just want to hear “The Beach Boys Love You.” And then at most of these shows, there will be people who don’t know the albu at all. Do you feel like there’s kinda like two audiences that you’re playing for?
Jardine: Probably, I’m sure.
Sahanaja: I don’t know. In the spirit of Brian Wilson, I like the idea that we just forge ahead and be bold.
Von Mertens: I think that the idea is partly to bring the audience along with us. I can remember on the “Smile” tour, we were playing a festival in Belgium, and it was kind of drizzling on a soccer field, and there were beer stands encircling the entire field where the audience was. We hadn’t been playing “Smile” for very long. and we’re playing this outdoor festival and people are sliding around in the mud. And I remember the whole band — Jeff (Foskett) in particular — was like, “We can’t do ‘Smile.’ They’re gonna kill us! They’re gonna hate it.” And finally we just like bit the bullet and said, “OK, we’re gonna do it and we’re just gonna throw down like we always do.” When we finished the set, we left the stage and the audience was singing that soccer chant that they do that’s like an audio equivalent of a standing ovation. They were all going, “Ohhh-wayyyy-ooh,” and we were like, “OK. I guess, I guess it worked.”
Sahanaja: Exactly. I always believe that if the material is really good and it’s performed well with love and care, it doesn’t matter if an audience is familiar with the music. I think they walk away feeling like, “Wow, that was really good.”
Jardine: But I do like the first note of the show… It’s an anthem, “California Girls,” and as soon as you hit that first ding.
Sahanaja: You’re making me sentimental because, because our dearly departed guitarist, Nick Walusko, I remember when I met him in 1983. And Nick would always say, “What Brian could do with just one note. Like the intro of ‘California Girls,’ listen, I know it’s one note, but it’s like a whole atmosphere in that one note.” And I totally understood that.
How many members of the Brian Wilson Band have carried over to this band now?
Jardine: There’s 12 on stage. All of us.
Sahanaja: Almost everybody; one of us, Probyn (Gregory), couldn’t do this tour because he was out with “Weird Al” Yankovic on that incredible, successful tour. So we have another fellow filling in for him named Emeen Zarookian, who plays with Micky Dolenz. It’s been really fun. … Just to go back really quickly to the audiences: I love that this new music, us performing the “Love You” material, is just because of its kind of DIY approach in the synths, and we’re getting a lot of young people coming out to the shows, and freaking out. We just see them chanting and jamming along and jumping and up and down. It’s insane. It’s great, because I know what they’re excited about: Brian being Brian, which is somebody eccentric…
Jardine: The big sing-along is a tune called “Ding Dang.” You know the album. It’s 52 seconds long, right? But it gets the audience; they go crazy immediately with the biggest reaction, and they start going “woo” with this, just carrying on like a bunch of kids. It’s really a childlike experience. We add a little extra, actually, at the end. We actually have a chord change now. We will surprise you with it.