Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys

Yesterday I was at the grocery store looking at my phone for any last minute requests from my darling hubby. Instead I learned that Brian Wilson died at the ripe old age of 82; still a young man by some accounts, especially by those approaching their 80th decade of life. Nonetheless, I was saddened; I remarked to a young grocery clerk about Wilson’s passing and was confronted with a blank look and a “who?”. 

Time traveling back to 1965 I was with my school friends Carol and Kathy (the ghastly trio) at the Maple Leaf Gardens to see the Beach Boys. We were beside ourselves in anticipation; dressed in our best mid-60s outfits of ridiculously short mini skirts, white stockings, big hair and extremely silly eye shadow colors. We were around 16 or 17, probably the best that we would ever look in our entire lives but there we were, painted up like court jesters, secretly knowing  that the minute one of those Beach Boys laid eyes on us we would be whisked away to live happily ever after. We had very rich fantasy lives. Then again, attending a live concert was a big deal in those days and we were thrilled to be forerunners, so avant garde. While waiting for the show to begin, we looked around to see if we recognized anyone. Nope, we saw only more equally goofy starry eyed faces. There may have been some manner of drugs in the audience but we were still too young and naive to be aware of those darker realities. We were there to see the Beach Boys live. 

Finally, it was time for the show to begin and we all sat silently, expectantly, preparing for this momentous event. The lights went down; we waited with bated breath and the first musical lyrics we heard when the lights went back up were: “Baby don’t go. . . ”. The opening act was Sonny and Cher. Wait, what? We had heard of them, of course, and recognized them when they walked on the stage, singing. A lot of clapping and a bit of whistling but no real screaming at their entrance. While they sang, I noticed that they both had a lot of hair. . . a lot of hair. Sonny wore an embroidered Mongolian fur vest and Cher wore matching white fur boots. They sang a few songs, including their current hits: I Got You Babe and Baby, Don’t Go. I remember that we enjoyed their songs but thought they were today’s flash in the pan and so were only mildly impatient with their singing and joking while we waited for the Beach Boys.

Once again, the lights went down, then up and then there they were. The ones, the only, the original Beach Boys; sun kissed hair, candy striped shirts, flashing white smiles punctuating their California tans. We started screaming before they even opened their mouths. Patiently, they waited for us to settle down a bit before they started singing. We sang along with their songs and when they adjusted the lyrics of “I wish they all could be California girls” to “I wish YOU all could be California girls” while they pointed their fingers at us, I’m pretty sure that a few girls in the audience passed out while the rest of us just screamed ourselves hoarse. And they finished with the very pretty “God only knows”. Oh my. At the time we were too moved to speak but later spent hours on the phone telling our girlfriends about this very historic occasion in our lives, as if nothing this exciting was ever going to happen to us again; if we only knew.

Ten years later, as I biked along the Manhattan Beach strand in California on beautiful Saturday mornings I would occasionally hear their songs spilling out from nearby beach homes. “Wouldn’t it be nice. . . .” Life was so simple then, a song remembered while the sun worked its magic: "the warmth of the sun. . . ."

In later years we heard stories about Brian and his mental and emotional setbacks but back in the ‘60s he and his band mates were the stuff of dreams.