Being a Beach Boys fan today is akin to being a Cubs fan: You don’t expect much from them, but you never completely give up hope either. After all, it’s been something like 25 years since the Beach Boys have done anything remotely creative as a group.
While original guiding light Brian Wilson is enjoying something of a renaissance in recent years, thanks to the album “Orange Crate Art” and a recent documentary, his former cohorts seem mostly content to grind out the crowd-pleasing surfing and car fetish numbers.
The key word in that last sentence is “mostly,” as the band’s concert Tuesday at the Rosemont Theatre included some surprisingly powerful musical moments and some poignant personal ones as well.
Charter members Carl Wilson, Mike Love and Al Jardine and 30-year veteran Bruce Johnston were augmented by six other musicians, including Jardine’s percussionist son Matt, who provided the soaring falsetto vocals that were originally Brian Wilson’s calling card.
But while the graying Beach Boys may not present the prettiest picture visually, their sun-kissed harmonies on “Don’t Worry Baby” and “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” couldn’t help but conjure up warm memories for many in the audience. Then again, there were also large numbers of kids in the house, creating their own memories. The down side, though, is that for every “Don’t Worry Baby,” one had to sit through Mike Love singing through his nose on “Little Deuce Coupe” and “409.”
True Beach Boys fanatics waited in vain for a cameo appearance by Brian Wilson, who has been spending most of the summer in the Chicago area recording a solo album and who performed a brief opening set for Steve Dahl’s band just a few weeks ago at Navy Pier. Brian may have been absent, but it was Carl, the youngest of the star-crossed Wilson brothers (drummer Dennis drowned in 1983), who provided the memorable moments.
Carl’s heartbreakingly expressive lead vocals provided the necessary counterbalance to Love’s lighter-than-air approach, and his majestic renditions of “I Can Hear Music,” “God Only Knows” and “Sail on Sailor” sounded as strong as on the original versions. That fact was even more impressive given that he was diagnosed with early stages of lung and brain cancer earlier in the year and just completed chemotherapy and radiation treatments.
So one could easily forgive Carl for using a stool for much of the show and handing off some of the lead vocals to Al Jardine. His soulful entreaty of “God only knows what I’d be without you” made one wonder whether there would even be a Beach Boys without his stolid presence.
Those more philosophical points probably didn’t bother the father and grade-school-age daughter dancing in the aisle to “Barbara Ann” and “Fun, Fun, Fun” at the end of the show. But for hard-core Beach Boys fans–as with die-hard Cubs fans–hope springs eternal.
