Al Jardine and veteran members of Brian Wilson’s touring band have spent the past several months playing the vast majority the 1977 oddball Beach Boys LP The Beach Boys Love You at venues across the United States. The shows have been magnificent, but hardcore fans have yearned to see them perform the album in full by breaking out the missing songs “Mona,” “Let’s Put Our Hearts Together,” and “Love Is a Woman.”
They’re going to get their wish Feb. 27 when Al Jardine and the Pet Sounds Band stages a special show at the United Theater on Broadway in Los Angeles, which will feature the “world premiere” of The Beach Boys Love You in full. (Tickets are available now.)
Jardine sang lead on the Love You song “Honkin’ Down the Highway,” but had little creative role in creating the album. “Carl Wilson was guiding Brian through the process of making the record,” Jardine told Rolling Stone last year when we stopped by the kickoff of his tour with the Pet Sounds Band. “And you’ll hear a lot of Dennis on there. Mike and I came in and basically filled in the harmonies on the backgrounds. That was about it.”
The special Los Angeles Love You show is co-produced by Alex Jules, a Los Angeles-based singer-songwriter who has toured with the Monkees, Wings/Moody Blues founding member Denny Laine, and Badfinger’s Joey Molland. Last year, he organized the L.A. wildfire relief concert titled Let’s Get L.Aid. The bill included “Weird Al” Yankovic, Eric Idle, Nancy Sinatra, Paul Shaffer, Rufus Wainwright, and Jardine.
“In the aftermath, some of the folks from Al’s camp inquired about my interest in working with him as everyone was excited to do the show and see the positive results,” Jules tells Rolling Stone. “After spending some time discussing ways to work together, I had the idea to do a Los Angeles concert to fully celebrate this new Al Jardine & the Pet Sounds Band show by having them do a world premiere of the full Love You album in concert.”
The timing is perfect since it lines up with the release of the box set We Gotta Groove: The Brother Studio Years, which chronicles the period around The Beach Boys Love You in incredible detail. “Fans can expect not only the world premiere of Love You by a founding member of the Beach Boys in its entirety (49 years after its release!),” says Jules, “but also selections from 15 Big Ones and Adult/Child as well as all of the Beach Boys hits — masterfully recreated by Brian Wilson’s band and Al Jardine, whose voice sounds remarkably unaffected by time.”
This isn’t the only Jardine show on the books for this year. He begins a tour with the Pet Sounds Band in Stateline, Nevada, on Feb. 21. It includes stops in Jacksonville, Florida; Clearwater, Florida; Sarasota, Florida; Collingswood, New Jersey; and Ridgefield, Connecticut before they head to Australia in June.
The plan is to play nearly all of Love You at these shows. But if you want the full thing, you’ll need to head to Los Angeles. “As of now, this is a one-night-only world premiere event,” Jules says. “Not to be missed.”
