This year marks the 60th anniversary of Pet Sounds, but there was no talk of surviving Beach Boys Mike Love and Al Jardine coming together for a tour to celebrate. There’s simply way too much bad blood for them to agree to anything besides a promotional appearance together at the Capitol Records building in May, right around the time of the exact anniversary.
This took place during a brief moment when both of their touring bands were off the road, but it’s been an otherwise very active year for both Mike Love’s officially licensed version of the Beach Boys and Al Jardine and the Pet Sounds Band. And they’ve both decided to dip deep into Pet Sounds after initially playing just the big hits at their shows earlier in the year.
It began in March when Chris Cron, an incredibly gifted vocalist who made his name on Instagram recreating vintage Beach Boys harmonies, was recruited by Love to replace Bruce Johnston, who stepped aside from the band after six decades of service. Cron’s tribute group, Pet Sounds Live, plays note-perfect renditions of the full Pet Sounds album at their shows. That made it easy for him to introduce “I’m Waiting for the Day” into the actual Beach Boys live show.
Christian Love, Mike Love’s son and a longtime singer and guitarist in the Beach Boys touring band, sings “God Only Knows” in the show. Brian Eichenberger, a former member of both the Four Freshmen and Brian Wilson’s touring band, takes the lead on “Wouldn’t It Be Nice.” For “Sloop John B,” Cron and Eichenberger lock their voices together in remarkable fashion. Mike Love has been struggling vocally throughout the year, but he’s assembled an impressive team to help him out.
And for much of the year, strangely, they were doing more Pet Sounds songs than Al Jardine and the Pet Sounds Band. (The Pet Sounds Band shouldn’t be confused with Pet Sounds Live. The former is a collective of veteran members of Brian Wilson’s backing band; the latter is an unrelated tribute band that now includes an actual member of the Beach Boys touring lineup.) This is because Jardine and the Pet Sounds Band were devoting half their set to the 1977 oddball LP The Beach Boys Love You, leaving room only for “Sloop John B.,” with Al Jardine on lead vocals, and “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” and “God Only Knows,” with his son, Matt Jardine, on lead. (Much like Chris Cron, Matt is able to brilliantly recreate the falsetto parts originated by Brian and Carl Wilson.)
But when Jardine and the Pet Sounds Band returned to the road in early June, shortly after the Pet Sounds anniversary, they added an extended selection of songs from the album to their show, including “I’m Waiting for the Day,” “I Know There’s an Answer,” “Here Today,” “Pet Sounds,” and “Caroline, No,” in addition to standards “God Only Knows,” “Wouldn’t It Be Nice,” and “Sloop John B.” That’s nine of the album’s 13 songs, leaving out only “That’s Not Me,” “Don’t Talk (Put Your Head on My Shoulder),” “Let’s Go Away for Awhile,” and “I Just Wasn’t Made for These Times.”
Days later, when the Beach Boys played Edinburgh, Scotland, they responded to the challenge by adding “Caroline, No” (with Cron on lead) and “You Still Believe in Me” (with Eichenberger on lead) to the set, meaning they were now doing six Pet Sounds songs to Jardine’s nine. (And Jardine continued to perform the vast majority of Love You, while Love hasn’t played a single one of those songs since 1979.)
Not to be outdone by Love, Jardine began singing a portion of the Pet Sounds outtake “Hang On to Your Ego” during his ongoing tour of Australia that month. As Beach Boys aficionados know, that song is simply “I Know There’s an Answer” with different lyrics. Mike Love insisted on the change back in 1966 because he felt the concept of losing one’s ego was too closely tied to psychedelic drug use.
“Hold on,” Jardine said in Sydney after singing a verse of “Hang On to Your Ego.” “Those aren’t the right lyrics. Somehow I got confused. Sometimes when you walk up to the microphone and don’t like the lyrics, you go right to another lyric. Then you’ll get a couple extra royalties out of it too.” (To anyone who caught it, that’s a clear dig at Mike.)
At the present moment, Jardine is still playing nine Pet Sounds songs a night, and Love is back down to just “God Only Knows,” “I’m Waiting for the Day,” “Sloop John B,” and “Wouldn’t It Be Nice.” At least for now, they’ve cut “Caroline, No” and “You Still Believe in Me” to make room for John Stamos to join the tour and sing “Forever,” just like Uncle Jesse did on Full House when he married Aunt Becky. We’ll see what happens when Stamos can’t make a show. It could mean the return of at least one of them.
The Pet Sounds 60th anniversary celebration is going to continue through the end of the year. There’s still time for Jardine to add the other four songs and play the album straight through. It’s very tough to imagine Love playing the full Pet Sounds, or even coming close, but we didn’t expect him to allow “I’m Waiting for the Day,” either.
What we can say is that Love and Jardine won’t actually play these songs together at any point. There’s a better chance that Love will perform 15 Big Ones and Dennis Wilson’s Pacific Ocean Blue straight through, and drop “Kokomo,” “Be True to Your School,” “409,” and “Shut Down.” In other words, it’s never happening.
