Beach Boys getting ready for orchestral dates in Hong Kong
It’s 50 years since the release of Pet Sounds, and these concerts will feature Brian Wilson’s orchestrations of tracks from that seminal album plus many other beloved songs
The Beach Boys still get around. Singers Mike Love and Bruce Johnston, who appear at the Queen Elizabeth Stadium next week, are both in their mid seventies, but last year performed no fewer than 175 shows.
“I talked to Tony Bennett’s manager the other night,” says Johnston over the phone from a hotel room in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where the band are on tour. “Tony is going to be 90 soon, and I asked how many shows he has scheduled. He said about 115 for 2016.
“Some people are just go, go, go, and I guess that’s what we do.”
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Longstanding members Johnston and Love, who have toured under the Beach Boys name since 1998, were last in Hong Kong in August 2012. They played one night at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre on a 50th anniversary reunion tour that featured all the surviving members of the band from the 1960s.
Love was a founder member of the group. Johnston was not, but replaced touring member Glen Campbell in 1965 and was later drafted in full time. Dennis Wilson and Carl Wilson from the original band died in 1983 and 1998 respectively, but Johnston and Love were joined for the 2012 tour by Brian Wilson, the composer responsible for much of the band’s most acclaimed music, and the other founder members, Al Jardine and David Marks.
The anniversary concerts and an album, That’s Why God Made the Radio, were well received, but at the end of the tour Love announced that he and Johnston would be resuming their previous performing arrangements without the others. There are currently no plans for another full reunion.