Wouldn't it be nice if we were older? Then we wouldn't have to wait so long for a Beach Boys reunion featuring fractured genius Brian Wilson and the few living members (but alas, no John Stamos)? Well we are older now, and we don't have to wait much longer: to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the band's first single, Brian Wilson and those living original members have bandied together for a 50-show tour and reunion album next year. Check out a clip of them re-recording "Do It Again" below.
The band will include original members Brian Wilson, Mike Love and Al Jardine, as well as David Marks, who replaced Jardine briefly in the early years, and Bruce Johnston, who filled in for Wilson once he stopped touring in the late '60s. The tour will kickoff at New Orleans Jazz Festival in late April, but the band will appear before that at the Grammys on February 12th. "This anniversary is special to me because I miss the boys," Brian Wilson said in a statement. "It will be a thrill for me to make a new record and be on stage with them again." Wilson was coy with us about a potential Beach Boys reunion (well...he was coy about everything) when we talked to him in October about the release of their lost masterpiece, Smile.
The new album, which will be Wilson's first with the group since the godawful 1996 country-tinged album of re-recordings Stars and Stripes Vol. 1, is still in the planning stages, but it sounds like Wilson is leading the charge musically: "There are some new things that Brian has come up with that are really remarkable. 'Do It Again' was done in an afternoon. These songs will take a little more putting our heads together," said Jardine. Maybe these new things are related to the creative explosion Wilson told us he has been having lately—so hopefully we'll get to hear a Beach Boys tune about shelter and "the private life of Bill and Sue."
