The Beach Boys played their Wild Honey Tour at the Bord Gais energy theatre recently and they sang for over two and half hours belting out song after song. Although at the start of the evening Bruce Johnston cracked a joke about needing to take a nap.  Instead they continued to play all their greatest hits without a single flaw.  Songs like Surfin’ USA, California Girls, Good Vibrations and Fun Fun Fun really got the crowd going.  The big screen behind the stage displayed images of the Beach Boys with girls surfing in their bikinis and after the interval it was all songs about the fast cars such as “Little Honda”, “I Get Around”, and “Little Deuce Coupe”.

The Beach Boys were an American rock band which formed in California in 1961, and the original members were Brian, Dennis, Carl Wilson, cousin Mike Love and friend Al Jardine. Brian was the genius behind the band and together with his dad Murry, they combined different types of music such as Jazz, 1950’s rock and roll and black R&B, in order to create the Beach Boys unique sound.  Mike Love and Bruce Johnston have amazing voices and together with other members of the band, the atmosphere and the singing in the venue was electric.

In the late 1960’s my dad John Coughlan (Managing Editor of New Spotlight) brought The Beach Boys over to Ireland and actually got his picture taken with them while presenting them with an award for being voted “Ireland’s Favourite World Group.” Starting out as a garage band, the group came up with certain songs that portrayed a real Californian image such as surfing, cars and romance.  In 1966, the Pet Sounds album along with the “Good Vibrations” single catapulted the Beach Boys to number one.

In 1983 Denis tragically drowned and in 1998 Carl died of lung cancer, and as a result of Carl’s death, the band was fronted by Mike Love and Bruce Johnston and they played live gigs and continued to tour into the 2000s, in the meantime other members pursued solo careers. Jardin and Wilson have not performed with Johnston’s and Love’s group since their reunion tour in 2012, they still remain part of the Beach Boys’ corporation, Brother Records Inc.

I grew up in the 70s and my favourite music has to be ABBA and The Beach Boys, and when they played that night in Bord Gais, it really brought back very fond memories. The Beach Boys are one of the most successful bands of all time, with over eighty chart songs word wide and thirty-six of them US Top 40 hits.  They sold in excess of 100 million records across the world and in 2004’s Rolling Stone magazine, they were listed as number twelve of the “100 Greatest Artist of all Time.”  In 1988, the three Wilson brothers, Love and Jardine were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Thirty years on The Beach Boys are still rockin’ and received a standing ovation from the crowd.