Brian Wilson at the Grand Canal Theatre September 7th 2011
Brian Wilson’s farewell tour of sorts stopped in at the fantastic surrounds of the Grand Canal Theatre Dublin on Wednesday night. In a show of two halves, Wilson and a large ensemble of backing musicians firstly performed his George Gershwin covers record – Brian Wilson Re-imagines George Gershwin in its entirety before emerging after the interval to blast through Wilson’s own extremely formidable songbook.
Arriving on stage to rapturous applause shortly after 8pm with nine backing musicians in tow plus Dublin’s own Bohemian Strings, a rather frail looking Wilson thanked everyone warmly for coming and then he gave the back story to the Gershwin record before it was played right through.
The first song was the main theme of Rhapsody in Blue, which is a familiar piece of music, but from that point on, there were lots of new songs for the audience to absorb. As was to be expected, people began to get restless and one guy shouted for Good Vibrations during a break between songs. To alleviate this Wilson got the crowd to sing Mary Had a Little Lamb, something he claimed he’d never done before.
Summertime was another familiar and well received song which helped to settle things down. Gradually the band hit their stride and the album title truly became obvious as Gershwin’s music was filtered through Beach Boy high harmonies and complex layers of instruments including xylophone, sax, trumpet, and Wilson’s signature sleigh bells. The tempo picked up and the first half of the show progressed nicely to the interval.
There was no messing around for the second half with the musicians coming flying out of the blocks with California Girls. The Beach Boys hits started rolling, classic after classic was belted out with the only let up occurring when Wilson took a moment to introduce certain songs. With some of the greatest tracks ever in popular music including Good Vibrations, Heroes and Villains, God Only Knows, Sloop John B, Barbara Ann, Surfin’ USA, and I Get Around the crowd was absolutely hooked and everyone was having a good time. The band even threw in a cover version of Chuck Berry’s Johnny B Goode, which got a great reception. Wilson himself looked quite feeble throughout the show, sitting down at his keyboard for pretty much the entire thing. His voice was sadly lacking in both power and range and he is quite hunched now. He stood to play the bass for two tracks towards the end but did not look in the best of health, being as he is 69 years of age.
However, his backing musicians were able to pick up the slack and they really put a lot of energy into their performances. Special mention goes to Jeff, an overweight middle aged bald man who had the unenviable task of hitting those famous high notes, something he pulled off superbly. The harmonies were absolutely spot on throughout the show and all the intricate fine little nuances of the Beach Boys more experimental music were well delivered by the group of talented multi-instrumentalists.
Overall, this was a wonderful concert. It was a celebration of the work of Wilson, undoubtedly one of the all time greatest songwriters in popular music, and also a really good time with loads of uptemo rock n’ roll numbers. It’s simply a real pity that Wilson’s career is winding down and this is his last tour.