Brian Wilson was "thrilled" to being his ‘Pet Sounds’ tour to London on Tuesday (01.08.17).
The 75-year-old singer, joined by a top class 10-piece band including his former Beach Boys bandmates Blondie Chaplin and Al Jardine and Al’s son Matt, took to the stage at the city’s Eventim Apollo to perform the 1966 LP, sandwiched by a huge number of other tracks from his extensive back catalogue.
He told the audience: "I’m thrilled to be in London, I love London, you’re such a great audience."
While Brian’s voice is no longer what it was, he is still more than capable of holding his own from behind the piano, though he now takes Mike Love’s lower parts on the tracks, leaving the higher vocals to Matt.
The 38-song set began with ‘California Girls’, quickly followed by ‘Dance, Dance, Dance’ and ‘I Get Around’, getting all the audience in the mood to dance and sing along.
Long-term Beach Boys fans will have been delighted to hear ‘Let the Wind Blow’, as Brian hasn’t performed it live since 1973, or the equally lesser-known 1965’s ‘Salt Lake City’, taken from the ‘Summer Days (And Summer Nights!!)’ LP.
The band propelled through 19 Beach Boys songs before returning to play ‘Pet Sounds’ in full – with ‘God Only Knows’ the highlight of the night – in the running order of the album, before wrapping with a six-track encore of ‘Good Vibrations’, ‘Help Me, Rhonda’, ‘Barbara Ann’, ‘Surfin’ USA’, ‘Fun, Fun, Fun’, and ‘Love and Mercy’.
Brian Wilson brings Pet Sounds to London
