{"id":27904,"date":"2024-08-08T05:30:39","date_gmt":"2024-08-08T09:30:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=27904"},"modified":"2024-08-06T08:34:27","modified_gmt":"2024-08-06T12:34:27","slug":"for-the-beach-boys-the-summer-never-ends-part-2-of-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2024\/08\/08\/for-the-beach-boys-the-summer-never-ends-part-2-of-2\/","title":{"rendered":"For the Beach Boys, the Summer Never Ends (Part 2 of 2)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Continued from Part One<\/a>\u2026<\/i><\/p>\n

Created with a briefly returning Brian Wilson, the group\u2019s last new studio album of all-original music, That\u2019s Why God Made the Radio<\/i>, was released in 2012. These days, the Beach Boys are primarily a performing unit; the group\u2014Love and Johnston plus a top-flight array of younger musicians, including lead guitarist John Wedemeyer\u2014continues to tour, bringing the sentimental sounds of surf, sun and sand to modern-day audiences. And in tacit acknowledgment of the compilation that revived the band\u2019s career, the current Beach Boys tour is branded as \u201cEndless Summer Gold.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mike Love says that concerts on this tour feature 18 of the album\u2019s 20 songs. \u201cAnd we\u2019re still getting amazing audience response,\u201d he says. \u201cAll kinds of demographics, all age groups come out and have a great time, and I think that\u2019s a wonderful thing.\u201d He readily concedes that the release of Endless Summer<\/i> 50 years ago last month gave the Beach Boys a shot in the arm that continues to pay dividends today. \u201cAs time goes on,\u201d he observes, \u201cyou have a resurgence, then your career subsides a bit, and then you have another resurgence.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Love cites attendance figures from some of the band\u2019s most historically notable shows\u2014an estimated 900,000 in Philadelphia in 1985, half a million at the Washington Monument later that same day\u2014and makes the point that his group\u2019s appeal endures. \u201cWe\u2019ve had our highs even in the midst of our lower-selling albums,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd we\u2019re doing fantastic right now; we have thousands of people singing along to our songs.\u201d<\/p>\n

A longtime friend of the band, television actor and sometime musician John Stamos is a featured performer with the Beach Boys on this tour. He plays drums alongside main drummer Jon Bolton. And like every member of the touring unit, he sings.<\/p>\n

Love is enthusiastic about the tour, and about the new Disney+ documentary, The Beach Boys<\/i>. Like Endless Summer<\/i>, this officially sanctioned chronicle of the group\u2019s history focuses on the sun and fun more than the dense, ambitious studio works of the mid \u201960s. Love makes the point that since late 1964, there have effectively been two parallel versions of the group. \u201cOne is the recording group, of which Brian was absolutely in charge,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd then there\u2019s the touring group. My cousin Carl was in charge of that musically, but I was in charge of agency and management. I\u2019ve always preferred the live music part of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Carl Wilson passed away in 1998; these days his place in the touring group is filled by Wedemeyer, who joined in May 2023. Though he lives in Las Vegas, Wedemeyer is a Los Gatos native with a long South Bay history; for years he led adventurous trio group WHaT. Though his formative musical years were immersed in the blues, he says that when he belatedly discovered Pet Sounds<\/i>, everything changed for him. It struck a chord with the musician, who describes himself as \u201cin love with pop music and great songs.\u201d Between covers of Frank Zappa and Howlin\u2019 Wolf, WHaT could launch into a note-perfect reading of the Beach Boys\u2019 1973 classic \u201cSail On Sailor.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wedemeyer came to the attention of Mike Love during his time playing with Bill Medley of the Righteous Brothers. With that group, he had shared an occasional bill with the Beach Boys. \u201cI was happy to be on the periphery of the Beach Boys,\u201d he admits. \u201cI never dreamed that [an offer to join] would come up.\u201d<\/p>\n

But it did, and Wedemeyer has since played hundreds of dates with the band. And the versatile guitarist says that when he joined, he had a clear goal. \u201cI decided that my mission would be to play the parts as close to the original recordings as I could,\u201d he says. \u201cMy ear just wants to hear those classic Carl Wilson, Tommy Tedesco, Barney Kessel and Glen Campbell guitar licks.\u201d<\/p>\n

Along with singing harmony in the band, Wedemeyer works hard to get just the right guitar tone and effects to match the vibe of each classic Beach Boys tune. \u201cIt\u2019s not a guitar gig,\u201d he emphasizes. \u201cIt\u2019s about the songs.\u201d And while he\u2019s a generation younger than the group\u2019s leaders, he remains in awe of their stamina and work ethic. \u201cThe PR on Mike Love is that he\u2019s one of the biggest assholes in rock and roll,\u201d he concedes. \u201cHe gets a bad rap. In fact, he\u2019s the nicest, most accommodating guy. And trying to keep up with a couple of 80-plus-year-old guys is fascinating,\u201d Wedemeyer enthuses. \u201cThe minute you start to complain, you look at Mike all raring to go, and you think, \u2018Okay, I\u2019m gonna shut up now!\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Continued from Part One\u2026 Created with a briefly returning Brian Wilson, the group\u2019s last new studio album of all-original music, That\u2019s Why God Made the Radio, was released in 2012. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":27911,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,51,62],"tags":[5472,416,5474,5473],"class_list":["post-27904","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interview","category-pop","category-rawk","tag-beavh-boys","tag-brian-wilson","tag-john-wedemeyer","tag-mike-love","cat-41-id","cat-51-id","cat-62-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27904","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27904"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27904\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27912,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27904\/revisions\/27912"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27911"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}