Concert Review: Brian Wilson Surfs Napa

One thing you can say about the concert Aug. 25 at the : it was a professional show. Eight o’clock on the dot, the unlit stage began to fill with the shadowy figures of the musicians, including the shuffling bulk of Brian Wilson coming on stage to the slow accretion of the “California Girls” introduction. He moved awkwardly, and settled into the stool as if saved. Lights up.

The “co-founder of the Beach Boys” according to the contractual billing, started his first Napa appearance in his 49-year professional career with one of his group’s best-known songs, "California Girls"(“Well, East Coast girls are hip, I really dig those styles they wear…”).

Brian Wilson is on tour again, at age 69, not only to trot out the hits and promote the new CD, but to prove to himself -- more than anyone else -- that he can still deliver.

That he can. With the help 10 back-up band members on stage, headed by the “CEO of Falsetto” Jeff Foskett and several other long-time allies of his studio band, Wilson stepped out of the shadow of his own myth and demonstrated why there’s a myth to begin with: The guy could write a pop song like nobody’s business.

More surprisingly, to those who have heard stories and rumors that suggest otherwise, he also puts on a pretty solid show. True, the first couple songs were a big creaky, and a sense of disappointment lurked.

Then the magic kicked in as “Catch a Wave” hit the groove, and from then on it was smooth sailing through a decade of surf hits, car classics, romantic ballads, and a couple catchy B-sides that brought us back to “I Get Around,” their #1 1964 hit.

“Sit back and relax, we’ll take care of the music for you,” said a surprisingly animated Wilson early in the first set. Maybe “animated” isn’t quite the word – there’s something strangely affectless in his mien, but who wouldn’t look masked after 50 years under the spotlight?

Still, when he lifted his arms to direct or caress music’s shape, and introduced each song -- “And now! Another ballad!” – he seemed to be genuinely enjoying himself, undeterred by the blue spot that held him all night long, or the press of fans a few feet away.

Beach Boys fans are one thing, but Brian Wilson fans are another breed entirely. While the songs played in the first half of the two-set show included half-a-dozen Top Ten Beach Boys singles, the audience that came to the Uptown was heavily laced with Brian loyalists. 

You could pick them out: perhaps overweight, or walking with a cane, or wearing a rayon aloha shirt or a threadbare Tony Bahama. These are the kind of people who found it difficult to fit in when they were young, or maybe had some trouble adjusting, like you’d see at a Mensa convention.

Not just “aging boomers” but, inevitably and at last, aged boomers.

Like Wilson himself, they may have come to regain the buoyancy of their youth, if not their youth itself. Wilson has done it through not so much “re-invention” as “re-application” --  he’s taken his signature sound and applied it to some new material, some retreads, a resurrection of his “Smile” album, and now his latest, “Brian Wilson Reimagines Gershwin.”

It wasn’t just us oldsters at the Uptown, though. If the mean age was probably about 54, a certain percentage was in their 20s, like Danny Stuscavage, 25, of Walnut Creek. He proudly wore his Smile t-shirt and gladly explained why he was there. “I wanted to see one of the bets living musicians, except maybe Sir Paul McCartney.”

His girlfriend Dana Walsh, 24, said she recognized maybe 85 per cent of the songs. “But I’m too sure about that Salt Like City thing?” referring to a song mid-way through the first set. (Don’t worry, Dana, even die-hard Beach Boys fans aren’t too sure about that Salt Lake City thing, either.)

The second set began with five songs from the Gershwin CD, including an a capella “Rhapsody in Blue” theme and a solid cover of “I Get Rhythm” that had hit written all over it. The audience was fully on his side by now, and the set list could dig a bit deeper into the catalog with a fully realized “Add Some Music to Your Day” from the 1970 Sunflower album.

Though possibly an unfamiliar song to some, it was an example of what makes Brian Wilson’s music so transporting: its revivalist quality. It is church music, in a sense, exhorting the spirit toward celebration, whether to the fun, fun, fun of being a teen or the adventurous spirit of surfing, or even though the avowed resilience of break-up songs (like “Help Me Rhonda”).

There’s something healing in a Brian Wilson song. Like the best of the Beatles, his inspiration and creative competitors in the 1960s, the music just makes you feel good.

As the harmonic clarity of Bach, propelled by the steady loping rhythm of the American West via Copland, delivered a wall-of-sound choral mix that washed over the audience, that old Brian Wilson magic was working.

People sang along to their own harmonies, a smile on their faces. People clapped and swayed, couples rediscovered each others’ eyes, the dancing girls congregated in the well stage right.

I could feel the buoyancy return, the depression lift, the rusted Tin Man within starting to move to the music. Waves of sunshine indeed.

Afterward we all looked younger, I think, spilling out of the theater onto Third Street to block the late-night traffic. No one seemed to want to go home.

“He’s just an icon,” said Keith Parsons of Sacramento, in his ruddy 50s. “Like John Lennon or McCartney or Mick, there’s Brian – in that level. You’ve just got to see him when he’s around."

Fair disclosure: The reviewer has a son named Brian.