Where I'll Be Tonight

If you had asked me a year ago if I thought a Beach Boys reunion tour could ever happen, I'd have said not just "no," but "HELL NO!"

The reasons are many. Though the group never technically ceased to exist--lead singer and original member Mike Love has toured with numerous configurations of the band, often including Al Jardine (also an original member who's been in and out of the band over the years) and Bruce Johnston (who first joined in the mid-'60s) and various backing players (at one point, John Stamos was the drummer--no, really)--it hasn't been the same since Brian Wilson departed the group decades ago. The parting was not harmonious, with enough bad blood to send lawsuits and countersuits flying every which way.

Adding fuel to that fire was Wilson's subsequent solo career, which took a while to get going, but has been highly successful for more than 10 years. (I saw him a decade ago at House of Blues Chicago, and that concert remains one of the best shows I've ever seen.) Wilson's greatest solo success, in fact, was a revisit to the Beach Boys' most infamous projects: The never-completed album Smile, which Wilson re-recorded with his current backing band and finished writing with Van Dyke Parks. The results yielded not only adulation from his many fans, but critical success and robust sales as well.

Then there's the matter of mortality: Two of the band's founding members--Brian Wilson's younger brothers, Dennis and Carl--are both dead. (Dennis died in a drowning accident in 1983; Carl was taken by brain and lung cancer 15 years later.) So any possible reunion would be incomplete.

And yet, here we are, in 2012--50 years after the Beach Boys released their first single--and a reunion tour has been snaking its way across the country, arriving at the Chicago Theatre tonight.

The roster is as original as it can be without Dennis and Carl. Brian is on board, as are Love, Jardine, Johnston and David Marks (who briefly replaced Jardine in the early '60s, rejoined the group in the late '90s and had a pretty successful solo career in between). All reports indicate that the shows thus far have been amazing.

Tonight, I get to experience that for myself--well, as much as one can experience any performance from the high end of the balcony at the Chicago Theatre. (How people ever watched movies in this joint, I'll never know.) And I hope the protests of the NATO Summit (which wraps up today) don't interfere with the concert beyond making transportation more tricky than usual.

More anon.