Love & Mercy: A Review

Someday a movie about the Beatles may be made that's better than Love & Mercy about Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys, but until then Love & Mercy, which I just saw tonight with my wife, is easily the best rock star bio pick ever made.  Hey, it's the best movie about a musician ever made, period, and that's saying a lot, because Amadeus was none too shabby, not to mention the great movies over the years about greats like Ray Charles and Johnny Cash.

Brian Wilson's life is so big it took two stars to portray him - Paul Dano the younger Brian and John Cusack the older Brian - and both were just superb.  Though Dano looks more like the younger Brian than Cusack does the older, the performances of both were peerless, down to the mannerisms, tones of voice, and little ticks of Brian Wilson.  The music similarly was a seamless web with what was going on inside Brian's head and what we the devoted fans were hearing of the Beach Boys on radio and television.  The recording studio scenes were so realistic I felt like calling out to the engineer and asking him to bring up the bass a little more.

The movie is peppered with memorable phrases, delivered like history come to life, that I've both heard before and heard for the first time in this movie.  Jake Abel as Mike Love - another spot on performance - is there to complain to Brian that he can't make sense out of "sunny down snuff" and Van Dyke Park's masterful lyrics to "Heroes and Villains".  That's one I heard before.   But when a studio musician tells Brian that Phil Spector "has nothing" on Brian, that one was new to me, and I was as pleased as Brian in the movie to hear it (and not because I don't love Spector's music - he's a stone genius too - but I because I just love Brian's more).

Elizabeth Banks put in such a compelling and attractive performance as Brian's life-saving Melinda, that Banks instantly rocketed up to my favorite contemporary actress, that's right.  The sensitivity and strength of her performance made it totally believable that Brian fell in love with her, and she figured out a way to cut Brian lose from his baneful, control-freak, suffocating psychiatrist, well played by Paul Giamatti.

To get back the Beatles, the Beach Boys since the 1960s have been my second favorite rock group, way ahead of the Stones, in third place, and I guess, I don't know, the Eagles or the Who after that. Anyway, I don't want to argue about that.  I just want to say how good it was indeed in Love & Mercy, brilliantly directed by Bill Pohlad, to see Brian finally get more of the credit he deserves, not only for his music, but for making it and bringing it back against almost all the odds of his mental demons and most of the people around him.

See also my review of  The Beach Boys in White Plains

The Beach Boys in White Plains

I was driving by the Westchester County Center a couple of months ago, and saw the sign: "The Beach Boys, May 15".  The sign was simple and timeless and almost seemed unreal.  But its words were true, and so it was that my wife Tina and I were at County Center to see and hear the Beach Boys last night. I was 15 when I first heard The Beach Boys on the radio signing "Surfin' Safari" back in 1962.  I loved the song from the first time I heard it.  And here I was, 50 years later, on 15 May 2012, hearing The Beach Boys singing the same song and loving it even more.

I've always considered The Beach Boys easily one of top three groups in all of rock music.  Second only to The Beatles on most days, third after The Rolling Stones on some days maybe. The thing about the Beach Boys was their harmony - doo wop taken to symphonic, psychedelic heights, music of the spheres that no other group could produce.  The Beatles and The Stones usually had it over The Beach Boys on the lyrical front, but no one could touch their harmonies.

WFUV's Dennis Elsas of Fordham University introduced the group last night.  Pete Fornatale, a champion of their sound since the beginning, and also a Fordham dj, would no doubt have done those honors had he not left this world way too soon a few weeks ago.  Mike Love dedicated a song to Pete during the set - the newest Beach Boy song, "That's Why God Made the Radio," first heard on national radio just this last month.

Mike Love opened the concert with "Do It Again".  This was great opening choice.  As soon as Mike began singing I knew the evening would be remarkable.  And when The Beach Boys joined in with their effervescent popping harmonies, I knew the Beach Boys were truly back on that stage.

Dennis and Carl Wilson are no longer with us and The Beach Boys.  The group did two great numbers with each singing lead - from a recording - anyway last night.  Carl's rendition of "God Only Knows"  with the Beach Boys doing harmony right there on the stage last night was food for the soul.

So The Beach Boys last night consisted of Brian Wilson, Mike Love, Al Jardine, Bruce Johnston, and David Marks, and some great back up musicians and vocalists including John Cowsill of the Cowsills.

Brian's voice was amazing in the mid-range.   Jeff Foskett, one of the back-up vocalists but in fact standing right up front on the stage with guitar next to Brian on piano, did splendidly on all the high notes and patented Beach Boy falsettos.   The high points of the three hour concert were pretty much everything,  but among the special delights were Brian's lead and the group's exuberant harmonies on "Heroes and Villains" (a song whose lyrics by Van Dyke Parks equals the lyrical sophistication of The Beatles - "you're under arrest!" -  this performance including the "Bicycle Rider" segment), Al Jardine giving a fabulous lead rendition of "Help Me Rhonda" (brought the crowd to its feet singing the chorus),  David Marks' crackling sharp guitar work on every song (he was part of the group in the early 60s), the car song set ("Little Honda," "409," "Little Deuce Coupe," and "Shut Down,"  segueing right into one another), "Be True to Your School," and, like I said, there wasn't a weak performance in the concert, only great performances and even greater.



The crowd was in the aisles half a dozen times - including in the above video - singing and dancing, including nonstop for the last 4 or 5 songs.  My wife thought the average age of the audience was about 55 - there were little kids and octogenarians there for sure.

It's a strange, wondrous thing to hear music you've loved all of your life come to life again, right before your eyes and ears.   The Beach Boys touring group took the time to get the complex harmonies and musical licks just right - an impressive, even incredible, accomplishment for songs such as "Heroes and Villains" and "Good Vibrations," given the modular way (different sections of the songs in different recording sessions) the songs were first recorded back in the 1960s -  and the band performed with even more vitality than I've seen over the years on television and more recently YouTube.  I usually tell people that I feel like 17 on a good day and 19 on a not-so-good day.  The good vibrations last night - theremin and all - made me feel 15-22 again, and it all felt good.

See also this CNN article about The Beach Boys, in which I'm quoted.

Best Grammys Ever

I don't remember any Grammy Award ceremony being better than last night's - and I've been watching every one of them since the 1960s.

Any one of the following would have been enough to make last night's Grammys extraordinary -

• Paul McCartney's ending medley, joined about halfway by friends (including Joe Walsh and Bruce Springsteen), in full and fabulous form, leading right up to a great rendition of "The End"
• The Beach Boys's "Good Vibrations" - with Brian Wilson, Mike Love, Al Jardine, Bruce Johnson, and friends.  Like McCartney's medley, this is an intricate, complex song and arrangement, to say the least, and the Beachboys and friends performed it just beautifully and memorably.
• Glenn Campbell, also with a friends, in a poignant rendition of "Rhinestone Cowboy" - heartbreaking, really, since he's suffering from Alzheimer's (Tina and I met him once years ago, after a performance he and Tanya Tucker gave in the Catskills)
• Jennifer Hudson's powerful performance of Whitney Houston's "I Will Always Love You" (written by Dolly Parton) - a wonderful, also heartbreaking tribute to Whitney Houston
• Paul McCartney's "Valentine" - which sounds like the best song of this kind he's written since "Yesterday"
• Bruce Springsteen's opening "We Take Care of Our Own" - with Stevie, Max, and the E-Street Band.  Another blockbuster, which I hear tell has some Occupy Wall Street inspiration.

LL Cool J was also great as the host (I've gotten to know him on NCIS-LA).  It's taken half a century, but the Grammys finally got it right.