A little over 30 years ago, Al Jardine looked out onto the Pacific Ocean near his home in Big Sur, California, and thought back to his carefree youth with Brian and Dennis Wilson. “It just dawned on me how much I missed them,” Jardine says, who was actively touring in the Beach Boys with Mike Love and Carl Wilson at this time. “Dennis, of course, had passed, and Brian was pretty much out of the action. I felt very emotional.”
He wrote a sketch of a song called “Wish” that he tucked away until this past May when his longtime songwriting partner Larry Dvoskin suggested they finally finish it. Working together, they created a sweet, nostalgic ode to the Wilson brothers, and days gone by. “I could see you standing there, smiling in the sun,” they wrote. “We were both so young, and in love when /you gave your precious gift, a sparkling innocence/I owe you so much thanks for this.”
They recorded it this past May with Jardine on lead vocals and bass, Dvoskin on harmony vocals, piano, and synths, and Taylor Simpson on drums. It’s available now on all streaming services. “It’s a good message because right now we’re all wishing that things were the way they used to be, especially at our age,” says Jardine, “because our memories are wonderful, our musical memories are intact, and it’s just important to finish these great songs that we’ve written.”
Jardine hopes the song will eventually appear on a follow-up to his 2010 solo LP A Postcard From California, which featured guest appearances by Neil Young, Glen Campbell, David Crosby, Stephen Stills, Brian Wilson, Mike Love, and David Marks. “This song is kind of like the appetizer,” says Jardine, who notes that he’ll donate a portion of the proceeds from the single to the Make-A-Wish Foundation. “I’m actually working on a lot of unfinished tunes that are pretty close to being done. They come from all different backgrounds and fields of my musical endeavors over the years. My hope is to get a vinyl out for Record Store Day.”
As “Wish” demonstrates, Jardine remains in stellar vocal form, especially considering he just turned 82. He attributes that largely to clean living, and staying clear of drugs and alcohol. “Brian and I used to both be avid non-smokers,” he says. “We were militant. When Carl came to a session with a cigarette, Brian would pull it out his mouth and step on it. And then all out of nowhere, Brian became a four-pack-a-day smoker, which to this day, I still don’t get it. It dramatically changed his voice. But he has other issues that probably I wouldn’t understand either. But my voice survived. It also might be because I eat a lot peanut butter.”
That voice was a powerful tool in Brian Wilson’s touring band over the past couple of decades. But Wilson hasn’t performed since the summer of 2022. He now uses a wheelchair for mobility, and has been placed under a conservatorship because he’s living with “a major neurocognitive disorder.”
Jardine has played a series of small-scale solo shows over the past two years, but he’s plotting a return to the road alongside Brian Wilson’s touring band. “Brian has agreed to allow me to use the name of his band to resurrect that incredible Brian band that we worked with so wonderfully for the last 20 or 30 years,” says Jardine. “I’m looking forward to meeting up with him shortly and working out a schedule to do a couple of benefit concerts that we can do in L.A., and then maybe kick off an actual tour from there maybe early next year.”
He’s not sure exactly how they’ll bill themselves, but he can imagine it being something like “The Brian Wilson Band Presented by Fellow Beach Boy Al Jardine.” “Brian just isn’t physically in shape to join us,” says Jardine. “But he’s a strong individual and he’s got stamina. It wouldn’t surprise me if he could make a few of the shows in the Los Angeles area where we intend to do a trial performance.”
In a change from the past, Jardine hopes to add a video component to the show. “We never did video with Brian’s band,” he says. “I never understood that. But I think that dimension would really improve the quality of the show. I’ll also tell stories to inform the audience about how the music was made essentially. It could be a lot of fun.”
He hasn’t worked out a setlist yet, but he presumes it will be a mixture of Beach Boys hits and deeper cuts from the group’s overlooked Seventies albums. The Mike Love incarnation of the Beach Boys, meanwhile, plays a set focused almost exclusively around the Sixties hits.
“Mike does the Sixties really well,” says Jardine. “That can be a blessing and a curse, but apparently people are still coming to see him. People love to hear the same songs, and there’s a new generation of fans. And Mike seems to enjoy that. That’s the important part. But I found it tedious after a while. So now we have this opportunity to express some of the more esoteric things.” (A small list of the “esoteric” that Jardine is thinking about adding into the show includes “The Right Time” from Brian Wilson’s 2015 LP No Pier Pressure, and “Roller Skating Child” from 1977s The Beach Boys Love You.)
Jardine and Love haven’t toured together since the 2012 Beach Boys reunion tour, but they did spend considerable time together earlier this year promoting the Disney+ documentary The Beach Boys. “Despite the legal crap and everything that went down over the years, we can still talk,” he says. “Well, he’s a little hard of hearing now. I’m not quite sure if he hears anything I’m telling him, but we still have that common denominator between us. It works out.”
But don’t expect to see Jardine touring with Love in the current version of the Beach Boys any time soon. “I’ve got my hands full,” Jardine says. “If we’re going to get this Brian Wilson Band going again, I’m going to be pretty busy.”
So, what exactly drives Jardine to remain active like this into his eighties when he could easily retire and spend the rest of his life chilling on a beach? “That’s a good question,” he says. “I actually had second thoughts recently because I really don’t want to leave my home or my animals. But then I sat down and listened to some of our music, and I was motivated again because it’s the primal source. It is what got me over to where I’m today, and it’s been my living. I think we can go out at least for another year or so and give it our best shot.”