Brian Wilson Re-Imagines Gershwin

Having not actually heard the album that first conveyed Wilson's 2010 versions of George and Ira Gershwin classics, there we were assuming the name of the tour represented some attempt to wriggle out of a legal loophole. We left hoping against hope he comes back soon.

You wouldn't put anything past certain surviving Beach Boys and that has included preventing the man whose genius made their own fortune from so much as playing one of his tunes to anything an attorney might deem to be a 'crowd'.

Whoops, there goes The Chimp betraying an interest, and long may the brother of the late Carl and Dennis live, whether he's keeping one step ahead of the litigious little Deuce Coupe chasers or not.

"Rhapsody In Blue" was treated almost as an emblem throughout a breathtaking, "Smile"-inducing performance at The Bridgewater Hall even if it was the only Gershwin contribution to survive the first half of the show.

From there on in it was a wall-to wall jukebox jamboree as even the sappier end of Wilson's canon – your "Good Vibrations", your "California Girls" and your "Surfin' USA", for example – came to vivid life. An eclectic ensemble of virtuosos took the wheel when necessary, perhaps just in case Wilson, sat James T Kirk style on the bridge, should lapse.
But the lapse never came and the treats interspersed the hits as a stunning "Darlin'", plus drastically re-arranged "In My Room" and "Heroes and Villains" served to line up "the first song I wrote": "Surfer Girl".

By this point it was a straight choice: dance or cry. To have put together the exact folks to handle these harmonies and to knock them out "kinda honest and live" night after night must have seemed some kind of pipe dream back at Wilson's lowest ebb. Yet the most hardened cynic could not fail to hand it to him on this evidence.

If that decades-old dream ever existed, it's alive and responsible for over 40 such gigs by a man who turns 70 next June since this June.

Alex Griffiths