The Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson has announced what he says will be a final tour of Pet Sounds, often called one of the most influential pop albums, ever.
Wilson said on Monday he planned more than 70 shows to mark this year’s 50th anniversary of the release of the record, starting on March 26 in Auckland, New Zealand.
The 73-year-old rocker said in a statement that the tour would mark the last time he plays Pet Sounds in its entirety, which he will do at each show.
While it was released as the 11th album of the Beach Boys, pioneers of the California pop sound, Pet Sounds was essentially a solo work by Wilson. He spent months writing and recording songs and incorporating special effects that ranged from a bicycle bell to a barking dog.
After the innocent feel of earlier Beach Boys albums, Pet Sounds turns introspective with Wilson ruminating on the loss of youth and musically shifting into the psychedelic rock that would soon define hippie culture.
After Pet Sounds, Wilson suffered worsening mental health problems and drug dependency and retreated from music, re-emerging in full force only in the 1990s.
Pet Sounds is widely considered one of the most influential works in pop history: Rolling Stone magazine has ranked it the second-greatest album of all-time, only after The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
Nonetheless, Pet Sounds was initially a commercial disappointment in the US even though it became a hit in Britain.
For the 50th anniversary tour, Wilson announced 11 dates in Britain including at symphony halls and at the London Palladium.
Along with an extensive US leg, Wilson will play in Australia, with two dates scheduled at the Sydney Opera House, as well as Israel, Japan, Portugal and Spain, his management said.
He will perform on his tour with another founding Beach Boy, Al Jardine, and Blondie Chaplin, the South African rocker who joined the band when Wilson’s health was declining.
