In May Jardine met Brian Wilson for the last time, who for decades was his partner in the Beach Boys. The musician who passed away the day before yesterday was waiting for him on the back of his house. “He looks at me and makes me:” You founded the group “,” recalls Jardine laughing. “It was the first thing that told me, not even the time to greet me. I replied: “Yes, but you participated, you too was part of it.” Not that he had all the wrong. When we met by chance at college, at the time, it is I who told him: “Hey Brian, we have to form a band, we have to put on a group”. And he remembered it ».
For Jardine, the fact that Wilson recognized his role in the birth of the band represented a sort of closure of the circle. “I said to myself: Wow, see that I had something to do something too, it's an honor.”
Wilson was sick, but the two did not think that this would be their last meeting. “I was convinced that he would recover. It is true that he had problems with the levels of oxygen in his blood, but he was improving. ” In the end, says Jardine, “it's as if he had turned off … he has gone serenely in his sleep and I am grateful of this”.
In 2006 Jardine performed with Wilson and his solo band committed to carrying around Pet sounds. The two started playing regularly together in 2012. «I remember the first concert at the UCLA, they made me a standing ovation just because I had gone on stage. It was almost like returning to the times of the beach boys. In a sense we resumed exactly where we left ».
Wilson's last concert was in 2022. Jardine recalls that his friend's health was declining. «On the last tour it was certainly not expansive. He no longer had the same momentum. He was bent on the piano, he was not fully involved. It was understood that there was something wrong. ” According to Jardine, it happened after Wilson took Covid. “That was the end, he never returned as before.”
Jardine is working on a tour with the members of Wilson's solo band. Indeed, he hoped that his friend could go on stage for at least a concert. On the tour you will hear both the big hits of the beach boys, and less well -known pieces of the subsequent albums, including the bizarre The Beach Boys Love You of 1977. “I hoped it was there to give its approval.”
Wilson, says the friend, was not “only” a genius. It was beyond. «He invented the beach boys, conceived a musical style, he was able to put together eight notes differently. He could do anything and every time it was a joy to hear his arrangements, even if they were simple pieces like Surfer Girl. Author, arranger, producer, singer: it was all these things together. He left us an unbeatable repertoire that we can continue to record, sing and play for the rest of life ».
From Rolling Stone Us.
