Inside Stories

Six Decades Later, It’s Still All Fun, Fun, Fun in Lowell with the Beach Boys

Well, I’ve been thinking
‘Bout all the places we’ve surfed and danced
And all the faces we’ve missed
So, let’s get back together and do it again

It’s been quite a celebratory and nostalgic week in the world of Beach Boys news, some of it Fun, Fun Fun, some, not so much.

On Tuesday night, the current incarnation of the Beach Boys caught a wave and swept into the Mill City as part of Middlesex Community College’s annual Celebrity Forum event.  Spectacle Management and MCC teamed up to host a sold-out – read: FULL HOUSE – event at the Lowell Memorial Auditorium that had folks in Hawaiian shirts, flip flops and shades filling the dance floor.

(Kudos to Peter Lally from Spectacle Management and Judy Burke and Sherri McCormack from the college and the MCC Foundation, and sponsors like the TJX Companies and Nancy Donahue along with many others for joining forces to provide a truly memorable night.)

Before the 31 song performance, MCC President Phil Sisson interviewed founding member Mike Love, who is getting inducted Friday night into the songwriters Hall of Fame.  During the interview, Love gave a shoutout to former and original band members Brian, Carl, and Dennis Wilson, the latter two brothers who had tragically passed away years ago.

On Wednesday, cell phones for many who attended the show began pinging with alerts delivering the news that founding member Brian Wilson had himself passed on Wednesday morning, just hours after the Beach Boys’ performance in Lowell (which also featured recurring band member and heartthrob John Stamos).

Across social media, tributes began pouring in from other musicians, including the likes of Paul McCartney, Bruce Springsteen, and Sting.  Both Love and fellow founding Beach Boy Al Jardine weighed in with their own memories and love for Wilson, played the LMA solo most recently in 2021.  Multiple images of Wilson and the rest of the band played on the movie screen in the background Tuesday night as the band surfed through their song catalog on stage.

Many music aficionados began lamenting the loss of a creative songwriting genius, whose career had been spotted with both tragedies and pinnacle musical achievements.  And not surprisingly, many in the Mill City began recalling some of their own local recollections of both Wilson and the Beach Boys.

For me, my earliest Beach Boys personal memories reach back more than four decades.

It was July, 1980, and my friend Tom Beaupre and I were on a family attended bus tour that passed through Washington D.C. on the Fourth of July – THE EXACT DAY THE BEACH BOYS WERE GIVING A FREE CONCERT ON THE NATIONAL MALL!  Still minors at that point, both Tom and I, along with fellow teenage travelers Lisa and Becky Bolduc, tried to stage a mutiny on the tour bus, and were literally standing on the steps of the bus, staring longingly at the throngs of crowd of nearly half a million gathered on the mall, imploring our mothers – and the tour bus group at large to allow us to separate from the group tour and attend the concert.  What could go wrong? Sadly, we lost our bid for teenage independence, and decades later, the lament of a missed opportunity continues.

Luckily, as he often did, my brother Jimmy came to my rescue that same year, though.  Jimmy, for his part, had first seen the Beach Boys in 1972 in a concert on the Boston Common, and subsequently saw them more than another dozen times.  My older brother, who had previously taken me to my first string of live concerts – David Bowie, Queen, the Who, and of course a batch of Bruce Springsteen shows – took me to see the Beach Boys during their Keeping the Summer Alive tour.  I would repeat seeing them perform live a few more times in the ensuing years.

The Beach Boys are no strangers to Lowell. They made a famous visit to Lowell in 1987, when then-Lowell City Manager James Campbell, staged a show to help raise money to protect and support Cawley Stadium, which was falling into disrepair.

“We set our sights on the Beach Boys at that time because knew they were a marquee name that would draw people in and attract some financial backing that would help support Cawley’s rebirth,” said Campbell, who was supported in his efforts by, among others, former United States Senator Paul Tsongas. Campbell, coincidentally, was in attendance at Tuesday night’s performance, serving in his role as chair of the MCC Board of Trustees.

More than 13,000 fans attended the 1987 Cawley Stadium rain-soaked show.  (If you’ve got any pics of from that show, share them in the comments below).

Fast forward to this year’s performance, when fans young and old alike packed the venerable Auditorium to celebrate more than six decades of their beach tunes.

Mike Lenzi from Lenzi’s Catering said one of his chefs working Tuesday night’s event had seen the group perform at the LMA in April, 1965, the same year Bruce Johnston joined the group.  Johnston, by the way, donned one of the custom-made MCC embroidered Hawaiian shirts from All Sports Heroes and wore the MCC togs as he plied his trade at the stage-left keyboard!

Stamos, for his part, brought in a whole new slew of fans to Tuesday’s event, many of whom had followed him since his halcyon General Hospital and Full House days on television.  Several of the Northern Girls rushed the stage and broke into Beatlemania-level screams as Stamos gyrated and danced his way across stage.  Stamos was incredibly laid-back and interactive with attendees, even signing autographs and taking selfies with dozens of fans who lined the walkways outside the auditorium both before and after the event.  He signed collages of headshots from his television days, posters, notebooks, and in one case, a woman’s cell phone case because she didn’t have anything else on her that would support an autograph!

When all was said and done, the Beach Boys helped MCC raise money to support students at MCC, and Greater Lowell got another burst of sunshine to help kick off the summer on the right sandaled foot.

It’s heartening to watch a band 60+ years on still capturing headlines, and even more so, when the Good Vibrations spotlight a Lowell connection during an historic week in the band’s history.

Do any of you have your own special Beach Boys memories?  Share them in our comments.  God only knows, we could all do with some sunshine and shared happy memories.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *