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On March 1st, Al Jardine will grace the stage at the Florida Theatre in Jacksonville, bringing with him the iconic sounds of the Pet Sounds Band and the timeless music of Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys.
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. —
Over six decades ago, in the modest neighborhood of Hawthorne, California, Al Jardine teamed up with his high school football buddy Brian Wilson. Alongside Wilson’s two siblings and cousin, they formed a band in this working-class suburb, situated just six miles from the Pacific Ocean.
Initially, they named themselves The Pendletons, inspired by the wool shirts favored by local surfers. Al handled the standup bass for their debut track, “Surfin.” By the time the song hit the airwaves in November 1961, the group had rebranded as The Beach Boys.
Today, at 83, Jardine is still touring the nation, performing the music that not only shaped a generation but continues to resonate across age groups. He expresses that nothing compares to the thrill of performing live for fans.
“Every night we sing, you, it’s, it’s joyful,” Jardine said. “I mean you can’t help it.”
To millions of fans around the world, the Beach Boys represented the “Fun, Fun, Fun” culture of summer: Surfing, hot rods, and bikini-clad “Girls on the Beach.” Yet, their story is far more nuanced.
For starters, Jardine was not born a Beach Boy, instead growing up thousands of miles from the beaches that would come to define much of his life.
“I was born in Lima [Ohio],” he said. “We migrated to a place called California, and it just seemed to work.”
After more than 30 hit records, including four number 1 hits, Jardine never forgot his roots. Through the years, the Midwest has been a lyrical recurrence in the Beach Boys discography, from the “Midwest farmer’s daughters” mentioned in “California Girls” to deeper cut songs like “Back Home,” about a young man returning home to his farm in Ohio. It was homesickness that inspired a Jardine-led production, “Cottonfields (The Cotton Song),” a reworking of a Lead Belly classic.
“I just felt like everybody wants to go home,” Jardine said. “So, I did it kind of musically and, you know, physically. I mean, we actually went back there and did concerts in Lima and Toledo and, you know, it’s just a great feeling to, to be able to go.”
Once in California, Al lived the life of the classic post-war teenager. He remembers Hawthorne in the late-50s with the clarity that only nostalgia can bring, including a particular drive-up diner called Foster’s Freeze and a beloved music store.
“Brian and I used to go to a place called Melody Music right down on Hawthorne Boulevard,” he recalled. “You don’t need to know that, but I remember beautifully. It was fun.”
Jardine would also play as a backup fullback for the Hawthorne High School Cougars. One of his friends on the team was the Cougars’ backup quarterback, Brian Wilson. Jardine still recalls one particular scrimmage with Wilson.
“He stumbled in the backfield and he couldn’t [pitch] the ball off in time, and then finally, when he recognized where I was, I got tackled pretty badly, he felt bad about that for the rest of his life because I broke my leg,” Jardine recalled. “He though it was his fault, but it really wasn’t.”
After the release of “Surfin,’” which peaked at number 75 in the nation, Al left the new band to continue his studies. He could have been a mere footnote to music history if his old friend hadn’t made an important phone call a year later.
“I got a call from Brian. He said, ‘You got to come back. I can’t do the [tour],’” Jardine remembered. “I said, of course I’d be happy to come back and, and help out. I’m pretty grateful, to be honest with you. It was a great experience.”
After rejoining the band in 1963, Al’s voice became an instrumental in the harmonies that made the Beach Boys legendary. He would also sing the occasional lead vocal, including on the classic hit “Help Me Rhonda,” which reached number 1 in 1965 at the height of the Beach Boys’ commercial peak.
That peak would come to an end by the late 1960s as their leader, Brian Wilson, spiraled from undiagnosed mental illness and drug abuse. In his absence, the band would pick up the slack, with the entire band, including Jardine, helping to write and produce music on the band’s next several albums, including the critically acclaimed Sunflower and Holland albums.
Jardine’s current tour is celebrating a lesser-known Beach Boys era, the 40th anniversary of the cult-classic album Love You. The album was part of a campaign dubbed “Brian’s Back,” an effort by the band to bring the infamously reclusive artist back into the studio.
“That was a Brian Wilson album, and we were basically his background singers, so it was very, very personal for him and his brothers,” Al remembered. “When I think back on it, two of my favorite songs are on there. One’s called Honking Down the Highway, and the other is Roller Skating Child. I love those two because they’re up-tempo and happy.”
After the Love You album, Brian largely disappeared again and would rarely resurface publicly until the mid-1990s. By then, Jardine had left the touring Beach Boys to strike out on his own, recording the album A Postcard from California in 2010. Brian Wilson would also remake his career, touring around the world and recording a handful of albums, including finishing the legendary abandoned SMILE project in 2004 with an entirely new band.
“They’re absolute pros,” Jardine said of Brian’s band. “They’re the really [like] the Wrecking Crew of the 60s.”
The Beach Boys reunited in 2012 for the critically acclaimed album That’s Why God Made the Radio and a world tour without Wilson’s brothers Dennis and Carl, who died in 1983 and 1998, respectively. After the reunion ended, Wilson and Jardine began touring together throughout the mid to late 2010s. Despite more than 50 years of creating music together and taking part in one of pop music’s greatest dramas, Brian never let his friend forget that practice in Hawthorne.
“He didn’t like sound checks. Oftentimes, he’d bail on a sound check because he wanted to eat something,” Al said with a laugh. “I’d say, ‘Come on man, what’s going on?’ And he said, ‘Oh, sorry about your leg!’”
In June 2025, Brian Wilson, the troubled genius whose timeless music still resonates today, died after numerous health issues. He was 82. As a tribute to his longtime friend and brother in music, Al Jardine continues to celebrate his friend and brother in music by playing shows around the world, along with the band that toured with Brian for the last two decades of his life and career.
“They’re like an engine, a musical engine when it gets going. You can’t stop it. It just gets better and better,” Jardine said of the band, now dubbed the Pet Sounds Band. “It’s the Brian Wilson band, obviously, and, and they’re the best.”
As for Jardine, in his golden years, he remains humble about his own legacy, never forgetting his humble roots in the Midwest, his All-American adolescence, or his incredible journey through the annals of rock history. It is perhaps appropriate that Jardine will tour through America’s 250th birthday.
“We’re all fortunate to meet each other in a place called Hawthorne, California,” Jardine said. “It works as long as you’re allowed to do things like [we did], and move freely, you can find a better life. So, I got lucky.”
Al Jardine and the Pet Sounds Band will perform Beach Boys classics and deep cuts, including selections from the Love You album, on March 1 at the Florida Theatre in Jacksonville. You can still find tickets to the show here: Tickets | A Tribute to Brian Wilson Featuring Al Jardine and The Pet Sounds Band | Florida Theatre
Matthew Copeland contributed to this report.