Brian Wilson brings his legacy as a musical genius to Hawaii

Brian Wilson is a monumental figure in modern American music.

His current tour, which started a year ago in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Beach Boys’ “Pet Sounds” album, has usually been an easy sellout, or close to one, on each of its stops. The 74-year-old genius says this tour will be the last time he‘ll perform on this scale.

He doesn’t need to do interviews. And yet, there he was a few weeks ago, calling from Southern California to field questions about the tour and his spectacular career.

“I hope they like ‘Pet Sounds’ and the Beach Boys classics,” Wilson said, no touch of irony in his voice.

The set list for this concert includes every song on “Pet Sounds,” a milestone release for the Beach Boys when it came out in 1966. Wilson also sings many of the group’s big hits from the years before “Pet Sounds.”

It’s easy in 2017 to miss the impact that “Pet Sounds” had when it came out in 1966. It was a radical departure from the Beach Boys’ successful Top 40 formula: Mike Love and Wilson leading full, five-part harmonies in songs about fast cars, surfing and surfer girls.

The career had begun in 1961 when Wilson, his younger brothers Dennis and Carl, their cousin Love, and Al Jardine recorded “Surfin’,” a song he and Love had written, for a small Southern California record label. The song was a regional hit. Just months later, the Beach Boys were signed by Capitol Records — one of the biggest labels in the nation.

When they came to Hawaii for the first time in 1963, the Beach Boys were known nationwide, but, in one those strange-but-true show business stories, they’d been booked as part of a musical revue. They had to back up several other artists as well as do their own show. That never happened again.

The Beach Boys returned as the headliners in one of “Uncle Tom” Moffatt’s “Million Dollar” parties in 1964. They played all the major venues here in the decades that followed, including an unannounced concert on the beach in Waikiki for a 25th anniversary television special.

The Beach Boys mentioned Hawaii in “Surfin’ Safari” and “Surfin’ USA,” but they gave the islands major recognition in 1963 when Wilson and Love wrote “Hawaii,” a song they included on the group’s third album, “Surfer Girl.”

Wilson had never been to Hawaii when he wrote it.

“I wrote it in expectation of going there,” he said, adding that the islands lived up to what he’d imagined. “It’s a beautiful place.”

His favorite memory of the islands? “Watching Don Ho.”

After dominating the charts with Beach Boys songs about sun and surf, Wilson turned his attention to creating the more complex music of “Pet Sounds.” He stopped touring with the band in 1965.

He wrote almost all the songs for “Pet Sounds,” along with lyricist Tony Asher, who was from outside the group and the usual small circle of writing partners. Wilson also did the arrangements and produced the recording sessions with studio musicians. The other Beach Boys first heard what he was working on when they returned from a tour of Japan and Hawaii.

The album stalled at No. 10 on the Billboard 200 pop albums chart, lower than the group’s previous albums, but has since been acclaimed as one of the influential albums in pop music history.

It is also seen in retrospect as a seminal rock “concept album,” within which all the songs fit together to convey a unified message.

The first single released from the album, “Caroline No,” was officially Wilson’s solo debut as a recording artist. Two subsequent singles, “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” and “Sloop John B,” were credited to the group.

Beach Boys fans know that Carl Wilson was the original lead vocalist on “God Only Knows,” and that Jardine sang lead on “Help Me, Rhonda” in 1965.

In concert now, “Singing ‘God Only Knows,’ brings back (memories of) Carl, and ‘Wouldn’t It Be Nice’ always gets a nice reaction,” Wilson said.

Carl Wilson died of lung cancer in 1998. Dennis Wilson drowned in 1983.

On tour, Bruce Johnston replaced Brian Wilson and has been a member of the group for more than 50 years.

Wilson suffered from psychological and substance abuse problems that essentially put his career on hold and kept him out of the group for much of the 1970s and 1980s. But in recent years, his condition stabilized, and he has again ventured out into the public eye.

In 2012 the surviving members of the group — Wilson, Love, Jardine, Johnston and guitarist David Marks — set aside any lingering differences for a 50th anniversary tour celebrating the release of their first album, “Surfin’ Safari.”

Wilson performs here under his own name, with a 10-piece band that includes Jardine and guitarist Blondie Chaplin, a member of the Beach Boys in the early 1970s.

On tour, audiences will hear Wilson sing lead on songs like “Fun, Fun, Fun,” “Little Deuce Coupe,” “California Girl” and “Dance Dance Dance” that were originally sung by Love.

Wilson took “Pet Sounds” on the road in 2000; a live album, “Brian Wilson Presents ‘Pet Sounds’ Live,” was released in 2002.

Wilson wants everyone to understand that in terms of touring this is it.

“I think we’re going to wind up with this one. I might do a rock ’n’ roll album with Al (Jardine) after this, but I have no idea when it might be out,” he said.

Will he retire?

Looking back to the beginning, he said that even in high school — where he was a three-star athlete — he never planned for anything other than a career in music. “It was always music for me.”

It might seem odd to some “adults” to hear Wilson, at 74, singing about street racing, going steady and the joys of summer vacation. But the songs are timeless, expressing emotions shared by people generations removed from the 1960s.

“I was always thinking long term,” Wilson said of his famed attention to detail as a writer, arranger and producer. “I wanted to make the song right.”