The Casino File
Anytime a member of The Beach Boys takes the stage, you can be sure a jukebox-worth of hits from the legendary band’s prodigious songbook will fill the air. But charter member Al Jardine is digging deeper while on his current tour that brings him to Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa on Sept. 5.
Jardine, who turns 83 two days before the Borgata show, is using the road trip to highlight as many as eight of the 11 songs that comprise the Beach Boys’ relatively obscure 1977 album, “The Beach Boys Love You.”
The idea to break out this material predates the June death of Beach Boys’ guiding light Brian Wilson at age 82, Jardine explained during a recent phone chat.
“It was something we talked about when Brian was touring with [the Beach Boys],” he recalled. “We always said, ‘Why don’t we do something really esoteric and different?’ And then the ‘Love You’ album came up time and time again, but it just never happened. So now it’s just time for it, I guess. And it’s really charming.”
Jardine explained that touring is a far better alternative than sitting around his California ranch, as he is estranged from fellow band founder Mike Love, who continues to tour under the Beach Boys banner.
“I got sick of staying home,” he said with a chuckle. “We wanted to get out there and spread the word, and to bring the Brian Wilson Band back into action. And then Brian passed away, of course, but we had already planned to do this before he passed. We really wanted to get out and work again and bring the music to the folks.”
As he noted, Jardine’s musical support is being provided by the same group of musicians (including Jardine’s singer-percussionist son, Matt) who backed Brian Wilson on his solo tours. The unit has been dubbed The Pet Sounds Band after the Beach Boys’ game-changing 1966 album.
Actually, Jardine continued, the original idea was to include Brian in the project.
“I was hoping Brian would be there to help us to some degree, but it wasn’t meant to be. So, we’re out there now as a tribute to Brian’s music, because it’s so important, especially now.”
To be clear, there is more to the set list than the “Beach Boys Love You” material which has been presented as its own segment. For instance, last Saturday night’s concert in Des Plaines, Ill. included, among many Beach Boys signatures, “California Girls,” “Surfer Girl, ”God Only Knows” and, of course, “Good Vibrations.”
Jardine wasn’t sure whether or not the Borgata audience will hear all eight “Love You” songs because of gambling dens’ traditional imposition of a 90-minute limit on shows in order to get patrons into the casino. Hopefully, that won’t be the case: Last Saturday’s turn by Hank Azaria & the EZ Street Band at the Big B’s Music Box theater was a two-hour affair (see below).
His current road trip isn’t Jardine’s only 2025 dip into musical waters. In May, he released a four-song digital EP called “Islands in the Sun,” which includes the track, “My Plane Leaves Tomorrow (Au Revoir)” which features Neil Young on vocals and Red Hot Chilli Peppers’ bassist Flea, who plays the “Taps” sequence on trumpet. The song was recorded in 2010. So why did Jardine wait 15 years to make available to the public the track about a soldier heading off to fight in a war?
At first, he simply said “I don’t know” when the question was posed but ultimately added that “There was so much going on in the Beach Boys’ world” at the time of its recording. However, he did offer his reason for releasing it when he did.
“When I released it,” he said, “there was a lot of stuff going on [in the Middle East].” I thought, ‘We better get this out there now,’ because in the beginning of the song, you hear the BBC commentator say, ‘The president cannot start a war with Iran without Congressional approval.’ It’s an actual recording that I took from the BBC [in 2010], and I thought, ‘Wow, that thing’s never changed.”
For tickets, go to ticketmaster.com.
Azaria pours on the ‘Bruce juice’
Acclaimed actor Hank Azaria and his eight-member EZ Street Band were mighty impressive as they brought their tribute to Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band to Borgata last Saturday night.
The 61-year-old, four-Emmy-winning co-star of “The Simpsons” proved he’s not just a slumming Hollywood type with rock-star pretensions, but a true disciple who has clearly put in a lot of work to vocally emulate his musical hero of 50 years.
Opening the show with a thunderous troika of “Candy’s Room,” “The Promised Land” and “Badlands,” Azaria wasted no time showing off his ability to approximate Springsteen’s rough-hewn baritone. At least as often as not, his efforts put him in “close-your-eyes-and…” territory. And throughout the set — which primarily keyed on Springsteen’s 1970s catalog — the EZ Streeters captured the swagger and 1,000-volt energy of Bruce’s revered troupe of supporting musicians.
Pretty much every song of the two-hour romp was a highlight, but the set’s zenith was reached during an extended rendition of “Growin’ Up,” from Bruce’s 1972 debut LP, “Greetings from Asbury Park.”
As his subject has done many times through the decades, Azaria turned the declaration of personal independence into a tour de force with a lengthy spoken-word segment that included everything from an Al Pacino (in “Dog Day Afternoon”) impression to quick snippets of the voices of three “Simpsons” characters he does (Moe Szyslak, Police Chief Clancy Wiggum and Comic Book Guy) to the hilarious tales of the two times he got up-close-and-personal with the Bard of Asbury Park (neither meeting turned out well for our narrator). Interestingly, while this and a couple other stories were about Azaria, he told them in his Springsteen voice.
This portion of the show proved that Azaria is an engaging entertainer with a masterful delivery and impeccable timing (as befits a Tony Award — for “Spamalot”— nominee).
Azaria and the band also knocked it out of the park with their renditions of a trio of revered cuts from the “Born to Run” album (which marked the 50th anniversary of its release this past Monday) — the title track, “Thunder Road” and “Jungleland.”
Bottom line: Here’s hoping “EZ Street” is a regular addition to the AyCee map.
Chuck Darrow has spent more than 40 years writing about Atlantic City casinos.
