Happy Birthday to Beach Boys co-founder Al Jardine, who turns 75 today, (September 3rd)!!! Jardine is about to head back on the road with Brian Wilson and Blondie Chaplin for the latest leg of an ongoing world tour featuring the group’s groundbreaking Pet Sounds album. Jardine began singing with Brian Wilson while the pair were high school football teammates at Hawthorne High School in Southern, California. Jardine played a major role in securing the session for the group’s 1961 debut single “Surfin’” on which he sang and played double bass.
In February 2014, Jardine performed a rare unplugged solo show at Manhattan’s Rubin Museum of Art with Chaplin appearing as a special guest. The concert, which was billed as Transcendental Music At The Rubin, was in benefit of The Rubin Museum of Art and the David Lynch Foundation, which sponsors TM studies. Jardine thrilled die-hard by playing such Beach Boys deep cuts as “Wake The World,” “Cabinessence,” “At My Window,” and “Transcendental Meditation,” among others.
In June 2013, Al Jardine teamed up with Sean Lennon to record a new, mainly acappella rendition of John Lennon and Yoko Ono‘s global peace anthem, “Give Peace A Chance.” The video was among the many works projected on the side of London’s Tate Museum. The project, which was spearheaded by Bono‘s advocacy organization — the ONE — was the kickoff to the week-long “agit8,” an artistic statement geared to force the world leaders meeting soon after for the G8 World Summit to take a stand against world poverty. Artists were urged to record a new rendition of a notable protest song. Jardine also recorded and submitted his version of Pete Seeger and Lee Hays‘ folk classic “If I Had A Hammer.”
In 2010, Jardine released his first solo album, A Postcard From California. The critically acclaimed collection features appearances by Neil Young, David Crosby, and Stephen Stills, Beach Boys co-founders Brian Wilson, the late Carl Wilson, Mike Love and David Marks. Longtime member Bruce Johnston also appears. Also featured are his sons, Matt and Adam Jardine, Steve Miller, Gerry Beckley and Dewey Bunnell from America, the late-Glen Campbell, and the Red Hot Chili Pepper‘s bassist Flea.
