Dylan, Beach Boys play Long Island
The Beach Boys, from left, who are touring for their 50th anniversary, are John Cowsill, Christian Love, Bruce Johnston, Randell Kirsch, Mike Love, Scott Totten and Tim Bonhomme. Credit: Handout
Fifty years ago -- yes, 50! -- The Beach Boys cut their first record and Bob Dylan played his first Manhattan gig and signed a recording contract.
That anniversary isn't all they have in common: Both were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in the same class (1987). And this week both play Long Island.
The Beach Boys (featuring original member Mike Love, and almost-original member Bruce Johnston) will be at the NYCB Theatre at Westbury tomorrow, while Dylan performs Saturday at Nikon at Jones Beach Theater.
Here are 50 things you may not have known about Dylan and the Boys.
The Beach Boys
1. Dennis Wilson was the only member who actually surfed.
2. All the original members graduated from Hawthorne High School in suburban L.A., except for Mike Love, who attended Dorsey High in West Los Angeles.
3. Brian Wilson was the football team's quarterback.
4. At 6-foot-1 Brian is the tallest (and oldest) of the three Wilson brothers.
5. Before he joined The Beach Boys, original member Al Jardine played in a folk music group called . . . The Islanders.
6. When they recorded their first single, "Surfin'," the group was known as the Pendletones, after the wool Pendleton shirts they favored.
7. But when "Surfin' " was released, the name on the record label read "Beach Boys." A promotions exec decided that sounded better than Pendletones.
8. The Wilsons' father, Murry, was also their manager.
9. Their first paying gig was on New Year's Eve 1961, at the Ritchie Valens Memorial Dance in Long Beach, Calif. Ike and Tina Turner headlined.
10. Jardine briefly quit the group to go to dental school.
11. "Surfin' Safari," their first Capitol single as The Beach Boys, reached No. 14, in 1962.
12. "I Get Around" (1964) was their first No. 1 single.
13. They had just three more No. 1's: "Help Me Rhonda" (1965), "Good Vibrations" (1966) and "Kokomo" (1988).
14. When Brian Wilson left the touring group in 1964 to focus on recording, he was briefly replaced by Glen Campbell.
15. Campbell was replaced by Bruce Johnston (who would later compose Barry Manilow's smash "I Write the Songs").
16. They performed the theme song for the obscure 1964 sitcom "Karen."
17. The only "beach movie" they were associated with was "Girls on the Beach."
18. Brian Wilson is deaf in one ear and cannot hear in stereo.
19. Charles Manson lived with Dennis Wilson in his Sunset Boulevard home during the spring and summer of 1968.
20. Carl Wilson was a conscientious objector to the Vietnam War.
21. Love was one of the first pop musicians to practice transcendental meditation.
22. Their first known Long Island gig was a free concert at Nassau Community College in May 1966.
23. They played at Stony Brook University on Sept. 26, 1971, two days after a groundbreaking show at Carnegie Hall.
24. Elton John inducted them into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
25. They have never won a Grammy Award (although they do have a Lifetime Achievement Grammy).
Bob Dylan
1. You know his real name is Robert Zimmerman. But did you know his middle name is Allen?
2. His father, Abraham Zimmerman, ran a furniture store in Hibbing, Minn.
3. He was bar mitzvahed at Hibbing's Agudath Achim Synagogue in 1954.
4. Under his senior yearbook photo, Zimmerman said he wanted "to join Little Richard."
5. He is 5 feet, 7 and a half inches tall.
6. He attended, but never graduated from, the University of Minnesota.
7. He had considered changing his name to Robert Allyn, but then read the poetry of Dylan Thomas and settled upon Bob Dylan because "it sounded better."
8. In January 1961, he hitchhiked east to meet his idol, Woody Guthrie, who was dying in a New Jersey hospital.
9. Dylan's first professional gig was at Gerde's Folk City in Greenwich Village on April 11, 1961, opening for blues legend John Lee Hooker.
10. His Sept. 26, 1961, appearance at Gerde's was reviewed in The New York Times (after Dylan had pestered the writer to see the show). The review got him a recording contract.
11. "Bob Dylan," his first album, was recorded in a few hours and cost $402.
12. He said he wrote "Blowin' in the Wind" in about 10 minutes.
13. Dylan married Sara Lownds in an impromptu private ceremony on Nov. 22, 1965, in a judge's chamber at the Nassau County courthouse in Mineola. (Sara was in her third trimester when they wed.)
14. He has six children.
15. And nine grandchildren; 15-year-old Pablo (son of eldest son Jesse) is an aspiring hip-hop artist.
16. In 1964, he introduced The Beatles to marijuana during their first meeting in a Manhattan hotel room.
17. He lived for several years in Woodstock.
18. He did not perform at Woodstock (1969), but did perform at Woodstock II (1994).
19. He received an honorary doctorate of music from Princeton University in 1970.
20. After an eight-year hiatus, he resumed touring in 1974, backed by The Band. They played Nassau Coliseum on Jan. 28 and 29, 1974.
21. He and composer Jacques Levy secluded themselves in the Hamptons to write songs for Dylan's 1976 album "Desire."
22. He and Levy also co-wrote a song about Yankees pitcher Catfish Hunter.
23. He performed on a 1995 TV special celebrating Frank Sinatra's 80th birthday. (He attended Sinatra's funeral three years later.)
24. He performed for Pope John Paul II in 1997.
25. He won an Oscar and a Golden Globe in 2001 for best original song ("Things Have Changed" from "Wonder Boys").
The Beach Boys
WHEN | WHERE Tomorrow at 8 p.m. at NYCB Theatre at Westbury
TICKETS $56.50-$66.50
INFO livenation.com
Bob Dylan
WHEN | WHERE Saturday at 8 p.m. at Nikon at Jones Beach Theater
TICKETS $25-$125
INFO livenation.com
Most Popular
Top Stories
