What does BB stand for?

Beach Boys founder Brian Wilson considered The Beatles to be his chief rivals, and they in turn would cite his work as a major influence.

The fan club was out in force and one lucky member, one Sue Levine, got treated to a special round of Happy Birthday, Beach Boys style, before the gig got under way.

That was the watchword Saturday night at the Hanover Theatre for the Performing Arts on Southbridge Street as The Beach Boys rode a wave of nostalgia into the venue.

He went to his death leaving behind bankruptcy, five broken marriages (including two to the same woman), four children, a bunch of bereaved heroin and cocaine dealers, a dozen or so songs scattered across the later Beach Boys albums, and the memory of his sandpapered voice, which could bring crowds to tears when he advanced to the microphone and closed a concert with a single chorus of You Are So Beautiful, which he had co-written with Billy Preston.

Byline: ANDY COLEMAN WITH Arctic temperatures outside and a muted atmosphere inside the draughty, cavernous, not quite full NIA it seemed that The Beach Boys faced an uphill struggle to bring some Californian sunshine to Birmingham.

Byline: JOHN AIZLEWOOD POP The Beach Boys Hammersmith Apollo *** THE Beach Boys?

That was really the beginning of the end for the band, a peak they never recovered from, and they slowly disintegrated in a haze of drugs, critical maulings, arguments, firings and eventually deaths THE Beach Boys have spent more time in court than in the charts in recent decades.

The playlist for a Beach Boys concert draws from the triple-platinum "Sounds of Summer: The Very Best Of The Beach Boys," its follow-up, "The Warmth of the Sun," and "Pet Sounds.