Landing in Los Angeles after a splendid Memorial Day weekend in Crabtown ? where my folks slaughtered the fatted lamb for the wanderer?s visit, roasting it with red potatoes, rosemary and thyme ? I lit out for a town I learned about in the first grade via rock and roll.
“From Hawthorne, California,” announced Fred Vail on the 1964 concert album I received for a good report card, “The Beach Boys.”
Five miles from the ocean that Brian Wilson and his brothers celebrated in ethereal harmony, Hawthorne is a worse-for-wear L.A. suburb just south of the LAX airport. It sits hard by the 405 and 105 freeways, whose lanes took the house where the earliest Beach Boys song ? Surfin’ ? was recorded over Labor Day, 1961.
On the spot where Brian, Dennis and Carl Wilson grew up ? 3701 119th St. ?is a beige monument of cheap block, the kind they use these days to build elementary schools and drug stores.
It resembles an outdoor fireplace grill, except for a sandstone relief of six youngsters carrying a surfboard: the brothers Wilson (how miraculously odd that only tortured Brian survives); obscure neighbor David Marks (known as the “lost” Beach Boy); childhood friend Al Jardine and villainous cousin, Mike “I?m As Important As Brian” Love.
An official state landmark, the monument might be mistaken for the Tomb of the Unknown Surfer. It doesn?t come close to what the group deserves on the spot where they learned piano and harmony from their mother, Audrey, and some song writing and show-biz acumen from hard-driving father, Murry.
But it?s something and allows pilgrims to know they found the patch of earth where American pop standards as indelible as those of Gershwin were nurtured.
Reading all of the notes of gratitude and adoration chiseled into the blocks, I thought of a quote by one of the post-Elvis rock-and-roll monarchs, a heavy-hitter whose name escapes me.
It was about Dennis and Brian?s baby brother, who died in 1998 and briefly led a side project with the coolest name of all-time: Carl and the Passions.
“Carl Wilson,” declared the rock star. “Deserves a monument just for singing ?God Only Knows?”
Rafael Alvarez is a writer based in Highlandtown and Hollywood. His e-mail is [email protected]
