Al Jardine Revives Beach Boys Deep Cut 'Back Home' After 50 Years in Warren, Ohio

Al Jardine performed the Beach Boys deep cut "Back Home" in public for the first time in roughly 50 years on 15 August, during an encore at the Robins Theater in Warren, Ohio, with the Pet Sounds Band. The song had not been heard live from a Beach Boys stage since the band played it at least 41 times between July 1976 and October 1978, before it vanished from their setlist entirely. Rolling Stone

"Back Home" has a tangled recording history. Brian Wilson wrote it in 1963 with Bob Norberg, and the Beach Boys cut a version during the Surfer Girl sessions that year — a take that later leaked to bootleggers. The band revisited the song twice during the 1970 Sunflower sessions, including one take with Jardine on lead vocals and different lyrics, but shelved both. A rendition finally saw official release on the 1976 album 15 Big Ones, with Brian Wilson singing lead. Wilson also performed it on Saturday Night Live with the house band in November 1976.

Jardine is currently the only Beach Boy on the road. Mike Love pulled nearly 30 dates until 24 September following a string of performances that drew criticism for low energy. The Oregon State Fair booked Jardine and the Pet Sounds Band to fill the slot left by Love's cancelled Beach Boys date.

Jardine's current set with the Pet Sounds Band runs wide. It includes surf-era Beach Boys hits, a near-complete performance of the 1977 album The Beach Boys Love You, and a large portion of Pet Sounds — the 1966 album whose 60th anniversary falls this year. The only track from Smile, the famously abandoned Wilson masterpiece that later circulated in bootleg form, is "Heroes and Villains." Jardine's Instagram account posted after the Warren show that it was "great to be back home in Ohio," featuring classic 60s California Beach Boys music, and directed followers to his website for a complete list of upcoming shows.

For fans who have followed the Beach Boys' catalogue into its deeper shelves, hearing "Back Home" surface after half a century is the kind of moment that rewards decades of patience with bootlegs and session outtakes. The song spent more time shelved than performed, and its live history — a burst of shows in the late 1970s, then silence — makes its reappearance all the more striking.