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Beach Boys make comeback at Grammys

Los Angeles - Iconic 1960s California surfer band the Beach Boys played together live on stage for the first time in over two decades Sunday, bringing Good Vibrations to the annual Grammys show.

The band made their comeback performance at the music industry awards show, after announcing a 50th anniversary reunion last year, with a new album and tour planned this year.

A three-song tribute started with a close-harmony version of Surfer Girl by Maroon 5, and then the falsetto strains of Wouldn't It Be Nice by Foster the People, against a backdrop of multicolour surf boards.

After a standing ovation, the Beach Boys themselves, all now in their 60s, then took to the stage to play Good Vibrations, with famously glum-looking Brian Wilson almost smiling as he hit the high notes with his old bandmates.

The line-up of Wilson, Mike Love, Al Jardine, Bruce Johnston and David Marks looked happy to be together as they played to an audience including contemporaries Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder, among others.

New hits collection

The band, famous for their close vocal harmonies, was formed in 1961 by the three Wilson brothers, their cousin Love and friend Jardine, while Johnston and Marks joined later. Dennis and Carl Wilson have since passed away.

Their 1966 album Pet Sounds is widely seen as one of the most influential rock records of all time, and their other hits include Wouldn't It Be Nice?, Barbara Ann, California Girls and God Only Knows.

But while making increasingly pioneering music, the band - wracked by drug-taking and musical differences - never regained the peak of their 1960s heyday, while money wrangles also exacerbated their divisions.

However, group leader and chief song writer Brian Wilson's recovery and launch of a solo career since the late 1980s has fuelled talk of a reunion, which had looked increasingly likely since their re-recording of Do It Again.

As well as the new album and tour, the Beach Boys will also issue a number of commemorative releases in 2012, including a new hits collection and a career-spanning box set.

Watch The Beach Boys perform at the Grammys here:



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