For a few minutes in 1976 – America’s bicentennial year and the 15th anniversary of California-sun ambassadors The Beach Boys – the hype was right: Brian Wilson was back. On November 27th, the group’s resident, troubled genius was the musical guest on Saturday Night Live. And he was solo, his first TV appearance without brothers Dennis and Carl, Mike Love and Al Jardine since a legendary recital of Surf’s Up in the 1967 documentary Inside Pop. Brian’s three SNL songs included an eerie ‘Good Vibrations’ – alone and skittish at a piano in a faux-sandbox set – and ‘Back Home’, a jaunty original from the Beach Boys’ latest LP, 15 Big Ones, with the SNL band even though the former were in town selling out Madison Square Garden.
Brian also performed ‘Love Is a Woman’, a new…

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