38 Years Ago, The Beach Boys Rocked Grand Valley State University

The music world lost a legend this week with the announcement that Brian Wilson, the musical genius and leader of the Beach Boys, passed away at the age of 82. Some have dubbed Wilson the "modern Mozart", with the album "Pet Sounds" having sat at #2 on Rolling Stone's Top 500 Albums ranking for quite some time. As a 26-year-old in  2025, it is mind-boggling to believe that at the age of 22, Wilson had already contributed to/made seven albums and was embarking on his magnum opus.

At 22, I was staying up all night playing Call of Duty: Cold War. So we clearly had very different priorities.

But what Wilson and I do have in common is that we've spent time in Allendale at Grand Valley State. It was 36 years apart, but The Beach Boys brought the surf rock of California to the freshwater lakeshore of Michigan to give Grand Valley State College a night of music many never forgot.

The Beach Boys in Concert (and Allendale)

In honor of Wilson's passing, Grand Valley State University shared a throwback of an advertisement in the school newspaper, the Lanthorn, of when the Beach Boys played in Grand Valley's summer concert. Getting an act as big as the Beach Boys, even after their heyday, is pretty impressive. Ticket prices for the concert were a whopping $14.50, back in tickets didn't cost an arm and a leg.

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Members of the school's pompon team also went on stage to perform a routine to "Be True to Your School". In partnership with Chevy's Heartbeat of America campaign, a student also won a Chevy Z-28 Camaro.

But the other shocking part of this concert is that Richard Marx opened for The Beach Boys. Richard Marx, who in 1987, released his debut album and had 3 songs in the Billboard Hot 100 in 1988. It can't be understated how wild this concert was, and how unique this concert, especially considering Grand Valley State was still just a college rather than a university.

Many former students reflected in the comment fondly on the concert. Grand Valley seems to deliver pretty frequently, considering the year after the Beach Boys came The Romantics played. All in all, a pretty wild throwback shared by Grand Valley.

RIP Brian Wilson.