The Beach Boys Are Back, Reuniting for World Tour

Beach Boys, together again

Beach Boys Reunion Tour Planned for 2012

The Beach Boys are back, announcing their reunion tour, a new album and more.

The Beach Boys formed 50 years ago, if you can believe it -- three brothers, a cousin and a friend, who set off for their first paying gig, playing on New Year's Eve at the same gig that was headlined by Ike and Tina Turner.

Band leader Brian Wilson recalls the event, saying, "We were asking each other what the hell we were doing there. We were five clean-cut, unworldly white boys from a conservative white suburb in an auditorium full of black kids."

The night put them on the map and life was never the same for the Beach Boys again.

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Brian Wilson, brothers Carl and Dennis, cousin Mike Love and friend Al Jardine created that California sound.

It looks like that whole "clean-cut, unworldly white boys thing" really worked out for them.

With hits like Surfin' USA, Surfer Girl, Good Vibrations, I Get Around, Wouldn't It Be Nice and Help Me Rhonda, they were unstoppable.

But fame is not without its pitfalls, as personal problems, tragedies and fighting plagued the group, in what Wilson describes as "a rock 'n' roller-coaster."

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The surviving members are reuniting in 2012 for their 50th anniversary, as Wilson explains, "We are making a new studio album, re-issuing a lot of our hits, and in April we will embark on a 50-date world tour."

The surviving band mates, Brian, Mike and Al will reunite for the tour. Sadly, Dennis drowned in 1983 at age 39 and Carl died of lung cancer in 1997, at age 51.

Bruce Johnston and David Marks will step in, two Californians who've been in and out of the band throughout their run.

Earlier this year, they got together in the recording studio, with Wilson saying, "The tension in the studio was palpable."

Love commented that, "Later, while working out harmonies on a new song, it was a thrill to be around a piano again and experience, first-hand, the brilliance of Brian's gift for vocal arrangements. Music has been a unifying fact of life in our family since childhood. It has been a huge blessing."

The Beach Boys aren't so much "boys" anymore, with Wilson coming up on age 70, joining Jardine, Love and Johnston, who are already in the 70 club. The "baby," Marks, is 63.

The Beach Boys' tour kicks off in New Orleans on April 27, they have a new album in the works, and they promise to "do something really exciting" at the Grammy Awards in February.