From the Editor

I always have loved the music of Reunions. The high school band members playing earnestly as they sweat under thick uniforms and heavy hats. The kilt-wearing bagpipers — who knew there were so many Scots in Central Jersey? The indefatigable Princeton University band that marches in the P-rade once, twice, or three times within a few hours.

Nothing, however, could have topped the party music this year. Working together, the classes of 1961 and 1971 brought the Beach Boys to campus for a Friday night concert marking 50 years since the band’s formation. Technically, it was the Beach Boy — Mike Love was the only member of the original band to play. Still, you wouldn’t know that from the music of the reconstituted group, or from the reaction of the Princetonians spanning several generations who sang and danced along, reliving the music that eased their way into adulthood or realizing how much fun their parents once had.

The concert was the result of a collaboration between the two classes and particularly between their entertainment chairmen, Jim Blair ’61 and Stu Rickerson ’71. Working separately in the past, the two had brought top acts such as Chubby Checker, Darlene Love, the Drifters, and Smokey Robinson to campus. This year, working together led to their biggest coup.

After the performance, which lasted more than two hours, Love commented on the warmth of the crowd, Rickerson recounted. And that, after all, is what Reunions is about — that and the subject of the band’s closing song: “Fun, Fun, Fun.”

— Marilyn H. Marks *86