All you need is Love.

Well, Bruce Johnston, too.

The Beach Boys Christmas Show, held Sunday afternoon at the Maine Center for the Arts in Orono, featured founding member and lead singer Mike Love and keyboardist-vocalist Bruce Johnston, who has been part of the group since 1965.

Another six musicians backed up that dynamic duo, two or three of whom appeared younger than the songs themselves.

Love and Johnston carried the bulk of the lead vocals, but guitarist Randell Kirsch, bassist Chris Farmer and keyboardist John Cowsill (formerly of the ’60s band the Cowsills) all got their turns out front.

During the slightly more than two-hour show, the group played many of the Beach Boys hits, and also threw in some doo-wop and covers of “California Dreamin'” and the Cowsills hit “Darlin.'”

About a quarter of the concert consisted of the contractually obligatory holiday songs, including their hit “Little Saint Nick.”

Love was a genial host. After wrapping up the first half-hour, he commented, “If we would have known that we’d be singing the original songs in their original keys 40 years later, we probably would have given it a little more thought.”

Amen, brudda (“It’s my little lost youth/I do know what you got”).

Later, after five-part a cappella harmony opening of “Why Do Fools Fall in Love,” Love said, “Let’s see Justin Timberwolf and his buddies in ‘NStink get back together and do that.” Then he and the band broke into a ‘NSync parody, which he next said “was more hip replacement than hip-hop.”

Right before a street-racing medley of five songs, Johnston encouraged the audience to its feet, the collective groan from achy knees drowned out by the strains of “Little Deuce Coupe.”

But if you closed your eyes, the songs remained the same, and transported listeners back dozens of years and at least a like number of pounds ago. Lyrics leapt unbidden to lips, as the 1,561 in attendance sang along to such classics as “California Girls,” “Catch a Wave,” “Kokomo” and “Help Me Rhonda.”

This concert proved that, regardless what happens behind the music, the Beach Boys’ sound remains timeless.

Dale McGarrigle can be reached at 990-8028 and dmcgarrigle@

bangordailynews.net.