Unfortunately for onetime Beach Boy Brian Wilson, George Gershwin didn’t write many songs about surfing.

In fact I’m not sure Gershwin wrote any songs about being a California beach bum in the early 1960s, unless you count 'Someone To Wash Over Me' which, anyway, might just be my little joke. When it comes to songs about surfing, Brian Wilson’s your man. Beach Boys hits like 'Surfer Girl', 'Wouldn’t It Be Nice', 'God Only Knows', 'Surfin’ USA', 'California Girl' and 'Good Vibrations' defined something new in pop. They were songs about surfing – how to surf, how to attract the opposite sex whilst in the process of surfing, the hedonistic existence that people who surf enjoy (and no doubt fully deserve); surfing as a useful thing to be doing at a time, when as God only knows, America was entirely at peace with itself.

I suspect Brian Wilson is not burdened by dualities of meaning. The problem with writing so many songs about surfing – apparently while studying music at school Brian failed to complete the assigned piano sonata, instead opting to submit a composition called Surfin' – is that you’re not likely to chance upon a particularly deep vein of human experience. Which, if you’re riding the waves (a reference to surfing there) of your career by singing songs about surfing is fine, but quickly shows limitations when applied to material that hints at universal emotions like loss, vulnerability, need and desire.

Having scored a striking success by bringing a live version of his long-lost album Smile to the Royal Festival Hall in 2004, Wilson returned this weekend with his Brian Wilson reimagines George Gershwin project. When did I grasp what a horrible slog this evening was going to be? Was it from the off as Wilson and his band began by re-imagining Rhapsody in Blue’s opening as Beach Boys-style close harmony singing? Or hearing “They Can’t Take That Away From Me” traced inelegantly over “California Girl”? Or an instrumental “I Got Plenty of Nothing” that dug as deeply into the Black roots of Gershwin’s original as Pot Noodles authentically express the aspirations of Asian cuisine? “I Got Rhythm” wanted to swing but, principally the fault of Wilson’s plodding drummer, sounded like it couldn’t be bothered

Miraculously, though, Gershwin emerged as the evening’s hero. Sitting through these butchered renditions, I realised how deeply I care about songs like “They Can’t Take That Away From Me” and “Summertime”. Miles Davis and Janis Joplin, in their re-imaginings, add to “Summertime” by zoning in on hidden corners, revealing radically different sides of Gershwin we didn’t already know. They interpreted Gershwin, but Wilson sucked him inside a synthetic, manufactured vacuum where production values triumph over content. The Beach Boys were big on post-Phil Spector studio techniques and close-harmony vocals, updates of ideas seeded by The Andrews Sisters, The Mills Brothers and The Four Freshmen – sophisticated studio craft that lent their tinsel weight. But Gershwin needs an opposite approach. Everything’s already there. His songs need to be stripped back to their essence.

In the second half, a compendium of Beach Boys hits, Wilson returned to what he does best. He sang about surfing.