The Smiley Smile Message Board

Think about it. When Mike was given the chance, he was a pretty hip lyricist all the way up to Wild Honey (he wrote, after all, the lyrics for Top 20 and Top 30 hits on that album). But then... but then he went to India, and he lost the plot. Once he got into transcendental meditation and all kinds of other esoteric ways to deal with whatever issues it is that he faces in life, he lost his pulse on popular culture. His best work lyrically after that was the occasional but rare poetic gem - think "All I Wanna Do" - or nostalgic, like "It's OK" or "Do It Again". He got lucky with "Kokomo", but otherwise, he didn't know how to connect with contemporary crowds unless it was relating how cool the BBs used to be (remember when we sang "Fun, Fun, Fun"?).

If Mike doesn't go to India, I think the BBs score more hits in the late '60s and early '70s. I mean, look at that insane bearded and robed look he'd roll with on live TV! The guy had no clue.

Maybe so. I wondering if it wasn't TM adjusted his world view and that's what got him off track lyrically.

Well, that's what I meant. It's clear Mike desired some sort of escape. When he chose TM over booze and mary jane, it resulted in a whole slew of changes which perhaps put him out of touch with the general public.

Damn Straight, ML went from "hip " to looking to the past for hits.

ML was never hip.

Mike on stage during T.A.M.I. is hip. He's hamming it up and he knows it and the ladies in the audience know it, too. And he's totally about to spend some time eating up some wild honey after the show. You wanna bet he didn't?

The 1964 Mike was cool following Brian's lead, once Brian retired to the studio, Mike lost his way.

No way. His lyrics from Good Vibrations up until Surf's up were some of his best ever.

The Wild Honey album being a stand out

Wild Honey was the last booze/pot album. If you want to say Mike had some moments here and there after, fine. But if you want to see how out of touch he got during this period, I point you to one "Student Demonstration Time".

Methinks Mike died in the fasting incident of 1970 and a lookalike was called in to fill the void. Most everything he did up until 1970 I enjoy. Around SDT is where the alarms start ringing   :lol

Total bs as far as I'm concerned. Student Demonstration Time got the band back on the radio. I'm talking FM here. And not just any FM, WMMS in Cleveland and KSHE in Saint Louis. Standard barrers in true rock radio at the time. I speak from experience, not books. Without the early release of SDT, Surf's Up wouldn't have been such a game-changer. I guess you had to be there. Were you?

Agree with Wild Honey, but after that . . . No.  Surf's Up?  May I mention Don't Go Near the Water and SDT both of which are cringeworthy?  Anna Lee?  Do It Again was great for what it was - a retread of former glories.  But his TM based songs and ecology songs were awkwardly phrased and too preachy/message driven and obvious.  I agree All I Wanna Do is an exception - not the greatest lyric in the world but it fits the song like a glove.  I also like Sound of Free from this period.

There we are. Include a few songs from the few years prior to that, and yeah, Mike did pretty well. The guy only really "lost" it in '74 after Endless Summer came to be.

Mike's last great set of lyrics were for Pacfic Ocean Blues. After that he was sub-par at best. And runners is right it was Endless Summer that caused the drop, not meditation. Even the lyrics for Everyone's in Love with You read pretty good on paper - it's the cloying arrangement that makes the song stink. 1975, the year Love lost his way.

No. Wasn't it David Marks who stated (under oath) that Brian needed Mike to write lyrics for him because Brian didn't know the 'hip' and 'cool' language of the time. Mike was cool at that time.

The trouble is that a person who is cool in their early 20s is going to seem a lot less cool decades later if they haven't changed at all. Due to Endless Summer that happened to Mike when working with The Beach Boys (but some of his solo stuff features much better lyrics).

This brought me to a realization about the only set of lyrics from the album that make me cringe.  That whole thing about a "cold hearted slaughter of an otter".  Now I understand... it's a Mike Love lyric!  It all makes sense now!

Pacific Ocean Blues is the best song on that album hands down. And considering that musically, it's just the blues progression, Mike singlehandedly wrote that song.

I'm not against it being recorded, but it deserves no spot on the SU album if one views what else might've taken its place. As a standalone single I have no issue with it.

So Mike singlehandedly wrote the best song on POB?  Thanks be to the Lovester for the best solo album in BB history. You really talk some horseshit at times.

Yeah Aegir. So much horse sh*t.

Dave in KC - You got that right!!! You had to be there!  :kiss

The chord changes are more or less standard blues changes, yes (apart from the penultimate chord, where rather than moving to a G as you'd normally expect, the chord stays on A but with a C# in the bass, but that's not exactly an unknown variant either). But the melodic phrasing is all over the place in that song, crossing bar lines all over the place.
If Mike wrote the melody as well, to the backing track, then he's responsible for everything good about that song. If he wrote the lyrics to Dennis' melody, then while the melody is ninety percent of what makes the track good, the fact that he managed to write such natural-sounding lyrics to a melody which has such odd phrasing is *staggeringly* impressive, even if the odd line is a bit clunky. And if Dennis wrote the music to Mike's pre-written lyrics, then Dennis deserves all the credit, because taken without the music those lyrics are both unimpressive and quite hard to write a melody around.

Does anyone know exactly what Mike and Dennis' working method was on the few collaborations they had?
(Also, does anyone else wish Mike and Dennis had written together more? Sound Of Free, Only With You and Pacific Ocean Blues is a pretty good hit rate given they were their only collaborations as far as I know.)

And it's not the best song on the album.

I like how this is presented as fact rather than opinion.

Perheps it should be engraved in rock somewhere.

yeah that was a clunky choice.

Does everything really need "imo" attached to the end of it? Of course we know it's just Aegir's opinion, he's the one who posted it. imo.

Surfs Up impresses me as almost analogous to an "activist's" Pet Sounds or Smiley, to which Mike brought a certain audacity with Student Demonstration Time, which "kicked down the door" in a timely manner, giving a very 1970's era feel.  It was not a "feel good" era.  This week was a case in point; scary, harsh, and one of great debate and questioning. 

If there was one song that could characterize the crowd, in shock, distress, violence and death, it is this one.  Except to distinguish; here, the cops are the "good guys."

Apparently Mike wrote the words for POB in a few hours after Dennis played it to him down the phone. I remember reading this in a book by some guy who posts on here from time to time.

I'm afraid it's been a few years since I read Jon's Dennis book, and that bit slipped my mind. Do you remember if he said he played the track or the melody, though? Because that would make a big difference...

Track. (and it wasn't Jon's book I was quoting from. wink, wink.)

Good topic, Murry. In my opinion, there is a direct correlation between Mike Love's lyrics and the material he is working with - both quality and quantity-wise. If that says a lot about Mike's lyrical abilities, so be it.

Did Mike's lyrics have a "falling off" after 1968-69? Yes. If you had to pinpoint a year when Brian Wilson severely reduced his role/output within the Beach Boys? 1968-69.  Coincidence? No. When Brian came up with a good post-1969 song ("All I Wanna Do") or Dennis ("Only With You"), Mike was able to come with a good lyric. Coincidence? No. Maybe that's why Mike was pining for so long to reunite with Brian. Because of his ego, he would never admit it, but Mike knew how much he needed the SONG to come up with the words. Don't forget, in addition to Mike giving himself credit, he usually gave the composer credit, too.

Yes, many of Mike's post-Endless Summer lyrics have been a parody and the references to Fun, Fun, Fun and Good Vibrations have become cringe-worthy. But, not ALL of his lyrics included those references. While they haven't exactly been works of art, Mike has made attempts at songs "outside the box". Not including his solo recordings, these are some post-Endless Summer songs that aren't parodies:

- "Everyone's In Love With You"
- "That Same Song"
- "Pacific Ocean Blues"
- "Belles Of Paris"
- "Pitter Patter"
- "Sumahama"
- "Getcha Back"
- "Kokomo"
- "Make It Big"
- "Lahaina Aloha"
- "Daybreak Over The Ocean"

Just because the lyrics to "Everyone's In Love With You," "Belles of Paris," "Pitter Patter," and "Sumahama" don't contain references to earlier Beach Boys songs doesn't mean that they aren't terrible.

On the other hand, I do like the lyrics to "Pacific Ocean Blues" quite a bit.  I also think we should distinguish between lyrics that are terrible and painful to listen to ("Summer of Love") on the one hand and those which are merely lazy ("Beaches in Mind") on the other.

Speaking of song references, "Make it big" mentions "Johnny B. Goode".
Mike definitely did write good at times even great lyrics. Unfortunately that seems to not be the case anymore when writing for the Beach Boys. But I've said it before, imo his power is to come up with great commercial, catchy hooks (lyric wise or melody wise) that get you. None of the other boys could've come up with "round round get around I get around" or "help me Rhonda, help, help me Rhonda". Even "Daybreak over the ocean" (and although I really like that song I believe Brian could've written something even better around that chorus) has one of the strongest hooks/choruses on TWGMTR. The biggest problem though is that Mike's understanding of what the Beach Boys are and what made them great is so disturbed. But what he can still bring to a song is great ("Isn't it time" started out with his bassline IIRC), he just needs a lot of help for the lyrics by now.

Let's all 20 of us sneak backstage at at Mike and Bruce show and put all kinds of pot in Mike's hummus, or whatever that guy eats, and see what happens!
It needs to be done!

deleted

That would be awesome..

Next album will be called "Psychedelic trip with beaches in mind"

Or
Fun, Fun, Gettin' Hungry

It is a problem, and HAS BEEN a problem since Brian "left" in 1968-69. It never mattered until then.

If you asked each individual Beach Boy what their understanding of what the Beach Boys are, you would get five different answers, and Brian's would change on a daily basis. It's a shame they don't have a manager or associate or someone who could work out issues - like conceptual or lyrical differences - so they get on the same proverbial page. There was a time where I believe that was possible. That time has probably passed.

Could somebody put into words what Mike's understanding of the BBs.

 :beer

 ;)

ARUBA, JAMAICA, OOH I WANNA TAKE YOU

I know that part of the Mike Love persona :lol, I really meant what is the underlining motivation going on his head.

To quote Blondie Chaplin in his YouTube radio interview, Mike thinks he is the only original member of the Beach Boys.

Most likely to be heralded as the genius behind the (real) Beach Boys and even with that moniker, his screwed up ego would not be fully nourished or satisfied. Just one in the volumes of reasons this malcontent is not well liked by most.

Really, were Mike's lyrics ever "good"?

For sure! POB is awesome!

I deleted it.

Good move man.

Life will be a lot more boring when ML is no longer around.

Do you think Please Let Me Wonder is "good"?

Yes.
Even ignoring the songs on which his authorship is disputed, like Kiss Me Baby or Please Let Me Wonder, which are both good lyrics by any standards, Good Vibrations is a very, very, *very* well-crafted lyric, far more so than anyone gives it credit for (the way it moves from being grounded in the sensory world in the first verse to the extra-sensory world of the chorus and second verse is the cleverest thing in any Beach Boys lyric not written by Van Dyke Parks). Fun Fun Fun is a clever, witty lyric.
Even the lyrics he wrote which sound dumb are immensely singable -- he's very good on a basic technical level to this day. For all that I dislike a lot of his lyrics since about 1980, he never makes the basic mistakes of craft a lot of much more respected lyricists do -- he never has to torture the syntax, or have the scansion of the lyrics go against the melody.
(Student Demonstration Time is the one exception to this I can think of -- a lyric that just fails on the most basic levels).
Even at his worst, which is most of the time, he manages to have lyrics with a fairly conversational, natural tone, that rhyme and scan and are singable -- that is, sad to say, a pretty high bar. Something like Summer Of Love is a nasty, nasty piece of work, aesthetically revolting, but it's a nasty piece of work by someone who wanted to write a song precisely that horrible and managed to do so.

So very, very occasionally, he used to rise not only to good but to great. He still probably could if someone strapped him to a chair and gave him electric shocks of increasing voltage every time he used the title of an old song, the word "beach" or anything the Maharishi had ever said.

When people keep saying Mike was great up to Surf's Up or whatever, here is what he wrote from 20/20 up to Surf's Up:

"Do It Again"
"Add Some Music to Your Day" 
"All I Wanna Do" 
"Cool, Cool Water" 
"Don't Go Near the Water" 
"Student Demonstration Time" 

Overall, I would say his work was solid ("All I Wanna Do" is great, if esoteric), but if you think that's anything close to what he was doing before, I'd have to disagree.  Already the cheese is starting to really creep in. Of course it wouldn't compare to what would come after Endless Summer, but still. I'd take one "Darlin'" over all that.

Mike was one of the best pop lyricists going, from 'Warmth of the Sun' right through to the Wild Honey lp. I'd rank him up there, during those years (63-67), with Eddie Holland and Hal David. Memorable phrasing, conversational lines, fresh subject matter.

Who knows what happened. Maybe he just ran out of things to say?

100% agree. Incredible lyricist for a few years.

I guess we'll never know why Mike lost it, if he knows nobody will ever have the balls to ask him.

It doesn't matter though, he gave us more than enough.

Today could be a lot of fun
 And precious one
 I'd feel good just to walk with you

 Tonight will be a special treat
 You're so sweet
 And I feel good just to talk with you

Those opening lines and Mike's vocal make me feel a happiness no other song cold ever match.

I always thought his lyrics on Anna Lee were pretty good though

One thing I'll take issue with is Mike's claim that he concocted the "boy/girl" scenario for the lyrics of Good Vibrations.  If the original, more ESP oriented, lyrics ("I only looked in her eyes and I picked up something I just can't explain" etc) were written by Tony Asher, then it is he, not Mike Love, who should be granted the acknowledgement for deciding that, to make such a "weird" track as 'Vibrations' relatable  to all those poor confused Beach Boys fans, it ought to have a "boy/girl" lyric.  What Mike Love did do was alter the verses from the questioning mind ("I wonder what she's picking up from me?") to the more comment oriented nature of the lyric we all know and Love.  For example:  he Loves the wonderful clothes she wears, and the way the sunlight plays upon her hair.   Unlike the character of the Asher lyric (..."something I just can't explain"), Mike's character knows exactly what is, and unlike the Asher character, Mike's isn't questioning any of it, but rather is going with the flow; he is accepting of it all ("I don't know where, but she takes me there.") .  It's a good lyric and fits the song smartly.    Mike Love of course (and as he so Loves to remind everyone) also came up with the lyric for the bass line of the chorus.  He often gets chided for supposedly inventing a word simply to make a rhyme.   That word being "excitations".    However I believe that people have misconstrued two words for one.   Even Mike Love is too humble to cop to such a stroke of Genius as this!  You see, what the lyric actually is, is "ex citations".   Now we all know what an "ex" is, it's a former lover.  A "citation" however, can be a bad thing  :police:, and it also can be a good thing; a positive recommendation or review, for example.   Mike's character says, "she's giving me ex citations".  So, what Mike was actually saying is that not only does this chick have wonderful clothes, and sunlit hair, etc, but she also comes with references!   ;D   Brilliant!  

SDT is such a hotbed of controversy.   I hate to pull the "I was there" card, but to have been an American student, in America during that era, and be a Boys fan, is often to feel a true sense of gratitude that it became a part of the corpus.  

It was an indescribable song of support, that those "car-surf-girls" guys really "got" the impossibility of our positions, as generally law abiding baby boomers, children of those American veterans, in WWII, and question the folly of the US presence in Vietnam, and castigated for our American right under the First Amendment, to speak, to assemble lawfully, etc.  We questioned the authorities in a way our parents never dared to.  

It isn't about the song.  It is what it represented.  It stood (alongside Crosby, Stills and Nash's "Four Dead in Ohio") which articulated the killings of four students protesting on a college campus.

Our Band took a stand, with this harsh song, juxtaposed against the lusher work.  Too miss that meaning, is to miss the point of why Carl was a Conscientious Objector to the War, looking through a lens himself, questioning concepts such as colonialism, in The Trader, while fighting his own draft status.  It was the grown up Beach Boys.  

Mike is too glib to be writing lyrics with any kind of social edge. Those need to be on one extreme or the other--either very basic and to the point, or packed with rhetorical flourishes, allegory, and metaphor. Mike can do the former when he's writing lyrics for love songs, or "lifestyle" songs. The lyrics to GV don't get in the way of the transcendent musical wizardry; he captures the essential mystery/ecstasy with "I don't know where but she sends me there" and that dovetails wonderfully with the orgasmic middle section, but the rest of it is (IMO) merely serviceable.

He has a real hot streak on Wild Honey, lays low for most of the next two LPs, then has a couple of nice moments on Sunflower. His lyrics on Surf's Up are problematic, and when we get through to Holland we suddenly realize that he hasn't been working with Brian much for quite awhile (replaced primarily by Jack Reiley, who among other things may have been running a bit of interference between Brian and Mike). His best work on Holland is with (of all people) Dennis.

I agree with filledeplage that SDT opened some doors with the counterculture that had swung firmly shut in 1967-69. Remember that even in his rave review of Sunflower for Rolling Stone, Jim Miller called the music "decadent fluff." He went on to say that it was brilliant fluff, but the noun is what characterized the band for all too many at the time. SDT, "Long Promised Road," and "Feel Flows" (which also got a pretty good smattering of FM airplay at the time) were the portions of Surf's Up that helped knock down some of the roadblocks. Artiness, quirkiness, a pinch of nostalgia, and a shot of rock'n'roll was a winning combination in the fall of '71: the boys covered all the bases and the worst of their problems were past (until Endless Summer, of course).

SDT hasn't worn well, to say the least; taken out of the context of its times, it's hard to defend. Whenever Mike dusts this one off now, he just goes back to the "Riot In Cell Block 9" lyrics that he replaced originally, and there are few if any hackles.

SDT was lyrically strained and clunky, Mike trying to get hip with the kids. Post '67, he lost touch with the youth culture zeitgeist. He was a pretend hippie -- not quite Sonny Bono in beads or Sammy Davis Jr in a Nehru jacket, but coming uncomfortably close.

It's a bum rap though to accuse him, after 'Endless Summer', of resorting to "fun at the beach" formula. Throughout the 70's he was really extending his lyrical subject matter -- think of 'Pitter Patter', 'Matchpoint of Your Love' or 'Bells of Paris'. Again, the lyrics were strained and clunky, but they were still a long way away from 'Still Surfin' or 'Beaches in Mind'.

Amusingly, if you google nehru jacket you get stuff like:

"Named after Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of independent India, the mens Nehru Collar jacket is a hip-length jacket with stand up collar and without lapels. Soon after coming on the pages of "Vogue" magazine, the Nehru jacket  found its way onto a wide variety of personalities including the Beatles, Johnny Carson, Sammy Davis Jr., and the Beach Boys' Mike Love."

Who's the guy that we admire? Michael Edward Love is a real live wire!

SDT makes me itchy. I wish they just kept the original lyrics.

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Wrong thread.

Why stop praising the man at Surf's Up? I thought with All This Is That he wrote the best set of lyrics to grace C&TP by a country mile. And this is coming from a guy who usually shudders at TM inspired lyrics. He wasn't exactly dead weight on Holland either.

Absolutely.

Mike was still busy in 1974 I guess writing lyrics for Earthquake Time, Our Life Our Love Our Land, Don't Let Me Go etc. I've no idea whether these were recorded or have survived but would be interesting to see what sort of stuff he was writing then.

During the SDT era, Mike was still technically, under 30 so he was a "kid" himself.  You didn't need to be a real "hippie" to wear beads or a headband or a Nehru jacket.  There was a lot of "hippie-inspired" fashion.  Mike did wear some interesting stuff, but was the front man for the band.

The other guys, to a greater extent didn't seem to have that "onstage" gregarious manner, necessary to keep an audience engaged.  People who are confined in a seat, have the attention span of a flea.  Mike kept and keeps the show in a good flow-mode. 

Though I am firmly of the mind that there is nothing wrong with a good drink and/or joint, I think Mike's writing was more effected by Endless Summer than anything else. Besides Mike did still drink and smoke pot in the early seventies, check the 1971 Central Park show out-he takes a quick toke on stage.