The Smiley Smile Message Board

Just posted a new interview with The Beach Boys' Mike Love. We talked about the early days, his being honored at the 21st Ella Awards and much more. Plus, there's a 70 minute podcast on there too including the interview segments and lots of music! Hope you dig it!

http://rockabillynblues.blogspot.com/2014/03/beach-boys-mike-love-50-years-of-fun.html

How did I know this was going to be another opportunity for Mike to make sure everyone knows he had a part of the lyric writing to a few of the songs?

"I wrote all the words to "Surfin' USA", but have yet to be credited for it".

Didn't Brian once say that the list of surfing spots in the song "Surfin' USA" were given to him by Jimmy Bowles, the brother of Brian's girlfriend Judy?

Yep, Brian did say in the 1974 interview on Youtube though that he wrote the song with Mike.

After Jimmy Bowles provided the list, it was presumably Brian and Mike who wrote the song and lyrics around them.

This has been discussed several times on this board already, but I really don't think that Jimmy Bowles can be considered a co-writer of Surfin' USA. He had no creative input whatsoever. He provided factual information. If someone would want to write a song about, say, European capitals and I'd tell him that he could mention Paris, London, Madrid, Vienna, Amsterdam and Rome, that wouldn't make me a co-writer either, would it?

Did he try to get credit for Surfin' USA in the lawsuit?

It may have been too complicated to add Mike's name to that song so his lawyers decided not to include it in the lawsuit. There was the little matter that Brian plagiarized the tune from Chuck Berry's "Sweet Little Sixteen" and was forced to add Chuck's name to the credits. Changing the credits to add another name would have required getting Chuck and his attorneys involved, which could have been more expensive than it was worth.

That's probably true, in that Mike might just not wanted to have to deal with Berry's lawyers and such. Still, it seems obvious that if Mike did co-write the song, that instead of Chuck having to give up any portion of his credit, that Mike should simply have been able to get a portion of Brian's songwriting credit percentage on that song. It is baffling that Mike hasn't gotten a co-writing credit after all this time. Guess it must be more trouble than it's worth.

I think Mike needs a new script..!

He really does. Most if not all interviews these days with Mike Love are laced with, "Remember, I wrote the words to this or that.....". And lately he's been more vocal about Murry ripping him off.  You can't help but wonder what the average reader thinks of his ego when they read an interview with Mike. It's the same 'braggart' tone with him that surfaces during pretty much interview - just watch for it and you'll see.

Not saying a new script wouldn't be a good firts step, but, Consideration has to be given that the "average reader" isn't following every Mike Love interview. I don't believe any readers on here can be considered "average"   

They were too busy fending off Chuck Berry's lawyers to worry about who was going to get credit for the song with Brian. Look at it this way - what if Jimmy Bowles HAD NOT come up with the list of surfing spots. How different would the song have been? Would Brian and Mike have sat down with a map of the world and found all of those surfing spots themselves? Doubt it. Maybe the closest cities but I don't think they were aware of all of those surfin' spots, especially outside California. Thanks, Jimmy Bowles!

  Of course if Jimmy is in line for a credit, then Judy should get one too! Else how would Jimmy have made the connection? 

Granted, the "average reader" doesn't include Beach Boys fanatics on this board, Bgas. "Average reader" is your average music magazine (i.E. Rolling Stone) or your average guy on the street. People on this board will scrutinize it and read most of his interviews via links from this board. So we on this board can identify 'trends' a lot easier. Everywhere the Bruce and Mike show go, the local paper will interview them or the local DJ or whatever and you hear the same rhetoric come from Mike.

Deleted.  Avoided the ban hammer by a whisker!

Darn!!  I saw it for a second and didn't hit quote fast enough!!!  

By the way Mikie, I'm thinking about coming to the Oakland area in June; Can I come over and play in your pile of 45s?

Sure, Bgas.  I'll pull out my stack of 45's with the big holes in the middle and you can put your..............uh, you can play with those.

cool. Maybe we can have a BBs Party!

can I bring jar jar binks? 

I do wish he would learn the dictionary definition of alliteration.

Don't bother me now. I'm trying to fend off Jeremy with 5 different versions of Problem Child. Thanks, eh? Whatsamatter with your collection - you don't have Problem Child? Or does it have to be on vinyl or nothin' happenin'?

Alliteration is the repetition of the same sounds or of the same kinds of sounds at the beginning of words or in stressed syllables of an English language phrase

You are the CD/MP3 master!!  I have some of these, somewhere. Maybe 5?  but you have all of this stuff at your fingertips( while the rest of your collection is stored away) 
 I knew I'd have to give you advance warning  so you can have everything out of Davy Jones' locker  when I arrive....

At that point, Judy had already gotten credit, albeit indirectly when she was immortalized in the Brian Wilson-written song "Judy".  

Mike doesn't really mean alliteration, though. Nadine is not an alliterative song. I also don't think Van Dyke Parks used much alliteration in Smile, for Mike calling it acid alliteration. Mike himself doesn't use much alliteration. Simplistic, repetitive rhymes, yes.

Dream on.  Your best bet if you want to see a good collection is to contact Panayiotis.  He might let you near his domain.  Or Mr. Meade up in Sac....

Three points I"d like to bring up ..  Do you think Mike's use of the same script has anything to do with AGE..?? senility.. No one has brought that up.. Or obsessive compulsive  disorder ?.. Also im assuming this but... Brian was sued for SUSA melody being too close to Sweet little 16.... OK.. But Brian used Most of Johnny B Goode  intro for FFF.... Why no lawsuit..?.. I remember reading  in 1963 he admitted to using sweet little 16 as a roadmap so to speak to writing SUSA.. Ive always figured the reason he got sued was because he admitted to it in print.. So what's Up with a lawsuit for one but not the other.. Never understood that..

Good score, RnB. Will listen tonight!

Fun, Fun, Fun sounds very little like Johnny B. Goode. SUSA sound exactly like SL16. Chuck would have complained without Brian admitting to it in an interview.  Use of Chuck Berry type riffs was widespread, but SUSA is a carbon copy of a specific song.

I wish someone would ask him more questions about Smiley Smile and Wild Honey. What did he think of "Gettin' Hungry", for example? He wrote the lyrics, after all. To me, "Gettin' Hungry" is one of the more fascinating, unexplored aspects of the Boys fall from fame. "Heroes and Villains" may not have performed up to expectations, but it stayed at #12 for 2 weeks. Had Brian kept things in perspective, he'd have realized it was only a minor commercial setback.

To follow it up with "Gettin' Hungry" almost smacks of deliberate sabotage, or a conscious decision to be less commercial. It's not actually bad song, but it has such a bizarre, minimalist production, recorded at the last second  in one day. He'd spent way more time on "Vegetables", even during the Smiley Smile sessions, and that song was originally conceived as a single. In fact, he'd experimented with a piano arrangement quite a bit during the SS sessions and had apparently considered adding in "With Me Tonight". The extended mix of the song includes a bridge that basically sounds like an adaptation of the "With Me Tonight" theme.  

Anyway, the short of it is, I'm not sure how Mike could've been happy with Brian releasing "Gettin' Hungry" as a single, even if it featured his lyrics.

Perhaps Mike was okay with its release since it's credited to him and Brian on the single/sleeve.

I said the intro to FFF is like Johnny B Goode nothing else

The intro to FFF is slightly different than Johnny B. Goode, though granted it is very similar. A lot of songs from the '50s and '60s borrow Chuck Berry type riffs. What's a little different about SUSA is that it was originally published by Arc Music, Berry's publishing company. I had not remembered that until I went back and read the Wikipedia article on the song this morning. The song was never published by Sea of Tunes, which it would have been if it were a Brian composition. However, it was published by Berry's publishing imprint with Brian as sole author, then changed to Chuck as sole author, then changed to Chuck and Brian as co-writers.  It wasn't included in Mike's Sea of Tunes lawsuit because it was never a Sea of Tunes song, not even as a co-publisher.

That is a great point, and one which you beat me to the punch in posting!

There are several interesting aspects of the Surfin USA and Chuck Berry connection that also need to be mentioned or revisited just so everyone is on the same page.

First, that song even in the mid 60's was credited entirely to Chuck Berry, at least as far back as the first BB's "Best Of" package in '66.

The genesis of it is summarized in Preiss' book from the 70's: Brian heard Sweet Little Sixteen, and imagined doing a similar town-to-town roadtrip lyric as Chuck had done, but using hot surf spots rather than rockin' cities. So he did.

AND...here's the catch...the deal was that Chuck Berry would get full lyric credit. Even today, if you look for both the publishing/usage/broadcast rights for the song through Arc Music, you'll find that Chuck Berry is credited as the sole lyricist. This stems from the original deal.

You'll also find on the copyright itself for the song, that Chuck Berry is labeled as lyricist under a legal phrase that looks something like this "working in the employ of Brian Douglas Wilson", again or something legal-eze similar to that.

So Arc Music got the publishing and Chuck Berry was given - wait for it - SOLE CREDIT for writing lyrics he had no direct involvement in writing.

Aside: If I were Mike, I'd be miffed at that. But I doubt with things being as they are that Mike would publicly show his anger at Chuck Berry.

One other point: The original copyright was filed in 1963, and is set to expire in 2063, the normal 100-year stretch. But, it is noted that it was refiled or reauthorized in 1979. I'm guessing the 1979 date could be when Brian's name was added to the credit, being given the "music" while Chuck kept his credit on the "lyrics". But Arc Music kept ownership, I really don't know if they ever renegotiated their portion of ownership with the credit change.

So if Mike does have a bee in his bonnet over "Surfin USA", it's easy to see why: Chuck Berry gets 100% credit for lyrics he had nothing to do with, other than inspiring Brian to do a road-trip narrative on surfing spots instead of American cities.

And if it were renegotiated in 1979 or whenever, Murry and his influence were gone...didn't he take it up at the time the song credits were being rewritten?

(Another aside: The Morris Levy lawsuit against John Lennon in the "Come Together"/"You Can't Catch Me" is as bogus a claim as exists, and the Berry/Lennon songs share next to nothing in common except one line "here come ol' flattop...", yet Levy won the suit. Read the book "Hit Men" to perhaps understand how and why he pulled that one off...)

Well... and the melody in the verses...


Re: Surfin' USA
IIRC the demo (as to be found on Hawthorne, CA) features slightly different lyrics to the original release. Maybe Mike did come up with those changes (if he had anything to do with it at all)?

Well...Rocker, I know that you know your blues, rockabilly, 50's R&B history...tell me that one song in those genres couldn't be traced to hundreds if not thousands of similar songs in those styles. It's this specific case and who filed the claim that makes it notable if not laughable.

Let's compare notes on how many times the name Morris Levy appeared on a record's writing credits when he had nothing at all to do with writing it, and he was known for a practice of changing writer credits as various copyright forms crossed his desk in order to grab ownership and financial benefit from the songs, in effect 'stealing" money from those artists. It eventually caught up to him decades later, but he operated for years under a wink-and-nod kind of scenario where no one dared challenge it.

And if anyone wants to compare, here's the original 78rpm recording of "You Can't Catch Me". Play this for folks who have never heard this original, and ask if it reminds any of them of Come Together.

Chuck Berry "You Can't Catch Me" 78rpm:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xL4oPjTACPo (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xL4oPjTACPo)

Levy won on the basis of four words of a lyric: "Here come ol' flattop". Absurd. Essentially what I'm suggesting is Levy won because he was Levy more than the song itself.

The question isn't if anyone is remembered of "You can't..." when hearing "Come together". It's if the melody, or the notes are the same when you play them. Before that music became a big business and was still in it's folky forms like blues and country and gospel there was a whole tradition behind it in taken well known songs and making another one out of it (same goes for lyrics). But after the whole Rock'n'Roll thing started and there was big money to be made that started to get in the way. Suddenly you was sued when you took something from here, another thing from there a.s.o. On the other hand people got credits for writing songs that existed already when they couldn't even walk. Johnny Cash, Ray Charles, Bob Dylan and lots of other artists have their names under songs they didn't write (and I don't mean a "adapted by...") or only added some parts to. Al Jardine is a good example of how people take elements from one song and try to make a different one out of it.

Anyway I am digressing... what I wanted to say about "Come together" is that the same melody PLUS the borrowed lyric line from "You can't catch me" imo make one thing clear: Lennon was paying tribute to Chuck Berry. He didn't steal and it wasn't coincidentally. If he wanted to steal he certainly wouldn't have made it that obvious by using the "flattop".

Mike sounds bitter and miserable.

Do we know if it was purely a lyrical contribution or did Mike provide a "hook" too?

He was presumably pretty okay with it by the time "celebration" came around. That version is undeniably funky and fun, although the extra verse adds nothing to the song. It perhaps reflects the safer, more pedestrian lyrics Mike began churning out up in later days. 

Again, what more does this guy need to be happy?

Now imagine how bitter and miserable he'd sound if he DIDN'T meditate every day!  :o

So Brian essentially got credit for writing the music to a song he didn't write while Chuck Berry got credit for writing lyrics he didn't write?

No, he doesn't.

Short answer: yes and yes.  :)    At least according to the legal documents on how the song is registered under its US copyright and under its publishing/usage rights through Arc Music. Which means Mike would need to file a claim against Arc for those lyrics, as they're given entirely to Chuck Berry's credit. And, note too that Arc Music lists Surfin USA prominently in its PR/advertising as one of the big hits it owns. No doubt it's one of their bigger moneymakers in their entire catalog.

To use an old-time phrase my Dad used to love to say: Mike got "what the birds left on the pump handle".  :lol

He really does, he sounds truly bitter about how things have worked out.

Not sure about OCD but I definately think Age has something to do with it.  Plus, and I'm serious: our brains work like that.  When you think certain thoughts, eventually they become kind of ingrained and you automatically 'go there', it's one of the reasons it's hard to get out of depression, or why some people are just eternal optimists.  So Mike's told that story a thousand times, when he sits down for an interview his brain literally wants to tell the same story over again since it's so used to it.  I believe they call that a "Neural Storm", when your mind gets caught up in 1 way of seeing something and can't get out of that loop.  So to all of us that know (what we think happened!) the story, it seems pretty bitter and negative, but Mike may not even realize that he keeps going there over and over again. 

On top of that, by this time they were acting like complete Amateurs when it came to the business side of things.  Releasing Gettin' Hungry might have been a mistake from a business sense, but it was early in a long, long, long line of weird business decisions they made IMHO.  They're STILL making screwy business decisions (the tour fiasco, can't get their sh*t together and record another album... scrapped all Brian's song-cycle ideas from the latest album, etc.)

I don't blame him for not suing for that song... I'd have to think that the thought process was "Well, we already lost that song in a lawsuit" so he just didn't want any part of it legally... or at least his lawyers didn't.  Strange the way that worked out, though.

Yes, Surfin USA is quite similar to Sweet Little 16; but to say the two songs sound "exactly alike" is simply not correct – even though that "fact" been pounded into our collective noggin for the last 50 years.

If it's not exactly alike, then why was it always published, from the time it was first published, by Chuck Berry's publishing company? Brian knew he was copying Sweet Little 16 and no doubt decided to run it past Chuck before going ahead with the song, and Chuck requested the publishing in exchange for permission. The only differences are in production.  The lyrical concept is also borrowed from 16, which gives a list of American cities. It wasn't Brian's most purely creative moment. He had other tunes to exercise his creativity on. But he knew a borrowed  hit when he thought of one and he still made money on it, as did the Boys.

The two songs sound "exactly alike" to you.  They sound "similar" to me.  Perhaps its a matter of semantics.  I WILL admit to having absolutely no musical training, so my opinion is probably not worth much.  :)

Songwriting lawsuits have been won successfully based on chords alone, even when the songs have slightly different rhythms/melody bits and different arrangements that make them sound very different to most listeners. The writers of "He's So Fine" by the Chiffons successfully sued George Harrison for "My Sweet Lord" having an identical chord structure. I think Brian and Murry deserve credit for being proactive and avoiding any possible lawsuit by doing what they did, by asking permission of Chuck first.

You could view it as a stab against Mike - you want to wirte with me?  This is the best you can come up with?  OK, I'll release it as a single by Brian & Mike . . . and when it fails miserably maybe you'll get off my back about collaborating with others.

I agree though the Smiley era and Wild Honey and even Friends is very underrepresented in interviews.  Mike did some great lyrics for Wild Honey.  And I would love to learn more about She's Goin' Bald - here's a Smile era pice written with Van Dyke that Mike gets to rewrite the lyrics to, like he wanted to do with Smile to make them more accessible.  But what a weird result, less accessible than Van Dyke IMO.  It makes you wonder what Mike would have done with the task of crafting lyrics to the SMile music if he'd been given the chance. Love for someone to ask him about that possibility . . .

Actually, IIRC, the judgement said that the chord structure didn't qualify as plagarism, but the similarity of two key bits of the melody -- "My sweet Lord"/"He's so fine" and "I really wanna see you"/"Don't know how I'm gonna do it" -- were what made it count as a rip-off.

When George re-recorded it in 2000 for the remastered album, ISTR hearing that the reason he changed his delivery of those lines was to demonstrate just how trivial those specific bits of similarity were!

Cheers,
Jon Blum

Yeah George definately got the shaft on that... although I've got to agree that he did subconsciously plagurize the song.  I can't spell plagerize though so take my opinion with a grain of salt.

I've heard much, much, much worse though that never got called out for being a ripoff.  Of course the Paul McCartney/TLC "Waterfalls" deal jumps to mind first but that's been covered to no end I'm sure.