The Smiley Smile Message Board

Rolling Stone - August 4, 2000

Keeping the Beach Boys Alive


There are some really good reasons to loathe Mike Love’s Beach
Boys. There is the authenticity problem: There is no one named Wilson
onstage, and Love is the only founding member present. We can get
personal: Love sued his cousin Brian Wilson for songwriting credit,
refused to tour with Carl Wilson when he was sick and legally prevented
founding member Alan Jardine from using any part of the Beach Boys
name. Then there’s the show: The band’s current set list concentrates on
its surf years, with only a cursory nod to its richest music. Finally, there
is something really ludicrous about a nearly sixty-year-old guy prancing
around, singing songs about high school and pretending to be a “boy.”
The complaints may be irrelevant. Brian Wilson partisans have long
since stopped attending these shows. As for authenticity, there are no veteran
bands now touring who still have all of their original guys. All
this certainly didn’t matter to the sellout crowd who gathered at Seattle’s
Pier 62. As the sun set over Puget Sound, this music machine cranked out a
sped-up set of surf oldies and assorted gems, following its now-established
pattern of thirty songs in ninety minutes.

Throughout, Love seemed to want to give us even more reasons not
to like him. He went off on several sophomoric pro-Bush/anti-Clinton
rants. This was so strident that it probably made even the Bush people in
the audience feel creepy (and last we looked, Bush was running against
Gore). He then dedicated “Why Do Fools Fall In Love” to Diana Ross
“who isn’t feeling too good right now.” Then, his smarmy lieutenant
Bruce Johnston razzed the “rental Supremes.” Careful, Bruce. Beleaguered
as the recent Supremes tour may have been, it still had a greater
percentage of original members than these Beach Boys.

Still, this version of the Beach Boys plays crisp, clean and competent
music. That is to say, close your eyes and this could be the old days. Guitarists
Adrian Baker and Philip Bardowell bracketed Love and Johnston
onstage, adding passion and enthusiasm to the mix. Bassist Chris Farmer
-- who looked like a healthy Brian Wilson -- and drummer Mike Kowalski
gave the band depth. In fact, Love and Johnston (who spent much
of the set singing off-mike) only went through the motions, becoming
vestigial organs in the band they are supposed to lead.

While it’s obvious that Love won’t grow up, he also can’t last forever.
Documents filed last year in the court case versus Jardine stated that
he has about five years of touring left. But that doesn’t mean the Beach
Boys should pack it in. Love has already tossed authenticity out the
window, and proven that a group of ringers can perform these songs very
well indeed. One by one, the Wilson brothers and Jardine went away,
with no appreciable change in the sound. So it goes to follow that Love
could leave and much of the audience wouldn’t really notice.

One day Bruce Johnston could become leader. This is doubly horrifying,
as they would probably have to let him play his “I Write
the Songs” all the way through. But maybe it really doesn’t
matter. As repugnant as it may be to purists, an officially sanctioned cover band bringing
Brian Wilson’s music to a new generation of fans may not be entirely
A bad thing. (The precedent for this behavior is called the Glenn Miller
Orchestra.)

What would Love do if he were no longer up front? We will surely miss
witticisms such as his perspective on Brian Wilson: “My cousin is such a
genius. He’s stayed home since 1965 and we send him money.” He may
be angling for a job in the Bush cabinet. Failing that, he threatened
to move to Seattle for a month, get a condo (perhaps forgetting Jimi
Hendrix’ admonition that the planet should “never hear surf music
again”) and spend the time visiting the Experience Music Project.

“That place is amazing,” he said. “It would take weeks for you to see
everything that’s in there.”

“I wish,” Johnston piped up, “that we were in there.”

"smarmy lieutenant Bruce Johnston..."

I'm curious if this is the actual show where the semi-infamous “My cousin is such a genius. He’s stayed home since 1965 and we send him money" line comes from.

I recall reading some reviews from around this time and, perhaps because of the then-ongoing lawsuits and whatnot, Mike and Bruce were supposedly a bit more catty/feisty on stage in terms of commentary.

"refused to tour with Carl Wilson when he was sick"

That's not really true, is it?  I've never heard that.  Carl continued to tour in '97, I thought he stopped when he was no longer physically able to do it anymore.

This is mentioned in slightly more detail in another article from around the same time that I posted today in another thread:

http://smileysmile.net/board/index.php/topic,25340.0.html

But essentially, yes, it is true and is confirmed by Elliott Lott in the article.

To give it more perspective, Ray Lawlor offered some key information regarding this confusing period of time, confirming that Mike essentially threatened to quit if Carl continued to tour:

http://smileysmile.net/board/index.php/topic,18436.msg481404.html#msg481404

Yeccch, yeccch, a thousand times yeccch.