The Smiley Smile Message Board

so i read the steven gaines book a few years back and the keith badman book too.

and i was just ruminatin' over the strange case of the lovester through the years.

the fashions, the baldness, the beardness, the hats, the gold, the meditation, the dancing, and so on.

could someone remind me of what happened to him around 69-72 or whenever it was when he had his own share of legitimate (i.e., not just eccentricities) mental episodes?

he's a worldly guy despite his 'transcendental' meditation practice, ain't he? his worldly greed just extended into the spiritual. he wants money, fame and respect in one area :hat and in another wants being-consciousness-bliss.  :angel:

strange world where mike love is an authorized teacher of 'transcendental' meditation practices. although i don't suppose it's that weird. tm isn't really an advanced technique in the world of yogic practices. 

The Lovester defies rational explanation....that's why we love him.

I'd imagine about 95% of the population wants those things. Imagine that: multidimensional aspirations, sometimes contradictory. It's almost like he's ... human!

He liked apple juice a little too much to be normal around that time.

He's half Wilson so of course he's a different sort of fellow. I think his breakdown happened shortly after Sea Of Tunes was sold. Could have something to do with it. Also when he fasts he seems a little nuts. I love the Little Richard incident myself and the juice. Gaines wrote about that with much hilarity.

oh luther, how i love you   >:D

So peaceful yet so litigous.

Right back atcha, darlin'.

So did Mike play any instruments besides saxophone?  :-D

I was wondering how he wrote the number one worldwide greatest song ever conceived, Kokomo.

I figured he wrapped up a nice TM session, grabbed his old sax, and let the genius flow.  :lol

Anybody that goes up in front of his fellow rock royalty and rips them to pieces is alright in my book  ;D

I know you're just joking, but Mike has written a number of songs - he plays guitar, just not publicly. He also used to play the moog ribbon controller (theremin synthesizer) on stage, which requires basic keyboard knowledge.

I was joking but my question was legit - I really had no idea that Mike played anything, which is why I assumed he just sang live. Not that 'just singing' is an easy gig by itself or anything... sometimes I thought he looked uncomfortable when he had no singing part and everyone else was playing and he was stuck just... self-consciously dancing.  :-\

Really, I think that Mike just wants some level of respect, and a lot of times he comes off like an ass. In his rush to try and prove to the world that he's a talented fellow, he ends up putting his foot in his mouth.
You know, Brian caused alot of his problems himself. Yeah, the other guys did some shady sh*t to him, that's true. But alot of stuff is Brian's own fault. However, most articles or interviews are sort of along the line of 'Poor Brian who has been screwed over his whole life'. I could see that even the most understanding person, after awhile, would tire of that. If you were in the Beach Boys and saw some of the stunts Brian pulled, yet you're always labeled the bad guy, you'd probably get pissed after awhile, too. I can understand some of Mike's frustration, and I don't even really like the guy.

Sound thinking. In general, people can have someone's eccentricity, and drink and drug excesses up to a point. But after all the tiring has set in, and said person's behaviour managed the helpers for the umpteenth time to get out in the middle of the night, and find that 'someone' in the gutter, all strung out, and drag him into bed, and excuse his absence the next day... I mean, not that Mike did precisely this for Brian, but you'll see the point.

PS: I adore this thread. It's cool. Like the subject himself.

Yeah, great post, AMUIJ.

What rarely gets mentioned is that for many, many years, decades in fact, Mike Love was Brian's biggest fan. Look back at the tapes/videos of concerts in the 1970's, where Mike would introduce Brian as "the greatest composer in music", "the musical reason we're here today", "the musical sage of the age", "a genius", and, well, you get the point. And look at the print interviews, where Mike was ALWAYS mentioning how Brian was still writing great things and was still capable of sitting down at the piano and blowing minds - and, all the while Mike knew that Brian was stoned, incapacitated, or uninterested. I don't think Mike was saying these things entirely for PR reasons, not entirely. Or to "hide" the problems. He was protecting Brian the person, his cousin, encouraging Brian, hoping the positivity could get Brian in some "healthy" frame of mind.

But, the main point I'm trying to make (and I apologize for rambling) is that Mike rarely mentioned himself or his contributuins - that came much later. It was all Brian this, Brian that. Only later was it Brian WITH SOME HELP FROM HIS COUSIN MIKE. And this, I believe, as AMUIF stated well above, was because Mike/they got tired of all the crap. I mean, how long can you keep encouraging and praising someone, hoping that it does some good, only to see that person keep making questionable decisions, both personal and professional. I wonder how Mike and the guys felt everytime they read those books and interviews with Brian; it gets my blood pressure rising and I'm not even personally involved.

I'm surprised Mike lasted as long as he did in trying to get "his due". I know myself personally, if I wrote the lyrics to some of the greatest songs in the history of popular music, and didn't get ANY credit for doing so - forget the financial compensation - I wouldn't have been able to keep quiet about it for 30 years.

Same thing happened with Syd Barrett and Pink Floyd, basically. The band tried to understand and excuse Syd's 'eccentricities' but after a while...

Anyway, I like Mike. That he was into TM says a lot to me - call it corny or pretentious but to meditate successfully you have to turn off that elusive little fellow in the mind and be in a fairly vulnerable, open state for some time. And there's that tipsy interview from the early 80's somewhere of Mike talking about TM and he was absolutely sincere chatting about it.

OK dear friends -

the Mike Love rehabilitation/respect/sympathization/adoration/idolization/deification era starts HERE!

From now on, anyone who says anything derogatory about mr. Love here (like: Mike once reaped 5c from the sidewalk that were NOT his!) will be warned. The second infringement will be answered with a grave pecunial fine. The third will bring a LIFELONG BAN.

Think about it.

That was originally a John Phillips' number. A longing song in the past tense. Mike added the "possitivity" to it ("that's where we wanna go.." instead of "used to go"), and I think he also came up with the "Aruba Jamaica" part.

By the way, Summer In Paradise would have been such a better album with a couple of new Papa John--co-written songs!

I wanted to post this tidbit for awhile, this might be a good place; you guys probably were aware of it anyway....

In Chuck Berry's "No Particular Place To Go", there's the line, "so we parked way out on the Kokomo". I often wondered if Mike got the idea for the "place" from that song. You know how he likes to take lyrics/lines from old songs....

Mike's sole contribution is the hook.  The title came from John Phillips and Scott MacKenzie.

Without Mike Love, Brian Wilson would be still be pumping gas. End of discussion.

AGD said that as far as he knew the only bit Mike write of "Kokomo" was the "Aruba, Jamaca" bit, and Terry Melcher wrote Carl's piece. The rest was Papa John.

Mike has said in an interview somewhere that he supplied the line "By and by we'll defy a little bit of gravity" as a reference to TM. (Probably the Goldmine "Bad Vibrations" rant). So give him that one, and the carefully-placed reference to "Cocktails" implies that a fair amount of rewriting was done for the film version.

Water meet monitor. The "LOL" I needed tonight. Great post.

The 'Aruba, Jamaica...Bermuda, Bahamas' bit is the bit I like most. It could have been a BW trick along two chords. True dat. End of discussion.

Well, I don't think this is the case. I could be wrong of course. But the term "kokomo" exists for a long time. There's also a blues singer by the name of Kokomo Arnold from the 40s (or around that time)

According to Wiki, the song's name comes from a beach side bar in a large resort complex in Islamorada, Florida, in the Keys.  I went to the website of the resort, the Holiday Isle Resort complex, and there is a bar there by that name that features live entertainment, and they've used traces of the lyrics for their promo of the place.  Whether this bar has been named Kokomo since before the song was written, or if it adopted the name because of the song, I do not know.  It's likely not the same place that Chuck Berry sang about.

No, probably isn't, and I wasn't trying to give Mike any more credit, really I wasn't.

You know how they say that stand-up comedians never forget a joke they've heard. Well, Mike Love reminds me of the type of guy who never forgot a lyric he heard, especially on those "oldies" he grew up with. I just thought there might be a connection between the Chuck Berry lyric and "Kokomo", and, maybe it was Mike's idea - maybe re-titleing it from something else. But, I guess he would've taken credit for that, right? :police: