Bruce Johnston was name-checked on a recent episode of 'Have I Got News for You' (popular British panel show). Actor Robert Lindsay mistakenly called London mayor Boris Johnson "Bruce Johnson", and panelist Paul Merton picked up on the Beach Boy reference (must be a fan).

According to Carlin's 'Catch a Wave', Mike was initially opposed to taking part in the 1970 festival as well -- he thought Baez et al were a bunch of commies.

Then, like I've said before, the other guys are just as much to blame for whatever the hell as Mike is.

Well, I like SC and SIP more than Carl's away-from-the-Beach-Boys stuff. Carl's melodies were wan and his arrangements generic MOR pablum. At least Mike and Terry came up with some catchy vocal riffs.

So, 1) Mike was the leader post BB'85, and 2) did a better job at than Carl or Al could have done. Better, but not good enough.

Not a smoking gun at all.

It's also funny how Mike being "drive drive drive' all the time turned into "business business business" by us posters..... Carl also said that each of them steps up to the reigns from time to time... I still insist if Carl or Al or Brian or anyone else wanted to stand their groun against the evil Mike wall of death, they could have managed to get their way.

Well, any leader only leads at the sufferance of those he leads. Sure, if Carl or Al or Brian had banded together they could have deposed Mike as leader, doesn't mean that Mike is not the leader in the meanwhile.

Love 'Baby Blue', one of Dennis's finest ballads.

If they had cut out the dross and put in some of the better outtakes (Go and Get the Girl, It's a Beautiful Day, California Feelin') they might have made 2 excellent albums out of those 3 -- KTSA, MIU, and LA.

I guess Mike wants a creative collaboration.

He doesn't have to be sitting in the same room with Brian working on a song from scratch, but neither does he want (I'm guessing)  a make-work assignment from Brian and Joe Thomas : "Hey Mike, we composed the tune, selected the title and the subject matter, and wrote the chorus and most of the verses, but we've left a verse for you to write, just so we can have a Wilson-Thomas-Love credit."

But I don't know if Mike can even write a lyric nowadays that doesn't have a theme of 1) let's have fun in the sun,  2) remember those times in the past when we had fun in the sun? let's do that again, or 3) don't mess up the ocean environment.

Why didn't Carl use Mike as a lyricist? I know that that they did collaborate on a few songs, but those songs involved at least one other Beach Boy. You didn't get the C. Wilson-M. Love credit like you did the B. Wilson-M. Love , the A. Jardine-M. Love, or even, in a few cases, the D. Wilson-M. Love one. Carl, from the late 70's on, always -- with the exception of a Bruce collaboration -- used outside lyricists.

That has to tell us something about the Mike/Carl relationship, no?

I think if Mike didn't have his obsession with commercial viability he'd be pretty punk as f***. Dude just doesn't seem to give a sh*t in a lot of ways, haha.

Yeah, Mike should have the self-awareness to realize that he's basically Tony Bennett at this point -- an elderly gent singing the songs of his long-gone youth.

I mean, Tony doesn't pretend to be hip to contemporary musical tastes or trends. He's not trying to make hit singles. He's just making music he loves in a timeless style.

Mike needs to recognize that the music of the Beach Boys is as classic as Gershwin or Berlin or Richard Rodgers. Let contemporary taste move Beach Boy-wards (which it has), no need to go chasing after passing fads.

Listen, of course Mike and Brian and Carl wanted to make hit records. (Did even Mike make a record as egregiously faddish as 'Smart Girls?')

But to get back to Mike's comment : Carl's vocals on SIP are "the most commercial he's ever done". That remark is obtuse on several levels.

1) Mike had no idea what was "commercial" (actually Nirvana, grunge, U2) in 1992 rock.
2) What does he even mean by "most commercial" vocals? More commercial than GV? What attributes constitute a commercial vocal, anyway?
3) And of course, Mike is demonstrably wrong. SIP was a huge flop -- nothing was "commercial" about that lp.

Rather than demonstrating Mike's commercial acumen, Mike's comment showed how out of touch with contemporary musical tastes and trends he really was.

(And no, I'm not a Mike hater. I love the Beach Boys, and Mike is a Beach Boy).

I find it amusing that Mike believed that he had a bead on what were "commercial" vocals and music in 1992.

"Hey Bruce, check out this guy Kurt Cobain and his group Nirvana. This whole Seattle grunge thing is really happening!"

I just find it funny that a bunch of nobodies go on and on about a man who is more successful than they'll probably ever be...Michael really cares what people have to say about him, but he can't hear the bullshit over the sound of thousands of adoring fans night after night.

I've always found the logic of this line of argument unpersuasive.

"Rich and famous person X is more 'successful' (however that is defined) than his critics, therefore the criticism is invalid." So Jay Leno, say,  is above criticism? Justin Bieber? George Bush, Obama?

Anyway, Mike's statement is ill-considered on the face of it. Is Carl's vocals on 'Hot Fun in the Summertime' , for instance, more commercial than his vocals on GOK? GV? If so, then why was SIP such a commercial shipwreck?

[And Carl, God, he's a monster on the album. I think he sounds phenomenal, the most commercial he's ever sounded.]

" And Carl, God, he's a monster on the album. I think he sounds phenomenal, the most commercial he's ever sounded."

The most commercial  -- I guess Mike means that as high praise.

An underrated phase of Mike's career was the inventive, witty way his 1964 lyrics transitioned the BBs from being mainly a surf and hot-rod band into being a band that could thrive in the midst of the British Invasion.

I'm thinking especially of 'Fun Fun Fun' and 'I Get Around'. These were segue songs -- yes they were (partly) car songs, but car songs expanded to take in teenage life in general in a way that was freshly observed. Mike wasn't writing songs about other songs (as most pop music does), he was writing songs about the life he saw around him, in ways that were original, instantly memorable, and entertaining.

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'.

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?

"Progressive" was just what people were calling early 70's album-oriented FM rock. ("Acid rock" or "psychedelic rock" no longer fit).  Chicago was "progressive", so were the Steve Miller Band, the Moody Blues, Jethro Tull, etc. Nothing to do with whether or not the music was avant garde or anything.

What I find interesting is that the Beach Boys were able to re-invent their music and their image so successfully. The late 60's counter-culture revolution seemingly left the Boys as dead-in-the-water as were Herman's Hermits or the Dave Clark Five. Those groups -- in the mid-60's as popular as the Beach Boys -- finally gave up the ghost and disbanded 1970/71, but the BBs fought through to find renewed success, albeit only as a second-tier "progressive" rock band, along side early 70's acts such as Fleetwood Mac, Frampton's Camel, or Jo Jo Gunne.

[of course]

Clack -- I stand corrected.

Forever Changes is of course as "famous" (and as good and as important) as The Beatles' masterpiece Revolver.
(What was I thinking?)

Man, I gotta keep up on recent UK music magazine polls so I know what's what with Rock history!

'Revolver' is the best Beatles album, but it's not as known to the general public as is 'Sgt Peppers' or 'Abbey Road'. It's as obscure -- to the general public -- as 'Pet Sounds'.

Anyway, look at any list of the best albums of all time, you'll find 'Forever Changes' . It's even in the Grammy Hall of Fame.

Let me try to be a bit more clear; without Jon Stebbins and his work detailing and promoting Dennis Wilson and his work, PACIFIC OCEAN BLUE would have been forever relegated as a fringe curio the way the public (if at all) deems Love's Forever Changes, Big Star's Third/Sister Lovers, Nick Drake's catalogue, and Emitt Rhodes's self-titled album. He wouldn't rest leaving it a bullet point in a "Lost LP" sidebar.

'Forever Changes' a fringe curio? Not that the NME is the final word on these things, but they ranked the lp as the 6th best of all time (Pet Sounds coming in 3rd). It's as famous an album as 'Pet Sounds', 'Revolver', or 'the Velvet Underground with Nico'. Maybe a better comparison would be between POB and Skip Spence's 'Oar'.

Anyway, Dennis's potential as a composer and producer/arranger was only partially fulfilled. I wonder how his own life, and the career of the Beach Boys, would have been changed if, in 1973 or so, Dennis had been given -- or had seized -- Brian-iike control of the band as the producer and main writer.

Wasn't it not until  1967, with 'Wild Honey', that Bruce became an official, credited member of the band? If we claim that 1965 Bruce was a Beach Boy, couldn't we then also claim that 1969 Ed Carter was a Beach Boy?

With that said, there are things inherently political in music even if it isn't intended to. There early stuff may have sounded rebellious but it was clearly in a wholesome type of way and very much a soundtrack to the pre-revolution America of drive-in movies, malt shops ad nauseam.

Firstly, the early to mid-sixties weren't "pre-revolution", because there was no revolution, period.

Secondly, why do you associate malt shops and drive-ins with the cold war? There were cultural currents shaping American society during the 50's and early 60's that had nothing to do with cold war politics : for instance, the rise of the suburbs, the automobile, the teenage consumer with money in his pockets.

Thirdly, early 60's anthropologists and sociologists would have been middle-aged academics. Marcuse was in his 60s! Adorno's writings on music concerned such figures as Stockhausen and Boulez. Sociologists and left-wing cultural critics had no idea that the Beach Boys existed.

What went wrong post-Holland?

1) Carl, seemingly poised to become a major songwriter-arranger, didn't.
2) Dennis, who did become a major writer, couldn't get enough of his songs on the BB lps.
3) Mike and Al, who seemed to be developing into decent songwriters, couldn't sustain the quality.
4) Brian, after delivering a late masterpiece ('Love You'), succumbed to his demons.

Up until late '66 early '67, there was no major division within the audience of young white pop music listeners. Top 40 AM radio was the only game in town for pop, and you'd hear the Beach Boys next to Marvin Gaye next to Frank Sinatra next to the Animals. It was all just pop music, no place for music snobs.

The music snobs -- those who might look down on the "hedonistic" music of the Beach Boys -- were tuned in to jazz, or folk, or classical, or maybe "easy listening" stations.

and by that i mean anthropologists and sociologists who criticized them as painting a smiley face over "Amerika". For those that don't know what "Amerika" means its a euphemism to describe cold war America as a fundamentally racist oppressive society.

The "Amerika" spelling was 1st used by the KKK during the 19th c., then taken up by the Yippies (and other leftists) in the 60's  -- the implication being that the USA = Nazi Germany. Because JFK and LBJ were the same as Adolf Hitler, these jackasses pretended to believe.

One of my favs is from 'Please Let Me Wonder' -- during the fade, the number seems to segue into some Brian Eno-like ambient piece, just pure atmospherics, with the vibraphone (Jerry Williams?) throwing the song into a state of unresolve,  giving us a change of direction rather than a culmination.

'The Beach Boys' is a terrible name, and it really damaged the group's reputation from 1965 onwards. ('The Pendletons' and 'Carl and the Passions' would have been even worse -- too redolent of 50's doo wop.)

I mean,  most of the names of bands formed in the early 60's came to sound a bit dated later in the decade -- Gerry and the Pacemakers, Paul Revere and the Raiders, the Four Seasons, even the Beatles. But the name, 'the Beach Boys', unlike most of those other names, seems too tied down to a particular fad : surfing.

The Beatles were allowed to go from "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" to "Tomorrow Never Knows" without people holding the naivete of those earlier songs against them, in a way that the Beach Boys weren't. 'Surfin' USA' and 'Little Deuce Coup' always loomed too large in the mind of the public, even while they were producing 'Heroes and Villains' -- and for that, I blame the band's name.

Would the Boys have better withstood the battering that their reputation and image underwent in the late 60's, if the group name were 'the Kingsmen',  or 'the Ventures', for instance?