No love for 'London Calling'? 'Exile on Main Street'?

64-67, before the label began trying for "relevance".

Speaking objectively, I have to say Norman Whitfield did some great work writing and producing, but his style is just not to my taste.

It's Gamble and Huff -- and Thom Bell.

Lyrics way too on the nose. The song, by all rights, shouldn't work -- but somehow it does.

It's crude, it's blatant, it's overly earnest, but it has energy and power. We're still talking about it 48 years later.

Apologies if this was noted earlier, but wasn't there more or less a "stud competition" between Mike and Dennis on the road? All the guys liked girls but Dennis and Mike were horndogs. There may have been an ongoing rivalry in that regard. Juvenile to be sure, but these were young men on top of the world.

I remember reading that competition with Brian Ferry over girls is what led to Brian Eno leaving Roxy Music. Similar thing happened with Steely Dan -- Fagen and Becker, the songwriters, grew pissed with the other members of the band for pulling more girls than they did, so they ditched the band in favor of a rotating cast of studio pros.

This according to Eno, and Fagen and Becker. Can't believe it's the only reasons for their respective band estrangements, though.

I wonder how many other cases in music history have occurred. As a songwriter myself the idea of someone not getting proper due bothers me, but at the end of the day, we know the truth, as it were, and Dennis obviously didn't seem to have an outward issue with not getting credit.

It's very common. John Lennon (uncredited) wrote that great riff for the "George Harrison" composition 'Taxman' (best part of the song). Duane Allman (uncredited) wrote the opening riff for 'Layla'. Matthew Fisher (uncredited -- until a recent court case) wrote that haunting organ melody for 'A Whiter Shade of Pale'. Bill Wyman (uncredited) wrote the riff for 'Jumpin' Jack Flash.' Etc., etc.

Did Dennis really contribute enough to the song to be credited as a true "co-writer", or did he just offer suggestions as Preston composed it on the piano? Many songs over the years have incorporated minor contributions from producers, girlfriends, etc. without those contributers being listed in the writing credits.

Brian's love of 1950s music is today well known to BBs fans. But my question is this, what did the fans in the 1960s think of Brian's doo-wop covers like "why do fools fall in love" and "hushabye" along with the four freshmen stuff? The 1950s seemed like pre-history by the end of the 1960s.

Most of the fans in 1964 were new to listening to top 40 radio and to buying records, and wouldn't be aware of the Four Freshman or the Mystics. 'Hushabye' seemed to be just another Beach Boy cut (unless they looked at the song-writing credits).

'Why Do Fools Fall in Love?' was a different matter. Most pop radio stations did play occasionally "classic" oldies, and would have been familiar to listeners barely born in 1956 (when it was originally released). It was experienced as a cover song, same as the Beatles doing their versions of other classic oldies like 'Roll Over Beethoven', 'Blue Sued Shoes' , 'Long Tall Sally' or 'Kansas City'.

Bruce has claimed he left the band because he disapproved of the drug use (the Wilson brothers, I guess).

Anyway, Bruce had never been prolific.  One and a half years after 20/20, their previous lp, 'Sunflower' featured one Bruce song (Tears in the Morning), and one he co-wrote with Brian (Deidre). A year later, when 'Surf's Up' was released, he had just one song. Seems to be contributing at the same pace, with no decline in productivity.

I was on the Pynchon list back when Siegel was posting there. He was not well thought of, I recall...

I judge artists by their accomplishments, and not for their failures -- and I would rate the 1964/65 Mike Love right up their with Jerry Goffin, Hal David, and Eddie Holland as a pop lyricist of the time.

Not that his lyrics, line by line, were anything particularly wonderful. Rather, Mike had a knack for generating fresh subjects for songs, subjects that would immediately hook you into the song  -- 'Fun, Fun, Fun', 'I Get Around' 'When I Grow Up', 'California Girls' , etc. So much more original than the more generic song subjects of the day : "won't you be my girl?" "I'm glad you're my girl", "I wish you were still my girl" (not that Mike didn't occasionally resort to those more hackneyed subjects ).

After his golden period, Mike did struggle to fashion subjects for songs that addressed the new rock audience, the hippie/counter culture crowd (his 1966-73 work). His lyrics of the period were hit-and-miss -- his misses mostly being those lyrics that strived for "relevance". His lyrics of the period sometimes came across as the equivalent of a middle-aged businessman, who in order to get laid,  grows out his sideburns and puts on a Nehru jacket.

His post-1973 lyrics have been dire. He had it,  then he lost it. But once upon a time, he did have it, and for that I honor him.

Did any member of a major rock/pop group ever get screwed over as much as Mike Love?

1) Early days, (Surfin' Safari era) he's co-founder, co-leader, lead singer, and co-writer
2) Then Brian becomes co-lead singer, and begins writing with outside lyricists (as well as Mike)
3) Then Mike is denied writing credits for huge hits that he provided lyrics for -- while Brian's roommate, guys Brian runs into at parties, etc. all get co-writing credits. And Mike is family!
4) Then Al, Carl, and Dennis begin getting lead vocal assignments, further diluting Mike's centrality
5) Then Mike is cut off from virtually all the songwriting, and almost all of the lead singing (Pet Sounds), completing his journey from co-leader to marginalized in the space of 4 years.
6) Finally, after Mike makes a bit of a creative comeback by co-writing their biggest hit ever (Good Vibrations), he's rewarded by once more being shunted aside so that Brian can co-write with some outsider -- who, in Mike's view, is providing meaningless, pretentious, word-salad lyrics

Dealing with the last one first....Well, that was Mike's view - but H&V still came very close to making the national Top Ten in spite of its thoroughly avant-garde nature. I think there have been discussions here before whether all those modules could have been put together in a way that could have made it an American smash and, just maybe, opened a different path than what was followed.

But there is something to think about here - what if Brian had not sat down with Van Dyke at [David Crosby's, subject to correction if needed] house and asked him about writing lyrics? What if GV had marked the start of ongoing collaboration with Mike on the words?

It is well documented that GV started out with a bit more of an R&B feel than emerged in the finished recording....so I've wondered whether, had Van Dyke not entered the picture, the follow-up album to PS might have come out more like Wild Honey.  An album like that would have likely been commercially quite successful - WH itself bounced back from SS's unhappy chart performance to reach #24 on the Billboard chart. And in some ways it would have been a suitable response to the Beatles's Revolver, which has pretty strong R&B/soul influences.  Which might have led the Beatles, when working on Pepper, into completely different directions.

Maybe an even bigger "if only" would be : if Mike instead of Parks had collaborated on 'Smile', would the album have made its original Dec '66 release date? The boys coming off a critical and commercial smash with an lp timed for Xmas shopping, and while their sound still had central cultural relevance -- it would have sold tons.

As '67 went on, the 'Smile' project lost cultural relevance month-by-month, as 'Strawberry Fields', the 1st Doors and the 2nd Jefferson Airplane albums, Jimi Hendrix, Cream, etc. progressively set the bar higher and higher re: the cutting edge. In '66 'Smile' would have been a musical landmark. Even if it had been completed and released by May or June, it would have been too late -- it may have made a bit of a splash but would nonetheless have been swamped by Pepper.

Don't get me wrong, though. While I think Mike did have a point about the lyrics, they were in the style of the time, actually done better than most. I wouldn't have them changed.

Did any member of a major rock/pop group ever get screwed over as much as Mike Love?

1) Early days, (Surfin' Safari era) he's co-founder, co-leader, lead singer, and co-writer
2) Then Brian becomes co-lead singer, and begins writing with outside lyricists (as well as Mike)
3) Then Mike is denied writing credits for huge hits that he provided lyrics for -- while Brian's roommate, guys Brian runs into at parties, etc. all get co-writing credits. And Mike is family!
4) Then Al, Carl, and Dennis begin getting lead vocal assignments, further diluting Mike's centrality
5) Then Mike is cut off from virtually all the songwriting, and almost all of the lead singing (Pet Sounds), completing his journey from co-leader to marginalized in the space of 4 years.
6) Finally, after Mike makes a bit of a creative comeback by co-writing their biggest hit ever (Good Vibrations), he's rewarded by once more being shunted aside so that Brian can co-write with some outsider -- who, in Mike's view, is providing meaningless, pretentious, word-salad lyrics

^
I agree that minus the leching and leering bits in the Adult Child version of the song, the singer-persona of the MIU version can be interpreted not as the 35-year old Brian Wilson perving after an underage girl, but rather as a teenage boy addressing a girl his own age. In fact, that's how I interpret the song.

Hey, Chuck Berry recorded 'Sweet Little 16' when he was 31. I assume folks in 1958 heard it as a teenage boy addressing a teenage girl...

'Hey Little Tomboy' would have been a fine addition to the 'Surfer Girl' or 'Little Deuce Coup' lps. It's not the song itself -- it's the context (BB now being in their mid- thirties, and 1978 being far from the more innocent days of, say, 'Be True to Your School').

I'm just talking here about the MIU version of the song -- the Adult Child version is completely indefensible  and outrageous ( so outrageous that it makes me laugh -- am I evil for doing so?)

Not in any particular order:

Farmer's Daughter
This Whole World
Til I Die
You Still Believe In Me
All I Wanna Do

The words are obviously from Hendrix. I know the Beach Boys ceased to be hip (common opinion, not mine) by sometime in 1967. I wasn't around since I am only 35. For those who were there, were the Beach Boys the poster child for everything unhip? Or were they just another unhip band? I assume that the Four Seasons and Jan and Dean had the same image problems as the Beach Boys? What about the image of Elvis, Berry, etc in the late 60s from the hippy croud?  

Rather than the Four Seasons or Jan and Dean, I'd compare the hipness quotient of the '67 Beach Boys to the Mamas and the Papas, say, or the Lovin' Spoonful :  that is, groups that were fairly hip by '66 standards, but that were suddenly looking , well -- not unhip, exactly, but rather irrelevant.

The counter culture didn't think that Brian Wilson -- or Chuck Berry, for that matter -- was crap. Just that while they were both great in their day, their day had passed.