After 50+ years, what's the final verdict on Mike Love?

[halblaineisgood]

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[♩♬🐸 Billy C ♯♫♩🐇]

Yeah, but in all fairness he was a shitty drummer IMHO.

[halblaineisgood]

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[halblaineisgood]

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[Shady]

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

Very true. Somehow he ended up being the devil on Brian's shoulder during his creative zenith when in reality all he did was sing the hell out of those outsiders lyrics and ask a question or two. And when he was called in to write some lyrics he consistently knocked it out of the park

Sadly his actions during the 50th Anniversary tour, the tour that should have been his redemption so to speak among fans and the general public was in fact probably his worst year of press ever and he deserved every bit of it. We actually say the headline "Mike Love fires Brian Wilson" on major publications all around the world.

The final verdict on Mike, in my opinion...he truly is a jerk, and honestly I think he's lost his mind.

[rn57]

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.

[Andrew G. Doe]

Sadly his actions during the 50th Anniversary tour, the tour that should have been his redemption so to speak among fans and the general public was in fact probably his worst year of press ever and he deserved every bit of it. We actually saw the headline "Mike Love fires Brian Wilson" on major publications all around the world.

The final verdict on Mike, in my opinion...he truly is a jerk, and honestly I think he's lost his mind.

Except that he neither said nor did anything of the kind, but was nonetheless vilified for it. That media construct on a slow day aside, Mike's press for the C50 event was pretty good, as was the whole of the band and the tour in general.

[Shady]

Sadly his actions during the 50th Anniversary tour, the tour that should have been his redemption so to speak among fans and the general public was in fact probably his worst year of press ever and he deserved every bit of it. We actually saw the headline "Mike Love fires Brian Wilson" on major publications all around the world.

The final verdict on Mike, in my opinion...he truly is a jerk, and honestly I think he's lost his mind.

Except that he neither said nor did anything of the kind, but was nonetheless vilified for it. That media construct on a slow day aside, Mike's press for the C50 event was pretty good, as was the whole of the band and the tour in general.

I feel he did.

Booking Mike and Bruce shows while the C50 tour was still going on was ridiculous. His timing of the press release was just as odd.

I don't like assuming so I won't say he did all those things behind the groups back but going by Mike and Brian's childish back and forth in the LA times I'll go ahead and say he was already planning when the reunion's end date without consulting anyone else.

He didn't "fire" Brian but he did take the name away from him, again.

[JR]

Sadly his actions during the 50th Anniversary tour, the tour that should have been his redemption so to speak among fans and the general public was in fact probably his worst year of press ever and he deserved every bit of it. We actually saw the headline "Mike Love fires Brian Wilson" on major publications all around the world.

The final verdict on Mike, in my opinion...he truly is a jerk, and honestly I think he's lost his mind.

Except that he neither said nor did anything of the kind, but was nonetheless vilified for it. That media construct on a slow day aside, Mike's press for the C50 event was pretty good, as was the whole of the band and the tour in general.

I'm sorry - didn't Mike and Bruce skip the final crew dinner and group picture (the only two to do so)? And didn't Mike also reject about 30 to 40 more dates (including a few in the states) to go back to touring zoo openings with John Stamos? He didn't' fire Brian, sure - but I'd hardly call his actions nothing "of the kind."

[Shady]

Sadly his actions during the 50th Anniversary tour, the tour that should have been his redemption so to speak among fans and the general public was in fact probably his worst year of press ever and he deserved every bit of it. We actually saw the headline "Mike Love fires Brian Wilson" on major publications all around the world.

The final verdict on Mike, in my opinion...he truly is a jerk, and honestly I think he's lost his mind.

Except that he neither said nor did anything of the kind, but was nonetheless vilified for it. That media construct on a slow day aside, Mike's press for the C50 event was pretty good, as was the whole of the band and the tour in general.

I'm sorry - didn't Mike and Bruce skip the final crew dinner and group picture (the only two to do so)? And didn't Mike also reject about 30 to 40 more dates (including a few in the states) to go back to touring zoo openings with John Stamos? He didn't' fire Brian, sure - but I'd hardly call his actions nothing "of the kind."

Final verdict: Jerk.

[Andrew G. Doe]

Sadly his actions during the 50th Anniversary tour, the tour that should have been his redemption so to speak among fans and the general public was in fact probably his worst year of press ever and he deserved every bit of it. We actually saw the headline "Mike Love fires Brian Wilson" on major publications all around the world.

The final verdict on Mike, in my opinion...he truly is a jerk, and honestly I think he's lost his mind.

Except that he neither said nor did anything of the kind, but was nonetheless vilified for it. That media construct on a slow day aside, Mike's press for the C50 event was pretty good, as was the whole of the band and the tour in general.

I feel he did.

Booking Mike and Bruce shows while the C50 tour was still going on was ridiculous. His timing of the press release was just as odd.

I don't like assuming so I won't say he did all those things behind the groups back but going by Mike and Brian's childish back and forth in the LA times I'll go ahead and say he was already planning when the reunion's end date without consulting anyone else.

He didn't "fire" Brian but he did take the name away from him, again.

Been here before - the C50 tour was originally slated to end in mid-August, thus Mike booking M&B dates in October was no problem... until the response made extra dates (which Mike could have vetoed, or at least made difficult) viable. You never made a plan which was later made to look questionable by later events  ?

And yes, the timing of the September announcement was very poor. No argument there. The LA Times exchange didn't help matters much either. Business as usual in BBWorld.

[Andrew G. Doe]

And didn't Mike also reject about 30 to 40 more dates (including a few in the states) to go back to touring zoo openings with John Stamos?

Source and quote, please. (Currently you're 0 for 1).

Edit - I'll save you the trouble: Brian Wilson, LA Times, 10/9/12.

"What's a bummer to Al and me is that we have numerous offers to continue, so why wouldn't we want to? [text omitted]

We hadn't even discussed as a band what we were going to do with all the offers that were coming in for more 50th shows.

Al and I just assumed based on everyone's enthusiasm we would at least want to take those offers into consideration since we all knew about them. I mean, who wouldn't want to play the Hollywood Bowl again, Madison Square Garden and Wrigley Field? And what better way to celebrate New Year's Eve than with the 50th band? That would have blown the lid off things. There were also offers for more shows in the U.K. and markets we weren't able to play during the tour."

Numerous... no mention of 30-40 shows, a figure apparently plucked from thin air.

0 for 2. 

[JR]

And didn't Mike also reject about 30 to 40 more dates (including a few in the states) to go back to touring zoo openings with John Stamos?

Source and quote, please. (Currently you're 0 for 1).

Edit - I'll save you the trouble: Brian Wilson, LA Times, 10/9/12.

"What's a bummer to Al and me is that we have numerous offers to continue, so why wouldn't we want to? [text omitted]

We hadn't even discussed as a band what we were going to do with all the offers that were coming in for more 50th shows.

Al and I just assumed based on everyone's enthusiasm we would at least want to take those offers into consideration since we all knew about them. I mean, who wouldn't want to play the Hollywood Bowl again, Madison Square Garden and Wrigley Field? And what better way to celebrate New Year's Eve than with the 50th band? That would have blown the lid off things. There were also offers for more shows in the U.K. and markets we weren't able to play during the tour."

Numerous... no mention of 30-40 shows, a figure apparently plucked from thin air.

0 for 2. 

I'm sorry...it's not polite to reveal your sources (which I do have).

Remember?

[Shady]

Sadly his actions during the 50th Anniversary tour, the tour that should have been his redemption so to speak among fans and the general public was in fact probably his worst year of press ever and he deserved every bit of it. We actually saw the headline "Mike Love fires Brian Wilson" on major publications all around the world.

The final verdict on Mike, in my opinion...he truly is a jerk, and honestly I think he's lost his mind.

Except that he neither said nor did anything of the kind, but was nonetheless vilified for it. That media construct on a slow day aside, Mike's press for the C50 event was pretty good, as was the whole of the band and the tour in general.

I feel he did.

Booking Mike and Bruce shows while the C50 tour was still going on was ridiculous. His timing of the press release was just as odd.

I don't like assuming so I won't say he did all those things behind the groups back but going by Mike and Brian's childish back and forth in the LA times I'll go ahead and say he was already planning when the reunion's end date without consulting anyone else.

He didn't "fire" Brian but he did take the name away from him, again.

Been here before - the C50 tour was originally slated to end in mid-August, thus Mike booking M&B dates in October was no problem... until the response made extra dates (which Mike could have vetoed, or at least made difficult) viable. You never made a plan which was later made to look questionable by later events  ?

And yes, the timing of the September announcement was very poor. No argument there. The LA Times exchange didn't help matters much either. Business as usual in BBWorld.

AGD, I'm legitimately curious about this..

Do you agree with Mike deciding to not continue on, against Brian, Al and David's wishes?

Do you honestly feel he alone should have dictated how many shows were to be included in the C50 tour, should that not be a band decision?

You're making it sound like the whole thing was Mike's way or the highway and they were all just puppets

[Andrew G. Doe]

That's fair. However, your comment - "And didn't Mike also reject about 30 to 40 more dates" -  indicated the 30-40 figure originated from a source in the public domain, thus easily verifiable. I've checked and you never laid that info before us until now, thus our collective answer must perforce be "Don't know - did he ?"  We all have our sources... OK, except for Eeyore.

[Andrew G. Doe]

AGD, I'm legitimately curious about this..

Do you agree with Mike deciding to not continue on, against Brian, Al and David's wishes?

Do you honestly feel he alone should have dictated how many shows were to be included in the C50 tour, should that not be a band decision?

You're making it sound like the whole thing was Mike's way or the highway and they were all just puppets

I agree with Mike thinking there was a hard and fast agreement in place to end the C50 tour in late September after 70-odd dates, and after he'd already agreed to extend it by 50% from the original gameplan. BRI is a corporate entity: no-one can call the shots single handed, thus to extend the tour required a minimum 3-1 vote, as did the setting of a closing date. Now, consider this - the tour didn't extend past fall last year, which indicates to me that either...

1 - no vote on extending it again was taken or...

2 - the vote was taken and it was 2-2, and - granted I'm speculating here - if so, the other dissenting vote would logically be Carl's estate.

I'm betting option #1 as Brian stated in his article "While I appreciate the nice cool things Mike said about me in his letter, and I do and always will love him as my cousin and bandmate, at the same time I'm still left wondering why he doesn't want to continue this great trip we're on. Al and I want to keep going because we believe we owe it to the music. That's it in a nutshell, all these conversations need to be between the shareholders, and I welcome Mike to call me", indicating that not even informal corporate decisions had been taken. More to the point, if Alan & Brian were so all-fired on continuing, why not try to at least force the issue ? By not doing so, they gave their tacit, if grudging, assent. As has been stated frequently by those who really know Brian, if he really wants to do something (or not), he will.

I could be entirely off base here, but looking at things logically (never a good notion in the BB world) it doesn't look like the desire to further extend the C50 tour was as overwhelming as we've been led to believe.

[Shady]

I could be entirely off base here, but looking at things logically (never a good notion in the BB world) it doesn't look like the desire to further extend the C50 tour was as overwhelming as we've been led to believe.

From Mike & Bruce, we know everyone else wants to keep it going.

The whole thing is incredibly bizarre and if you told me two years ago Mike Love would be the main hold out in a Beach Boys tour I would have said you're insane.

At least we got the C50 tour and it proved one thing, for it be be truly special you need all the guys up there, even Bruce.

[D409]

Verdict on Mike Love : anyone who's been a Beach Boy their entire adult life is bound to have one or two issues. 

[Paulos]

And didn't Mike also reject about 30 to 40 more dates (including a few in the states) to go back to touring zoo openings with John Stamos?

Source and quote, please. (Currently you're 0 for 1).

Edit - I'll save you the trouble: Brian Wilson, LA Times, 10/9/12.

"What's a bummer to Al and me is that we have numerous offers to continue, so why wouldn't we want to? [text omitted]

We hadn't even discussed as a band what we were going to do with all the offers that were coming in for more 50th shows.

Al and I just assumed based on everyone's enthusiasm we would at least want to take those offers into consideration since we all knew about them. I mean, who wouldn't want to play the Hollywood Bowl again, Madison Square Garden and Wrigley Field? And what better way to celebrate New Year's Eve than with the 50th band? That would have blown the lid off things. There were also offers for more shows in the U.K. and markets we weren't able to play during the tour."

Numerous... no mention of 30-40 shows, a figure apparently plucked from thin air.

0 for 2. 

I'm sorry...it's not polite to reveal your sources (which I do have).

Remember?

Are your sauces ketchup and barbecue?

[NHC]

If you make a formal commitment to perform a  particular task for a certain period of time, and there is no indication that the time agreed upon to do that will be extended, and you need to continue with your livelihood after that date, then wouldn't you make arrangements to that effect ahead of time? Once again, we're lucky we got what we got, and to use the end of the reunion tour as just another lame reason to call Mike Love a jerk is ridiculous.

Someone posted that Mike's vocals were often the least interesting part of the song.  I can't imagine anyone doing 409 or Shut Down or Surfin' Safari, just to name three of many, as well as Mike Love, to say nothing of his co-lead portion on Kiss Me Baby.

[KittyKat]

Sadly his actions during the 50th Anniversary tour, the tour that should have been his redemption so to speak among fans and the general public was in fact probably his worst year of press ever and he deserved every bit of it. We actually saw the headline "Mike Love fires Brian Wilson" on major publications all around the world.

The final verdict on Mike, in my opinion...he truly is a jerk, and honestly I think he's lost his mind.

Except that he neither said nor did anything of the kind, but was nonetheless vilified for it. That media construct on a slow day aside, Mike's press for the C50 event was pretty good, as was the whole of the band and the tour in general.

I'm sorry - didn't Mike and Bruce skip the final crew dinner and group picture (the only two to do so)? And didn't Mike also reject about 30 to 40 more dates (including a few in the states) to go back to touring zoo openings with John Stamos? He didn't' fire Brian, sure - but I'd hardly call his actions nothing "of the kind."

I don't recall that being a big deal. Didn't the Wilsons put on that dinner? Maybe those two weren't invited, or they felt the Wilsons were doing some kind of political thing by having that dinner (or misunderstood the gesture as being political). Or they had something else to do. I wouldn't read too much into it or say they're bad people without more information. It was just a dinner. As for Mike "taking the name from Brian again," as someone made reference to elsewhere on the thread, he didn't take it in the first place. Brian gave it to him with his vote for Mike when it came up. I don't know if Brian even wants the Beach Boys name other than having a few more reunion shows than what he had agreed to in the first place. And if the reunion continued beyond that, who knows if Brian would have wanted to play a whole bunch of dates. He's never been a big touring guy and he pretty much played his quota with the shows they did perform.

[urbanite]

"A performer, not an artist."

....

I'm not accusing you, urbanite, of that, I just felt it was relevant to what I was saying and it doesn't get said enough.
 
My recollection is that Jeffrey Foskett made that comment in the article that ran in the L.A. Times just before the Hollywood Bowl show last summer.  I agree that Mike is a skilled showman and singer, and has written some timeless lyrics, but I don't think of him as a creative force, at least not anymore.  If you had asked me this question years ago, my opinion probably would be quite different, but the mediocre to mush lyrics he's come up with the last 30 years or so, have colored my view of things. 

[clack]

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.

[relx]

When evaluating Mike, an important point to consider is that The Beach Boys are unlike any other band in that the creative force behind the band is not the dominant figure in the group. Think of the contemporaries of the BB's--Beatles, Rolling Stones, The Who, etc. In each of those bands, the chief creative figures--Townshend in The Who, Jagger and Richards in the Stones, Lennon and McCartney in the Beatles--also controlled the band for the most part, meaning that most if not all of the important decisions were determined by those individuals.

With the Beach Boys, it is entirely different, as the main creative force behind the band--Brian--after the early days was not really the leader of the band. That left a void, which Mike, and Carl when he was alive, had to fill. As a result, you have Mike, who has a "leader" type personality--arrogant, brash--without having the so-called creative "chops" to back it up. (We forgive a lot of our creative types). I have heard just as many stories of bad behavior from the likes of Jagger, Richards, Lennon, Townshend, etc., (worse in fact) than from Mike, but because they also were the creative forces behind their respective bands, much of that behavior is forgiven by the media and the general puiblic. As an example, Richards trashed Jagger in his autobiography, but instead of public outrage--as there was say at Mike's Rock 'n' Roll HOF speech--it was just "Keef being Keef." Imagine if Mike had said the same kinds of things about Brian!

In addition, Mike does not possess some of the qualities of other "subordinate" band members, such as Roger Daltrey, who, unlike Mike, literally wrote almost nothing for The Who, but still became the long blonde-haired amazing interpreter of Pete Townshend's music. The general consensus about Mike is that he is nothing special as a singer, is off putting as a frontman (I have shown people who know nothing about the BB's clips of the band, and most take an immediate dislike to Mike's stage presence), and that the band could have easily been successful without him. Compare Mike to Dennis, for example--though Mike wrote some of the most well regarded and famous lyrics in rock history, he is considered by many to be dispensable to the band, while Dennis, based on just a handful of songs, was this amazing talent whose greatness was cut short. Stories of Dennis's behavior are far worse than anything Mike ever did, but because Dennis is perceived as talented--and good looking and cool--while his sins are acknowledged, he is also called things like big hearted and sensitive, while Mike is just some ass. I know that people on this board know better than this, but I think these factors I cited are why Mike doesn't have a good rep, and never will. 

[JR]

And didn't Mike also reject about 30 to 40 more dates (including a few in the states) to go back to touring zoo openings with John Stamos?

Source and quote, please. (Currently you're 0 for 1).

Edit - I'll save you the trouble: Brian Wilson, LA Times, 10/9/12.

"What's a bummer to Al and me is that we have numerous offers to continue, so why wouldn't we want to? [text omitted]

We hadn't even discussed as a band what we were going to do with all the offers that were coming in for more 50th shows.

Al and I just assumed based on everyone's enthusiasm we would at least want to take those offers into consideration since we all knew about them. I mean, who wouldn't want to play the Hollywood Bowl again, Madison Square Garden and Wrigley Field? And what better way to celebrate New Year's Eve than with the 50th band? That would have blown the lid off things. There were also offers for more shows in the U.K. and markets we weren't able to play during the tour."

Numerous... no mention of 30-40 shows, a figure apparently plucked from thin air.

0 for 2. 

Not plucked from thin air. Fact. You don't want to believe it, fine. But it's the truth. Plus, what would I have to gain making stuff up to go against a guy like you, whose life is posting on a message board?

At least 30-40 dates could've been had. Numerous European markets were after the Boys, and they came nowhere near. It's actually quite amusing that Mr. Doe wouldn't know that. But, considering his source (Bruce)...