Mike Love: 'There are a lot of fallacies about me'

[Pinder's Gone To Kokomo And Back Again]

Because for a brief moment last year, the BBs were a functioning and active band again. They did awesome shows with a number 3 album on billboard. Then it all ended and we are back to the M&B vs. BW band clusterfuck of 1998-2011.

Yes! But we should learn to just appreciate the moment for what it was and that mere humans were involved, in the end....

Perhaps.  Can't really argue with that.  But there is a possibility that for the entire duration of the C50 that the majority of us were sucked into believing that the feuding and issues that had plagued The Beach Boys essentially since Carl Wilson's death were in the past and the band was going to move forward with a bright outlook towards the future.  That was the bill of goods that many of us (certainly myself) felt we were being sold last year with the C50 and what happened at the end of the tour?  We were left holding the bag.  That doesn't make you feel too good as a fan.  In fact it makes you question whether or not the members of the group were just playing "happy families" in order to move tickets and a record.  Now believe me I'm not naive enough to not understand that that sort of thing doesn't happen but I'm also not a "fool me twice" sort of person.  If The Beach Boys ever do reform again as an inclusive unit, I'll be dead set pleased as I'm sure many on here will be but personally I'm finished believing a word any of them say in terms of their personal feelings towards one another.  Because after the conclusion of the C50 last year those words would just ring hollow to me.

But what a damn fine moment it was, ya know? The single show I saw was such an awesome emotional experience on every level, from hearing Brian and Mike proudly announcing California Saga, to the entire show, to the smug affirmation of watching a hipster kid with his arms folded for roughly half the concert but then dancing around and singing with abandon as Fun Fun Fun rang out in the hills.... to the haggle of hipster kids (like in their late teens) who snuck in over the rather giant hill behind the venue, singing and dancing like mad..... to the burly, yellowjacket secutity guys forgetting all about their jobs and joining in, to Brian in the front seat of his bus staring at us as we're nearly run down by the driver a mere second or two after we last saw him taking his stage bow: THIS is what The Beach Boys are, not whatever they do off stage or outside a recording studio..... This is what we can hang onto and that no one: Mike, Brian or otherwise can take away.

[Chocolate Shake Man]

So he's the frontman for a successful tour, he records/sings/writes songs for a #3 charting album, helps promote all this, and because he doesn't want to continue this he's a child??

Brian wants to continue in the band and that makes him the biggest a$$hole in the world? Are you seriously suggesting that?

[JohnMill]

Has anyone ever longed to return to a special place from their younger years, some place that holds great memories and this ideal in your mind of how things were, how great it would be to go back, etc.? Then does it sometimes happen where you do actually go back and find it's not the place you left, and the idea and memory of the past was better than reality?

I just can't help seeing Mike holding onto this ideal or this memory of some halcyon days when he and his cousin would sit at the piano and write tunes. If you want the actual imagery, look at that Beach Boys TV movie scene when Mike clears out all the druggies and interlopers Brian had around him and proceeds to write Good Vibrations with his cousin at the piano. Pure hokum and pure fantasy, but doesn't it make a little more sense now?

He wants to go back to a place in his mind that held great memories from years ago, and the description for it is "writing songs with my cousin". That's fine, but does an ideal that strong ever live up to the reality of what is possible and what isn't in the present? I just don't think Brian works that way anymore, though of course I have no way of knowing as a fan and observer from afar.

And we can list a few classic songs which came from collaborations where the co-writers were not on the same continent while collaborating, never mind sharing a piano bench.

Well that is essentially what I said a few posts up the chain and that is Mike Love in that regards essentially needs to understand that he's no longer in Brian Wilson's inner circle and if he wants Brian Wilson to be part of "The Beach Boys" he's going to have to make some concessions to do so.  Sometimes one hand has to wash the other and I'm not saying that over the course of the C50, Love didn't do his fair share of compromising either.  What I am saying is that the last time that Mike Love was truly part of Brian Wilson's entourage was probably sometime in 1965.  He certainly wasn't part of the inner circle during the creation of "SMiLE", from what I was told was kept offsides from his cousin during most of (if not all) of the Landy experience and hasn't been a constant in Brian's life in the years since Landy was given his walking papers.  In a way I feel badly for Mike Love because his desire to work with his cousin and perhaps even have a relationship with him at this point in their lives seems to be sincere.  But he wants to have a relationship with Brian Wilson as it existed fifty years ago and that is about as impossible as meeting up with a former  flame from your teen years and be able to pick up that relationship from where you left it and have everything be the same.  It just doesn't happen except in fantasies and Hollywood movie scripts.

[guitarfool2002]

And remember that Mike apparently wrote the lyrics to California Girls on the way to the studio, didn't he? Yet he constantly name-checks that particular tune almost like a benchmark in interviews, right next to Kokomo. So even in 1965 there was a case of Brian recording a fully fleshed-out backing track on his own and Mike added lyrics, and it produced a classic tune. But it wasn't the kind of collaboration Mike seems to long for now: It wasn't like Warmth Of The Sun where they met and actually co-wrote the tune together in the same room. Maybe that's the ideal Mike is looking for again, but as we said perhaps that's just a fantasy vision at this point...or at any point in the past decades except that time around 1995-96.

[OGoldin]

I would imagine that Brian's people think that Mike historically has not been good for Brian's head, and the idea of just the two of them sitting around the living room all afternoon for a number of days -- with no Jeff Foskett, no Joe Thomas, no Melinda -- is just too scary.  Seems reasonable to me.  Which is not to say that Mike's wishes are not reasonable from his point of view. 

[Nicko1234]

And remember that Mike apparently wrote the lyrics to California Girls on the way to the studio, didn't he?

No, that was Good Vibrations.

[drbeachboy]

Just wanted to step in after reading something about Carl's absence fracturing the band. I don't think that's accurate nor much of a factor in what's being discussed on these recent pages. Carl was the one who apparently balked at and therefore stopped the original BB's music which would have come from the Brian and Mike writing partnership in the mid-90's when Don Was had been involved. And Carl for various reasons seemed to be taking a hands-off approach to the touring situation and basically letting Mike call the bigger shots, apart from his role as music supervisor for the live band which he held until his death, I believe. Yes, of course Carl was a voting board member but his hands-on involvement seemed to present itself most when he didn't want the "new" Wilson-Love songs to be finished and released.

If anything Carl seemed to be more on board with touring the classics than starting up something new, at least at that point in time. Hypothetically speaking anyone could make a guess or assume what he'd have done in 2012, but all we have to base that assumption is what Carl did from 1995 to 1997.

I was being sarcastic. I should have used an emoticon. Never in my mind did I ever think someone would take me seriously.

[rab2591]

So he's the frontman for a successful tour, he records/sings/writes songs for a #3 charting album, helps promote all this, and because he doesn't want to continue this he's a child??

Brian wants to continue in the band and that makes him the biggest a$$hole in the world? Are you seriously suggesting that?

When did I ever suggest this?

[drbeachboy]

So he's the frontman for a successful tour, he records/sings/writes songs for a #3 charting album, helps promote all this, and because he doesn't want to continue this he's a child??

Brian wants to continue in the band and that makes him the biggest a$$hole in the world? Are you seriously suggesting that?

Boy, and you get on me for reading more into things or taking stuff out of context.

[hypehat]

Guitarfool is slaying it itt.

With regards to the Brian/Mike songwriting debacle, Brian's train of thought since the dawn of the band is that he doesn't necessarily have to write with Mike. He just has to write, and picks his collaborators cannily - Roger Christian knows cars, so I can write car songs with him. I like the way Van Dyke Parks talks, I'll write verbose lyrics with him. Gary Usher & Roger Christian were right there along with Mike in penning early material that Mike so loves, a strange irony. I think the only way you would get him to say 'Christian' or 'Usher' in an interview would be to get him talking about religion or movie theatres.

In the case of TWGMTR, Brian wrote a bunch of songs specifically for The Beach Boys, just like those early records, Pet Sounds, Smile, his 70's material with Jack Rieley and Tandyn Almer. He wrote with Mike for 15BO, but not for Love You or Adult/Child. MIU has Brian phoning it in. He's not present on LA Light, then Landy's in and he's giving the band sub-par efforts and giving himself the good songs. Then you have his attempts to resurrect his stewardship of The Beach Boys with Andy Paley and Don Was in the 90's.  Brian concieved of songs with JT in 1998 as specifically BB's tunes. This may seem odd in isolation, but then you could argue that outside of Do It Again Brian's conception of songwriting for 'The Beach Boys' has barely relied on Mike. Mike and Mike alone pervades the image of Brian & Mike being some unstoppable duo. Not really the case?

RnR has been on a similar schtick itt too.

[Moon Dawg]

I wish Bruce would write something again. He is very overlooked as a songwriter by Beach Boy fans.

PS. CD issues of First Love and Looking Back With Love would be really cool.

 We all (well, most of us) wish Bruce would write "something" again, yet when it came time to step up to the plate for TWGMTR all he delivered was a remake of "She Believes in Love Again" from the '85 album.  The man needs to get back in the tub with Deirdre.

 BTW- Can you imagine how badly Bruce must treat the hired help on a bad day?

[rab2591]

Because for a brief moment last year, the BBs were a functioning and active band again. They did awesome shows with a number 3 album on billboard. Then it all ended and we are back to the M&B vs. BW band clusterfuck of 1998-2011.

Yes! But we should learn to just appreciate the moment for what it was and that mere humans were involved, in the end....

Perhaps.  Can't really argue with that.  But there is a possibility that for the entire duration of the C50 that the majority of us were sucked into believing that the feuding and issues that had plagued The Beach Boys essentially since Carl Wilson's death were in the past and the band was going to move forward with a bright outlook towards the future.  That was the bill of goods that many of us (certainly myself) felt we were being sold last year with the C50 and what happened at the end of the tour?  We were left holding the bag.  That doesn't make you feel too good as a fan.  In fact it makes you question whether or not the members of the group were just playing "happy families" in order to move tickets and a record.  Now believe me I'm not naive enough to not understand that that sort of thing doesn't happen but I'm also not a "fool me twice" sort of person.  If The Beach Boys ever do reform again as an inclusive unit, I'll be dead set pleased as I'm sure many on here will be but personally I'm finished believing a word any of them say in terms of their personal feelings towards one another.  Because after the conclusion of the C50 last year those words would just ring hollow to me.

Honestly, given the aftermath of the C50 (the "firing" accusations, Al and Mike's interviews that clearly show a rift), I don't see how any of them could've actually reconciled. If the "happy families" was just an illusion, and Mike knew this, then I don't see how he can be blamed for leaving....it's not healthy to keep such an atmosphere of illusion going.

[SMiLE Brian]

 BTW- Can you imagine how badly Bruce must treat the hired help on a bad day?

Yikes, that must be scary...

[Chocolate Shake Man]

So he's the frontman for a successful tour, he records/sings/writes songs for a #3 charting album, helps promote all this, and because he doesn't want to continue this he's a child??

Brian wants to continue in the band and that makes him the biggest a$$hole in the world? Are you seriously suggesting that?

When did I ever suggest this?

When did I ever suggest what you attribute to me? Tell you what - I'll stop making up your position when you stop making up mine. I've made myself perfectly clear repeatedly and you repeatedly choose to re-write what I have written to the point that it is something you can argue against. Now you know how it feels to talk to someone who refuses to engage with what you have actually written.

[Chocolate Shake Man]

So he's the frontman for a successful tour, he records/sings/writes songs for a #3 charting album, helps promote all this, and because he doesn't want to continue this he's a child??

Brian wants to continue in the band and that makes him the biggest a$$hole in the world? Are you seriously suggesting that?

Boy, and you get on me for reading more into things or taking stuff out of context.

See above. It was intentional.   

[rab2591]

So he's the frontman for a successful tour, he records/sings/writes songs for a #3 charting album, helps promote all this, and because he doesn't want to continue this he's a child??

Brian wants to continue in the band and that makes him the biggest a$$hole in the world? Are you seriously suggesting that?

When did I ever suggest this?

When did I ever suggest what you attribute to me? Tell you what - I'll stop making up your position when you stop making up mine. I've made myself perfectly clear repeatedly and you repeatedly choose to re-write what I have written to the point that it is something you can argue against. Now you know how it feels to talk to someone who refuses to engage with what you have actually written.

It was a poorly worded question. I still don't see how he's acting like a child, after all his contributions to the C50, just because he's not willing to compromise.

[AndrewHickey]

Gary Usher & Roger Christian were right there along with Mike in penning early material that Mike so loves, a strange irony. I think the only way you would get him to say 'Christian' or 'Usher' in an interview would be to get him talking about religion or movie theatres.

To be fair, when he introduces Ballad Of Ole Betsy live he quite often mentions that the lyrics are by Roger Christian.

[Cam Mott]

As I remember Brian said Mike came up with a hook.

Where? Mike has said otherwise. Maybe Brian meant the hook were the "I'm pickin' up good vibrations" lyrics but not melody.

Maybe. I'll see if I can find it or if I remember/read it wrong.

Nope didn't find anything by Brian. Mike has said stuff you could take as him writing the music but he has more definitively said he wrote the words for that hook.

Didn't find Carl quote either but it is published in like one of Abbott's books probably or In Their Own Words or such.

Mike wrote the lyrics to CG in the hallway of the studio, GV was written in his XKE on the way to the studio.

Someone should compile a list with position of BB's Top 40 or 100 charting songs with authorships.

[Pinder's Gone To Kokomo And Back Again]

I kinda wish all these Beach Boys guys would just shut up.....

[hypehat]

Gary Usher & Roger Christian were right there along with Mike in penning early material that Mike so loves, a strange irony. I think the only way you would get him to say 'Christian' or 'Usher' in an interview would be to get him talking about religion or movie theatres.

To be fair, when he introduces Ballad Of Ole Betsy live he quite often mentions that the lyrics are by Roger Christian.

At Wembley, I thought he just mentioned Scott Totten was going to sing, but that's the only time I've heard it and it was a little while back, after all...

[AndrewHickey]

Gary Usher & Roger Christian were right there along with Mike in penning early material that Mike so loves, a strange irony. I think the only way you would get him to say 'Christian' or 'Usher' in an interview would be to get him talking about religion or movie theatres.

To be fair, when he introduces Ballad Of Ole Betsy live he quite often mentions that the lyrics are by Roger Christian.

At Wembley, I thought he just mentioned Scott Totten was going to sing, but that's the only time I've heard it and it was a little while back, after all...

I just checked the video of the Wembley show, and he doesn't name Christian but he says "the lyrics were done by a DJ in Los Angeles who was way into cars, and it shows". At other shows he's named him specifically.

[hypehat]

Close enough, consider me schooled 

[hypehat]

As I remember Brian said Mike came up with a hook.

Where? Mike has said otherwise. Maybe Brian meant the hook were the "I'm pickin' up good vibrations" lyrics but not melody.

Maybe. I'll see if I can find it or if I remember/read it wrong.

Nope didn't find anything by Brian. Mike has said stuff you could take as him writing the music but he has more definitively said he wrote the words for that hook.

Didn't find Carl quote either but it is published in like one of Abbott's books probably or In Their Own Words or such.

Mike wrote the lyrics to CG in the hallway of the studio, GV was written in his XKE on the way to the studio.

Someone should compile a list with position of BB's Top 40 or 100 charting songs with authorships.

It seems the bassline was always there for GV, but the initial lyrics and conception of the track (the early vocal mix with Tony Ashers lyrics, say) doesn't have the 'I'm picking up Good Vibrations' lyric. I reckon Mike thought of putting the lyrics to the bassline (composed by Brian). So he definitely wrote the words to the hook, but the melody is BW. 50/50.


[/stating the bleedin' obvious]

[oldsurferdude]

Mike is an artist too.

 

Yeah, it's called a hack artist. I'm an artist too, myKe.

[DonnyL]

This may seem odd in isolation, but then you could argue that outside of Do It Again Brian's conception of songwriting for 'The Beach Boys' has barely relied on Mike. Mike and Mike alone pervades the image of Brian & Mike being some unstoppable duo. Not really the case?

Mike is the only co-writer that Brian has consistently collaborated with on multiple albums ... most of the others were temporary writing partners, generally involved with a specific era.

I'm not saying his contribution is more important (or less important), but he's written more songs with Brian than any other person.

We'd all love to see the group back together again. But really people here are arguing about something which is such old news ... Mike & Bruce touring as 'The Beach Boys'. Yeh it's lame and it's always been lame. But I got over it sometime in 1999. I've never seen 'em and I never will. No Wilsons, no Beach Boys.

Brian's management wants the public to think that Brian wants to keep touring with the Beach Boys, but I seriously doubt this is true. And Mike mostly likely knows that these folks are pulling the strings ... really, all it takes is to have gone to one of the reunion shows or take a look & listen to one of the videos to see that Brian is not particularly comfortable. This is a guy who has spent most of his active years avoiding performing live.

People taking 'sides' in this is really absurd, because I'd say Brian and Mike are privately in agreement. We need to stop believing the hype and these press stories and start thinking about the history with these guys and the kinds of things that are going on behind the scenes.