Mike hopes to "record another album the way it should be"

[Mr. Wilson]

Hey AGD I agree with you with the formula answers.. ive posted that every interview on youtube are all the same + interchangeable .. I was especially disappointed in the Charlie Rose interview.. I expected more in depth analysis there.. I should have posted a longer post + explained myself better.. Im not a Mike hater.. I stand middle ground with him.. I DO find Mike Love frustrating tho.. But that's life as they say..

[Mr. Wilson]

AGD.. Did Mike do an in depth  Goldmine interview in 2002..??   I didn't know that.. The last one I remember was 1992.. Its possible I missed that of course.. THX

[urbanite]

I would like to ask ML - why do you keep making references to old Beach Boys hit songs in your newer compositions?  Did you and BW attempt to write any new songs while the two of you were traveling around the world for the 50th tour or did BW rebuff your effort to try and write?

[KittyKat]

I would like to ask ML - why do you keep making references to old Beach Boys hit songs in your newer compositions?  Did you and BW attempt to write any new songs while the two of you were traveling around the world for the 50th tour or did BW rebuff your effort to try and write?

I doubt they were ever together apart from sound checks and the actual show. Major tours usually have people well-separated and they have to want to hang out together. Look at the "reunited"  Everly Brothers for an example of a touring act who avoiding ever talking to each other except for onstage. They had separate hotel rooms, separate transportation, and separate stage entrances.

[The Shift]

And hey, I would buy an album of quirky BBs cover versions.

Nothing wrong with that idea at all… think Sloop John B, Barbara Ann, Do You Wanna Dance, The. I Kissed Her, I Can Hear Music, Rock an Roll Music, Come Go With Me, Cottonfields… th Beach Boys have scored some decent hit with cover versions down the years; a few more couldn't hurt and could be well handled and tasteful.

And what was that album they released in 2011 that was peppered with covers? You know, Gee, I Wanna Be Around, the El Paso derived tune, You Are My Sunshine… forgotten the album's name now…

[c-man]

I would like to ask ML - why do you keep making references to old Beach Boys hit songs in your newer compositions?  Did you and BW attempt to write any new songs while the two of you were traveling around the world for the 50th tour or did BW rebuff your effort to try and write?

I doubt they were ever together apart from sound checks and the actual show. Major tours usually have people well-separated and they have to want to hang out together. Look at the "reunited"  Everly Brothers for an example of a touring act who avoiding ever talking to each other except for onstage. They had separate hotel rooms, separate transportation, and separate stage entrances.

Well, the big Rolling Stone article covering the tour starts with Mike joining Brian for dinner, and later in the article it was pretty clear that Brian was traveling with the rest of them (although Mike stayed behind in NYC for a bit and therefore wasn't on the same flight as the rest of them).

[Mr. Wilson]

Brian + Jeff had a separate tour bus.. The rest of the BB + the whole band + crew had a separate tour bus. How they got all those people on 1 bus I don't know.. Maybe some of the crew rode with the truck driver up front + in the sleeper bunk.. There was 2 big rigs with 53 ft trailers and 2 busses at Indio Ca ..End of may 2012.. And I know you were talking about when they fly to a gig.. Sure wish they would do a tour like that again.. The music was AMAZING..!

[Ron]

A Mike Love book would be incredible, maybe better than the up coming Brian once since we know Mike will actually be involved in his

The first "Mike Love's New Book" thread will crash this damn site all by itself, and perhaps even the entire internet! 

Imagine the photos.  All the photos we have of Mike are the ones he allowed to be releaseed, think of all the photos he's kept locked up. 

for instance, did you know that he used to wear wigs?  Yeah.  There's a ten year period where he wore wigs.  Nobody was allowed to take photos, they'll be in the book, you'll see. 

[Ron]

What would people on here like from lyrics?  Would they want songs about "chicks and bikinis" or "Pacific Coast Highway"?  I doubt the last three songs would have been on there if Mike and Brian were writing together.  Look at the evidence from the last 50 years or so.  /quote]

Nonsense.  Mike can be over the top 'deep' and in fact loves to do it.  He wrote "The Warmth of the Sun", remember? 

Hell look at "Cool Head, Warm Heart", that's not bad, and it's in a similar vein.  Look at "Bring Back My Baby" Mike has a penchance for writing sappy stuff... with Brian (or Al, or Scott, or somebody) co writing some of that stuff, those songs could have absolutely been cleaned up and written a little better, and you'd be left with a good track. 


The whole problem with Mike and Brian is, Brian has a lot of handlers who probably do make promises they can't keep, or things change, etc. etc.

Mike for his part is incredibly stubborn and is a right fighter.  He feels he's got to stand up for what's right and apparently will die before he lets soembody get one over on him.  He bent a little for this reunion, and then bent a little more, and then was contractually forced to bend some more... and that's all a little too much for MIke, he just can't do it beacuse he feels like a fool when he does.

That the public generally hates him doesn't help either.  He's a hard guy and he'll fight to be right to the end (and he IS right, most times), but i'm sure , i'm positive that it absoultely kills him that the fans hate his ass.  He'll never admit that.

[KittyKat]

A Mike Love book would be incredible, maybe better than the up coming Brian once since we know Mike will actually be involved in his

The first "Mike Love's New Book" thread will crash this damn site all by itself, and perhaps even the entire internet! 

Imagine the photos.  All the photos we have of Mike are the ones he allowed to be releaseed, think of all the photos he's kept locked up. 

for instance, did you know that he used to wear wigs?  Yeah.  There's a ten year period where he wore wigs.  Nobody was allowed to take photos, they'll be in the book, you'll see. 

There's a lengthy thread on here with some incredibly unflattering photos of Mike.

[mikeddonn]

I didn't say Mike hasn't written some great lyrics.  He has including stuff with Dennis like POBs.  Do you think Mike would have come up with another "Warmth of the Sun"?  His interviews suggest he has an idea for the Beach Boys nowadays ( last 35 years) and they don't really involve much other than fun in the sun let's mention our old hit songs type lyrics.  It doesn't mean he can't do it, it's just unlikely.  Brian, on the other hand, has come up with some cheese in his time, but has demonstrated he can still and wants to produce 'art', with help from others.

[guitarfool2002]

Those types of lyrics are Mike's calling card and the precedent has been there for decades, as much as fans like me would like to see some different themes coming from his pen, I doubt it will happen on any larger scale than perhaps a handful of song ideas. Remember the Don Was story, from when he had Mike and Brian collaborating and co-writing in the studio almost 20 years ago? Don suggested they write about their family bond, their relationship and the struggles that they went through leading to a reunion of sorts, like a redemption, and Mike and Brian came back to Was with "Baywatch Nights". If that doesn't explain it, I don't know what can...

Remember too Mike's main outlet is still anything labeled "Beach Boys", and I think he is indeed thinking in a decades-old mentality of how to get a hit record on the charts. When he did the fun in the sun route in the 80's, it got him Kokomo. He even tried to get together some of the same crew who worked up Kokomo to do the next "Beach Boys" album, and his lyrics flirted with a social conscience and relevance, and it gave him a sales bomb of almost epic proportions. So to get those "hit records", where did he go? The revisit/rehash/retro/nostalgia route, and even most of those efforts didn't make that big of a splash with the general public, outside of hardcore BB's fan circles. Santa Goes To Kokomo?

Brian has also flirted with a lot of light, fluffy, cheesy material, but at the same time he has taken artistic chances and has sought out lyricists like Van Dyke to go beyond where his reputation with the BB's might suggest - again, like Mike, to mixed sales results. But I think there are more opportunities in that kind of outlook to even give someone like Jimmy Webb a call if some kind of new inspiration hits him. And the vehicle Mike has with the Beach Boys identity also exists for Brian, but I don't know if anything outside the norm coming from Brian's pen would be immediately targeted for a Beach Boys product. In all seriousness, I think that might also explain why he wanted to rerecord "Do It Again" in the early reunion stages, because it simply fit that label and that outlet.

[Ron]

Well said.... what it always comes down to with me too is, we don't know what the label's role is in all this. 

I'd have to think that the label sees them more as a fun in the sun band then a brian wilson perpetual teen angst band or even the brian Wilson the genius band. 

[CenturyDeprived]

A Mike Love book would be incredible, maybe better than the up coming Brian once since we know Mike will actually be involved in his

The first "Mike Love's New Book" thread will crash this damn site all by itself, and perhaps even the entire internet! 

Imagine the photos.  All the photos we have of Mike are the ones he allowed to be releaseed, think of all the photos he's kept locked up. 

for instance, did you know that he used to wear wigs?  Yeah.  There's a ten year period where he wore wigs.  Nobody was allowed to take photos, they'll be in the book, you'll see. 

Ron - roughly, what years in question are you referring to?

[Micha]

I thought Ron was joking. Was he not?

[mikeddonn]

I hope he was joking because if they were wigs they weren't very good!  Or maybe Ron meant wigs for beards! 

[KittyKat]

That reminds me of the "Dick Van Dyke Show" episode where Laura accidentally tells a game show audience that Alan Brady wears a toupee. When Laura goes to apologize, Alan shows her his collection of wigs, including some that imitated a receding hairline. Mike must have been wearing various receding hairline model wigs for years before he gave up and started wearing a baseball cap.

[Bicyclerider]

" there was a lot of collaborating with people other than myself. I had literally nothing to do on anything on the Smile album, so naturally I was a little upset."

Suprised no one's mentioned this quote from the interview.  Very revealing of Mike's real feelings towards Smile, and this doesn't seem like a formulaic answer - don't remember him coming right out and admitting this before.  He was upset about Smile because he was cut out of the songwriting, that was why he was so negative towards the project and personally to Van Dyke.  Just like he's negative now to the TWGMTR project, although he had a lot more input into that album than Smile.