My take on Mike vs Brian

Quote from: petsite on June 17, 2015, 11:48:15 AM

And yes, there were people, including some in Brian's own family, who were calling Melinda "Mel-Landy". Ginger Blake even said the life that Brian was living with Melinda was "the surrendered Brian Wilson" that had grown complacent. Mike Love told Don Was, which Was repeated, that if Brian was off his meds, the would write better songs. So everyone has an angle. Its so sad, but that is how business runs. Look at the history of CCR and you will see brother against brother. It happens.

And consider those angles too. After a divorce, actually it would have been over a decade at least after the divorce, can anyone reasonably expect a friend or relative to have good things to say about a new relationship? Feelings are still raw, the negativity of the whole thing still colors opinions and forms biases against people, it's a part of everyday life and something that happens in nearly every case of divorce or even a relationship gone bad for whatever reason. It's not positive, and that comes out. In this case, consider too how much contact she actually had with Brian in the intervening years. Weigh the words and opinions with that.

As for the Mike comment, what screams out to me at least is look at the conditions being set up or implied. So Brian was writing with Mike, he was writing for the Beach Boys, they had Don Was ready to pull it together in the studio, they even had a handful of original songs and collaborations that some of these participants seemed excited about...

But Mike thought they weren't good enough, or he could be doing better songs? I won't even get into the reason he gave, but look at that kind of opinion at face value. They wanted Brian back working with the band, he was willing and able and did. Mike wanted to write songs with Brian, they wrote songs together as soon as the lawsuit cleared up. They wanted material for a new album, if you believe Don Was (and I have no reason not to) they had a supply of up to 40 songs to choose from, and we have a few that we can hear were worked up in the studio. Carl vetoed Soul Searchin, that we know. But how about the other 3 dozen on hand and whatever Mike and Brian were writing together at that time?

But now it's an issue of quality? So it wasn't Brian's participation, it wasn't his willingness to participate, it didn't involve him wanting to work with the Beach Boys on new music because he got involved in doing just that...

...instead it's the quality of the songs and songwriting? Is it just me that sees more than a few issues revolving around that? For one, it paints a different picture to say the songs Brian and Mike were writing didn't meet whatever standards of "quality" seem to have been in place than it does to find other reasons why they didn't write together much after that. Not to mention the fact the Beach Boys basically were in ruins after 1998 in several ways.

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