The Times article: The Beach Boys — yes, they’re back

[HeyJude]

Those snippets remind me just how delirious Mike was following Kokomo.  He was completely off his rocker with that ego. I think he finally came back down to earth by the mid 2000s. But man, he must have insufferable to work with in that time period.  No coincidence that post Kokomo is when the Al/Mike relationship really deteriorated.

Even in more recent years the degree to which Mike will attempt to overblow the success of "Kokomo" tends to wax and wane.

Very recently, he's back to pushing it as the band's ultimate success even harder. In one of the EPKs for the symphonic album, I believe it's there that he mentions something about "Kokomo" spending many weeks on the charts in Australia, clearly trying to side-step the short amount of time (was it a single week?) at #1 that it spent on the US charts.

He also explicitly calls "Kokomo" the band's most successful song/single in one of his new SiriusXM interviews. Obviously, measuring "most successful" is a pretty loaded issue and depends on how one is measuring. Wikipedia simply lists both GV and "Kokomo" as having platinum status. It's worth noting that GV hit #1 in the both the US and UK, while "Kokomo" only hit #25 in the UK. "Wipe Out" and "Lady Lynda" peaked higher than "Kokomo" in the UK. Safe to say perhaps that "Good Vibrations" had more widespread top chart success globally.

[The LEGENDARY OSD]

Not to mention in the Kokomo vs Good Vibrations department that at best, K is merely a "tune" that can't qualify as a classic. GV is a sonic masterpiece that will always go down as a legendary piece of game changing, influential, throw the book away genius. K was written by a talented member of another group which luHv and company changed a few things around. In fact, the two songs cannot sincerely be compared to one another on any level whatsoever.

[guitarfool2002]

Those snippets remind me just how delirious Mike was following Kokomo.  He was completely off his rocker with that ego. I think he finally came back down to earth by the mid 2000s. But man, he must have insufferable to work with in that time period.  No coincidence that post Kokomo is when the Al/Mike relationship really deteriorated.

One interesting facet of both the 1992 Goldmine interview and his 2018 Mojo interview, interviews that span *26 years*, is that in both interviews he paints Al Jardine as being unhappy and difficult to work with, yet Mike comes across precisely as unhappy (and/or disgruntled) and difficult in both of these interviews.

In particular, the 2018 Mojo interview features Mike calling Al "very unhappy" and therefore "very negative", and then proceeds in the same interview to talk s**t on other band members, and continue to complain about the "Love and Mercy" film soundtrack, and in recent years regularly still complain about the songwriting lawsuit that he *won* 24 years ago. More than any other band member (with the exception of the weird "bad days" Bruce has), it is Mike who often comes across as unhappy and negative.

To be clear, I do think Al could be difficult, especially in the 80s/early 90s timeframe. I've talked to many folks in and around the whole organization and folks who interviewed these guys over many years, and there was certainly a period of time where Al could be "difficult", kind of sour on stage, etc. I have little doubt there were times when he could have been difficult to work with. But that goes for ALL of the guys, and certainly it's hard to claim Al isn't pretty mellow and down to Earth and has dropped ego in favor of deference to Brian and Brian and the band's legacy in the last decade or two.

If there was bitterness perceived as coming from Al during this time period, it may well have been due to his issues with Mike's "leadership" of the band, specifically things like the dancers on stage and all that. Al had complaints about how the band was being presented, and to be honest, videos of the stage show from that era would seem to validate Al's complaints.

So what happened? Like any company with ego-driven bosses who just don't get it, they found excuses to justify shitcanning a long-time employee who rocked the boat too much, and proceeded to trash Al by name in interviews and even in legal documents for the next two decades.

[guitarfool2002]

Now, having said all of this, I don't have a problem with everyone making nice to promote the new symphonic album. If they can't stand to be in the same room together, they should be unified on the PR side, hopefully with more *archival* releases rather than the gimmicky symphonic project. But how they're promoting the symphonic album is a good model for how they could do so for a huge archive project as well. Yes, ideally we'd like to keep the revisionist, ego-pumping comments to a minimum and do something more like their attitude on projects like "Sunshine Tomorrow" where they eschew most of the hot-button stuff and just all celebrate how much they like the music.

What did Mike do in terms of promoting Sunshine Tomorrow last year? Did he project the cover on his giant video screen at his live shows or something?

I still remember the band doing that summer holiday concert broadcast in DC, and instead of getting in as much as a simple name-drop plug on that broadcast for the just-released 1967 set, he instead plugged his own solo "Do It Again" cover and tried to suggest it was a "Beach Boys" release when it was nothing of the sort. There was a blatant case, another in a long line of these happenings, of fans having real, authentic "Beach Boys" material available and the so-called standard bearer of the brand instead plugs his own material and suggests it's from "The Beach Boys".

It's fine to suggest they're all on the same page, in terms of signing off on various projects like the 67 set, but why doesn't Mike if he's the so-called "flag bearer" of the BB's brand name plug the release of real Beach Boys music to millions of potential fans instead of plugging his own new releases?

The answers should be obvious.

[MyDrKnowsItKeepsMeCalm]

What did Mike do in terms of promoting Sunshine Tomorrow last year? Did he project the cover on his giant video screen at his live shows or something?

At the BBs' NYC Beacon Theater show I went to last August, the video screens during the halftime intermission were chiefly promoting Mike's book (!) and maybe a few other odds and ends. No mention of Sunshine Tomorrow.

With the Sunshine Tomorrow set then only a month old -- and on the "Wild Honey Tour", for crying out loud! -- I thought the optics of that were quite disappointing at best.

[guitarfool2002]

What did Mike do in terms of promoting Sunshine Tomorrow last year? Did he project the cover on his giant video screen at his live shows or something?

At the BBs' NYC Beacon Theater show I went to last August, the video screens during the halftime intermission were chiefly promoting Mike's book (!) and maybe a few other odds and ends. No mention of Sunshine Tomorrow.

With the Sunshine Tomorrow set then only a month old -- and on the "Wild Honey Tour", for crying out loud! -- I thought the optics of that were quite disappointing at best.

That illustrates the point perfectly. It's disappointing but it's also indicative of the way things are. Mike uses the Beach Boys brand name to promote his own stuff over authentic Beach Boys music, music which was created by and features the original members. What makes it even more unbelievable is the 67 set features some truly great singing from Mike and classic lyric contributions from him as well, but the set also served to disprove and shatter mythology that came in part directly from Mike, which suggested for years that Brian was fried on drugs by the end of 67 and unable to contribute from his bed which he was in perpetually during that era.

What we got instead on the 67 set was a total refute of that kind of revisionism or outright nonsense, and fans were able to hear some creative and even unexpected music that would surprise both the fans who are of the Kokomo sort as well as the more invested and hard-core fan types...along with audio verite documentation of an involved Brian Wilson creating those tracks from the studio floor. Maybe Mike didn't want that authentic BB's material being promoted over his book and his Stamos-McGrath remake, new album kind of stuff.

Again, the reasons why all of this went down as it did should be obvious. 

[HeyJude]

In terms of the members all being on the same page for archival releases, I meant mainly by agreeing to the releases, presumably participating in the interviews for liner notes, etc. Mike did offer that level of support for "Sunshine Tomorrow."

Howie Edelson described doing new interviews with all of the guys for that set, and he mentioned that they all seemed enthusiastic and were all fondly remembering the "Wild Honey" album/era.

Presumably, this only translated to Mike using the vague "Wild Honey Tour" moniker for his 2017 tour dates, sprinkling a few WH tracks into his setlist, rather than actively pushing the "ST" set in concert, and then in short order he moved on to promoting his own album. I don't and never have agreed with the manner in which Mike promotes his solo stuff using/blurring the BB name. But that's how it is and nobody else at BRI appears to want to kick the hornet's nest on issues like that.

Jerry Schilling has been in there for just a little while and we saw some great archival releases last year, and as a branding/PR piece the symphonic album is just fine, so we'll probably see in the next couple of years how the long-term archive plan is going to shake out.

As I've mentioned elsewhere, it appears the symphonic album was Schilling's idea based on the similar Elvis album and his long-time connection to the Elvis camp. The reason that bodes well for the BBs is that it appears they can be amenable to Schilling's ideas. Let's hope his next set of ideas involves a larger archival program (hopefully not coincidentally similar to the Elvis "FTD" releases, etc.)

[HeyJude]

Aside from finding it kind of funny that Mike still uses a term like "hogwash", I think this bit from the new article is interesting:

What about the popular view that the Beach Boys, Love in particular, were threatened by and hostile to Wilson’s innovations? “Hogwash,” Love says, stridently. “It’s completely untrue. I used to call Brian ‘Dog Ears’ because he could hear sounds normal mortals couldn’t. I named the Pet Sounds album. Brian and I went in and played it to Capitol Records and they didn’t know what to do because it was such a departure. I’m known for my lead singing on California Girls and Fun, Fun, Fun, but one doesn’t participate in an album like Pet Sounds unless you believe in it.”

Reconcile *that* statement, that it's "hogwash" that Mike was "hostile" to Brian's work, to these 1992 comments from Mike concerning the PS album and "Hang on to Your Ego":

How about the case of Tony Asher writing Pet Sounds?

Now, that was a different story. When it got to that period of Brian's life that's when he started doing a lot of drugs. We were touring a lot and we'd come back in and do an album like Pet Sounds, for instance, and some of the words were so totally offensive to me that I wouldn't even sing 'em because I though it was too nauseating.

Was that "Hang On To Your Ego"?

Yeah. That was too much of a doper song to me. I just didn't want to have anything to do with it, therefore I didn't go down that road of acid and the things that destroyed Brian's brain. I didn't want to go that route. I'd still come to the sessions and I still wrote the words for "Good Vibrations" but I didn't participate in a lot of the stuff that was going on there, because I just didn't think the psychedelic route was the way to go.

[Bicyclerider]

mike's 1992 comments about "I just didn't want anything to do with it" are contradicted by the session tapes of Hang on to Your Ego.  I'm sure it's true he didn't like it and objected to the lyrics at some point, but you wouldn't know it based on the vocal session tapes.  He volunteers to sing Al's parts!