Notable quotes from a recent Bruce Johnston interview:

You know, I hope I’m a nostalgia merchant... I would say that Disney World is a nostalgia merchant. And they do a great job. I hope we do as good a job as they do.

Frankly, you can’t have the Beach Boys turning into the Ink Spots, or those guys from the ‘40s with about five bands using the name. It confuses the marketplace.

I think as an exercise in keeping him occupied, (Brian Wilson Presents SMiLE) is interesting... A lot of things could have happened, but they didn’t. And then they dust him off and roll him back out.

I talk to him every once in a while. But I’m never going to tell him that I’ll take “Pet Sounds” over what he’s doing now.

Without Mike Love, the Beach Boys would have never gotten this far. Brian’s absolutely brilliant, no doubt about it, but Mike kind of kept the groove going. He put the commercial sauce on stuff. It’s like you buy a really cool car and have it delivered to the dealership, but they detail it before you get it.

-- Mike Love gets the baddest rap, next to Hitler, I’ve ever seen. Hitler deserves it. Mike doesn’t.

There are guys like (author) David Leaf, who’ve spent years trashing Mike, and they’re partially successful in the world of minutia. But as far as the big picture goes, there’s that guy struttin’ the stage, singing these nasal, wonderful leads to songs he wrote, all these years later ... take Brian solo, Al solo or me solo, it’s just not gonna happen. But put Mike out there with Beach Boy music — and me, or Al or somebody — and it’s gonna do really great.