Profile of Mike Love on Famous Like Me

Mike Love (born March 15, 1941 in Los Angeles, California) is an American singer and songwriter who was one of the lead singers and lyrical composers of The Beach Boys, along with Brian Wilson, Carl Wilson, Dennis Wilson, and a school friend Al Jardine. Mike Love is first cousin to the Wilson brothers.

Role in The Beach Boys

Love was the lead vocalist for many of the early Beach Boys hits, including "Surfin'", "409", "Surfin' Safari", "Surfin' USA", "Little Deuce Coupe", "Fun Fun Fun", "Be True To Your School", "Little Saint Nick", "When I Grow Up To Be A Man", "I Get Around", and "California Girls". His role as lead vocalist subsequently diminished, but included sections of Pet Sounds (including the bridge of "Wouldn't It Be Nice") and the hit "Do It Again". Onstage, Love has always served as the Beach Boys' "MC".

Love also wrote or co-wrote many of the Beach Boys hit lyrics, mostly for songs with the themes of surfing and love; the band's early car song lyrics were generally by Gary Usher or Roger Christian, although a lawsuit established Mike's composing credits on many of the (those?) hits.

In the late Sixties, as founder Brian Wilson was sidelined by mental illness and drug problems, Love played an increasingly contentious role in the Beach Boys career, and rightly or wrongly, he has often been identified as one of the "villains" in the band's story.

Partly in response to the band's concerns, articulated by Mike, Brian began writing songs that were easier to perform live, which turned up on the late 1967 album Wild Honey, which would be the last Beach Boys album with Brian dominating the songwriting until the mid-1970s.

Despite his conservatism in other areas, Love was one of the first pop musicians to become involved in the practice of Transcendental Meditation, through his meeting with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and as a result he accompanied The Beatles and Donovan on their famous trip to the self-styled guru's ashram at Rishikesh in India in early 1968. Love has been a lifelong advocate of the benefits of TM and contributed a song on the subject to the Beach Boys' 1968 album Friends.

In the late sixties, with Brian no longer touring, Carl Wilson took over leadership of the band (with contracts reading that venues hired "Carl Wilson plus four other musicians"), but by the early 80s, Love grew to increasingly dominate the band, who fell in line with his desire to play the early 60s hits and record new material dealing with similar lyrical subjects.

While Love has sometimes been perceived as a negative force in the Beach Boys creatively, there is no doubt that he has on occasion exhibited sound commercial instincts, as for example on his co-writing and singing lead on the 1988 US number one hit "Kokomo", the only number one the band had that wasn't co-written by Wilson.

After the death of Carl Wilson in 1998 the Beach Boys split up, and Love took over the name, touring with no other original members but with longtime member Bruce Johnston and various musicians formerly of tribute bands.

The Beach Boys were the introductory act in the televised 2005 Fourth of July celebration on the grounds in front of the United States Capitol. The Beach Boys performance featured five hits originally sung by Love and was their first Fourth of July appearance there since 1985. While detractors criticize Love for carrying on The Beach Boys name, supporters point to shows such as this as evidence of Mike Love's dedication to the millions of people who love the hit music of The Beach Boys.

Pet Sounds/Smile controversies

Probably motivated in part by anxiety over his replacement as Wilson's writing partner (as Wilson increasingly relied on Pet Sound lyricist Asher and, later, SMiLE collaborator Van Dyke Parks), Love became increasingly hostile towards Wilson and his new material between late 1965 and early 1967, a period that critics and fans now widely acknowledged as the most creative phase of Wilson's career.

He reportedly led the group's opposition to the Pet Sounds material and particularly objected to the song "Hang On To Your Ego", which, at his insistence, was partly re-written and re-titled; it was eventually released as "I Know There's An Answer". However, at this stage Brian Wilson still held sufficient sway to overrule his opponents and the album was completed more or less as Brian had intended. Although Love clearly had a strong personal dislike for Parks' writing he has often said that he was concerned that the band risked losing popularity by abandoning their successful formula.

Another factor that is likely to have influenced Love's views is that, while Brian had withdrawn from touring in late 1964, Love and his bandmates had to perform Brian's increasingly complex music on stage. There is no doubt that Brian's rapid musical development placed the group in an increasingly difficult position, since they were being asked to perform material that, in the case of "Good Vibrations" Brian had recorded over a period of many months using the best musicians available. While the Beach Boys were of course equal to the task as vocalists, Brian's intricate arrangements were becoming all but impossible for them to perform as a five-piece band.

Love's trenchant opposition to Wilson's new direction came to a head over the songs they were recording for their follow-up to Pet Sounds, the legendary SMiLE album, which was begun in mid-1966 but was eventually shelved in mid-1967. Some who have listened to Smiley Smile, the album that was released after Pet Sounds, concur that Love's pleas to Brian to "not fuck with the formula" made plenty of sense.

Love is reported to have vehemently objected to Parks' oblique lyrics, reserving particular scorn for the song "Cabinessence". During a heated argument at a recording session, Love demanded that Parks explain the song's meaning; Parks demurred and walked out; some few weeks later he officially terminated his partnership with Wilson, effectively scuttling the album only weeks before its scheduled release.

Many critics feel that Love's dogged opposition to Smile was the major reason that Brian finally abandoned it, and that his opposition was motivated in part by professional jealousy, as well as the fear that Wilson's departure from the Beach Boys' proven formula would cause them to lose ground. In a 2004 interview with Mojo magazine, Love argued that he was not opposed to Smile, as claimed, and that he liked and respected Parks' work, but this claim was strongly denied by Parks himself, who wrote to the magazine to protest at what he described as Love's "revisionism" and stated unequivocally that Love's hostility to Smile was indeed the chief reason why the project was shelved.

Love wrote some of the lyrics of their famous 1966 single "Good Vibrations", although the song also has an earlier set of lyrics written by Wilson's main Pet Sounds collaborator, Tony Asher, which Wilson restored on the 2004 SMiLE version.

Legal controversies

In the late 1990s Brian Wilson went to court to regain his rights to the publishing company, Sea of Tunes, which owned the copyrights to most of the Beach Boys' hit songs. The suit stemmed from Wilson's forced decision to sign over his publishing rights to his father Murry Wilson in 1969, but when the suit came to court it was found that the contract Wilson had signed was not valid because of the mental problems he was suffering from at the time. (It was even suggested that Murry had signed his son's name on the document.) Wilson failed to regain the copyrights, but won a $25 million settlement.

Following Wilson's win, Love launched his own lawsuit, claiming that he had made significant writing contributions to many Beach Boys songs, including two titles on Pet Sounds and "California Girls", and never received due credit (or the accompanying royalties). Love won the case, due in no small part to Brian's statements that Mike's assertions were correct. As a result, he was granted $13 million of Wilson's award, and his name was retrospectively added to the writing credits on all subsequent releases of those songs. (Love and Wilson reportedly had no malice toward each other in the lawsuit; unable to come to terms, they resorted to going to court to settle matters.)

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