Mike Love talks Beach Boys, Jimmy Buffett, jamming with Jimmy Page
Would you rather be known as a singer or songwriter? A solid interview question for a wide spectrum of musicians, but one that takes on some complexity when posed to Mike Love.
Love is widely known as the face, frontman and a primary vocalist in The Beach Boys, one of America’s most legendary and influential pop groups. But he also cowrote more of The Beach Boys’ best songs – including “Good Vibrations,” “California Girls” and many others – than people often credit him for.
One explanation for this misconception is Brian Wilson — Love’s cousin and Beach Boys bassist, singer, cofounder and sometimes recluse — is widely heralded as a studio genius.
Wilson’s arrangement prowess is unassailable. Even if he wasn’t the record producer for “Pet Sounds,” the brilliant 1966 Beach Boys album that directly influenced the seismic 1967 Beatles album “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.”
“I guess I have been known as a singer more than a songwriter,” Love says during our recent phone interview. He believes there’s a bigger reason besides Brian’s mastermind rep.
“That’s because my uncle Murry [Wilson, early Beach Boys manager and father of Love’s cousins and classic era bandmates Brian, Carl and Dennis Wilson] decided to not put my name on the contracts for ‘California Girls,’ ‘Help Me, Rhonda,’ and ‘Be True to Your School’ and ‘Surfin’ U.S.A.’”
Love gives a good-natured laugh. Then he continues, “He [Murry Wilson] cheated me, so my role as songwriter hasn’t been 100 percent properly known.”
Love is a longtime transcendental meditation enthusiast and way more laidback than he’s sometimes been depicted in media coverage. When we chat, Love sounds appreciative the person who’d best know what he meant to Beach Boys songs gives him props.
“My cousin Brian,” Love says, “when asked, ‘What is the success of The Beach Boys due to?’ He says, ‘Mike Love’s lead with our harmonies behind him.’ And that was pretty neat.” The studio musician collective known as The Wrecking Crew contributed significantly to many now-essential Beach Boys recordings, too.
The best music is magic and eternal. The magic of Beach Boys music is transportation and elevation. A song like 1964′s “I Get Around” distills youth experience into three minutes of sun-kissed radio perfection still right-on nearly 60 years later. Even listeners who’ve never been to the Pacific Coast are taken there by listening to the lush vocals of early Beach Boys essentials like “California Girls” and “Surfin’ U.S.A.”
Young adulthood wistfulness has never been articulated better in song than mid/late ‘60s Beach Boys standouts like “Wouldn’t It Be Nice.” Even if you’re not a huge fan of the group, if you enjoy happiness chances are you like at least one Beach Boys song. One of their greatest tracks is even named “Fun, Fun, Fun.”
As with any artist with a clear prime, later solid Beach Boys recordings are underappreciated, including moody 1972 LP “Surf’s Up.” The 2022 boxset “Sail On, Sailor” excavates lesser known gems released between ‘72 and ‘73.
The group’s breezy 1988 chart-topper “Kokomo” — which Love cowrote with Mamas and the Pappas singer John Phillips, Byrds producer (and pre Roman Polanski/Sharon Tate 10050 Cielo Drive resident) Terry Melcher, and Scott McKenzie, known for quintessential hippie hit “San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)” – has aged better than expected.
Formed in 1961 Hawthorne, California (about 40 minutes southwest of downtown Los Angeles), The Beach Boys have at least 36 U.S. top 40 hits to their credit. The group’s original lineup consisted of Love, Brian, Carl, and Dennis Wilson, their friend Al Jardine and neighbor David Marks.
Like most half-century-plus endeavors, the Beach Boys lineup has seen changes over the years. On the current tour, including concerts at Huntsville, Alabama’s Von Braun Center 7:30 tonight and Birmingham’s Alabama Theatre Thursday, the lineup features: Love, longtime member Bruce Johnston, musical director Brian Eichenberger, Love’s son Christian Love, Tim Bonhomme, Jon Bolton, Keith Hubacher, Randy Leago and John Wedemeyer.
[RELATED: John Stamos talks Beach Boys, haircuts, ‘Full House’]
Actor, musician, “Full House” hottie and longtime Beach Boys associate John Stamos occasionally pops up onstage with the touring band. A full list of tour dates and more info at thebeachboys.com.
Love, now 82, is in an excellent mood when he calls in for this interview from his Lake Tahoe area home. Edited excerpts below.
The early Beach Boys songs were hits when my parents were young people and “Kokomo” came out when I was a teenager. Not many groups are able to have big hits more than 20 years apart. Mike, was the success of “Kokomo” sweeter to you than the Beach Boys early hits?
Mike Love: Well, I mean, well it would be hard to say that that wasn’t phenomenal in the ‘60s. But it was fantastic to be able to do a song [’Kokomo” decades later] and have it go to number one … Actually, in Australia it was number one for eight weeks, which is amazing.
And [Australia] that’s where Margot Robbie, the star of “Barbie” was born in 1990, two years after “Kokomo” was number one for that long. And she used to be obsessed with the Beach Boys, she’s said in various interviews and stuff. So that’s pretty remarkable that “Kokomo” would appeal to someone of that age group, and yet the fans who are my age plus or minus 10 years are completely into and familiar with all the stuff we did in the ‘60s. That’s two enormous wins for us, I think. And so, one’s not better, no — they’re just both great.
There’s a great recently posted photo on your Instagram account of you onstage singing while fist-bumping a young fan who’s near the front of the stage and singing along. What’s that like, having music that will not just outlive you but outlive a lot of folks.
I guess Chuck Berry would say, “Roll Over, Beethoven.” [Laughs] You know, it’s a miracle. It’s a family hobby, singing and harmonizing together, which by virtue of my cousin Brian and I being about a year in age and growing up together and listening to and loving the same music, whether it be doowop, the Four Freshman or … The Everly Brothers in particular we used to sing harmonies to Everly Brothers songs. They had a great blend and great songs. The doowop genre was fantastic because it had the high part which Brian would sing and the lead and the bass part which I liked doing.
And Chuck Berry was a tremendous influence with his hooks and alliteration and the way he wrote the wrote his lyrics and sang them. He did these little stories which got us thinking about, well, let’s do our stories about you know, the Beach in California and surfing and all that kind of the environmental stuff that gave rise to their first subject matter.
But then, as we grew a little older, you know, we got a little more introspective. “In My Room” was a harbinger of that and then the “Pet Sounds” album and things like that was definitely a departure.
“Good Vibrations,” there was done by a psychologist in England recently, in the last few months, that said, out of all the songs that he tested to see which songs made people the happiest and “Good Vibrations” came in at number one. There was a Bob Marley song and Earth, Wind & Fire in the top 10m and “I Get Around” was seven. So, it’s pretty phenomenal that our music even in these days, these times, resonates so beautifully with so many people.
Jimmy Buffett recently passed away. Mike, did you feel a camaraderie with Jimmy Buffett, since a lot of his songs, like yours, are beachy?
Oh, for sure. Matter of fact, in 2018 we did a show called the Capitol Fourth on July 4 in Washington DC. John Stamos was hosting it and he was playing drums. And when we were singing “Kokomo” Jimmy ran out barefoot and did the second verse with us. We had a complete blast with him, and we’ve known him for many years. Nobody’s been more successful than he has and in creating a lifestyle and so on and so forth.
We miss him. I was hopeful that we do some touring – that would’ve been phenomenal. He once did our song “Sail On, Sailor.” So, we really had a great rapport with him. Cosmologically speaking, we’re in this similar zone, you know, with creating good vibrations and an upbeat look at life through our music.
In addition to doing Beach Boys hits and classics, in concert your group does a few cover songs. Those include the Ramones song “Rockaway Beach,” and that made me smile. I always thought “Rockaway Beach” was a great tribute to your music with the Beach Boys.
Oh yeah. Well, they did “Surfin’ Safari” and they were big Beach Boys fans as well as Jan & Dean fans. You know that punky thing they did, “Rockaway Beach” really kicks ass. I mean, it’s fantastic and I really love doing it because there’s so much energy too it.
Speaking of energy, I wanted to ask you about Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page guesting with the Beach Boys for a couple shows in 1985 in Philadelphia and Washington. It’s really fun to watch the clips of him playing guitar and doing solos with your band, including on “Surfin’ U.S.A.” and Little Richard’s song “Lucille.” Do you have any memories from jamming onstage with Jimmy Page?
Definitely. Back then it was like a Martian landed on stage, with Jimmy Page playing the guitar. [Laughs] And it was pretty amazing, it really was. He was great.
We had a rehearsal the day before, and he was quite the character that guy, but what a brilliant guitarist. He was a session guitarist before he became famous for what he did with Led Zeppelin and all that. So yeah, phenomenal talent. And like I said, it was like a Martian landed on stage or something — it was so unreal, but great at the same time.
Of all the Beach Boys classics you had a hand in writing, Mike, which are your proudest of and happy with how it’s endured?
“Good Vibrations,” definitely. That song was avant-garde for its time and is still avant-garde and has created so much joy and happiness and positively. It makes people feel good.
“Good Vibrations,” you know, I wrote every syllable of that song. And my cousin Brian did the brilliant track. My cousin Carl sang the verses, and I came up with the chorus: [sings] “I’m picking up good vibrations. She’s giving me excitations …” It was unique and like a psychedelic anthem for its time, but it was ahead of his time, for its time, and is still timely.
Earlier you mentioned your cousin Brian. When you and Brian Wilson speak these days is it mostly about Beach Boys business or about growing up together?
We don’t talk about business. We talk about old times and what we did back in the day in high school and what have you. In fact, we did a filming for a documentary that’s being put together on the Beach Boys, and David Marks and Al Jardine, Brian and myself and Bruce [Johnston] got together.
Brian really remembered some remarkable things about our growing up together and things we experienced. And we even did a little bit of acapella singing together on the beach at Paradise Cove, where the first album cover with our Pendleton woolen shirts on that little old truck that they had on the sand. And so yeah, it was a really, really nice reunion. We had a great time.
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