The "bad guy" in the band: who are the other Mike Loves in music?

Truly insane Mel Lyman article by Kliph Nesteroff: http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2011/03/the-mel-lyman-personality-cult-revisited.html

plus, he wasn't the leader or lead force in the jug band but he had a lot of ideas about world domination. thus, he is mike love.

J Mascis in the 90s

cleese and idle

On March 19, 2010, Cheap Trick issued a statement that Carlos is not the current touring drummer for Cheap Trick but that he still remains a band member. Cheap Trick guitarist Rick Nielsen's son Daxx was named in the statement as the touring drummer.[3] Carlos had previously suffered from back problems, the recovery and treatment of which had caused him to miss portions of some Cheap Trick tours. However, Carlos has repeatedly stated that he is healthy. He has also stated that he hasn't heard from the band "in a couple years" and that "maybe we’ll kiss and make up".

In 2013, Carlos filed a lawsuit against his former bandmates, claiming that even though they claim that he is still a band member, he is not being allowed to participate in band-related activities, including recording a new album. The remaining three members of Cheap Trick filed a countersuit, seeking an official affirmation of their removal of Carlos. Their lawsuit was thrown out by a Delaware judge in late 2013. [4]

If he's missing road time because of his back, I could understand them wanting a more reliable drummer for tours. But apparently he's getting the total freeze out.

Some Tinted Windows jealousy up that, no doubt.

Glenn and Don as Evil Eagles Axis.

Bob Mould in Husker Du.

YES

Eazy Muthaphuckin' E

haha oh man totally

eazy e is a great call

so basically being the mike love of a band means being the band's resident republican, is that it?

they have to be relatively talent-less too imo

and kind of driven and bitter and charmless

but also crucial in some way to the band's history/success, such that you can't just be easily fired for being a dick.

yeah - best Mike Loves would be people you could make a Peter Bagge-style argument for their importance, but they remain relatively unloved if not hated by the stans

Yeah, like if Wayne Coyne is right and Kliph Scurlock is one of the most hateful assholes alive, he's still not a Mike Love.

Is Doug Yule a Mike Love?

Or is that a different beast altogether?

they have to be relatively talent-less too imo

that would disqualify virtually everyone who's been named in this thread so far.

yule is underrated!!

I think key term is relatively…Mike Love isn't THAT untalented, but compared to the rest of the Beach Boys, it's no contest.

Which is why Eazy E is such a great example.

I feel like the thing that makes Yule potentially qualify is mainly Squeeze. Without that record, he'd probably be a lot less hated, and also loom a little less large in the band's history.

i always thought of Buddy Miles as having this kind of role in Jimi Hendrix's post-Experience career, never really cared for the influence he seemed to have on Jimi's musical direction or the way he came off in interviews

xposts

hmmm good question - he does get a lot of hate from VU fans, and seems like a bit of a workhorse but doesn't really seem like he has the ego to be a Mike Love, and I don't think he had enough presence for anyone to think he was a dick or uncharismatic. If anything he seems subsumed into Lou, not a rival.

generally Mike Loves had the thankless job of hauling a beloved lunatic self-sabotaging genius around while trying to make bank - and end up totally resenting their meal ticket. I think Yule

cuz: the "relatively" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in "relatively untalented"... also I think it's more about fan perceptions and the narratives around bands than whether these people could actually play and sing

Mike Love isn't THAT untalented, but compared to the rest of the Beach Boys, it's no contest.

not trying to be, um, the mike love of this thread, but really? compared to dennis wilson? compared to al jardine?

Ray Manzarek seemed to develop a kind of Mike Love vibe as the decades of post-Morrison Doors activity dragged on

yeah, maybe 'no contest' is overstating it. I also really like Pacific Ocean Blue, so that's maybe influencing me.

also I think it's more about fan perceptions and the narratives around bands than whether these people could actually play and sing

that makes more sense to me -- with the stipulation that fan perceptions and narratives are not the world's most reliable things.

compared to dennis wilson?

them's fightin words

(Al could play guitar, and wrote a bunch of songs by himself. Mike could barely sqwawk on the saxophone, and never composed any music whatsoever)

mike was a great singer (i liked both brian and carl more, but that doesn't take away from mike's greatness for me in that department), and he composed a whole bunch of lyrics, some of which i like quite a bit.

but yeah I agree about the narratives thing (I also think the narrative about the BBs is mostly correct, altho Bagge makes some interesting devil's advocate sorta points)

xp

yeah the Peter Bagge pushback on fan perceptions and championing of the genius-child figures in bands is key - especially the idea that without the driven bitter dick you'd have a bunch of flakes who fell apart, which is a pretty convincing pro-Johnny Ramone argument as well

but doesn't make them less dicks or necessarily mean they had to be dicks about it

xp I like the idea of Manzarek as a Mike Love with the Ghost of Jim Morrison as his Brian.

Or maybe people who thought Manzarek's activities seemed silly and kind of pathetic were the Brian, I don't know.

Dennis Wilson's Pacific Ocean Blue does not inspire confidence (he wasn't a "bad guy" though, just a fuck up).

brio, if you really want to go down the lyman rabbit hole

Nobody's mentioned Noel Gallagher?

Byrne, Wareham are principal songwriters & musicians - something Mike Love never was. Feel like anybody who is that much of a creative leader of the band doesn't really qualify.

― Οὖτις, Thursday, May 22, 2014 6:06 PM (Yesterday)

Yes, this. Come on guys, you can't go around naming the MAIN DUDES from a band, even if they are dicks. The point about being a Mike Love is that you totally are not the main dude but you (attempt to) co-opt the band for your own purposes at some point.

cleese and idle

No wai, Cleese is merely a dude with opinions about his own work, Idle is a grasping cunt who repeatedly tramples the others in his quest for props and money, and actively fucked over Innes again and again (also funny, main m/s on the books, one most responsible for keeping the name an ongoing concern, etc – a total Mike Love package)

Eazy Muthaphuckin' E

I blame that manager feller.

That Solar dude who controlled Guru in his final days

"Definitely fans of early- to mid-period Wilco and Jay Bennett partisans viewed Tweedy as a Mike Love-figure."

Yeah and there was also this bit of weird nugget out there on the end of Uncle Tupelo from a former thread.

Jay Farrar on Uncle Tupelo split

Farrar does not necessarily disagree with all that, but has his own (juicier) side to contribute to history. In the lengthy Relix interview, Farrar tells journalist Antony DeCurtis that things started to unravel after he saw Tweedy stroke the hair of his girlfriend of seven years, Monica Groth (now his wife), as she was sleeping. "I found out later that he was telling her stuff, like, he loves her," says Farrar, who attempted to quit the band the next day. Tweedy was devastated. "[Tweedy's] parents called mine and said that Jeff 'wanted to be me.' I struggled with that...Then every other day for about a week he would call. After a week of sitting around with no prospects, I decided to continue."

Farrar departed the band for good in January 1994. Before leaving Tupelo, he met with Tweedy for another major confrontation. Farrar explains, "When I spoke to him about why I was quitting I basically laid it out for him. I told him that the dynamic had changed and that it wasn't fun for me anymore...His response was to call me a 'pussy.'"

Farrar's story definitely adds a different dynamic to Uncle Tupelo's end, which is what he hoped to accomplish upon ending his silence in the Relix interview. "One misconception that I find difficult to absorb is Jeff's portrayal of himself as a victim, which I find to be absurd," says Farrar. "There were steps we could have taken to have a better relationship and a better understanding. It could have happened. But it didn't."

The guy that should probably own this thread is Phil Anselmo.

Professor Griff. Minister of worthless ignorance.

Richie Blackmore.

I blame that manager feller.

― rage against martin sheen (sic), Thursday, May 22, 2014 5:23 PM Bookmark

Naw, Heller was an bastard but he was Eazy's bastard. Without Eazy there's no Heller and I've always gotten the impression that Eazy was always in on Heller's schemes and vice versa. Then again, I haven't read Heller's autobio but fuck that.

Lars.

I assume Eazy went along with Heller's schemes rather than v/v, but I just wanted to ref the line

Professor Griff. Minister of worthless ignorance.

He never attempted to exert any influence over the band in any way that we know of though. Plus Pawns In The Game is p good

If we're talking CSNY, I don't see how it can be anyone but Neil Young. The occasionally continued existence of the group is entirely at the mercy of Neil's whims.