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

Johnny Ramone is a great guitarist

― Οὖτις, Friday, May 23, 2014 1:35 PM (28 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^jesus christ, on what planet. I think when you gotta bring in session guys to play your parts, you lose some cred.

I love the guitar on the Ramones records, esp the first one, but it's not "great" by any stretch.

xp not that I know of, it all sounds dee dee-ish to me though it wouldn't be the toughest thing to sound like dee dee

upper missisppi OTM about how he saw his role in the band - and that's where the most direct Mike Love comparisons work for Johnny, the vision of themselves as the straight hard-working money guy who just wants to tour for the fans and the bucks, but saddled with a beloved OCD weirdo genius who wouldn't make it on their own

it does what it needs to do, very well. sorry there aren't enough fiery solos for you. a great musician is someone who has command of his instrument, can make it achieve the desired effect, which Johnny definitely did.

but yeah brio and balls etc. all otm musically Johnny is not incidental to the Ramones, he IS the musical center of the Ramones.

xp

again - it's not so much about how great Johnny Ramone plays or Mike Love sings, those are subjective arguments outside the totally objective Mike Love taxonomy game. The Ramones narrative is not that he was a shitty player riding on the backs of his more talented bandmates. He's no Yngwie, that's not the point.

Disagree. And im not into firey solos chief. I just dont see anything really great about the guy.

xpost

Plus he was a fucking douche

not trying to be a jerk, i do like the ramones, at least i like the first 2 or 3 albums. Gets sketchy for me after that.

hahaha 'chief'

yeah but the thing is Ramones fans don't generally hate on Johnny because they think he can't play as well as the other Ramones whereas Beach Boys fans hate on Mike Love for being a lesser musician than the other Beach Boys. It's about being a weak link in relation to others' talents.

If you were going to go after Johnny on his musical contribution, I think a better argument would be that Dee Dee and Joey wrote all the songs.

I think just to remove any possibility that anyone else can meet the narrow criteria we should just also stipulate that the band member's name has to be "Mike Love"

or Lars! yeah maybe I have made restrictions too tight to be a Mike Love. It's an exclusive club.

xp
And I guess the other Johnny/Mike comparison is the idea that they were the anti-experimentation force in the band - the ones who wanted to keep the band on a fan-pleasing familiar track and play 200 shows a year. Mike lost that battle at least for a time, while Johnny won. Whether that was best for their bands is open to debate I guess.

hahaha 'chief'

― balls, Friday, May 23, 2014 2:21 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I gotta whole bunch of those: "sport", "coach", "junior"- im good like that.

without even trying, I imagine

Was it you who called somebody "Wapner" on another thread, Bill? That cracked me up.

yeah "nice try Wapner" lol

I heard Walter Lure plays some of the guitar parts on the Ramones' records for Johnny, is this true?

yo- Stevie Nicks is absolutely a Mike Love!!

i don't think it's any big secret Walter Lure and Ed Stasium and others (Daniel Rey maybe?) played bits and pieces on some of the shitty mid-late 80's stuff

yo- Stevie Nicks is absolutely a Mike Love!!

― i also enjoy in line skateing (spazzmatazz), Friday, May 23, 2014 1:49 PM (17 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

wuuut no way dogg

Stevie absolutely fits all the criteria listed above. Relative weak-link in the band, became the breakout star, and didn't humor Lindsey's whims after Tusk flopped. Similar to Axl too: in the mid-late 80s when she did only like two weeks on Tango in the Night…

Plays it safe for the money, discourages the OCD weirdo savant, and becomes the perceived leader/face of a band she joined nearly a decade already into its existence. She didn't do much but sing on the records even though she wrote her songs/the germs of her songs. Totally a Mike Love.

FWIW I love Stevie

there should probably be some kind of rule that Mike Loves would be incapable of a highly successful solo career like Stevie was

ugh phrased that poorly, incapable of the kind of solo career Stevie was capable of i mean

what about the cure dude? LOL! no, really, that's his name. LOL! no, really...

maybe he was a nice guy. i dunno. i just remember they kicked him out and he sued them and yet still plays with them sometimes? and he helped start the band. and didn't really know how to play keyboards...

(though i guess he was an okay drummer.)

Is Otis Williams a Mike Love?

hard to say. it doesn't seem like he wrestled control of the group from anybody, just outlived them.

I always got the impression he was the de facto leader and he was mostly behind Ruffin and Kendricks' exits although he was arguably the least talented. I don't think he necessarily perfectly fits the Love profile but he definitely has characteristics.

Feel like maybe, in the interests of creating a greater pool for discussion, that the most crucial criteria for being a Mike Love are:

1) Being the practical, get-shit-done force in a band that has an oppositional hard-to-manage or self-destructive "genius"
2) Having a demonstrable track record of being an asshole about it.

Don't want to water the definition down too much or anything; I feel like the sticking points from earlier were mainly the "talent"/"essential to the group" components, and if we table those criteria there are potentially far more candidates.

It's the super-rare Mike Love that is also not really that musically talented, a key songwriter, or a shaper of the group's sound.

Williams definitely fits criteria #1, not really sure if he had a rep for being an asshole tho.

How about Greg Norton? It seems like Mould and Hart get along now, but still dislike him.

It doesn't seem like he wrestled control of the group from anybody
Isn't the preferred expression "wrested control"?
/nitpick

More i read the definitions of a "mike love" the more I am adamant that Johnny ramone was the penultimate mike love.

sorry James Redd and the Blecchs

most people would just say yoko.

Whats Greg Norton actually done to be considered for this? He was notable in not getting involved in whatever was going on in the band

After all this time, Hart's recent jab at Norton comes off as total bullshit, to the extent where I begin to doubt the last 25 years of passive aggressive slanging matches with Mould

the next-to-the-last Mike Love

Link for grant dig at Greg?

Finally, what’s more likely: a Hüsker Dü reunion or a Bob Mould and Grant Hart collaboration album?

Well, the first one is intriguing, but not so likely. I like what Bob does, but sometimes two people have had such an impact on each other’s lives that they need 20 years to really stand back and be able to appreciate that. The third member of Hüsker Dü, Greg Norton, has in the past demonstrated a lack of respect for our time, and dare I say our talents. There were times when Bob and myself would show up at the office at 10, while Greg would turn up at the golf course at 11. We both had musical and artistic goals, whereas he had this band that contributed to his lifestyle, rather than the opposite way round. There were two possibilities for the bass-playing job when we started Hüsker Dü. Greg was technically the better choice, but it may have resulted a whole lot differently if Bob and I hadn’t had to share the frustration of working with him.

Love the use of middle-aged white collar guy terminology to the operations of 80s hardcore punk band Husker Du.

to describe the operations of, i mean

everything i've seen w/ the three of them has suggested that norton is by far the most laid back and would easily be the one it would be easiest to spend a lot of time around.

Jeez. Let me just say I highly doubt this is something grant has been bottling up for decades.

1) Being the practical, get-shit-done force in a band that has an oppositional hard-to-manage or self-destructive "genius"
2) Having a demonstrable track record of being an asshole about it.

while mike love does indeed have both of those qualities, i don't think that quite define what makes him "mike love."

i think it really boils down to this simple two-part criterion:

1a) assuming control of a group in which you are not a primary creative force, and
1b) exercising that control in a way that goes against the interests of the creative force

i think if you meet those two criteria, you'll automatically be perceived as (2) an asshole, (3) relatively untalented and (4) a practical get-shit-done dude. those things don't have to be stated, or even be true; they'll be assumed.

chris kirkpatrick of 'nsync is a good example of a guy who fits my 1a but not, as far as i know, my 1b.

greg norton strikes me as a guy who doesn't fit a single criteria that anyone has proposed in this thread.

like the quintessential mike love act was him firing brian wilson from the beach boys a couple of years ago

yes