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

I thought Spiny Norman would have been the Spandau Ballet example? (Also Gary Kemp admits to being useless and only being able to play the bare minimum that Martin showed him.)

I was thinking about what would be the opposite of a Mike Love--as in, an individual who was not the main songwriter or creative force in a band, but who represented to many of the fans the true spirit of the band, and was sometimes pushing against the direction the "genius" leader wanted to take the band. I'm thinking maybe of one of the Stinsons in the Replacements.

Yeah, Bob Stinson. Or Brian Jones.

that's pretty close to the bez right?

Eddie Hazel sorta

Brian Jones was the genius leader in the early days of the Stones

sure...until he went bugfuck crazy

The anti-Mike Love of G'nR would be Izzy Stradlin.

Roxy Music was, and is, Ferry's band but all eyes, especially those of the Americans who saw Roxy on its late 72 US tour, were invariably fixed on the enticing, sinister, spangled and feathered vision at stage right that was Eno. The process of indentification / association was obvious and immediate. The whole band looked spectacular, but even so Eno stood out. You can't tell the players without a program or the leader without a bio, and audiences simply assumed that Eno was Roxy Music while Bryan pumped away at the opposite side, singing and sweating and getting as much recognition as a ventriloquist's dummy.

I was thinking about what would be the opposite of a Mike Love--as in, an individual who was not the main songwriter or creative force in a band, but who represented to many of the fans the true spirit of the band, and was sometimes pushing against the direction the "genius" leader wanted to take the band. I'm thinking maybe of one of the Stinsons in the Replacements.

― relentlessly pecking at peace (President Keyes), Saturday, May 24, 2014 5:13 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Lately, Richard Lloyd? Ppl vociferously wanting nothing to do with a TV sans him.

Lloyd is key when you realise how much of the parts on MM is him

Spiral Stairs? Bob Nastanovich?

I don't think Lloyd is a bad guy.

not a bad guy per se but the tone of his public statements has gotten more and more aggressively outspoken

i wasn't saying he's a mike love! just an example of the species president keyes was positing

Ozzy is an anti-Love as posited by Keyes. Probably the ideal anti-love.

I think an anti-Love would be like an Eno in Roxy, or John Cale in VU - a super-talented and well-respected member who pushed the band in experimental directions but was a bit of a thorn in the lead dude's side.

The "heart of the band" guy is something different - Stinson, Dee Dee, Bez...

Trying to work out how Mark E Smith fits into this, as the bad guy, the heart of the band and the main creative force all rolled into one.

xpost well Eno and Cale were major creative forces in their bands--the usual story of when there's more than one songwriter and somebody has to go (Lou Barlow, Jason Isbel, etc.)

I was thinking of someone who was not a major creative force, but was as loved/credited by fans as much Mike Love is hated/blamed by fans.

Anti-Love: Michael Nesmith

Some names that come to mind are ones from hit-making machines. Dennis DeYoung, Peter Cetera. Maybe Lou Gramm at one point with Foreigner. Steve Perry?

McCartney gets a bit of this hate from some quarters too maybe.

More than a bit, I'd say! It's a big inescapable part of the Beatles narrative that sort of forces you to take sides: was he the one hero holding things together when everybody else was too drugged out and angry to do anything, or was he the one in denial that shit was over who kept trying to force it to happen? I'm a huge Macca fan but still lean basically towards the latter.

This has now been covered pretty thoroughly but intheblanks is right that the enforcer is often the 'main' person, probably because the press/them have come to see the band as an extension of themselves. In some cases they might also be making a disproportionate share of the profits, I think? File under this slot all the bands that at one point claimed to be an inseparable unit, then at some point all of them were gone except the famous guy, with everybody else replaced by young, obedient hired guns. Some Everclear thread (?) touched on this recently re: Art Alexakis. But yeah - all that is distinct from Mike Love, somebody with no special claim to being a 'leader' of the band, who seized the role anyway as part of a longer-term campaign of maintaining the band-as-brand, band-as-corporation, band-as-empire.

Eric Idle is sooooooooooo oTM.

The group would lose something inessential yet distinct if the Mike Love were not there.
The group would lose something essential and gain a Jon Stamos if the oppositional force were to leave and the Mike Love were to remain.

― cwkiii, Friday, May 23, 2014 12:08 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^^^ getting kind of D&D rulebook here, I dig it.

Nesmith is the right kind of anti-Love for me: guy who leaves rather than follow whatever would enable the corporate vision to survive/triumph/reform, guy who contributes a number of important musical things to the band, but nothing that's ever essential to their sound, distinctive enough that some fans could side with him on everything, but not quite compelling enough in his own right that anyone could claim that his presence/absence makes or breaks the band.

Richard Lloyd is admittedly not well.

His wikipedia entry also seems to be self-written. I love it when people do that!

are Brian Jones and Syd Barret anti-Loves?

"Trying to work out how Mark E Smith fits into this, as the bad guy, the heart of the band and the main creative force all rolled into one."

Smith's like Zappa and Beefheart, he's the dictator/warlord.

James Brown would be another member of the dictator/warlord sect.

ROGER WATERS???

― i also enjoy in line skateing (spazzmatazz), Saturday, 24 May 2014 18:58 (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Roger Waters obv

― goth colouring book (anagram), Thursday, 22 May 2014 16:50 (4 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

gilmour is definitely the mike love of pink floyd. waters? fuck outta here

lol. op says "the ones who got shit done and kept things together". gilmour organized nothing in pink floyd.

as for waters, in 1967-8 he certainly had a "drug addict/mentally unstable/genius partner (who) derailed things endlessly but still got the glory"

I can think of someone so much like Mike Love in many ways outside of music: Stan Lee.

Sarah Palin

lol. op says "the ones who got shit done and kept things together". gilmour organized nothing in pink floyd.

In which era though? I thought he was sort of the singlehanded face of the brand following The Final Cut - kind of a classic case of a guy who wasn't really a creative leader, forcing the thing to keep moving and put out material and make big money. That's Mike Love, right?

Stan lee is worse than mike love imo

xp

In which era though? I thought he was sort of the singlehanded face of the brand following The Final Cut - kind of a classic case of a guy who wasn't really a creative leader, forcing the thing to keep moving and put out material and make big money. That's Mike Love, right?

― Doctor Casino, Tuesday, May 27, 2014 2:09 PM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otm, that's how i see it too

I don't recognize the post-Final Cut Floyd as Floyd but yeah ok

not familiar with comic book industry stuff....what's the basics on stan lee?

josh in chicago to thread lol

palin way off btw, she's a bez if politics has ever had one

not familiar with comic book industry stuff....what's the basics on stan lee?

― dollar rave club (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Tuesday, May 27, 2014 2:35 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Generally, that in developing his own legend as mister super-creative genius who whiz-bang created the Marvel Universe, he shortchanged his collaborators, particularly Steve Ditko and probably also Jack Kirby. There's a lot of varied opinion on this, mind you. See also Steve Ditko: Classic or Dud The Love-ness probably comes a lot with him just living forever and really making hay out of his media presence as a winking, lovable teenage senior-citizen - Nuff Said, True Believers!

Stan Lee seems to be a lot more genial than Love (in public at least, I don't really know enough about what went on behind the scenes at Marvel), he can actually pull off winking and lovable, though maybe I just think that because I've been aware of him since I was a kid?

Kind of wary of stepping into another classic era Marvel argument because they often go on forever. I think EC's Gaines/Feldstein/Kurtzman is the only other comparable argument in comics.

Stan Lee was a writer and editor at Marvel when their most famous characters and stories were coming out but he had more skill for hype and business, he really was the ultimate cheerleader. He made Marvel seem like a cool club and created a sort of fan loyalty and obsession that didn't exist for DC until quite a bit later (some fans got called "Marvel zombies", it would be funny if they created that comic title of the same name to dispel that insult).
He had a distinct cheery writing style but not many would ever call him a great writer; he kept adding all these cringeworthy elements to appeal to hip young people, including a word I'm sure Wild Honey era Beach Boys used a couple of times: "Outtasight!" (Other examples being repeated mentions of Harry Orborne's "Fu Manchu" moustache and Mary Jane's "ginchy" new haircut. Also Mary Jane referring to friends as "dad".
Stan Lee always confessed to having a terrible memory and it really shows, he would reuse plots, ideas, character names and even specific bits of dialogue as if he had forgotten he used them before. He even forgotten names of main characters and tended to use alliterative names to help him remember.

He taken credit as if he were the sole creator in most of his media appearances for a long time unless he was challenged about it (he even joked he would take credit for anything that wasn't nailed down). It taken a very long time for it to be common knowledge that people like Kirby and Ditko were the ones with way more creativity. Some have even referred to Lee as a mere "instigator" or "word balloon filler" of the main Marvel characters. Much like Mike Love, Lee fought against his collaborators less commercial tendencies: Ditko's critique of youth culture and student protest, Kirby's ideas of killing Thor in an Asgardian apocalypse, Gil Kane's "faggy"(according to Lee) looking characters. Many more examples exist.

Lee shamed Marvel for keeping movie money from him but he stood against the children of Kirby in court so they couldn't get money.

So many have remarked on how Lee charmed people so much that he could screw them over and they wouldn't resent it too much. There are accounts of Ditko and Kirby meeting Lee at separate times in the 90s where they hugged and (sort of)forgiven him for all the things they had criticized.

I haven't been able to get much info on how Stan Lee Media turned against Stan Lee but it sounds crazy.

The main difference between Mike Love and Stan Lee is that he wasn't a bully, he sort of smoothed over injustices as if there were none.
I'd agree that Lee turned Marvel into a multimedia phenomenon and that those characters wouldn't have survived for more than a decade without him but I don't think that would be a bad thing at all.

Bob Kane was way worse than Mike Love.

I'm surprised at how little has been written about Love's disowned son, but I saw a small documentary about it.

actually, one way in which Stan Lee is similar to Mike Love is that a 'can we be shown weirdos and Stan Lee' thread would probably be viable xp

http://37.media.tumblr.com/141159766357b498e2912be675de5f5c/tumblr_mw6fqmr8u61rfrzmko1_500.jpg

cool thanks guys that is enlightening wrt to Lee who as a very very casual comic/comic book movie fan i guess i thought was like "the man" of comics

if anyone (Robert?) feels like telling the Bob Kane story I'd be interested to hear it. And thanks for Stan Lee enlightenment.

Bob Kane is more of a Mike Love than Stan.

Stan lee and mike love are both horrible greedy egomaniacs I think its a good analogy

(some fans got called "Marvel zombies", it would be funny if they created that comic title of the same name to dispel that insult).

if?

http://img4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20091119155018/marveldatabase/images/8/88/Marvel_Zombies_2_Vol_1_1.jpg

Also Mary Jane referring to friends as "dad".

wtf lol