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

or maybe U2 is just mike love: the band

Robbie Robertson, Gene Simmons, Eddie Van Halen

there's an interesting KISS article in a recent Rolling Stone in which Ace & Peter suggest Paul is the actual evil mastermind in Kiss ala Dick Cheney.

a la Keyser Soze, the limp being his guitar playing

wow, would take some doing to secretly be a bigger dick than gene simmons.

RZA, according to Raekwon, but to me it goes both ways.

George Clinton, kinda - self-professed non musician, ringleader, notorious business manager. altho he seems way more lovable and fun than Mike Love and actually had great ideas.

I can see how maybe Paul Stanley is only a dick within the band, whereas Simmons is a dick throughout the rest of the world.

Fogerty

don't think this is right, given that he wrote literally all the music

xps: Were Bootsy Collins and Maceo Parker all like, "I can't believe how badly George screwed up the band"?

I really don't know much about PFunk history.

It's the bullying of more fragile members that sets Mike Love and Johnny Ramone apart. Really vile behaviour.

lol at the suggestion that John Fogerty was a cold-hearted businessman. If only.

iirc, Stu and Doug had been hounding Fogerty about having more creative input. So Fogerty called their bluff and said, fine, each of you write a third of the new album. They complained about being forced to do that, the songs sucked, and that was the end of CCR.

re: Bootsy and Maceo - there were definitely serious fights about money and credits and publishing, not so much creatively I don't think.

yup Tarfumes is right. end of CCR is so sad.

http://www.depeche-mode.ru/media/photos/depechemode_010.jpg

Wayne Coyne

Btw, I recommend reading Johnny Ramone's memoir Commando if you want some insight into the mind of a total shit. The lack of self-awareness is so complete that he doesn't cover up any of his awful behaviour. He's proud of it.

the only non-JF post-CCR song i enjoy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8-pbsXBe24

http://i1222.photobucket.com/albums/dd488/sallylu1/harrisonband.png

and it ain't that great...

fyi: this is not a good album.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/a4/Doug-clifford-solo-album-cover.jpg

Lars Ulrich.

Doesn't everybody seem to hate on Bob Weir in the G.Dead threads?

bob is good cuz he is arguably the least talented member and he had a lot of the input and was the vocal presence on so much. a la mike.

but he seems like a nice enough guy?

I dont think Weir was one of the "keeping it together" guys, in fact he got canned a couple times in the early days for pinheaded behavior. He wrote some great songs, but he wasnt any kind of leader of that crew.

crosby
http://www.jmeshel.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/david-crosby-birthday-august-14-c.jpg

Most hated person by far in Deadhead fan circles is Donna.

Crosby owns this thread. Along with Robertson.

Btw, I recommend reading Johnny Ramone's memoir Commando if you want some insight into the mind of a total shit. The lack of self-awareness is so complete that he doesn't cover up any of his awful behaviour. He's proud of it.

― What is wrong with songs? Absolutely nothing. Songs are great. (DL), Thursday, May 22, 2014 10:39 AM (43 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Dee Dee didn't really represent himself very well in his books either.

both johnny and deedee's books come across, at least partly, as schtick.

i only have a problem with mike love when i have to see pictures/video footage of him. and all the latter-day awful live cheerleading he did with john friggin' stamos or whoever. he just LOOKS like such a jerk. but he has never lessened my enjoyment of the beach boys. i don't really pay too close attention to who does what on their albums. or even who is singing. bob weir has definitely lessened my enjoyment of the dead. i like some of his songs but most of them are nowhere near as good as hunter/garcia stuff and his voice has always been really annoying/not great. but, like i said, he seems like an okay guy. jerry always thought he was a great "original" rhythm guitarist but i think they could have almost any good guitarist playing with them and if anything they would have sounded better if someone else had been playing. i definitely think bob was the sloppy x factor.

that woman in bardo pond is kinda my donna & bob rolled up into one hippie with a flute. can't listen to that band because of her and i really like them otherwise! she ruins the experience for me. they totally would have been one of my favorite jam bands if she wasn't in the band. sad, i know. or mean. she's probably really nice. that violin though....ugh...

DON: A lot of critics, they think Glenn and I are "bad guys" *makes scare quoes with fingers*. But really if a band is a car, two guys gotta sit in the front. Those two guys in the Eagles are Glenn and myself. It would've have worked any other way.

GLENN: If two chicks had sat in the front seat, I an think of several ways we could work it.

DON: Well, yeah.

it's complicated in that he is also sort of the protagonist, but everybody else from Talking Heads sure seems to dislike David Byrne

Dean Wareham in Galaxie 500? Though I find him kind of likable these days.

great eagles quote. frey really pitches in to lift henley's prickishness to another level there.

what are the counter-examples, the good guys in bands of dicks? I always think of Gene Clark as the good guy of the byrds, but that's probably just because i like his stuff the most. maybe he was a dick too.

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.

First: that Mike Love article is incredible.

I'm curious how many other examples there are where the dynamics play out like this--with the guy who handles the business of the band and is the asshole enforcer. A lot of times it is the main guy in the band--the David Byrne example, Jeff Tweedy kicking Jay Bennett out of Wilco by saying "a circle can have only one center," and then turning over the a huge chunk of his band's "personnel" 6-7 years into their existence.

I don't think anyone in Slint or the music-loving public at large considers him an asshole on any level, but Brian McMahan plays a role like this in Slint. The Spiderland 33 1/3 book basically paints him as an intense perfectionist that picked apart each component of their music obsessively until it met a certain standard of quality. But he's not necessarily the one with the chops or the ideas--that was Walford and Pajo.

And that recent Guardian article basically said he quit and imploded the band because there was no way this would ever be sustainable from the business/making-a-basic-living end.

That said, there is no evidence that he's an asshole on any level, or that the rest of the band resented him.

So he doesn't fit, so maybe he's just an example of that role on a smaller, non-asshole level.

fwiw yeah og post article is one of my favorite things Bagge ever did, had the accompanying drawing of Mike Love on the wall in our rehearsal space for a longtime, v motivating

altho the image in that link cuts off the "Motherfucker" on his t-shirt!

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

Ginger Baker even though he's my favorite player in Cream. Does Sharon Osbourne count?

that Mike Love article is incredible.

yeah thanks for posting that. surprised it hasn't appeared here before.

I've referenced it, but it wasn't available online for a long time

but he has never lessened my enjoyment of the beach boys.

I honestly can't stand the sound of Mike Love's voice. You get these ethereal harmonies and then Mike steps in with his flat nasal bah-bah-bah's.

I dig Mike Love for ruining the Beach Boys

Cream might be 3-Mike Love band, but that Ginger Baker doc definitely makes the argument for him as king prick. I love the part when he just starts showing up at Blind Faith practices and they're all to scared of him to not let him in the band.

jfc how much of a dick do you have to be to hate on nardwuar

― Οὖτις, Thursday, October 12, 2017 5:17 PM (four hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

not that this excuses his behavior at all, but dude was up all night the night before doing so much blow & was coming down hard when Nard came in. again it is completely unacceptable to be anything but deferential to Nardwuar no matter the circumstances. at least Thurston & Lee atoned in 2002.

i don't understand the shtick and i think he's a fucking dick and can only imagine he's enjoyed by dicks

the second part of this statement is especially insane

Soul Coughing is an interesting example. Steinberg and De Gli Antoni both come off pretty poorly in the book, but the not-so-hidden subtext there is that all four of them were assholes. To some extent Doughty would be good candidate for this thread, if not for the fact that he never really got his way in the band. For all the complaining he does in the book, if you read it and then listen to his CD of Soul Coughing "covers" (idk if they count as covers if he wrote them in the first place) you could make an argument that Doughty would've single-handedly ruined the band and torpedoed their chance at commercial success if he had full reigns over the band. Not to mention the fact that he was (by his own admission) fucked up all the time, was often late to the studio, and half-assed pretty much everything as the band went on.

someone mentioned Spiral Stairs way upthread and there was no discussion but i think he has a lot of the qualities. maybe not all, but definitely a few.

SM is such a cock though

Dave Grohl in ways

Phill Judd

Matt Sharp

Bev Bevan

Brian Ritchie

Stewart Copeland?

would be hard to be worse than Sting tbh

yea I don't see how Copeland fits here. Sting doesn't really either, he wrote like 80% of the band's material and 100% of their hits.

well he wrote the lyrics and claimed the credits and then you get him absolutely coining it in when puff samples the EBYT riff and andy doesn't even get a whiff of the royalties

i don't understand the shtick and i think he's a fucking dick and can only imagine he's enjoyed by dicks

the second part of this statement is especially insane

we may need to consider that NV is ILX's Mike Love

Copeland only gets credit for like 2-4 songs per album. I didn't think he wrote all that many lyrics.

Summers getting screwed out of the Pupp Daddy money is definitely pretty egregious though. IDK how much of that was on Stew though

Bear in mind I generally like Copeland as a musician, songwriter, composer, etc.

But in any interview, any documentary or video where he gets to talk, and in his fluffy-as-fuck memoir, he absolutely cannot ever shut up. He tries to come off as a genial goofball, but he keeps changing the subject to himself, and also never shuts up. On the "Certifiable" reunion tour DVD, he keeps talking and talking and you can see the other guys just rolling their eyes. "Oh, god, there he goes again." He makes Sting - STING - seem reserved and modest and shy.

They did this little faux-nonchalant Whisky appearance and they were like, "what should we play?" and Sting turns to Andy and says, "Do you know 'Message in a Bottle'?" So they start playing, and it sounds great. But Stewart doesn't realize the joke is over, and he's still pretending that they don't really know the song. So he is - get this - AUDIBLY CALLING OUT THE CHORD CHANGES, including the inversions/extensions and bass notes.

They were taking questions from a mainly-press audience and Questlove happened to be there, and Stewart gets all goofy about it, while clearly not knowing who Questlove is.

I mean, this guy is responsible for some of the purest joy I've ever felt, but whenever he opens his mouth it just sounds like the most show-offy class clown in the whole 8th grade. Andy's pretty cool, and Sting is... Sting. But Stewart always wants more of the spotlight than he's earned. Which makes him a Mike Love in my book.

I've always thought all of that band were dicks tbh.

Very compelling case, YMP. But Copeland's musicianship cannot be questioned. This is crucial in being a Mike Love.

tbf you could probably gather all that about him just by listening to his music. I think the big difference here is that Copeland contributed a ton to the band, in fact if you listen to his Klark Kent record next to Sting's solo stuff, you can make a pretty good argument that Copeland architected the whole sound in a way.

I believe Copeland wrote "Does Everyone Stare" and "On Any Other Day"; a few others that I can't call to mind right now. I see where you're going, flappy. If being an unquestionably good musician means you're not a Mike Love, I will defer to the hive-mind wisdom.

Mike Love's not really a good musician but he is a good songwriter

Mike Love's voice is his instrument!

it is not that great

tho I do think he made the most of it

Aruba, Jamaica, ooo I wanna take ya; Bermuda, Bahama, come on pretty mama

https://media.giphy.com/media/NzRf8Kx3AsrXa/giphy.gif

Hah. Left to right: L: Mike Love; R: Mike Love.

He sits behind his microphone: Johnny Carson
He speaks in such a manly tone: Johnny Carson

Ed McMahon comes on and says "Here's Johnny"
Every night at 11:30 he's so funny

^^^possibly the best song on "Love You" (not written by Mike tho)

So. In the movie "Frank," Domhnall Gleeson's character joins an existing band led by a reclusive visionary genius.

He proceeds to push the band in a more popular, less obscurantist direction, alienating the other band members.

Guess who else joined an existing band led by a reclusive visionary genius, then proceeded to push the band in a more popular, less obscurantist direction, alienating the other band members?

Anyone care to opine on who was the Mike Love of the New York Dolls?

John Stamos? (xp)