Defend the Indefensible: Mike Love

Amazing comment via FB on this from Michael Fennelly:

I never pass up an opportunity to tell my Mike Love story about the time he came over to the house where Curt Boettcher and several of us Millennium members lived, in Beechwood Canyon, to discuss the Beach Boys' interest in helping us establish a record label. Mike showed up drunk, and was obnoxious, and unpleasant. Our drummer, Ron Edgar had a lovely German shepherd who had one very serious issue - Ron could NEVER get her house-broken. As Mike was heading out, having insulted us sufficiently, he reached for the door handle and stepped in a massive pile the dog had left in the foyer. He uttered "Shit!" and left. The dog got a lot of love that night...

Wait, what?

I barely give a fuck who Mike Love has his picture taken with, or what political candidates he supports, or how he may stumble in public speeches; he is a gentle and kind man whose heart is in the right damn place,

"Gentle and kind" are not words I would readily associate with Mike Love.

This is clearly some next-level clickbait trash.

p weird article -- it's not like "the legend of brian wilson" is somehow to blame for brian not leaving the band after 1967. (did he even want to leave? did the others want him to leave? who exactly is the writer of this stupid article yelling at?)

The idea that post 67 beach boys is seen in terms of a missed opportunity instead of celebrated for the stuff they did accomplish. Worrying about this feels like what I imagine hell to be like.

Why, of all the Beach Boys, did they send Mike Love to meet with Curt Boettcher?

Had I been alive to do so, stepping in dog shit at the Millennium house would be up there with the highlights of my life, that Love probably doesn't remember doing so is indefensible.

Tried to read that article, but stopped after "Tim Sommer."

Ric Ocasek
Todd Rundgren
Lou Reed
Paul Simon
Mike Love

What's with all the 'bubbelah,' etc.stuff in that article?

I barely give a fuck who Mike Love has his picture taken with

are they referring to Can we be shown weirdos + Mike Love?

How sweet would that be?

He's referring to Love being photographed with Trump this week.

What's with all the 'bubbelah,' etc.stuff in that article?

Wondering maybe if this is a bit of an opening salvo in the attempt to rehab Mike's image before the memoir is released. I mean, the writer did try to defend the indefensible.

I can't defend a lot of Tim Sommer's professional activities (eg signing Hootie), or the way he and every WNYU DJ shouted into the mic in the early '80s, but he was awful cute when he was an MTV newsmonger a quarter-century ago.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Sommer

And I do believe political morons can be decent folks otherwise, and love any allusions to Paul Simon treating little ppl like garbage. No interest in the touring Beach Boys tho.

http://www.people.com/article/charles-manson-confronted-beach-boy-mike-love-in-shower

lol

"He started passing out LSD tabs and was orchestrating sex partners," Love writes. "I love the female form, but this was too much."

"Something told me this was not your average acid-fueled gangbang sesh," he continues. "The vibrations, shall we say, were not good."

Wasn't Neil Young was into it? And didn't Mike and Al take to calling Manson "Pigpen" at the Stephen Desper session?

Aside from what would be Bruce's assuredly safe, affable response, I'd really like to know the date as it compares to Andrew G Doe's timeline:

http://esquarterly.com/bellagio/gigs68.html

In ‘Good Vibrations,’ Summer Fun Soured by Mike Love’s Score Settling

So Mike went to dinner at Dennis' house with Bruce Johnston and just decides to take a shower? How does that work? And where was Bruce?

Also, Squeaky is alive and free.

XP Needed to wash off the stench of weirdos...

"I never lose sight of the overwhelming positivity of our music,"

"and that's why i've relentlessly sued all of my former colleagues for several decades, because positivity."

i was kind of half willing to be sympathetic to mike love but then i read this excerpt from the NYT review:

He can be inadvertently hilarious when he explains those lyrics word by word, as in the first lines of “Be True to Your School.” I will admit to knowing and loving them: “When some loud braggart tries to put me down/ and says his school is great.”

Now we have Mr. Love’s explanation for his word choice. “‘Braggart, to my ears, is more formal than ‘bragger,’ so I thought our more erudite fans would appreciate the subtlety,” he says.

what a hopeless fuckwad he is.

he thinks people like the beach boys b/c of his "erudite" lyrics

is bragger even a word

like congratulations on using proper English words Mike, good job, really puts the song over the top

"when some boisterous braggart makes a vain effort to defame me / and claims that his alma mater is without peer..."

beach boys lyrics but like all stodgy and proper english and shit

Seems like Mike is still defending against replacing his words with Van Dyke Parks. December '66 isn't over!

"when some boisterous braggart makes a vain effort to defame me / and claims that his alma mater is without peer..."

is this a chap-hop song

i had never heard of that "movement" until now! interesting and maybe a little stomach-churning.

me neither until I read the "worst fads of the 21st century" thread.

thanks ilx! for better or worse, til death do us part

on balance, I don't think I like Mike Love, however, if nothing else, he (allegedly) managed to sit down with Brian and coax "Warmth of the Sun" out of him, so, I'm just gonna give him a pass.

I quite like his vocals on "Do It Again" as well

I think P. Bagge was right, if you can't at least appreciate Mike Love on some level you don't really love the Beach Boys

yeah, mike love contributes plenty of awesome stuff to the beach boys' music. and yeah, he is a hopeless fuckwad.

"plenty of awesome stuff" seems a bit generous.

"plenty of awesome hats"

"lots of scalp"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfilXmU4ReM

Is that Trump at 0:10?

I would also like to advance the theory that there is no one else in the world that could have taken the lead vocal on "Roller Skating Child" and made it sound both natural and somehow acceptable in the context of the record. somehow.

So cold i go brrrrr

what exactly does he think he's doing in that video compilation? is he showing off his breath control?

prob something he picked up from the maharishi

love Bruce Johnston popping up to rally the crowd

"plenty of awesome stuff" seems a bit generous.
i dunno, as a vocalist, he's pretty key for me on the 60s stuff, whether he's singing back up or lead. Defending the indefensible here, I know.

He definitely is key to Good Vibrations, among other things

what exactly does he think he's doing in that video compilation? is he showing off his breath control?

― wizzz! (amateurist), Saturday, September 3, 2016 3:53 PM (four hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Attracting sheep.

Mike Love is absolutely indispensable to the classic 60's stuff - he wrote the hook and most of the rest of the lyrics to "Good Vibrations" - which were a vast improvement on the original lyrics by Tony Asher, who did fantastic work on Pet Sounds - along with most of the words and probably at least half of the vocal hooks on "I Get Around," "Help Me Rhonda," and "California Girls." I would never argue that Love was a better musician than the two other Wilson brothers, but by sheer force of his own confidence/narcissism he was easily the #2 creative force during the group's 1962-1966 commercial peak.

Perhaps the most preeningly obvious heel in rock and roll history, ML is still nowhere near as malevolent an antagonist in Brian Wilson's life story as Murry Wilson or, god, Eugene Landy. But he's clearly a horrible person, even by rock star standards - Steven Gaines' lurid BBs biography details multiple instances where Mike beats the shit out of his wife and/or kids, and that's only in the 1960s. I'm sure the abuse didn't stop there.

Mike's decision to replace Asher's lyrics on Good Vibrations seems driven by royalties. The Feb. '66 version was not done on 8 track, no editing, etc. Mostly Brian and Carl on the initial instrumental. Speculations who is the muse have been fun to track (Loren Daro has chimed in on that subject).

The months between that Feb. version and the final Sept. '66 session at CBS 8-track is an entire soap opera unto itself, with Suzanne Belcher and Mike being 1 year into their relationship. She's the one famous for taking Mike's dictation of the lyrics the way to the studio.

Dennis "converted" Suzanne to the Wilson camp. Mike and Suzanne's divorce came Dec. 24, '68, and it was Bruce who testified on Mike's behalf. All while Dennis was in the press praising Charles Manson.

http://www.smileysmile.net/uncanny/media/users/djm/scan02SMALL.jpg