Defend the Indefensible: Mike Love

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

Well guess what someone got me for my birthday

A picture of Mike Love with Cordwainer Smith?

Mike Love's tighty-whities

A baseball cap embroidered with the word "weirdo"

A signed first edition of Time Enough For Mike Love, by Robert Anson Heinlein?

A copy of the Spinal Tap/Beach Boys collaboration Smell Mike Love?

excellent guesses everyone but no - friend said the bookstore he went to "was all out of the new Brian Wilson autobio AND the new John Stamos autobio" so he got me a copy of the new Mike Love autobio. Will commence hate-reading shortly.

B-b-but was there not a John Cowsill bio available for purchase?

Please to live blog.

within the first ten pages he is bragging about a musical performance he gave at the age of 2 "with much aplomb" also his entire family is a long line of multi-talented self-made geniuses dontchaknow

also as a kid he would "add some harmonies" when mariachis came to his family's table at a restaurant

Feel like this thing is going to stray into Zelig territory before long.

i liked his book! the brian wilson book is LIGHT YEARS better. it's written in Brian's non linear, all over the place voice it's great.

reading that now, and yeah, it's really fun -- and definitely all over the place. Anecdote digressions within anecdote digressions

This book is really good tbh. Mike's essential assholishness (and his obliviousness to it) comes through, but really he has lots of great stories

i read brian's first autobiography a long time ago, the weird ghostwritten one which is like 50% about how great and misunderstood eugene landy is

Lol yeah i didnt go near that one