BRAIN IS BEING DUPED, YADDA, YADDA, YADDA...
By DJ M on April 24th, 2006
In Brian Wilson/B. Boys
COURIER POST ONLINE "The Beach Boys, The Beatles and Motown are the top three musical entities from the '60s that are still performed on the radio today," notes Mike Love.
"That's pretty good company. We're up there in the top three in most cities across the USA for airplay. It spikes a little for us in the summer because the Beach Boy's music seems to become synonymous with summer months."
"The crowds range in age from children to grandparents now," he says. "If a person was 20 years old when the Beach Boys started, and got to like us, well heck, they're 65 now, which I turned a couple weeks ago."
"When we did our first year's worth of shows, we drove in a station wagon with a U-Haul behind it, and set up and broke down our own equipment," he explains.
"Now, we have a crew that goes out in advance, and we fly first-class and stay in really nice hotels. The travel part of it is far more comfortable these days."
"Brian and I are OK," he reports. "It's the people around Brian who have gotten him to do things that I don't know if he even knows what he's doing.
"A situation arose in England where they gave away 3 million copies of a record . . . they used our name, our photographs, rerecorded songs that I co-wrote with him . . .
"We weren't asked, we weren't told, they just did it. It's just an abuse. Brian was manipulated into it, that's my belief.
"I had to sue him 10 years ago, or nine years ago, or whatever. It was to get the credit and start getting compensated for writing songs like "California Girls,'
"I Get Around,' "Be True to Your School' and all these other songs. I was never given credit by he and my Uncle Murray (Wilson, Brian's father and the group's first manager) back in the '60s.
"He, actually, and I spoke and he said, "Mike, let's work this out.' But he was under a conservatorship, which was overseen by an attorney. Because of his mental and emotional state he was so easily influenced, and negatively by some people.
"I knew he wanted to resolve it, but he was not able to, or capable of, doing it legally because he was in a conservatorship.
"But I did prevail because there was fraud involved. The relationship between myself and Brian has never been bad. It's obviously a strain to have to go to court, but I knew it was never his fault."
Mike Love's top ten Beach Boys songs:
1. California Girls
2. Don't Worry Baby
3. Their Hearts Were Filled with Spring
4. Fun Fun Fun
5. Kiss Me Baby
6. Kokomo
7. Good Vibrations
8. The Warmth Of the Sun
9. Wouldn't It Be Nice
10. The Ballad of Ole' Betsy (?!?)