MIKE LOVE WILL NEVER CHANGE
By DJ M on April 24th, 2006
In Brian Wilson/B. Boys
TIMES HERALD RECORD ONLINE "No marketing surveys or anything," the 65-year-old Mike Love says during a recent phone interview. "We were just observing our environment. If somebody had a real great car, everybody would pile into it and go to the hamburger stand. That was how life was in southern California. 'Fun, Fun, Fun.'"
"Brian has a publicity machine, and they've done quite a bit in terms of disparaging me," he says. "For whatever reason, they've tried to make Mike Love the bad
guy, probably because I had to sue Brian."
"'Heroes and Villains' was a little esoteric and obtuse in the lyric department," he says. "We find that it just doesn't go over that great." ("Listen to these outstanding lyrics! They'll just amaze you! This nuclear disaster!" he phrased it during a 1967 rehearsal, before the song had ever been played live.)
"Teenagers, and young adults, and mature adults, and grandparents, they'll all know our songs," he says now. "We try to focus on what will please most of the people."
"If you have guys who can sing those original parts and replicate the original records, that's the most important thing," Love says. "The thing that distinguished the Beach Boys from other rock groups is the refinement of the harmonies and the great vocal arrangements. My cousin Brian was very gifted at that. People called him a genius. In vocal arrangements, you'd have to give him his due.”