Good Vibrations?
The Beach Boys' Mike Love gets his turn

This interview with Mike Love ordinally appeared in Goldmine, Sept. 18, 1992. We're not sure who the author is... This interview has been edited; here are the most interesting excerpts:

I understand that you're putting out the new album ["Summer In Paradise"] yourself and bypassing major labels.

The Beach Boys have been on Capitol Records, Warners, CBS, back to Capitol, and in the case of "Kokomo," it was on Elektra. So we've been distributing our records through major labels all our lives except for our first record, "Surfin'," which was on a label called Candix, which went bankrupt [laughs]. We got a total of $900 on the royalties for that one and we signed to Capitol in 1962.

But the problem with a major is that just as recently as the Still Cruisin' album, the same week that we went to radio with a song called "Somewhere Near Japan," which was getting really good airplay, Capitol Records went to CHR radio stations with eight singles. That was just one label in the same week. They'd also just done a deal with Duran Duran. They had paid a lot of money for Duran Duran, whereas we did an album of half new and half older songs. The theme of that album was to have been songs that have been in movies. It was basically a repackage.

But then in got watered down with politics, meaning Brian's Dr. Landy forcing a song called "In My Car," which was never in a movie, and a song by Jardine, which ultimately ended up on the album, called "Island Girl," which was never in a movie either. So to me the concept was a little bit diluted there politically.

So what happened in this instance was I was not happy that the album was half repackage and half politics. What happens when you do things politically just to accommodate the fact that if you're in a group and you divide it by five members, and you got two songs each, it may be a nice thing to do but everybody has their own point of view that isn't taken into consideration objectively.

Capitol's treatment of the Beach Boys' catalog on CD has been fabulous. What was your impression of the slew of two-fer Beach Boys CDs?

I don't even know. I don't know.

Have you seen them?

No. I don't know. You find that amusing?

Yeah, it's hard to believe that being a Beach Boy you haven't seen something like that.

It is hard to believe. I find it hard to believe too.

Why is that?

Why is that? Because I'm a Pisces, is that a good answer [uproarious laughter]? That's as good as I can come up with. There is nothing that we can do to stop them from merchandising our records the way they want to merchandise them so we're at their mercy. So if they've done something that in the opinion of the caring public is well done, then I'm glad to hear it. But having no recourse or say-so ...

For instance, they were going to do a Best Of The Beach Boys Volume Three in 19 - , whatever the hell it was, and I came in there and went, "Wait a second, call in Endless Summer." And instead of being Volume Three which sound nauseating to me, like ...

The third rung of hits.

Exactly. Endless Summer has a whole other vibe to it and sold several million copies just with the switch of the title. But then I'm a title guy anyway.

The artwork was so strange on that album. I could never tell who was who.

Yeah, I know, it was awful ...

Do you meditate every day?

Yeah. I have since December 1967. I do it in the morning before you start your day's activities and in late afternoon or early evening. There's a distinctively different level of consciousness that is waking, dreaming and sleeping. And then there's a fourth level of consciousness unlike the others, metabolically. Your metabolism goes to a level of rest twice as deep as sleep. And you think about how profound that rest would be being twice as deep as sleep; it's very restful.

What do you think of Brian Wilson's book, "Wouldn't It Be Nice"?

I never read it. However, excerpts have been read to me, which have caused me to prepare a lawsuit against Brian. Because, you see, Brian has had the benefit of getting money from Al, Carl, Bruce and Mike's touring for the last nine years while he's been supposedly in therapy with Landy. In the meantime, Brian did two solo albums, a book defaming the group, me personally, other people, Brian's mom [laughs]. It's terrible stuff.

You've got to understand that Brian has been diagnosed, among other things, as a paranoid schizophrenic, so he has delusions, but these delusions are printed in his book as if they're fact. And they're not and I want him not only to apologize formally but retract everything that was not fact and set the record straight.

That, and the other thing which is not known, is that there's a little issue of me writing the lyrics for "California Girls." But what is not known is that I wrote many, many, many - we're talking a couple dozen songs that I wrote that I was not credited for.

Why weren't you credited for "California Girls"?

You see, Brian Wilson, they just signed the day before yesterday a settlement of his claims against the publisher. [Wilson was awarded 10 million dollars.] It's my assumption, and it's only an assumption, that his legal advisors are interested in taking the money and running. Brian is a pathetic figure and one of the more pathetic things is that he did not give me credit for many, many songs which I wrote. I have a huge list of them. It's unbelievable.

Have you heard Brian's unreleased second solo album, Sweet Insanity?

No, I haven't. Have you?

Yeah.

What do you think?

I like it a lot but it would be much better with the rest of the Beach Boys singing on it.

Did it come out with a record company?

No. But anyhow, I still love Brian.

Hey, there's nobody more talented at arranging and writing.

Did you like his first solo album?

No.

You didn't like it?

Fuck no.

What didn't you like about it?

First of all the lyrics. Second of all the arrangements weren't commercial enough. Third of all it sounded like shit compared to what he could sound like.

Back to the lawsuit. What are some of the songs you co-wrote but didn't receive credit for?

Okay, "Little Saint Nick." Brian Wilson is credited with writing 100 percent of that. Well, guess who wrote the words? Mike Love, that's who wrote the words. "Don't Back Down." It's very well known that Brian Wilson did not surf. I wrote "Catch A Wave" and "Don't Back Down." He's credited 100 percent. He didn't give me any credit.

How did that happen?

Because he didn't put my name down. Murry Wilson was the publisher of Sea of Tunes and and put in for this stuff. The same thing with "The Man With All The Toys," "Santa's Beard," "Merry Christmas Baby." There's "Good To My Baby." Brian Wilson is listed as writing it completely, guess who wrote the words? Doctor Love, that's who. "When I Grow Up (To Be A Man)." I participated in that and didn't get a stitch of recognition. "Help Me Rhonda," I wrote, "Since you put me down I've been out doing in my head." That's my fucking line, thank you very much. Things like "Dance Dance Dance," I asked Carl if he wrote any lyrics for the song and he said no. He just came up with the guitar line.

It's a good guitar line.

It is a cool line. Brian Wilson and Carl Wilson split 50-50 on that. I was the one who wrote the Chuck Berry-styled alliteration lyrics. That's my scene.

Was this more Murry Wilson or Brian?

Either that or Brian didn't tell him because of his ego. It's a bloodbath. It's millions and millions of dollars' worth of damage. Other songs, he arbitrarily assigned me a percentage which was fairly nominal. Basically, when I wrote 100 percent of the words he'd give me like 30 percent of the tune, as opposed to a split.

Would you ever work again with Brian as a writer and producer?

Sure I would, But I want him to... "Be True To Your School," I wrote a lot of words to that and wasn't credited. Like I said, "Help Me Rhonda." It would have been nice if I was credited with "Catch A Wave." "South Bay Surfer." I wrote the words to "Hawaii." "Be True To Your School." The line [recites lyrics], "When some loud braggart tries to put you down and says his school is great, I tell him right away what's the matter buddy ain't you heard of my school it's number one in the state."

"I Get Around," he put in for 100 percent of it. I came up, Dr. Love, got witnesses, Al Jardine will testify in a court of law. I came up with "roud round get around," and if that's not a hook I don't know what the fuck is. That was a chickenshit move to credit himself with a hundred percent. Virtually all the songs that were chart records I had a hand in writing some if not all of the lyrics.

How about "All Summer Long"?

Yeah, I wrote, "Remember when you spilled Coke all over your blouse." I wrote that with him. To the best of my recollections I wrote 50 percent of of the words on that. In "I Get Around," Brian had "I get around from town to town, I'm a real cool head, I'm making real good bread." I wrote the verses through, and the "round round get around" part.

There's interesting things like "409" where I came up with "She's real fine my 409" and "giddy up, giddy up, 409," and was not credited, but Brian Wilson did give credit to Gary Usher for his contribution. So it was weird. It was like directly against me. He wouldn't fuck with anybody else but he screwed me over royally. I didn't know how badly I had been abused until I was deposed in Brian's pursuit of his claims against Irving Almo and Mitchell Silverburg and Nutt, which was the attorney representing the Beach Boys and Irving Almo. An inherent conflict of interest there.

At any rate, I didn't know to what degree I'd been taken advantage of until I got the deposition. I saw that and went, "Oh my goodness!" And I wasn't really even advised of my rights until recently. In the last few months I've consulted a good litigation attorney. He's done incredible research on the rights of a songwriter that I've never even heard of from anybody until he started advising me of these things. On the basis of these rights and the potential remedy that I have, I have a very, very good case against Brian Wilson. I hope we don't have to go to trial because it's going to destroy Brian. He's going to be destroyed in depositions, first of all, let alone getting him in court.

So what will you be doing with this?

Suing his ass to pieces because he's hiding behind his lawyers and all that kind of stuff.

Have you started the suit?

It's being prepared. It'll probably be pretty soon. You'll hear about it.

With the numerous Beach Boys books that have been published, have you thought about writing your own?

I don't think my ego is that strong in that kind of department. I mean, I have a strong ego in terms of competition and creativity and I'm proud of the contribution I made.

That brings up the song "Hang On To Your Ego," which was going to be on Pet Sounds.

That used to be "Hang On To Your Ego" and then it became "I Know There's An Answer." I changed the lyrics because I thought it was too acid for me. That was those guys doing acid, Van Dyke Parks, and Brian and Tony Asher.

So I guess there's no chance for a book?

Who would want to take the fucking time to go through garbage like that just to rectify garbage. What I want is Brian to admit and say that half that stuff he said in his book is outrageous bullshit. And it was because of his paranoid delusions that he came up with this stuff that's not factual, number one. Number two is, yes, Mike Love wrote this and this. And if he actually does not forget, I can have witnesses to say, or we can have a lie detector test brought to bear, then let's go.

I just want to have it be fair. That's the one thing that I'd like to have is a little bit of fairness because he's been very unfair to the rest of the group over the years. Now Brian is very ingenious. You want to like him, you want to feel sorry for him because he's destroyed his life. I mean, who wouldn't feels sorry for a guy who is very gifted and destroyed his life? But the untold story is that he's selfish, he's defrauded his cousin. He's cheated his group. He's been taking money and has not performed. The intent of his getting money to have therapy was not for him to do two solo albums and write a book defaming individuals and the group. The guy has mental problems. The thing is, he's crazy. He's a genius but he nuts so a lot of things he imagines like the two-by-four his father was supposed to be beating him with, that's delusions.

Is Brian's father Murry Wilson made out to be worse than he was?

Murry was a prick. He was awful. I'm so glad he wasn't my father. He definitely did some damage. Carl's gotten a grip on life but Dennis sure didn't. He kind of lost his grip.

So he was really kind of a tyrant?

Oh, definitely. Very abusive and gruff and terrifying and intimidating and negative. Stuff like, "You guys don't know what you're doing." Those kind of remarks. Very unsupportive. However, he was an aspiring songwriter and he knew that there was a value to songs. I didn't even know what publishing was when we started out. I wasn't from a show business background. My dad was a sheet metal worker and my mom was a housewife. All I knew was that I liked to sing and that I could make up words. I wrote my first song when I was maybe 10 years old.

Then Murry Wilson had some good qualities.

He was very good at promoting, getting radio stations to play our records. He was very smart and clever about it. He would have us go out and do hops and events where a DJ would make a couple hundred bucks and we would make a couple hundred bucks. And the DJ, since he made some money, he'd be playing our records for the next six months till we did it again. So we built a real good foundation doing that kind of thing not only in Southern California but all around the country until we got a momentum going.

Have you been in touch with Brian?

No. He's paranoid. We tried to have a board meeting and he was supposed to show up and he didn't come.

Were you disappointed when Brian would collaborate with other lyricists like Van Dyke Parks, Tony Asher and Roger Christian?

I was not happy about it but in the case of Roger Christian I wasn't as into the terminology of cars as he was. I wrote "I Get Around," which is, I guess, a cruising song, but it's more generic. It's not "competition clutch with four on the floor." I wasn't into hot rods to the extent that Roger Christian was so he provided some lyrical content to support Brian's musical abilities, so that was good. But when I did come up with a hook or some lyrics it's funny 'cause it was almost like it was not recognized. It was definitely not legally recognized.

How about the case of Tony Asher writing Pet Sounds?

Now, that was a different story. When it got to that period of Brian's life that's when he started doing a lot of drugs. We were touring a lot and we'd come back in and do an album like Pet Sounds, for instance, and some of the words were so totally offensive to me that I wouldn't even sing 'em because I though it was too nauseating.

Was that "Hang On To Your Ego"?

Yeah. That was too much of a doper song to me. I just didn't want to have anything to do with it, therefore I didn't go down that road of acid and the things that destroyed Brian's brain. I didn't want to go that route. I'd still come to the sessions and I still wrote the words for "Good Vibrations" but I didn't participate in a lot of the stuff that was going on there, because I just didn't think the psychedelic route was the way to go.

You could hear Brian's writing starting to progress with the Beach Boys Today record on such songs as "Please Let Me Wonder" and "She Knows Me Too Well." What was your initial reaction to the Pet Sounds material?

Well, Pet Sounds was fine because he was still intact, but from there... I mean "Good Vibrations" was great. That and "Heroes And Villains" was his high point and then from there into the toilet because mentally he was incapacitated and emotionally he was destroyed by the acid. That's my opinion.

There's quite a few versions of "Good Vibrations." Did you write a few sets of lyrics for the song?

No. I just wrote one set on the way to the session in Hollywood at Columbia studios. I dictated it to my then wife Suzanne on the Hollywood Freeway on the way from Burbank to the studio. It was like a 15-minute drive. Just dictated the words.

Did you have any input into the front cover of Pet Sounds, which was shot at the San Diego Zoo?

That was simply us going on location to shoot the cover. Pet Sounds, a petting zoo. I suggested the title Pet Sounds.

One of the best Wilson-Love songs is "The Warmth Of The Sun."

We wrote it at one or two in the morning before the JFK assassination. We were asleep and Brian had moved out of house, a parental home in Hawthorne, to a rented home, and I spent the night there. I wrote the words and he did the music.

What inspired your lyrics for "California Girls"?

By that time we'd traveled a bit. We'd had some hit records. We'd been to Hawaii, we'd been to Australia. We'd been all around the United States and I just thought the neat thing about the United States was that all these girls from all over the world were living here. And that was the premise of the song. Some people confuse it with thinking that we were extolling the virtues of simply California girls but if you listen to the lyrics it's about girls form all over the place. "I couldn't wait to get back to the States, back to the cutest girls in the world."

So I just wrote it from that standpoint of having traveled, seen a bit of the world but really digging the fact that they're all here in the United States and that we wished they could all be California girls.

From the Beach Boys Today album you co-wrote a beautiful song with Brian called "Please Let Me Wonder."

I remember wondering about the title. Not relating to the title so great but writing the verses.

Were you someone who could come up with a lyric quickly?

Yeah. Well, like "Wild Honey." Brian was doing this track with a theremin and we were doing the song. I went into the kitchen and we were in this health food thing and wild honey was all natural. So there's this can of wild honey and we're making some tea. So I said, I'll write the lyrics about this girl who was a little honey. And I wrote it from the perspective that that album was Brian's R&B-influenced album, in his mind. It may not sound like it to a Motown executive but that was where he was coming from on that record. In that particular instance I wrote it from the perspective of Stevie Wonder singing it.

One that same record you covered "I Was Made To Love Her" by Stevie Wonder.

Yeah, "I Was Made To Love Her" is great.