The Ballad of Mike Love
Mike Love bounds up the stairs inside his massive Lake Tahoe home (10 bedrooms in all, 12 bathrooms, two elevators, not to be believed) and into a large walk-in closet stuffed to overflowing with garish, multicolored shirts and a gazillion baseball caps, many of them emblazoned with the name of his band, the Beach Boys. A suitcase rests on the floor. Love nods at it, prods it with his foot. “A lot more shirts are in there,” he says, “because, if you must know, I haven’t unpacked.”
And why should he unpack? For the past 54 years, he and various versions of the Beach Boys, which these days include only him as an original member, have toured almost constantly. On his current outing, he has 172 dates lined up, cramming 19 European shows into 22 days this past December, for instance, and shortly thereafter flying back stateside to give the 6,500 citizens of tiny Avon, Colorado, the chance to hear all about California girls. From there, it’s onward, evermore, venues big and small, makes no difference to him. The man is 74. You’d think he’d want to mothball the Beach Boys caps and Hawaiian shirts he always wears onstage, maybe do something else with the years that remain. Not a chance.
“My cousin Brian loved the studio, but I like performing,” he says. “I mean, I’ve probably sung ‘Fun, Fun, Fun’ live close to 6,000 times, and there are county fairs where we’ve broken the attendance records, playing to the biggest crowds they’ve ever had, 50- to 70-year-olds mostly, their children and their grandchildren. I love making music, and there’s never been a time in my life when there wasn’t music.”
And the fans sure do get their money’s worth, with more than 40 songs crammed into a typical two-hour show by the time “Fun, Fun, Fun” finally fades out, the soaring nasal twang of Love’s bass-to-baritone range, so essential to the band’s five-part-harmony stack, memorable and distinctive, leaving all the Dockers-wearing duffers buzzing happily, if not a little bittersweetly.
The Beach Boys: cars, girls and surfboards. Home movies on a backdrop. All the original members in a swimming pool, falling into and out of a life raft, laughing, fully dressed. Dennis Wilson, gone since 1983, drowned while drunk. Carl Wilson, cancer got him in 1998. Al Jardine, the band’s Ringo, still kicking but quietly. Brian Wilson, 73 now, the group’s musical genius, visionary, guiding light and the bearer of all those wonderful harmonies, a little wobbly in the mind since 1968, due to drug and alcohol problems and mental illness. Love, still going strong, looking fit and trim, just as he did back in the day, as always the entertaining cornball, joke-telling frontman, the souped-up, flamboyant counterpoint to his introverted cousin Brian, both entirely necessary to the band’s enduring success.
The Ballad of Mike Love, Page 1 of 10