Mike Love
Mike Love (* 15. March 1941 in Los Angeles , California as Michael Edward Love ) is an American musician . He is a founding member, oldest member and lead singer of the US band The Beach Boys .
Music with the Beach Boys
Love founded the Beach Boys in 1961 with his cousins Carl Wilson , Dennis Wilson , Brian Wilson and his school friend Alan Jardine . Love acted as lead singer and voiced many of the Beach Boys' hits. Mike sang bass on the songs, which were set in polyphonic harmonies.
Love co-wrote texts for numerous Beach Boys pieces. Early in his career, he wrote mostly about carefree life as a teenager in California , life on the beach, girls, surfing, and fast cars. With his optimistic attitude he was a very good counterpoint to the rather melancholy Brian Wilson. In addition, Love ensured security for his younger band members with his pronounced stage presence and his announcements during the songs.
When Brian Wilson resorted to external lyricists for the albums Pet Sounds and Smile in the mid-1960s , Love criticized this style very heavily because he felt that the band had strayed too far from their origins. In addition, he thought the more complex songs for the band as unperformable. After Brian Wilson withdrew from the band, Love finally began to work with Alan Jardine and Dennis Wilson as copywriters.
The first Beach Boys song that Mike Love penned himself was Big Sur on the 1973 album Holland . With Everyone in love with you , an homage to Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and Sumahama , an ode to Japan, two more love songs came on Beach Boys albums of the 1970s. Sumahama reached number 45 on the UK charts. In the 1970s, Love's influence on the band business became more apparent. So he succeeded in getting the Beach Boys on the nostalgic bandwagon and increasingly including their old hits in the program. Love was also instrumental in creating the hit compilation Endless Summer , which reached number 1 on the Billboard charts in 1974. In the 1980s he finally began to write songs for the Beach Boys with Terry Melcher , again relying on nostalgia. Together with John Phillips , Melcher and Love wrote the world hit Kokomo , which became the Beach Boys' last number 1 hit in 1988.
Since 1998, when the band fell apart after Carl Wilson's death, Mike Love has held the naming rights to the Beach Boys and goes on tour with Bruce Johnston under this name.
Outside the Beach Boys
In 1977 Mike Love began taking care of projects outside of the band. He founded the band Celebration with half the team of the Beach Boys tour and studio band (including Ron Altbach, Mike Kowalski, Ed Carter and others) , which initially only recorded the soundtrack for the film Almost Summer . When the single of the same name climbed to # 28 on the US Billboard charts, the band decided to record an album. As some of the group's titles were later incorporated into the Beach Boys concerts, the strange situation arose that the other regular Beach Boys members always left the stage to join them and only came back to them afterwards.
In the same year Love tried to gain a foothold as a soloist. He first recorded the album First Love and a little later Country Love . The albums included many songs composed by Mike Love. However, they were consistently rejected by the record companies. In 1979 a second album by Celebration followed, which, like the single Starbaby , flopped. In 1981 he finally released his first solo album, Looking Back with Love .
During the 1980s Love worked increasingly on projects with other musicians. This is how the albums Rock 'n' Roll City and Rock 'n' Roll Christmas (1983) were created with Dean Torrance (by Jan and Dean ). Among them he sang the lead voice on Happy Birthday America, written by Gerry Griffin .
When the Beach Boys were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988, Mike Love caused resentment among the colleagues present with a very aggressive speech. He criticized almost every known star present as well as absent. Bob Dylan , who had to take the stage after Mike Love, thanked Love for forgetting to mention him.
In the 1980s and 1990s, Love finally worked again with Adrian Baker.
In 2004, Mike Love announced another album in several interviews. First he put it under the title Unleash the Love , later he renamed the project Mike Love, Not War . This album, which contains 14 songs, has not yet been released.
In addition to some new songs, this album includes new recordings of two well-known songs (Everyone's in Love with You , Brian Is Back) and two previously unreleased songs. One of those songs is 10,000 Years , a work that Love's cousin Dennis Wilson wrote in the mid-1970s. This piece, which was planned either for the Beach Boys or for Dennis Wilson's solo album, was previously only available as an instrumental version on bootlegs .
Finally, in November 2017, the album Unleash the Love was released as a double album with 13 new songs and 12 new recordings of old Beach Boys classics. An album with Christmas carols followed in 2018 under the name Reason for the Season .
Reputation in the band / lawsuits
Love was charged with driving off Brian Wilson's copywriter. From Gary Usher to Roger Christian to Tony Asher and Van Dyke Parks . Asher and Parks were involved as copywriters on the two albums Pet Sounds and Smile . Love criticized the music and lyrics of these albums.
During the 1990s, Mike Love led a number of lawsuits. At first he successfully litigated Brian Wilson: Love claimed co-authorship for 29 Beach Boys titles, which until then had been attributed to Brian Wilson alone. The court recognized Love's involvement in the lyrics and also awarded him $ 5 million in outstanding royalties. At the end of the 1990s, when Alan Jardine left the band, Mike first fought for the name "Beach Boys" in order to be allowed to continue touring under this name, then he led a lawsuit against Alan Jardine to change the band name "Beach." Boys Families & Friends ”.
After the successful 50th Anniversary Tour of the Beach Boys in 2012, Mike Love is touring again with his version of the Beach Boys, of which Bruce Johnston is also a member. The stage band includes Mike Love's son Christian Love and a few other musicians, who mainly consist of the Beach Boys tribute band Papa-Doo-Run-Run and former musicians from Jan and Dean . Brian Wilson also gives other concerts with his band. The founding members of the Beach Boys Alan Jardine and David Marks have been announced as guests .
Love is a member of the " Rock and Roll Hall of Fame " and, like the other Beach Boys still alive, received a Grammy for Lifetime Achievement in 2000.
Private
Mike Love has long been considered the group's "bad boy". He has been married five times and has nine children. He married his girlfriend at the time in 1961, who had become pregnant by him. One of his affairs became pregnant in 1964. Shawn Marie Harris, later Shawn Marie Love, was born in December 1964. Love denies paternity to this day. In 1983 Shawn married Mike's bandmate Dennis Wilson . So it came to the curious situation that Mike Love became the father-in-law of his cousin Dennis. Mike Love became a grandfather in 1983 with the birth of their son Gage Dennis Wilson. Mike Love is also the uncle of basketball player Kevin Love .
Love flew to India in 1967 to Maharishi Mahesh Yogi , the Transcendental Meditation to learn. The Beatles , Mia Farrow and Donovan also took part in this course. Mike became friends with Paul McCartney and George Harrison during this time . Even today he proudly speaks in interviews about how Paul McCartney played him the first riff for Back In the USSR and Mike gave him advice on how to continue with the song. He also talks about it in great detail in concerts in which he plays the song.
Love owns a large estate on Lake Tahoe, California, which he u. a. also used for courses in transcendental meditation.
social commitment
Appearance at the press conference on the occasion of the benefit concert of the David Lynch Foundation for Consciousness-Based Education and World Peace on April 4, 2009 at Radio City Music Hall in New York . With the funds raised, the foundation wants to give one million children from socially disadvantaged families the opportunity to learn Transcendental Meditation .
Discography (solo)
- Almost Summer (1977, soundtrack to the film of the same name with Celebration)
- Celebration (1979, also with the band Celebration)
- Looking Back with Love (1981)
- Unleash the Love (2017)
- Reason for the Season (2018)
Unreleased albums
- First Love (1977)
- Country Love (1978)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Brian Wilson: Wouldn't it be nice
- ↑ https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/flashback-mike-love-rages-at-the-1988-rock-hall-ceremony-197737
- ↑ Archived copy ( Memento of the original from September 27, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Archived copy ( Memento of the original from September 27, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ uclabruins.com: Player Bio: Kevin Love - Men's Basketball - UCLA OFFICIAL ATHLETIC SITE ( Memento of the original from January 19, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed January 19, 2016
- ^ Paul, Ringo, Donovan and Mike Love promote TM at the Lynch Foundation press conference: the transcripts. ( Memento from July 30, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ) examiner.com, April 3, 2009
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Love, Mike |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Love, Michael Edward (maiden name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American musician |
| DATE OF BIRTH | March 15, 1941 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Los Angeles , California |