Interview: Beach Boys’ Mike Love

The Beach Boys will bring their fun-filled summer tour to Youngstown Foundation Amphitheater on July 2.

The surfer boys who, in actuality, never waxed up a surfboard, have more hits than can be mentioned within this article’s word count allotment. The music has stood the test of time. Some of the elders among the OG fans might have great-grandchildren who also have been exposed to the band’s music.

Since the band debuted in 1961, they have sold over 100 million records, amassed 37 Top 40 hits, and ranked #12 on Rolling Stones’ Greatest Artists of All Time list.

63 years later, the Beach Boys are still touring. Mind = blown.

“We are doing what we love, which is to take our music to every corner of the country and some corners of the world,” original Beach Boy Mike Love told CleveRock in a recent phone interview regarding the band’s current tour.

Love says the Beach Boys’ broad reach and staying power is pretty simple.

“We have four generations now coming to our concerts. We have the grandparents and their kids, and then down to grandchildren. I mean, literally, our fans can be grandparents to little toddlers,” he said. “And so it’s amazing how our music to this day, I mean, it’s maybe more popular than ever because the worst things get in society, the positivity of our music is kind of like a huge relief, and it’s a joyous experience, and everybody has a great time together. It’s unifying. It’s not all the negativity and hostility that you see in certain areas of our life. They evaporate, and they go away, and it’s kind of a celebration of positivity and harmony and good times, good vibrations.”

Love’s cousin, Brian Wilson, the mastermind behind the Beach Boys’ compositions, has not toured with the group since their 50th-anniversary tour in 2012. Aside from longtime Beach Boy Bruce Johnston (who first toured with the group in 1965), Mike Love is the only name in the current lineup that is still familiar to Beach Boys faithful.

Except for John Stamos. Everybody knows the name John Stamos.

“Our friend John Stamos, Uncle Jesse on Full House, and before that, Blackie on General Hospital, he had us on Full House because he loved the Beach Boys music so much, and he still comes out and plays with us whenever he can to this day,” Love noted.

Stamos is playing many dates with Beach Boys on their current trek, although he’s taking a pass on the sights of beautiful Youngstown next week. (Can you blame him?)

“He’s a really good drummer and a decent singer, too. I mean, we’ll back him up on the song ‘Forever,’ which was in one of the Full House episodes where Uncle Jesse got married,” Love reminisced.

This interviewer reminded Love of when Uncle Jesse’s fictitious band, Jesse and the Rippers, plagiarized “Forever” and made it a #1 hit in Japan. Love laughed and admitted that he had forgotten about that plotline.

Countless biographies and films have tried to capture the tumultuous story of the Beach Boys’ career. Storylines range from teenage boys trying to grasp the realities of fame, spats between group members, the genius recording techniques of Wilson (who was far ahead of his time), and exposing that the ‘boys’ were not actually surfers. The most recent documentary, Beach Boys, debuted on Disney+ last month.

Love was asked if the recent Disney+ film (or any other account of the band’s story) has got it right:

“It’s quite historical,” Love said of the Disney+ film, somewhat dodging the question.

“My mom was one of eight children. As a result, we had so many uncles, and aunts, and cousins, and we’d all get together on birthdays and Thanksgiving, and Christmas, and Easter, and all the important holidays, and it was always about music,” Love recalls. “The parents had the music that they liked, and we had our Everly Brothers and our Chuck Berry stuff, and then the R&B stuff that we liked. It’s been a lifetime of music. I mean, it even started before we became the Beach Boys. We would sing at all these family gatherings and sometimes the local church.”

None of this is news to even casual fans of the Beach Boys. Nonetheless, this interviewer appreciated the Cliff Notes directly from Love.

Having been on the road since the early sixties, present-day concert tours have many more modern conveniences, some of which could not have been dreamt of in the Beach Boys’ early touring years.

“When we started out, we literally had a station wagon and a U-Haul, like a trailer in the back. And we would carry our stuff around, and we would set it up and break it down, and then we figured out there’s a thing called roadies,” he chuckled. “And so that was a huge evolution there. Nowadays, I mean, back in the early days of our touring and our performing, we did all these little places. They weren’t even designed for music. They didn’t have all the big amphitheaters like the one we’re going to be playing in Youngstown.“

“We would play all these little places and set up and break down our equipment and stuff. So, it was primitive. The sound systems weren’t any good. We might have two mics that we’d have to gather around. And I remember one time in Minnesota, the place was so small that there was this one guy who just sat on my foot on the edge of the stage, and I asked to have his friend, ‘Hey, can you tell your buddy to get off my foot?’ I mean, it was that funny. And when the place emptied out after the four sets that we did, we’d do four 45-minute sets with the break, and when it emptied out, there were all these bottles of booze that they just left on the floor. It was quite a colorful area in Hatfield, Minnesota,” Love continued. “Nowadays, the sound systems are really good. The lighting is really good. The venues are much better. And so it’s a much better experience for the concertgoer today than it was in the early sixties. But the energy of rock and roll at the time was exciting. And every young person, almost everybody, loved rock and roll. The early guys, like Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Elvis Presley, obviously were huge deals on the radio. And then we were the next wave to come along, the Beach Boys, and then a little later, The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. And so rock music became an industry after a while. And, of course, ever since the mid-sixties, I’d say it’s gone up and up and up, and things have gotten better and better in terms of the technology and the listener experience. So I think it’s much better these days. And I know instead of a station wagon and a little U-Haul behind us, we have a couple of great buses. We have a crew bus, which goes ahead and sets everything up, and then we have the band bus. And so it’s really a nice experience, and I think it’s infinitely better for the audience.”

Readers: If there is one takeaway from that lengthy explanation, let it be that the Beach Boys were precursors to The Rolling Stones and The Beatles!

The internet was science fiction in the sixties. TikTok, Facebook, X, Spotify, et al. weren’t even thoughts in the minds of the most innovative folks then. Yes, it is much easier for artists to get their music out to the masses in 2024, but how about becoming famous and being on top of the world? Harder? Easier? “God Only Knows.” Certainly, the path to fame was entirely different during the Beach Boys’ ascent. Love chimed in on the topic and was put on the spot of which period he feels is more convenient for an artist to “make it.”

“That’s hard to say because nowadays a person will become famous and known worldwide doing a song in their living room or something, and all those ways of getting your message out there or your are amazing, and all that kind of stuff. But I kind of enjoyed the way it was in the sixties because you’d see on Cashbox or Billboard, the record magazines, that the Beach Boys ‘Surfin’ U.S.A.’ was in the top 10 in Israel, or it was big in Hong Kong or Australia,” he replied. “There were really neat things about back in the day, and if we’re on tour, we’d need a Rand McNally road atlas, and we’d be looking for payphones. Nowadays, everybody has their iPhone, and you can dial the address where you’re going, and it takes you right to your destination. So it’s a lot more sophisticated these days. But I’ll tell you, there was a lot of charm to having to look up where you’re going on the Rand McNally and plot out your travel. It certainly wasn’t so convenient to stop if you had to call home while on the road. I mean, obviously, when you got to a motel or hotel, they had phones, but it was nowhere near as convenient as it is these days.”

The day before this interview, Love posted happy birthday wishes on social media to his cousin and Beach Boys’ founding member, Brian Wilson. Love was quizzed about what he would say if put on the spot to share a story about Wilson at his recent 82nd birthday bash.

“Brian and I grew up together. We’re about a year apart. He’s a year younger, so he has to respect his elders. That’s me,” Love said while laughing. “We had the greatest time growing up. It was a lot of music and a ton of humor, too. We would crack each other up, literally. I mean, we had so much fun,” Love reminisced. “I mean, we’re like best friends. I went to Dorsey High School. He went to Hawthorne High School. I took him to a Dorsey football game with a huge conga line, and he remembered this when we were doing the documentary. The final shot was us at Paradise Cove, which is where we did our first album cover photo shoot. He remembered stuff from back in those days. We sang a couple of songs together and a capella, like four or five songs, ‘Barbara Ann” and Surface Safari,’ we did a capella version of ‘Their Hearts Were Full of Spring,’ which is The Four Freshmen, which is a huge influence on us in the early days. The Everly Brothers, The Four Freshmen, and that Doo Wop, and also some church music. He, my sister Maureen, and I would go to youth night at the Presbyterian Church on Wednesday night and sing the songs you would sing at church. And then we’d sing Everly Brothers.”

“I just wanted to wish him well. He’s not doing well. I mean, physically, he has to go from a walker to a wheelchair, and that’s a drag because he was one of the most athletic people. He could throw a football as far as Tom Brady could,” Love revealed. “There’s a lot of love, Brian and me. I mean, there’s always been. My uncle, his father was abusive to him and controlled him. And then there was the nefarious Dr. Landy, who took over and wouldn’t let him get in contact with his mom or his brothers or myself or anything. He always seemed to have been controlled by other people. But when it’s just he and I together, it’s a love fest.”

Mike Love may be the second most revered Beach Boy and possibly the second most revered member of his family, at least in Northeast Ohio. Mike’s nephew, former Cleveland Cavalier Kevin Love, helped end Cleveland’s 52-year championship drought when the Cavs won the NBA Finals in 2016. He certainly captured the hearts of locals during his tenure with the team.

“The thing about the family is that it was always sports and music, and music got a lot more attention from the family than sports. But I’ll tell you what I told my nephew, Kevin. I said. ‘I was a big deal in the family until you came along,'” Mike said with a laugh. “Kevin has been enormously successful, and he is a really great guy, and he deserves every bit of success that he’s had because he has worked so hard at it. In fact, his dad, my brother Stan, was in the NBA as well. So there’s always been sports and music. My sister Maureen played the harp on a couple of our earlier songs. So musicianship and sportsmanship have been a hallmark of our family. But Kevin, I jokingly tell him that I used to be a big shot in the family until he came along. And in certain ways, he has eclipsed us. However, I’m 83 years old, and I doubt he’ll play basketball at 83. We have the longevity. Sports and music have been a part of the family tradition.”

As for his thoughts on the upcoming Northeast Ohio stop:

“We’ve loved Cleveland. We’ve had so many great fans there. I remember playing at Euclid Beach in the sixties. It made its way into a song called ‘Amusement Parks U.S.A.’ on one of our earlier albums. We’re excited to be coming back.”