The Word Is Love

Let me rise to the defense of Mike Love. Poor Mike was and is a huge part of the Beach Boys' history, and yet he's routinely been treated like dirt for years by fans and critics. Not fair.

Sure, the guy's notoriously hard-nosed and pushy. But he also wrote the lyrics for some of the band's greatest songs, which, by the way, are some of the best songs America produced in the second half of the 20th Century. Any guy who wrote the words to "The Warmth of the Sun" deserves a little respect, don't you think?

Let's not forget his lead vocals on "Surfin' USA," "I Get Around," California Girls" and, most notably, "Fun, Fun, Fun," either. Just for starters. Face it, Mike was a key player in the vocals department.

Brian Wilson was the genius of the Beach Boys, but it's ponderable how far the band would have gone professionally without Mike's drive and ego. He was definitely the number two figure in the group, and when Brian bailed on live performances, it was Mike who kept them going in concert. He's still keeping them going, in fact. Plus all great bands need creative tension: Lennon vs. McCartney, Jagger vs. Richards, McGuinn vs. Crosby, the list goes on and on. Brian was consistently better when he had to fight back against Mike - and against his Dad - than he has been since everyone started kissing his feet.

Okay, Mike had reservations about some of "Pet Sounds" and all of "Smile," but so did lots of folks at the time. Yeah, he didn't want Brian to derail the gravy train with Van Dyke Parks' weirdness, but very few people like to kill a good thing. Brian also wasn't exactly the most stable, reassuring person to build your future around at that time either. Ask Marilyn. It's awfully safe years after the fact for critics to look down their noses at Mike, but if critics had one-tenth of his talent, they'd have their own bands and not be critics.

In short, Mike Love has become a convenient punching bag, much the way Paul McCartney has had to fight the critics' love affair with John Lennon for years when any objective reading of the Beatles' history is clear that the Cute One was the brains behind the operation.

Mike wasn't the McCartney of the Beach Boys, but he was a lot more than a go-fer for the great Brian Wilson. Come on, people, give the man his due.