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Michael Edward Love (born March 15, 1941) is an American singer and songwriter who is one of the vocalists of the Beach Boys, of which he was an original member alongside his cousins Brian Wilson, Dennis Wilson, and Carl Wilson and their friend Al Jardine. He is the band's only constant member, appearing on all its albums, and following the death of Brian Wilson, he became the last-surviving familial co-founder. Characterized by his nasal tenor and occasional lower register singing, Love has been one of the band's vocalists for their entire career, contributing to each of their studio albums and often serving as their frontman for live performances. During the mid-1960s, he was one of Brian's main collaborators, contributing lyrics to hit records such as "Be True to Your School" (1963), "Fun, Fun, Fun" (1964), "I Get Around" (1964), "Help Me, Rhonda" (1965), "California Girls" (1965), and "Good Vibrations" (1966).
Drawing inspiration from Chuck Berry and Felice and Boudleaux Bryant, Love's lyrics primarily reflected the youth culture of surfing, cars, and romance, which helped fashion pop culture's perception of the "California Myth". Love also contributed to the Beach Boys' vocal arrangements – particularly the doo-wop element in their sound. Starting in 1968, Love was a student of Transcendental Meditation (TM) under Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, and became a TM teacher in 1971. The experience influenced his lyrics to take on themes of astrology, meditation, politics and ecology. In the late 1970s, Love fronted Celebration, a short-lived band that consisted of Beach Boys touring musicians, and began working on solo albums, releasing his first in 1981, Looking Back with Love.
Love is often vilified by fans and critics due to his history of conflicts with his bandmates, a characterization he has disputed. Many of his lyrical contributions to the group's hits were not officially recognized until the 1990s, when he sued Brian for writing credits on 35 songs. Love remains uncredited for another 44 Beach Boys songs he claims to have co-written. Following Carl Wilson's death in 1998, the band members and their corporation, Brother Records, granted Love an exclusive license to tour under the Beach Boys' name. Since then, Love has maintained a near-constant touring regimen with his edition of the group, and has released three more solo albums. He last performed with Brian on their 2012 reunion tour.
Love's honors include an induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the Beach Boys in 1988. Beyond music, he has taken part in projects to promote international charities related to such subjects as environmentalism, juvenile diabetes, and music education.
Love often sang at family get-togethers at his cousins, the Wilsons', home in nearby Hawthorne, especially at Christmas. It was here, under the vocal harmony guidance of Brian Wilson, that the Beach Boys sound was established, predominantly influenced by Brian's devotion to the Four Freshmen's arrangements. Musical accompaniment during this formative phase was solely Brian's self-taught piano, but this was quickly expanded by the guitar contributions of Brian's college friend Al Jardine (whose fundamental interest was folk music) and Carl Wilson (whose idol was Chuck Berry). With the failure of Love Sheet Metal, the family was forced to move to a modest two-bedroom house in Inglewood, closer to the Wilsons.
Carl Wilson commented that, "It's not widely known, but Michael had a hand in a lot of the arrangements. He would bring out the funkier approaches, whether to go shoo-boo-bop or bom-bom-did-di-did-did. It makes a big difference, because it can change the whole rhythm, the whole color and tone of it." He also credited Love, an avid fan of doo-wop combos, with influencing Brian to listen to black R&B records. Writer Geoffrey Himes claimed that without "Mike's R&B influence ... Brian couldn't have possibly become 'Brian Wilson.
Conversely, Love has also been reported as resisting the group's new direction. In the description of music journalist Erik Hedegaard, Love gathered a reputation as "one of the biggest assholes in the history of rock & roll" due to such accusations. Love commented in a 2007 interview,
Similarly, Love dismissed most of the reported claims about his reservations with the Smile album: "I never said anything bad about any of the tracks. I admit to wanting to make a commercially successful pop record, so I might have complained about some of the lyrics on Smile". In 1970, Love stated in Pop Chronicles that Smile was "good stuff" and "a fantastically-produced album", adding that "it'll come out, eventually." Brian said that the collapse of Smile was not due to Love's opposition to the lyrics. However, Van Dyke Parks, the album's lyricist, blamed Love with putting "a stop" on the album. In a 1971 Rolling Stone article, business associate David Anderle quoted Love saying, "Don't fuck with the formula". Over the ensuing years, the quote was repeated in myriad books, articles, websites, and blogs. Anderle later said that his statement about "the formula" had been misinterpreted. Love returned to co-writing with Brian for the Beach Boys' December 1967 album Wild Honey, the group's first foray into R&B.
Love stated in 1978 that the group's unhappiness with Capitol's promotional efforts had led them to change record companies in the late 1960s. "They promoted us very well for the first four or five years, then they failed ... in promoting the change, which would have been very commercially sensible on their part, but they didn't ever do it. In '68 or '69, they were still promoting us as the number one surfing group in the USA. How relevant was that after 'Good Vibrations', Pet Sounds, Smiley Smile or Vietnam and everything else?" In his 2016 memoir, he wrote that, unlike Brian, he was never concerned about being taken seriously by critics, and felt that detractors of their early songs showed "elitism at its worst: because so many people loved our music, there must be something wrong with it."
While in Rishikesh, Love planned a U.S. concert tour that would feature the Beach Boys and the Maharishi as co-headliners. The tour begun in May 1968 ended abruptly after five shows due to the disappointing audience numbers and the Maharishi's subsequent withdrawal to fulfill film contracts. In his 2016 autobiography, Love wrote: "I take responsibility for an idea that didn't work. But I don't regret it. I thought I could do some good for people who were lost, confused, or troubled, particularly those who were young and idealistic but also vulnerable, and I thought that was true for a whole bunch of us." Despite the ignominy of the tour, the Beach Boys remained ardent supporters of the Maharishi and TM. Love became a TM initiator in 1972 and later progressed to more advanced levels such as the TM-Sidhi Course.
In 1988, the Beach Boys had a U.S. number 1 hit with "Kokomo", the only number 1 the band achieved without Brian's involvement. Love (along with "Kokomo" co-writers Scott McKenzie, Terry Melcher, and John Phillips) was nominated for a Golden Globe Award (1988) in the Original Song category, and was nominated for a Grammy Award, for "Kokomo". Also in 1988, Love was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame along with the other founding members of the Beach Boys. At the induction ceremony Love delivered a hostile speech, criticizing McCartney, Bruce Springsteen, Billy Joel, and Mick Jagger. When asked in 2016 if he regretted anything about the night, Love said, "Yeah, I regret that I didn't meditate earlier."
In 1992, Love, along with Jardine and several Wilson family members, sued Brian for defamation regarding claims made in his 1991 memoir . The case was settled out of court by publisher HarperCollins, who awarded Love $1.5 million. It was the first of numerous lawsuits that Love would file against Brian. Two years later, Love won a legal proceeding to establish what he considered to be proper authorship credit for many of the Beach Boys songs he co-wrote. Love successfully argued that Murry Wilson avoided crediting him with his early lyrical contributions to Brian's songs, denying Love accrued royalties. He later called it "almost certainly the largest case of fraud in music history".
In 2000, ABC premiered a two-part television miniseries, , that dramatized the Beach Boys' story. It was produced by Stamos and was criticized for historical inaccuracies. Love was an advisor to the film. Some critics accused him of having the film overstate his role in the group and portray negative depictions of Brian and Smile collaborator Van Dyke Parks.
On November 3, 2005, Love sued Brian and the British newspaper The Mail On Sunday because the Beach Boys' name and Love's image were used in a promotional CD that was given free with the paper to promote the 2004 Brian Wilson presents Smile release. Love argued that the unauthorized (by Brother Records Inc.) free CD resulted in loss of income for the band. Wilson's wife Melinda alleged that, during the deposition, Love turned to Wilson and remarked, "you better start writing a real big hit because you're going to have to write me a real big check." The lawsuit was dismissed on May 16, 2007, on the grounds that it was without merit.
In 2011, Love reunited with Brian, Jardine, Johnston and David Marks for a new Beach Boys album and 50th anniversary tour beginning in 2012. In September 2012, Love and Johnston announced via a press release that following the end of the reunion tour the Beach Boys would revert to the Love/Johnston lineup, without Brian, Jardine or Marks, all of whom expressed surprise. Although such dates were noted in a late June issue of Rolling Stone, it was widely reported that the three had been "fired".
Love's autobiography, , was published on September 13, 2016. He wrote the book as a response to "many inaccuracies" that had he claimed were said about him over the decades. It was published one month before the release of Brian's autobiography, . When asked about the book's negative comments toward him, Love responded: "He's not in charge of his life, like I am mine. His every move is orchestrated and a lot of things he's purported to say, there's not tape of it." As of November 2016, Love claims that he has not read Brian's book.
On November 17, 2017, Love released his second solo album Unleash the Love. On October 26, 2018, Love released his third solo album, Reason for the Season, featuring traditional and original Christmas music. Love's fourth album 12 Sides Of Summer was released on July 19, 2019. The album Mike Love Not War followed in 2023.
In addition to being a cousin of the Wilson brothers, Love is the brother of former NBA basketball player Stan Love, and Pink Martini harpist Maureen Love, and the uncle of Utah Jazz basketball player Kevin Love. Shawn Marie Harris, a woman who was married to Dennis Wilson in his final months of life, has alleged she is Love's daughter, an accusation Love has denied.
In 2018, Love praised Trump for his "support of music historically" and was present at the signing of the Music Modernization Act in October. After Trump's election, the Beach Boys were asked to perform in the festivities for 2017 Trump's inauguration, and Love initially responded positively, saying Trump had "been a friend for a long time. Does that mean I agree with everything he says? No. But... if we were asked to, I'm sure that we would." Instead, during the evening of Trump's inauguration day, Love's Beach Boys performed at the Texas State Society's "Black Tie & Boots" Inaugural Ball.
In February 2020, Brian Wilson and Jardine's official social media pages encouraged fans to boycott the band's music on animal rights grounds, after it was announced that Love's Beach Boys would perform at a Safari Club International convention in Reno, Nevada. The concert proceeded despite online protests; Love issued a statement that his group has always supported "freedom of thought and expression as a fundamental tenet of our rights as Americans." In October 2020, Love's Beach Boys agreed to play as the headliner at a high-dollar fundraiser for Trump's reelection campaign in Newport Beach. In a press release, Wilson and Jardine disavowed the use of the Beach Boys' name and music at the event, stating "we have absolutely nothing to do with the Trump benefit today in Newport Beach. Zero." Love again played at Mar-a-Lago's New Year's Eve celebration that year, alongside other acts. In 2022, Love attended the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).
In 2010, Love contributed to the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation's More Hope For The Holidays album with vocals on "Closing of the Year" as well as contributing his self-penned "Santa's Goin' To Kokomo". On the album he appears alongside Weezer, Brandi Carlile, and Creedence Clearwater Revisited. Proceeds benefit the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. He performed a benefit concert for the foundation for the Children of the Californias which raised one million dollars to support the expansion of three new surgical suites. During the 50th Reunion Tour, Love, alongside the Beach Boys, partnered with Operation Smile to raise funds for those in need of cleft lip and palate repair surgeries. In May 2013, he was recognized for his decades of investment in education and national service by being awarded City Year's "Seven Generations Award".
With Celebration
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Singles
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