The Beach Boys’ Mike Love On “Unleash The Love” & Hanging With Richard Pryor

Even if you do not regularly listen to a lot of rock radio, you ought to know dozens of songs by The Beach Boys. “California Girls,” “Fun Fun Fun,” “Surfin’ U.S.A.,” “I Get Around,” “God Only Knows,” “Help Me, Rhonda,” “Sloop John B,” “Kokomo” — those are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to hits by the surf-rock pioneers. More than 55 years since forming The Beach Boys in Hawthorne, California, lead vocalist Mike Love is still at it in a big way. Love released his first solo album in over 30 years late last year, Unleash The Love, via BMG. He was also heard on two new Beach Boys reissues from Universal Music in late 2017, 1967 – Live Sunshine and 1967 – Sunshine Tomorrow.

When talking with Love — who returns to the road with a February 11th Beach Boys concert in Coral Springs, Florida — by phone, I had the opportunity to ask him about both Unleash The Love and the early days of The Beach Boys. Highlights of this chat included discussion about Jan & Dean, Richard Pryor, Bob Hope, Jack Benny, brother Stan Love and nephew Kevin Love; notably, Stan and Kevin have both done well in the NBA. Love also offered some memorable “last words for the kids.”

More on Mike Love and Unleash The Love can be found online at www.mikelove.com.

I had the pleasure of interviewing Dean Torrance a few months ago and he designed the Beach Boys logo that I believe is still used these days…

Mike Love: He has been a friend for many many decades now, and I see when Jan Berry got in a wreck and almost died, he was paralyzed on one side, had to re-learn how to even speak… So during that time, Dean who had been a student of architecture at USC, he went into album cover designs and he designed a couple of ours, but particularly the logo that we absolutely use to this day.

You came up very favorably in the conversation and he was also talking about your brother Stan and nephew Kevin. Something I was curious about was, being that there are two famous NBA players in your lineage, were you yourself ever a basketball player?

Mike Love: No, I wasn’t great at basketball. I went out for football because my father Milton Love, father of Stan and myself, we have football, because he was All-City when he was 17 years old. So I thought, “Well I’d try my luck at the football.” But for some reason I was able to run long distance, so they kept me in cross-country and track and I would run five miles in the morning with a friend of mine on the track team, Craig Owens. He and I were the number one and two on the track team, and we would run five miles a morning and have breakfast to go to school and work out in the afternoon, either track or cross country…

I wasn’t able to run particularly fast, but I could run a long distance and do reasonably well like the mile and cross country was like two miles. So that was my extent of athleticism, my brother Stan of course was in the NBA and he broke all the scoring records when he was going to college in the University of Oregon. But his son Kevin, he’s a great athlete and of course with the Cleveland Cavaliers. I jokingly tell him, “I used to be somebody in this family till you came along.”

Continuing with the family trade, I had the attended your record release party a couple weeks ago in New York. I believe you had two of your sons playing on-stage with you. Were you encouraging them to pursue music? Or is that something that happened naturally?

Mike Love: It was two of my boys. Christian Love was the older one, he’s 49. Brian Love is 29, and interesting little story there. We were doing “All The Love In Paris,” a romantic song on the album and I asked my son Brian who’s fluent in French. I said, “Brian, how do you say all the love in Paris in French?” [Love translates it with a fine accent] If you listen to the intro of “All The Love In Paris,” it is bilingual, which I thought was pretty cool. Brian and Christian and I sang together on that chorus; I did lead, of course. They contributed the backgrounds along with a fellow who wrote that song with me, Paul Fauerso, who wrote that and produced the original version until Michael Lloyd produced the more current version and got Dave Koz to play saxophone on it. So I really enjoyed that because I think it’s a great record, I think everybody did a great job on it… I even texted Dave, I just loved what he did on the record.

I can’t imagine that you want to listen to back to so much old stuff. But the latest reissue I listened to was the 1966 Graduation Day Michigan show, and the comedic timing of the band is very on. Your records don’t have a lot of jokes in them, per se, but live you guys were great with one-liners. Who were some of your comedic influences?

Mike Love: Wow, well you know, The Smothers Brothers are really great. We loved them when they were ruling the TV… A long time ago The Beach Boys, in fact in 1965, were on a Jack Benny TV special with Bob Hope joining him. It was amazing and this is one of the earliest TV appearances we had made. They dressed up because it was “The Beach Boys,” they dressed up in these outrageous outfits, just ridiculous looking and then ask us, “Which way is the beach?” or something like that. It’s probably on YouTube, but it was hilarious.

They’d come from a vaudeville background and so they would say, “Where’s the beach?” in a really loud projected voice, and we would say, “Oh, that way.” We were really timid and shy and Bob Hope took the time to say, “Throw your voice.” He actually schooled us right there on the spot about how to respond to their bit that they were doing, which I thought was amazing. It was embarrassing and fun and informative and it was like, you know, getting a Ph.D in “How To Be On TV” from the Master Bob Hope.

But Richard Pryor, he and I used to hang out back in the 60s when I was living in Beverly Hills. I’d go see him on Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood at a comedy club, and because I had some notoriety from being in the band, visit with him backstage in the little dressing room… One time I told him that I think someday the Chinese will be drinking Coca-Cola. He said, “No, no Love, ain’t no way. That’s a yellow peril, man, they ain’t going to be having no Coca-Cola in China.” And so, years later he was hosting the Academy Awards and I was backstage and he came by and said, “Love, you were right about the Chinese and Coca-Cola.” (laughs) So, yeah, hanging out with Richard Pryor was an amazing thing, you know?

We always liked to joke around. We had a thing called “’Cassius’ Love Vs. ‘Sonny’ Wilson,” which was a parody little thing on an earlier album. We were just making fun of each other about how we sounded and all this kind of stuff. So Brian and I, as kids, would assume these little personas that were just comical and we’d make each other laugh… We would just be so silly and so funny together, so I think that comedic timing thing that you mentioned comes from our childhood and our young adulthood.

So in closing, Mike, any last words for the kids?

Mike Love: Well, I’m a proponent of Transcendental Meditation — TM — meditation, yoga and those are things that are good releases of stress that don’t involve any negative side effects that alcohol and some drugs do.

I’m just a proponent of “if you’re going to go into the music field, find somebody who is better than you.” If you’re good with an instrument, then find someone who is great with a lyric or another instrument and find a way to… The chemistry enhances the whole, becomes greater than the sum of its parts when you get with some people; other people that bring their own individual strengths into the situation.

But on a lifestyle level, I recommend not to get involved in the street kind of things and all the stuff that is so pervasive these days. There’s all too many poignant examples of tragic events and terrible outcomes for people who engage in that kind of stuff, so I really promote meditation. Transcendental Meditation is the one I practice and know about and that’s available. The information on that is available through TM.org, and of course yoga is ubiquitous all over the place. It’s really a wonderful physical thing that you can do at any age, but in fact it’s something you can do when you’re elderly. There are certain yoga positions that one can do, that keep you toned. It’s very scientific actually… There’s different positions that positively affect every function, whether it be a gland or organ… The whole human system and the way it runs and the way it works.

All those kinds of things are things that I’d say are worth looking into and practicing if you’re into it… I used to run long distance and that’s pretty good too, that’s like a huge antidote to depression. Rather than be depressed, get out or go to a club and run… I’m always trying to accentuate the positive even in the midst of things that are not positive in any way, but there are lifestyle choices that one needs to make that can be hugely-influential on the way your life takes place and takes shape. Like, for instance, at the same time we learned meditation from the Maharishi, my cousin Dennis met Charlie Manson… That whole thing was horrible how that turned out and I think Dennis felt the guilt of having introduced him to the Beach Boys scenario. So it is a matter of lifestyle choices, they’re very important, and I’d always accentuate healthy and the positive.

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Tags: BMG, Charles Manson, Coca-Cola, Kevin Love, Mike Love, Richard Pryor, The Beach Boys, Transcendental Meditation

About the Author

Darren Paltrowitz Darren Paltrowitz is a New York resident with over 20 years of entertainment industry experience. He began working around the music business as a teenager, interning for the manager of his then-favorite band Superdrag. Since then, he has worked with a wide array of artists including OK Go, They Might Be Giants, Mike Viola, Tracy Bonham, Loudness, Rachael Yamagata, and Amanda Palmer. Darren's writing has appeared in dozens of outlets including the New York Daily News, Inquisitr, The Daily Meal, The Hype Magazine, All Music Guide, Guitar World, TheStreet.com, Businessweek, Chicago Tribune, L.A. Times, and the Jewish Journal. Beyond being "Editor At Large" for The Hype Magazine, Darren is also the host of weekly "Paltrocast With Darren Paltrowitz" series, which airs on dozens on television and digital networks. He has also co-authored 2 published books, 2018's "Pocket Change: Your Happy Money" (Book Web Publishing) and 2019's "Good Advice From Professional Wrestling" (6623 Press), and co-hosts the world's only known podcast about David Lee Roth, "The DLR Cast."