The Ballad of Mike Love

The most important thing to know about Love is that he meditates twice a day, without fail, morning and night, and has done so for 49 years. He learned meditation from the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi himself, in 1967, at which time he forswore pot, hash and hard liquor, his only real vices, while Brian and Dennis, in particular, continued lighting up their brains with the more drugs and booze, the better.

Today, Love is tooling around in his wife’s Audi SUV, taking a right onto Tahoe’s Lake Shore Drive, the lake itself shimmering off into the distance. He looks quite crisp, happy, prosperous and well put-together: wool trousers, striped pullover, his Van Dyke–type beard trimmed close. He talks in a friendly, easygoing way.

“When I learned to meditate,” he says, “I said, ‘Hallelujah. I can relax without all that stuff that fogs your mind up.’ But everybody has their own path, makes their own choices. My addiction, if it’s an addiction, is to meditation.”

He has been up since seven this morning, already meditated and practiced yoga, eaten a vegetarian breakfast and spent time wondering how best to release his recent recording of a song he wrote in 1979 called “Alone on Christmas Day.”

“It refers to the melancholy of feeling alone on Christmas Day,” he says, “but I meant it sweet, in that you’re never really alone. It fits a number of situations, whether it’s a parent or a grandparent or somebody that you really cared for who is not there anymore.”

Like Brian, Dennis, Carl and Al, one could say, but the point seems too obvious to make. So let’s get back to meditation for a moment. Have there been periods where you haven’t meditated?

“Oh, no, that would not be safe,” he says, chuckling. “I need to meditate. Well, let’s put it this way. It’s not good for me to miss meditation. And not good for others, too.”

One time he skipped was in 1988, on the night of the Beach Boys’ induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Come time to make a speech to the crowd, he started off by saying, “We love harmony, and we love all people, too,” after which he hurled insults at Bruce Springsteen, Paul McCartney, Billy Joel, Diana Ross and “chickenshit” Mick Jagger, while insinuating that he and the Beach Boys were bigger and better than any of them. He struck a grim-as-death, tight-lipped pose and was greeted with jeers and boos. At one point, he said, “I don’t care what anybody in this room thinks,” which was clear enough. He also said, “A lot of people are going to go out of this room thinking Mike Love is crazy,” which was true too.