The Ballad of Mike Love
He scratches at his beard, recollecting this awful, reputation-cementing moment, and says just about the only thing he can say: “Well, I didn’t get to the punchline.”
Do you regret anything about that night?
“Yeah, I regret that I didn’t meditate,” he says. “It helps you deal with whatever you’re dealing with. I meditate in order to cope with things.”
And over the years, he’s certainly had a lot to deal with. There’s the time, he says, “when my then-wife, Suzanne, mother of two of my children — I’d flipped for her, she really rocked my world — had an affair with cousin Dennis. Out of all the women in the world, you would think … ”
What else? Has there been one thing, above all others, that’s required meditation to cope with?
His blue eyes darken to gunmetal gray, and the bristles of his beard nearly stand up and quiver. “Yeah,” he says. “The major one of those things is being cheated.”
Ah, yes, that, of course. It goes way back to the start. Thanks to the Wilson brothers’ father, Murry, who was an abusive, conniving piece of work, as well as the Beach Boys’ first manager, Love’s name didn’t make it onto the publishing credits for many of the early hit songs. For instance, on “Wouldn’t It Be Nice,” Love says he was responsible for the ending couplet “Good night, baby/Sleep tight, baby,” not an earthshaking contribution but significant nonetheless, as were the lines that he wrote for “409”: “She’s real fine, my 409” and “Giddy-up, giddy-up, 409.” And so on, with many other songs, including “California Girls,” “Help Me, Rhonda” and “I Get Around.”
Brian apparently knew what his father was up to but was too scared of him to do anything about it (Brian Wilson declined to comment for this story). Even so, Love seems to blame both of them, although, on occasion, he does acknowledge how cowed Brian was by his dad. And it doesn’t seem to have helped that in 1993, long after Murry’s death, Love successfully sued Brian for back songwriting credits, got his name appended to some 35 of the songs, and was awarded at least $2 million in back royalties. The whole thing still pisses him off. And once he gets started on it, there’s no stopping him.
He’s in his house now. Waterfalls burbling, Chef Joaquin tending the stove, wife Jackie overseeing some interior redecorating, Pixie the little cat sleeping in the bed that Pumba the big dog should be sleeping in, and Love lost in the past.
“I wrote every last syllable of the words to ‘California Girls,’ and when the record came out, it said, ‘Brian Wilson’ — there was no ‘Mike Love,'” he says. “The only thing I didn’t write was ‘I wish they all could be California girls.’ ‘Surfin’ USA,’ too, the big shaftola. Same thing with ‘I Get Around.’ I came up with ‘Round, round, round, get around, I get around’ and redid Brian’s lyrics. And nowhere was my name mentioned on the record. Thank you, Brian. Thank you, Murry,” he says with a laugh. “And, OK, so then what do I say? My only recourse was legal. But if I stick up for myself, Mike’s an asshole. I mean, Brian wanted to settle, but he was in a conservatorship that wouldn’t let him. I give him credit for that. But I was cheated and stolen from by my uncle and my cousin, and I don’t think it’s ever going to be resolved. I mean, how you gonna resolve it?”