BLOG.CLASSICROCKESOTERICA.COM: The Beach Guys

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The Beach Guys

By Martin Rots

     Mike Love needs to give it up. He's sixty-eight and hardly a boy. There are no Beach Boys. There hasn't been a real Beach Boys in decades. How is it that most of us have aged gracefully, but he's still hanging in there, clutching his youth like a wilted rose, impervious to the thorns of time?
     Brian Wilson does his own thing and, after years of silence, rejuvenated his career with the release of Brian Wilson in 1988. He has toured and released new projects regularly since. Dennis Wilson was the heart of the band and he's been gone since drowning in 1983. Carl Wilson, the youngest of the Wilson brothers, passed away as the result of lung cancer in 1998, and Al Jardine left the band soon after.
     As a result, Mike Love is the only original remaining member of the band. He tours with talented musicians, many of which have contributed in the studio. People like Bruce Johnston have floated in and out of the organization in different roles. It's admirable that Love is like the Energizer Bunny, but he doesn't know when to quit.
     The band he tours with is no more the Beach Boys than it is the Beatles. He does have a legal right to use the name and, what's more, he did sing lead on some of their biggest hits including Surfin' Safari, Fun, Fun, Fun, I Get Around, and California Girls. However, a legacy does not a band make.
     The Beach Boys were special.
     They occupied a time in our lives when we still possessed an innocence that would soon be tarnished, our naiveté replaced by cynicism as the promise of that era we knew as the sixties was left unfulfilled. The Beach Boys became an anachronism as soon as the Beatles played the first note on Ed Sullivan in February 1964. When Bob Dylan began to reach a mass audience, it was an omen. Certainly, they had more hits after the English Invasion but the writing was clearly on the wall. In spite of their best efforts, the Beach Boys had become an oldies band.
     The times, they were a changin'. Brian Wilson fought back and, in spite of Love's vehement protests that his new music would be difficult, if not impossible, to perform live, produced Pet Sounds which initially was a critical and commercial flop. Paul McCartney recognized Pet Sounds brilliance immediately, and it inspired him to conceive of Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Today it is considered a classic of the era.
     In spite of being the lone original member of the band, Mike Love presses on with the name. There is no concern for the legacy that the original band made. It's not to keep the legacy alive, it's all about money.
     Now admittedly, the Beach Boys, or Mike Love in particular, never expressed altruistic opinions in the past. If you look at the current ticket prices for the 2009 concert season, they frequently top $100 each. At the Desert Diamond Casino in Tucson, they start at $113 and go up to $518. I know it's a casino and I know those are the best seats in the house for $518; but c'mon, that's a lot of money to see Mike Love and a pick-up band and, no matter how you look at the situation, that makes for an expensive night out.
     A lot of these artists follow the oldies circuit because they can't support their lifestyle any other way. When your last hit was Kokomo in 1988 which you co-wrote and share royalties with Terry Melcher (produced and wrote for Paul Revere and the Raiders and the Monkees), John Phillips (Mamas and Papas), and Scott McKenzie (If You're Going to San Francisco), you need to tour or scale down your lifestyle.
     Mike, no offense, but it might be time to start scaling back a bit or change the name of the band to something more realistic...like Mike Love and the Old Beach Guys.

To learn more:
http://shopping.yahoo.com/p:Carl%20Wilson:1927017550:page=biography