Good Vibrations
Mike Love, the nasal singer and frequent lyricist for the Beach Boys, is one of the most hated men in rock. The early reaction to his memoir Good Vibrations (Blue Rider) suggests that the book isn't going to change that. Love and his cousin Brian Wilson, the Beach Boys' main composer and vocal arranger, are painted in fan history as, respectively, the Antichrist and the man who walks on water.
Wilson represents sensitivity and artistic exploration in this saga; Love, brash showmanship and a bourgeois approach to entertainment as a business. It took both men to create and maintain The Beach Boys as America's longest-lasting and still quite successful band; Love is proud that 2015, 53 years into their career, saw the largest number of Beach Boys performances ever.
Love admits some of the more far-out music his cousin made didn't necessarily thrill him, a sin to the Wilson fanatics who see him as a Tinker Bell who must be believed in to thrive. But reading the story of Love being cheated over writing credits and suffering bandmates (and cousins) who indulged in debilitating drug abuse and descended into mental illness, an honest reader will see that solid dependability has its own merits, in art and life.
This article originally appeared in print under the headline "Good Vibrations."
