{"id":1643,"date":"2016-09-11T11:47:01","date_gmt":"2016-09-11T11:47:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hamiltonbookreviews.com\/reviews\/?p=1643"},"modified":"2016-10-01T08:53:38","modified_gmt":"2016-10-01T08:53:38","slug":"good-vibrations-beach-boy-mike-love-unloads-in-a-contentious-memoir","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hamiltonbookreviews.com\/reviews\/good-vibrations-beach-boy-mike-love-unloads-in-a-contentious-memoir\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Good Vibrations\u2019: Beach Boy Mike Love unloads in a contentious memoir"},"content":{"rendered":"

In his new book, \u201cGood Vibrations: My Life as a Beach Boy,\u201d Mike Love uses the memoir form to attempt to settle some scores.


\n\u2018Good Vibrations: My Life as a Beach Boy\u2019

by Mike Love

Blue Rider Press, 436 pp., $28


\nIt\u2019s difficult to imagine a more iconic American rock band than the Beach Boys. Bursting on the scene in the early 1960s with catchy songs about the California surfing scene, the Beach Boys had a string of hits that continue to inspire generations of fans. \u201cSurfin\u2019 USA,\u201d \u201cCatch a Wave,\u201d \u201cCalifornia Girls,\u201d \u201cGod Only Knows,\u201d and dozens of other hits propelled the group to prominence.

The band included Brian, Dennis and Carl Wilson \u2014 all brothers \u2014 and their cousin, Mike Love. Under Brian\u2019s direction, the group constructed tightly woven harmonies that spoke of life on the beach. Love was the lead singer and contributed lyrics to many of the band\u2019s songs.

In his just-released autobiography, Love sets out to settle more than a few scores. Perhaps it\u2019s a hazard of the genre, but the entire effort is more than a little self-serving. Love is alternately defensive, angry, self-pitying and proud. It\u2019s dizzying just trying to keep his grudges straight.

Love has had a contentious relationship with his cousins \u2014 and many of his fans \u2014 over the years. Brian Wilson was the genius of the band, responsible for writing the stunning music, the catchy melodies and \u2014 most important \u2014 the astonishing harmonies.

Brian, though, stopped touring in 1965 (but he\u2019s coming to Seattle soon!), instead focusing his time on creating ever more complicated songs. \u201cPet Sounds,\u201d released in 1966, was largely written by Brian Wilson, with vocal overdubs recorded by the rest of the band when they returned from an overseas tour. The album is now considered one of the greatest rock albums of all time and an inspiration for the Beatles masterpiece, \u201cSergeant Pepper\u2019s Lonely Hearts Club Band.\u201d

The band, under Love\u2019s direction, continued to tour without Brian. As Brian\u2019s music became increasingly esoteric, he began to crumble under the combined weight of public expectation, increasing drug use and evident mental instability. His planned masterpiece album, \u201cSmile\u201d was abandoned as Brian unraveled.

Love, meanwhile, continued to drive the band forward. But as the 1960s progressed, the Beach Boys \u2014 with their matching striped shirts \u2014 fell out of fashion and, without Brian\u2019s contributions, the band suffered. Since then it has released several mediocre records but has largely survived as an oldies band.

Love bitterly complains that he did not receive credit for co-authoring various hits, \u201cCalifornia Girls\u201d among them. He sued Brian Wilson over the issue (and separately for defamation) and won a judgment declaring him the co-author of dozens of the band\u2019s songs.

According to Rolling Stone magazine, Love \u201cis considered one of the biggest assholes in the history of rock & roll.\u201d Reviled for his hostility to \u201cPet Sounds\u201d (he denies it), his tight gold lam\u00e9 pants, his Republican sympathies (he denies it) and his vain effort to conceal his balding head in a rotating series of caps, Love is easily one of the most controversial figures in rock \u2019n\u2019 roll.
Dennis Wilson died in 1983, in a diving accident. Carl Wilson died in 1998 of lung cancer. Brian Wilson rarely performs.

Love, for his part, continues to lead a band legally licensed to call itself the \u201cBeach Boys,\u201d singing songs he helped write 55 years earlier. And carrying just a few grudges.
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1644,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1643","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-rw","category-str"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hamiltonbookreviews.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1643","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hamiltonbookreviews.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hamiltonbookreviews.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hamiltonbookreviews.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hamiltonbookreviews.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1643"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.hamiltonbookreviews.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1643\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1647,"href":"https:\/\/www.hamiltonbookreviews.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1643\/revisions\/1647"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hamiltonbookreviews.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1644"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hamiltonbookreviews.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hamiltonbookreviews.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hamiltonbookreviews.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}