Music has always been an integral part of Mike Love’s life. A founding member of The Beach Boys, he calls music “a family tradition,” and it’s one of the reasons he’s still touring at age 83.
“My mom sang light opera in high school and her brothers sang in a quartet on the radio. We were awakened to go to school by my mom playing her opera music, which was a challenge,” he laughed during a recent Zoomer phone interview. “Every birthday, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s, there would always be a party and it would be always about music.”
And it’s that ingrained passion for music that continues to drive Love to perform. This March, billed as The Beach Boys/Mike Love, he and his band embark on a cross-Canada, 11-date Endless Summer Gold tour that started in the U.S. last year for the 50th anniversary of The Beach Boys’ iconic album, Endless Summer.
Love, who turns 84 on March 15, is the only remaining original member of the harmony-driven pop group, which he formed in 1961 in Hawthorne, California with his cousins, Brian, Carl and Dennis Wilson, and friend Al Jardine. The Beach Boys signed to Capitol in 1962 and released their debut album, Surfin’ Safari, later that year.
Synonymous with surf, sand and girls, they went on sell over 100 million records worldwide and enjoy over 80 hit singles.
While Brian was always pegged with the “genius” title, Love was co-writer of such classics as Fun, Fun, Fun, I Get Around, Help Me, Rhonda, California Girls and Good Vibrations. He’s also finally being inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame this year. The Beach Boys were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988.
Dennis Wilson drowned in 1983 and Carl Wilson died from cancer in 1998 and, in the ensuing decades, the surviving original members of the band have rarely performed together. Still, the popularity of the Beach Boys endures. That includes last year’s eponymously titled documentary on Disney+, and a limited-edition anthology from high-end book publisher Genesis.
Today, Love – who also owns an award-winning rum brand called Club Kokomo Spirits – tours with a Beach Boys lineup that includes longtime member Bruce Johnston, musical director Brian Eichenberger, son Christian Love, Tim Bonhomme, Jon Bolton, Keith Hubacher, Randy Leago and John Wedemeyer.
Love talked to Zoomer about why he is still touring so much in his 80s, recreating those beautiful Beach Boys harmonies, his relationship with Brian Wilson and his daily Transcendental Meditation routine.
KAREN BLISS: You are a member of the quintessential California band and also lived where the fires are. I appreciate you doing this when there’s a very stressful situation right now.
MIKE LOVE: It’s terrible. I had a house in the Palisades at one time, several years ago, and it’s still standing, believe it or not, but the houses across the street are gone. We lived in a beautiful area. I’ve always had a place in Santa Barbara and then I moved to Lake Tahoe. I’m looking out at the lake right now and there’s snow all around because of the high elevation. But words cannot describe how tragic that whole event has been. Imagine everything you’ve ever cherished and your home was gone.
KB: How far from the fires were you and other members of the Beach Boys born and raised?
ML: One of our earliest pictures of us performing, we had jackets on and we played at a concert right overlooking the beach in Pacific Palisades in the Malibu area. So, it really touches us. We love where we grew up and love the beach, Malibu, the Palisades. It’s gorgeous, but it’s just destroyed now.
KB: On to happier subjects. You are a touring workhorse. On your upcoming cross-Canada tour, you perform a show a day. Your only days off are between the Manitoba and Ontario dates because you’re travelling. What you enjoy so much about touring at this stage of your life?
ML: Music’s been a part of my life for all of my life. And so we love performing our songs. We love seeing the audience respond and have a lot of fun. I mean, life is challenging worldwide, but we’ve had fan letters from Russia and China, and we’ve had hit records in Israel and South Africa and Australia and all over Europe. And so, the music we did about our lifestyle growing up in Southern California, and the cars we like, the girls we like, it resonated around the entire world. So we are so thrilled to be able to go out. We’re warming up in Florida, then we come to Canada, and then we’re doing a few USA shows, and then we’re going to Europe, Switzerland, Germany, England, and Spain.
KB: Do you have a health regimen to get through such a rigorous tour schedule?
ML: Yeah, Transcendental Meditation. TM program, they call it. [Creator] Maharishi Mahesh Yogi taught me in Paris in December of ‘67. I’ve been able to meditate ever since. Your metabolism goes down to a level of rest twice as deep as sleep. So, it’s profoundly relaxing, profoundly restful, and it gives you energy and clarity to keep doing what you love to do.
You’re taught 20 minutes twice a day, but [I do] at least twice that because you have an advanced program called the TM-Sidhi. So I’ve been doing that for many years.
KB: Are you also a vegetarian and healthy eater?
ML: We try to be as healthy as we possibly can be because you have to stay in shape.
I’m 83 years old. So, I work out a little bit. I meditate every day, a couple times a day. I’m staying in really good shape because I want to be able to enjoy life, not deteriorate, but get better. And you can, but you have to focus on it. You have to eat properly. You can’t overindulge. You have to get some good exercise. But the meditation gives a lot of benefits, anaerobically. In other words, you don’t have to be running five miles in the morning, which I did when I was in high school [laughs].
KB: I don’t think I can name another group that’s synonymous with a season. Even with a show in the cold Canadian winter, your music transports our minds to summertime.
ML: But the thing is, we were young guys singing about things that we liked about California, and they still resonate today. For some people, it’s nostalgic, but the young people, these days like The Beach Boys music because, frankly, it’s all positive and uplifting.
KB: Harmony-driven bands are a lost art, these days.
ML: A lot of people have a really good lead singer, but they don’t have people that can harmonize, really. In our case, my cousin Carl sang the lead on Good Vibrations. I came in on the chorus. [sings] “I’m pickin’ up good vibrations. she’s giving me the excitations.” My cousin Brian sang the lead on Don’t Worry Baby, sounded fantastic on that. We all harmonized on the ballads. I sang the lower part, but I do the leads on Surfin’ U.S.A. and I Get Around and Fun, Fun, Fun and shared leads on Kokomo, for instance. So we have had, in the original days, several really good lead singers. And with us on stage now, my son Christian sings with us. He does God Only Knows because we lost Carl 26 years ago to lung cancer. Our drummer Dennis passed away in 1983. So, mortality has definitely impacted not only us, but many other groups. But as long as you can sing or play that part, you can recreate those songs in a beautiful way and that’s what we do.
KB: Actor John Stamos has famously been associated with the band for decades, and joins you for some of your shows. How did your relationship with him start back in the 80s?
ML: We met him when he was Blackie [Parrish] on General Hospital, getting thousands of letters from fans all over the country at that time in his life. And then later on, he had us on Full House because he loved The Beach Boys music. And he’s a good drummer. He’ll come out and play drums with us, and we’ll back him up on the song “Forever,” which he sang on a Full House episode, where Uncle Jesse got married. So, we’ve just known him for many, many, many years. And people recognize us from the reruns of those Full House episodes.
KB: I watched the documentary that came out last year [directed by Frank Marshall and Thom Zimny] You call it “a family story.” Is it okay for me to ask you what your relationship is like now with your cousin Brian?
ML: He and I sat together and we were singing songs. He’s got his challenges physically and emotionally, but his long-term memory is very much intact. He was remembering things and we were talking about things that happened during our high school years [laughs]. So that was sweet because we got together and harmonized. We sang some songs together. That was not portrayed on the Disney+ special. However, just being together was. And so, that was a very nice way to end up, I think. My cousin Brian and I have been through ups and downs, not such great things all the time, but there’s a tremendous amount of love there and so much wonderful things that came out of our relationship musically.
The Beach Boys/Mike Love kick off their Canadian tour (March 22-April 4) in Victoria, B.C. For full tour dates and ticket information, visit the band’s official website.
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