Love can’t keep The Beach Boys from feuding
MUSIC: Part of group to play PNE
The Beach Boys have peaked and plummeted numerous times over the years. A little more than a year after their triumphant return in celebration of their 50th anniversary, things have gone murky once more.
Co-founder Mike Love, for one, is not pleased. “I have no problem with my cousin Brian (Wilson) and I in a room with a piano, but it’s not that uncomplicated,” Love, 72, told Billboard in an interview posted to its website. Love said what was agreed upon for the reunion is not what came to pass, and any tour dates or recording sessions featuring core members of the group have since been put on hold.
“We were supposed to be allowed to get together to write songs from scratch like we did in the ’60s, but that was never to be, and that wasn’t because of me,” Love said.
One of the most successful acts in pop music history has been divided for longer than it was together, so it was deemed a surprise when the surviving members of the group — Wilson, Love, Al Jardine, Bruce Johnston and David Marks — put years of acrimony to rest in 2012. A superb new album (That’s Why God Made the Radio) and subsequent tour put the band back in the spotlight for the first time as a unit since 1996, to the delight of fans. But it was not meant to be. Love, who has been given exclusive licence to use the Beach Boys name, was cited as the cause of a split that saw Wilson, Jardine and Marks exit once the reunion dates wrapped.
Some say they were fired, but Love (as per a news release he sent to the Los Angeles Times last October) said plans to tour with a version of the Beach Boys featuring just Love and Johnston were in place long before the successful 75-date reunion tour was booked.
Wilson has since gone back to a solo career, with Marks and Jardine now on board. The latest events sully further what is one of the bestregarded legacies in rock and pop music.
Meanwhile, Love and Johnston are committed to the Beach Boys trek that brings the group to Nanaimo’s Port Theatre for two shows next week.
The Beach Boys play the Summer Nights Concerts series at Playland at the PNE Friday night at 8:30 p.m.