The Beach Boys return to ‘Unleash the Love’
Mike Love is calling from the Caribbean island of Curacao, where the Beach Boys have ventured down to thrill people on a cruise ship, even though they’re not on the cruise.
On a gray, rainy November morning in Pittsburgh, one can only dream of a Beach Boys gig on a beach.
“Oh my God, it’s a beautiful tropical island,” he says. “Originally Dutch, but they have their independence, yet they’re still kind of dependent. Kind of like Aruba, same thing.”
At that point, you know exactly what he’s going to do. And he does, singing “Aruba, Jamaica/Oooh, I wanna take ya.”
The Beach Boys, who come north to Heinz Hall on Saturday, pretty much have an open invitation to play wherever they want around the world, and have played most of it.
“We’ve never played in Russia,” Mr. Love says, when asked about unchartered territory. “I wanted to go there in 1968 when I was with the Maharishi and Donovan and The Beatles. Maharishi kind of discouraged my going there. We had fan letters from Russia, we just never got there. We’re blessed to be able to go all over the world. We haven’t been to Israel and major parts of Africa. I think we’re going to pass on Yemen for a while.”
Just another savvy veteran move from the 76-yearold Love, who has been a steady Beach Boy now for 56 years. It’s been a famously up-and-down ride for one of America’s finest musical institutions, with its share of fallouts, tragedies and legal disputes. Since 1998, he and Bruce Johnston, who joined in 1965 to replace Brian Wilson on the road, have had license to the name, while Mr. Wilson, generally regarded as the genius in the group, tours under his own name with fellow Beach Boy Al Jardine.
They came together as one big happy family in 2012 to tour for the band’s 50th anniversary and release “That’s Why God Made the Radio,” their first album of original material in two decades. Soon after that, though, there was confusion between the cousins over future bookings and the reunion came to an end.
“Brian does his own thing and I’ve been doing my own thing, and so Al is with Brian,” Mr. Love says. “Since the 50th anniversary, there hasn’t been any collaboration, although I wouldn’t be opposed to it. I just think everybody is doing their own thing.”
Does he see a time when they might be together?
“Alone together, we’re fine,” he says, “but there’s a lot of … I don’t know what to say about that. ‘Do you see a time when you might get together?’ Well, yeah. Maybe Christmas. And we’re booked to do the national Christmas tree-lighting ceremony in D.C. on the 30th of November. Something like that could be conducive to us being together, but that would depend on whether they would want to accept doing it with us.”
In the meantime, Mr. Love is busy doing these nearly 40-song sets with a version of the Beach Boys that includes Mr. Johnston, singer-guitarist Jeffrey Foskett (who switched from Brian’s band to the Beach Boys in 2014), drummer John Cowsill (the youngest member of the Cowsills) and Brian Eichenberger, a latterday member of the Four Freshmen for 18 years.
“We do an a cappella version of ‘Their Hearts Were Full of Spring’ by the Four Freshmen, which were a huge inspiration on us because of those four-part harmonies,” he says. “We melded those four-part harmonies with the rock beat, sometimes ballads. Could be ‘In My Room’ or ‘Warmth of the Sun,’ a song my cousin Brian and I wrote in November 1963 in the wee hours of the morning before President Kennedy was taken to the hospital in Dallas. That was charged with a lot of emotion when we recorded that a month later.”
The Beach Boys are also slipping in a few songs from a new Mike Love solo album — his second, and first since 1981 — called “Unleash the Love,” led by a “We Are the World”-style feel-good title track.
“The song is meant to be inspirational,” he says, “because there is so much chaos and horrible things happening on the planet, and I say in the song ‘it’s time to unleash the love’ and not hate each for our differences but appreciate them.”
The album, due on Nov. 17, will also feature a song called “Pisces Brothers,” a tribute to the late George Harrison.
“He was such an incredibly great guy,” Mr. Love says. “His birthday was Feb. 25, mine is March 15. We had our birthdays in India at Maharishi’s place in India in 1968. That’s a very sentimental song and I incorporated a lot of things that George did. We have video of him playing sitar with Maharishi. Whether or not people practice transcendental meditation, I think they’ll feel the sentiment involved. There’s a lot of love and appreciation of a great soul.
“There was a lot of crosspollination of the groups,” he says, recalling that golden era. “‘Rubber Soul’ got Brian thinking of ‘Pet Sounds,’ and then ‘Pet Sounds’ got The Beatles to think in terms of ‘Sgt. Pepper.’ In 1966, we had ‘Barbara Ann’ in the early part of the year from the ‘Beach Boys Party!’ album to give us time to work on ‘ Pet Sounds,’ and then ‘Good Vibrations’ was No. 1 in late 1966. That was quite the time, and then a year and change later, we found ourselves in India and when we got there all The Beatles were there.”
Fifty years later, the songs are still meaningful to people, and Love and company still have the energy and desire to play them.
“The beauty is that everybody I’m with is a lifelong musician and loves doing what they do,” he says. “It’s not like we think in terms of retiring or anything like that. I don’t think there’s any shelf-life or expiration date on the Beach Boys’ music. We come out and do our thing every night. We see multiple generations at our shows. It’s an amazing thing. Our music has become part of the fabric of American culture and it’s appreciated around the world. As long we’re healthy and enjoy what we’re doing and have the ability to sing and play, there’s absolutely no idea of retiring. The guy that established the bar is Tony Bennett. He’s 90 years old and he still sounds great.”