Picking up from good vibrations

So it is very strange today to watch their 1971 video for the ecologically themed Don’t Go Near The Water, the opening track on their classic Surf’s Up album.

Opening with a shot of the murky English Channel a heavily bearded Mike Love, Al Jardine and Carl Wilson, clean-shaven Dennis and temporary Beach Boys Ricky Fataar and Blondie Chapman are revealed performing on Brighton’s bandstand with the WestPier in the background.

The video underlines the band’s love of the city, where they are making a long overdue return visit this Wednesday.

“Brighton is one of my favourite places,” says Love, de facto leader of the band since they first got together in Hawthorne, California, back in 1961.

“When I first learned about Transcendental Meditation I used to visit a woman called Evelyn who lived on Marine Parade. It was only a short train ride between Brighton and London – I have a lot of great memories.

“A couple of the guys in the group are planning to go down there on one of our days off just to enjoy the town and have a wander down The Lanes.”

Love is still leading the band, alongside keyboard player and vocalist Bruce Johnston, who joined the fold in 1965 after songwriter Brian Wilson gave up life on the road. He filled a space recently vacated by singer and guitarist Glenn Campbell who left the group after one tour to focus on his own solo career.

The rest of the sound is fleshed out by long-time associate John Cowsill, who had a US number one with his own band The Cowsills in the late 1960s, guitarist Scott Totten, Brian Wilson’s long-time sidesman Jeffrey Foskett, keyboard player Tim Bonhomme and newest member Brian Eichenberger whose 18 years with the Four Freshmen links back to the band’s own origins.

“Brian used to come over and play Everly Brothers and doo wop songs,” says Love of the days before The Beach Boys came into being. “He became obsessed with The Four Freshmen who did this challenging harmony on Their Hearts Were Full Of Spring. The harmonies were Brian’s forte – I was into concepts and lyrics. We wrote the first record at the Wilsons’ house in Hawthorne – originally there was talk about doing folk music, but we wanted to do what we liked – rhythm and blues, rock and roll.”

The original line-up was based around Love, his cousins Brian, Carl and Dennis Wilson and family friend Jardine. Sadly Carl and Dennis are no longer with us, Dennis drowning in 1983 and Carl dying following a battle with lung cancer in 1998.

A big part of the Beach Boys sound was their use of harmony – something which Love still looks for when recruiting members today.

“You need to get guys who can not only sing the notes, but blend,” he says. “There are many groups that can sing notes and harmonies in two or three parts, but four part harmonies require an ability to blend, so personality doesn’t matter. It becomes a harmonious blend, which distinguishes The Beach Boys.

It was the harmonious relationship between Brian Wilson and Love which was at the heart of The Beach Boys in their early days. Love and the Wilsons were cousins, with Love growing up around music.

“My mother was a singer on the radio,” says Love. “That was a big deal in the 1930s. I grew up at home with a grand piano, organ and harp in the living room. There has never been a time when music wasn’t an important part of my life.

“Every birthday was nerve-wracking as there would be a family gathering to sing – it was where The Beach Boys started long before The Beach Boys recorded their first record.”

Wilson and Love had grown up together and gone through high school.“Be True To Your School was a result of that high school experience,” says Love referring to one of the band’s early singles.

“We would go to each other’s football games and on field trips. I remember going to Catalina Island off Los Angeles on a senior trip –it was where we experienced a lot of that southern California lifestyle.

“As first cousins there was a closeness there, which led to the creation of so many songs to do with southern California. As we grew up a little and got more worldly the songs got more introspective.”

Love was the lyricist behind many of the band’s biggest hits, including early favourites like Surfin’ Safari, Fun Fun Fun, I Get Around, California Girls and The Warmth Of The Sun, famously written on the day John F Kennedy was assassinated.

He also contributed I’m Waiting For The Day to their classic album Pet Sounds, managed to drag a reclusive Wilson to the beach in 1968 to pen one of their later worldwide hits Do It Again, and co-wrote 1988 Beach Boys hit Kokomo.

But it is his contribution to arguably the band’s finest three minutes which has gone down in history.

“Good Vibrations was done in sections, Brian had recorded it over six months in different studios,” says Love. “When Brian felt it was ready I went into the studio – and on the way I dictated the words to my then wife Suzanne. There was an element of spontaneity there.”

At the height of the band’s powers while Wilson was composing his mini-symphonies at home in California, Love’s role focused more on the band’s life on the road.

“I became interested in the mechanics of performances,” he says. “By that I mean booking the acts and working with agents and promoters. I just gravitated towards that business aspect. It wasn’t a burden at all, it was something I was avid about. I’m still involved with it on a daily basis, finding out who wants us to come where, how many miles there are from one show to the next and making it consecutive.”

It was this control over their own destinies which he feels is part of the reason The Beach Boys survived – most obviously with the launch of their own label Brother Records in 1966 with the single Heroes And Villains.

“Even before we started the Brother label we were pretty much independent,” says Love. “We used to produce our own records. In the old days you would have an A&R person deciding what songs you would do, a producer and an engineer in the studio, who were often associated with the record company. We did all that ourselves. Brian was in control of the recording processes, so much he left the touring group in 1964 as he wasn’t really happy with the amount of touring we were doing. He was much more suited to the studio.”

To mark the band’s 50th anniversary in 2011 the surviving members of the original band – Love, Wilson, Johnston and Jardine, along with former guitarist David Marks - got back together for an album and tour That’s Why God Made The Radio.

“It was really nice to get together, particularly for the fans who knew us since the beginning,” says Love. “When we recorded [the title song] That’s Why God Made The Radio we could hear the harmonies coming back – it felt like the mid-1960s all over again. It was a very good feeling.

“We were originally going to do 50 shows together, as Brian has his own band, Al was doing his own thing, and I was touring as The Beach Boys with Bruce and John [Cowsill]. That grew to 73 dates, but we agreed that would be it, and we would go back to doing our own projects.

“The music has sustained over the decades, for which we are all grateful. We have experienced resurgences a couple of times in our career – [in 1974] the Endless Summer album sold a million copies in the UK which is a lot considering the size of the population. We have been blessed that successive generations have taken to The Beach Boys and discovered, or rediscovered them.”

The track at the heart of the Brighton-set video Don’t Go Near The Water was a very early ecological anthem. As well as covering environmental concerns in some of the later Beach Boys songs Love and Johnston are still heavily involved in green issues.

“Both Bruce and I are advisory board members of the Surfrider Foundation which strives to keep the beaches pristine and unpolluted,” says Love. “If there’s a very delicate environmental spot we will try to keep it from being turned into condos or whatever.

“As a celebrity or an act which has some kind of impact it’s nice to do things that are in favour of, or can finance non-profit groups. It was always part of our ethos.”

As for the future Love is working on his autobiography, which he hopes to complete and publish by the end of next year. He is also trawling through some of his own back catalogue – which contains a number of unreleased solo albums including Mike Love Not War and First Love.

“I have a studio at home in Lake Tahoe and I use it from time to time to look at some of the stuff I did 20 or 30 years ago,” he says. “Some of the things are a little dated, I’m going through the songs to see how I can improve them or make them suitable for consumption.

“The record industry has been through so much change over the last several years. You want to be able to put your records out there they will be accepted and can be heard. They are your children – you don’t want to put them out for the sake of putting them out. With the book coming out, and the music coming out the next couple of years will be pretty productive.”

· Check out the video for Don’t Go Near The Water at www.youtube.com/watch?v=3e8PqMs4C2E

The Beach Boys at Brighton Centre, King’s Road on Wednesday, June 3. Doors 7pm, tickets from £38.50. Call 08448 471515

All you need is Love?

AS Mike Love puts it: “The Beach Boys, The Beatles and The Rolling Stones were the patriarchs of rock groups. After those three bands I always say all hell broke loose.”

Much of The Beach Boys success is placed at composer Brian Wilson’s door, but Love’s lyrics contributed to some of the band’s biggest hits. Below are eight of the best.

Surfin’ Safari

PERFECTLY encapsulating the surf scene of Southern California, Surfin’ Safari never troubled the UK charts on release, but was their breakthrough hit on the US charts reaching number 14. Mike Love took the lead vocal on the song, which was recorded during The Beach Boys’ second studio session.

I Get Around

RELEASED in July 1964 I Get Around became The Beach Boys’ first UK hit and their first US number one. The focus had shifted from catching a wave to cars and girls, with Love taking the verse and Wilson the chorus. I Get Around was one of the songs Love gained a writing credit on in 1992 following a lawsuit concerning lost royalties on more than 40 Beach Boys tracks.

The Warmth Of The Sun

FAMOUSLY penned by Love and Wilson on the night President John F Kennedy was shot, The Warmth Of The Sun explored the darkness behind the California sun, and showed The Beach Boys had much more depth to them than your average 1960s pop band. It was released on the Shut Down Valume 2 album, and as the B-side of 1965 UK single Dance Dance Dance.

California Girls

IN his Beach Boys Classics compilation, released in2002, Brian Wilson described this as “My favourite Beach Boys record... I would probably say that it’s probably The Beach Boys anthem”. Love traces this song back to that senior trip to Catalina where the cousins experienced the surfing lifestyle for the first time: “So many songs had to do with California girls and the southern California lifestyle”

Good Vibrations

CERTAINLY The Beach Boys’ finest three minutes, famously described on release by publicist Derek Taylor as “a pocket symphony”. The music was created over the course of eight months in a variety of locations by LA’s legendary session musician group theWrecking Crew. The lyrics were penned by Love in a car ride on the way to the studio apparently inspired by the growing flower power movement in California.

Wild Honey

GOOD Vibrations and the Pet Sounds album were the high water mark of Brian Wilson’s experiments in pop orchestration. The ambitious projected Smile album eventually collapsed under its own weight in May 1967 and wouldn’t see the light of day again until 2011. Co-penned by Love, Wild Honey was a way of getting back to basics, in a stripped back soulful anthem.

Do It Again

LOVE describes the origins of their second UK chart-topping single as a visit to Wilson’s house in 1966 when he was “being a bit reclusive”.

“I got him out, we went on the beach and wrote Do It Again,” he says. The single appeared on The Beach Boys’ last album of the 1960s 20/20.

Kokomo

THE Beach Boys’ first number one single in the US in 22 years, Kokomo was co-penned by Love, John Phillips of The Mamas And The Papas, San Francisco-writer Scott McKenzie and producer Terry Melcher. As well as such a high songwriting pedigree it was helped along by its inclusion on the soundtrack of cult 1988 Tom Cruise movie Cocktail.