Beach Boys seek to overcome discord with new wave of Love

With songs like “Good Vibrations,” “Fun, Fun, Fun” and “Wouldn’t It Be Nice,” feel-good music is as much a part of the Beach Boys’ brand as surfing and hot rods.

There’s a darkness just below the surface of the Beach Boys’ story tugging on their legacy like a riptide. Their two main protagonists, cousins Brian Wilson and Mike Love, don’t speak. A supporting player in the drama, Wilson’s former singer-guitarist and right-hand man, Jeffrey Foskett, is now part of Love’s Beach Boys. He treasures his time hanging out with Wilson, but quit Wilson’s 2013 solo tour with guitarist Jeff Beck after saying he “snapped.”

Foskett and the Beach Boys perform two shows at the McCallum Theatre Sunday while riding another wave of success. Foskett says he’s recaptured that sitting-on-top-of-the-world feeling with Love, who was given exclusive rights to the Beach Boys name by the founders and heirs of the original band members. In exchange, they get 17.5 percent of all Beach Boys touring revenue.

“I have really settled in,” said Foskett, who lived in Rancho Mirage while in Wilson’s band. “The first year out was a real eye opener because Michael loves to work. We kicked some serious butt as far as number of shows. But, even though it’s a lot of work, it’s a lot of fun because it’s like your second family. There are five crew guys and eight of us on stage. I’m sure we have our quirks; I have mine. But there’s no one I wouldn’t call to go to lunch or hang out with. We all like each other.”

BACK HISTORY: Foskett explains switch to Beach Boys

There’s a public perception that Wilson is a misunderstood genius while Love is the guy who held him back to make sure the Beach Boys stayed on a commercial path. Wilson’s struggles with drugs and mental illness are well documented, so, there’s sympathy for him. You don’t mock a man who says he hears voices, as Wilson acknowledges in his new memoir, “I Am Brian Wilson.” Love has felt compelled to take Wilson to court several times. In the 1990s, he sued for being falsely defamed in Wilson’s book, “Wouldn’t It Be Nice,” and for not getting credit for lyrics he wrote with Wilson.

Foskett wonders why Love waited 30 years to file his suits. “I don’t know if I could wait that long,” he said.

Love has defended himself in interviews, but Wilson’s story had become such grand opera there's no print canvas big enough for a thorough defense. In 2015, it became the basis of the acclaimed film, “Love and Mercy.”

The Love defense

Love, 75, finally told his side of the Love and Wilson family story in 422 pages this year in his autobiography, “Good Vibrations: My Life As A Beach Boy.” Just as Charles Leerhsen’s 2015 book, “Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty,” debunks the portrait of the baseball pioneer as a disliked, mean-spirited racist in the 1994 movie, “Cobb,” Love’s book paints a less sympathetic picture of his cousin than “Love and Mercy.”

The movie doesn’t mention that HarperCollins settled Love’s defamation suit rather than defend Wilson’s claim that Love had cost the band “millions of dollars in lost royalties” because of bad business decisions. It doesn’t note that a jury declared on Dec. 12, 1994, that Love deserved co-songwriting credits on 35 Beach Boys songs, including seven top 10 hits, and that Wilson or his agents had intent to defraud and did commit promissory fraud to deny Love songwriting credits and royalties.

Love said in his book he was deprived of $18 million to $22 million worth of royalties. His attorney was preparing to ask for punitive damages 10 times the full value of those songs, he said, which could have been between $40 million and $100 million, according to experts Love’s attorney was read to call.

Love says he only accepted $5 million because that was half the amount his cousin took to settle a law suit of his own for a previous fraudulent sale of the publishing of his catalog, including the 35 songs for which Love did not receive credit.

A certified instructor of Transcendental Meditation, Love admits to many mistakes, including his speech at the Beach Boys’ induction into the Rock ‘N’ Roll Hall of Fame in 1988. That night, he challenged the Rolling Stones to a battle of the bands and said Mick Jagger had always been too chicken to "get on stage with the Beach Boys.” He said in his book he hadn’t meditated that day and “I got off track.”

Love was reluctant to criticize Wilson in an interview with The Desert Sun. He twice asked for more “positive” questions.

“I know what I did,” he said. “Maybe I’m two or three decades late in coming out with my story, but, so be it.”

Wilson says in his memoir — which came out after Love’s — that he doesn’t like to think about all that he and Love have been through.

“We had been in court once in the ’90s when he sued over royalties from the early songs,” Wilson wrote with his co-author, Ben Greenman. “I lost that case during a trying time in my life… Mike had a funny way of looking at things. He was always an aggressive person.

"We spent way too much time going to court. In the ’90s, he got angry about how Tony Asher and Van Dyke Parks were credited on early records and he asked for some credit back. Now, on ‘Wild Honey,’ he’s credited on every song, even ‘Mama Says,’ even though that part comes from what Van Dyke wrote for ‘Vega-Tables’ on ‘SMiLE’ (the 1966 Beach Boys masterpiece, containing “Good Vibrations,” that Wilson released as a solo project in 2004).”

He needles Love for saying he could make one of Wilson’s songs “25 percent better” and violates a Transcendental Meditation dictum by revealing his mantra in print.

Love hasn’t read Wilson’s book, but he’s not sure Wilson is the one saying those negative things.

“He’s not in charge of his life, like I am in mine,” Love said. “His every move is orchestrated and a lot of things he’s purported to say, there’s not tape of it. But, I don’t like to put undue pressure on him, either, because I know he has a lot of issues. Out of compassion, I don’t respond to everything that is purportedly said by him. I’ve noticed where he says he really regards me as his greatest writing partner and that he loves my voice. Even on the 50th (anniversary tour), he made it quite clear he really liked watching me do my thing while he was at the piano. So, there’s a lot of positivity there.”

Start of villification

Love realized he was being made the villain in the Brian Wilson story when the Beach Boys released their “Pet Sounds” album, transitioning from a band dealing with teenage themes to a mature group challenging the Beatles' growth after their “Rubber Soul” LP.

“Some of it stems from the ‘Pet Sounds’ era when a guy named David Anderle said I said, ‘Don’t (f***) with the formula,’ which wasn’t true,” Love said. “I never said that. But it assumed a life of its own.

“I always have been competitive and commercial. You want to do things unique and creative, but, if you’re not commercially successful, you find out all too soon the record companies will drop you. If they don’t see any value in what you’re doing or can’t properly communicate the changes you’re going through, then that’s a big problem. That’s what happened with ‘Pet Sounds.’ It was a disappointment commercially speaking, initially. It took decades to go platinum. But it was received by fellow musicians and peers phenomenally well. Well, I worked very hard on ‘Pet Sounds.’ I named the album, I went with Brian after we finished it and played it for Karl Engemann, the A&R guy at Capitol Records. So, it was just a totally erroneous thing."

Unlike many rock stars in the late 1960s, Love rejected drugs after getting into Transcendental editation. That was going against the trend of what was cool in rock circles. Consequently, he said "there is so much negativity that has confronted the group. 

"A lot of it is brought on by lifestyle choices," he said. "I mean, some of the people that gave Brian all these drugs thought they were being really cool. I just thought it was very uncool. But that’s another one of those things where I knew what I was all about and other people (were) making these choices that ultimately didn’t do them any good. Dennis died in 1983 (at age 39). He couldn’t shake the drugs (heroin and cocaine) and the alcohol. So, seeing that happen to your family members, it’s not fun. Of course, because we’re in a public arena, all those problems, which may occur to millions of families across the world, become magnified.”

Love’s book recalls the significant role the Beach Boys played in pop culture even when they weren’t making music. Love traveled to India to visit Maharishi Mahesh Yogi while the Beatles, Donovan and Frank Sinatra’s estranged wife, Mia Farrow, were there. Farrow’s sister also attended and was so serious about meditating indoors, John Lennon wrote “Dear Prudence,” after asking her to come out to play.

Dennis Wilson, the middle of three brothers in the Beach Boys, became involved with the Manson family and tried to help Charles Manson get a record deal. The Beach Boys actually sang one of Manson’s songs on “The Mike Douglas Show.” Dennis Wilson disassociated himself from the cult leader, Love said, after seeing him shoot a black man in half with an M16 rifle and stuff his body down a well. This was before Manson’s followers killed Sharon Tate and other occupants of a house that was previously occupied by the Beach Boys’ producer friend, Terry Melcher, son of Doris Day.

“That’s what he told me,” Love said. “He told it to just one or two other people that I know of, but, since the book came out, a couple people told me they heard the same thing from Dennis. Dennis was acting so uptight, I said, ‘Why are you so uptight?’ 

“He actually wanted us to join the Manson family. I didn’t necessarily want to do that. He was kind of a weird dude.”

Love decided to write his book after his grandfather died shortly after his 95th birthday. He said he wasn’t just trying to set the record straight about his role with Brian Wilson.

“I didn’t get credit for writing so many songs, like ‘California Girls’ and ‘I Get Around’ and ‘Be True to Your School’ and ‘Surfin’ USA,’” he said. “All the fallacious stuff – the inaccuracies and painting me as a bad guy, I didn’t (usually) bother to deal with it. But, if you’re going to write your story, then you’re going to have to write it as you lived it and the truth is what it is. So, if it contradicts some of the lore, some of the fallacies, some of the mythology, then so be it.

“Long story short: I’m 75. It occurred to me, maybe it’s time I document my experiences because it has been a very special and unique life. Just because somebody said something erroneous, or an outright lie, it doesn’t mean I’m going to get all defensive and uptight about it. I just let it go. I’ve always accentuated the positive.”

Working relationship

Foskett calls Love a prudent businessman and “a really great showman.” He said recording veteran Michael Lloyd summed up Love’s and Wilson’s working relationship best.

“He said it was the perfect partnership,” Foskett said. “All Brian wanted to do was stay in the studio and create really great music and experiment with sounds. Michael was a great lyricist and while Brian created the template of the music, Michael would come in and write these really great lyrics. But Mike wanted to spend as little time in the studio as possible because he wanted to get out and tour and be in front of as many people as he could and keep the brand and the trademark and the whole thing running.”

REVIEW: Beach Boys and Brian Wilson shows in 2014

Foskett said he wasn’t even aware of the behind-the-scenes friction between Love and Wilson’s business partners on the 50th anniversary tour, when he was part of Wilson’s band.

“Michael runs a very lean and very efficient machine financially and organizationally,” he said. “Half the time we’ll rent backline gear, half the time we’ll carry backline gear. But, on the Beach Boys 50, we carried sound, lights, backline gear, production. Brian had his own bus, Mike was on a bus with some people, the crew members had a bus -- I think there were four buses out and I think every day Mike looked up and just saw money going down the drain. Compared to how he runs his business, I think Michael thinks it could have been more profitable because of the production aspect. But I personally had a good time on the tour because it was all of the living original guys back together. As a fan, it was a bunch of fun.”

Love learned the touring business in the earliest days of the Beach Boys because he was the only band member old enough to sign contracts. Brian Wilson is one year younger than him.

“Being the oldest and having two baby girls, it made me want to learn the business ropes of at least the touring,” Love said. “I obviously didn’t learn enough about the publishing part. My Uncle Murry handled that. I thought that was in good hands because it was in the family, which turned out not to be true. But, I took a very active part early on in the booking of the shows. I would spend a couple days a week at the William Morris Agency lining up future tours and working with a promoter, Irving Granz, brother of Norman Granz (founder of the Jazz at the Philharmonic tours). So I was plenty busy as lead singer of the Beach Boys and co-writing the songs with Brian.”

The only time Love got emotional in the interview was when he was reminded that Brian said he felt like he was being fired from the 50th anniversary tour.

“That was not accurate,” Love said. “That was a total fabrication. He wasn’t fired. Who could fire him? Nobody. Al Jardine (the other original surviving Beach Boy) promulgated that and that was not cool. We did 73 shows even though the original deal was 50. So, we did more than we were contracted for.

“The way things were done, that’s a whole other book.”

Concert info

What: The Beach Boys, featuring Mike Love, in concert

When: 3 p.m. and 7 p.m. Sunday

Where: The McCallum Theatre, 73-000 Fred Waring Drive, Palm Desert

Tickets: $117 for the 3 p.m., tickets for 7 p.m. show are sold out

Information: (760) 340-ARTS or online at mccallumtheatre.com