Everybody agrees that Brian Wilson’s genius is crucial to the music of The Seaside Boys, and but the creation of the Californian dream, the idyll of infinite summer time days – and summer time nights – owes a lot to the brilliance of Mike Love and the lyrics that he wrote. Cousin to the Wilson brothers, Mike Love was born on March 15, 1941, and rapidly grew to become a key a part of the musical household.
As Mike Love says, “I really like Chuck Berry, the way he wrote his words, he described little vignettes that were going on in his life in his environment and that’s what we did when I went to start writing lyrics – ‘Surfing Safari’; ‘Surfing USA’; ‘Fun, Fun, Fun’; ‘I Get Around’ – that kind of thing. Those were little stories of what was going on in Southern California at the time we were growing up.”
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On Surfin Safari, The Seaside Boys’ first album that was launched in 1962, Mike contributed the lyrics to the title monitor, “Surfin,” and “409”; it set the template for lots of the basic Nineteen Sixties Seaside Boys hits, a heady mixture of browsing and vehicles…and some ladies as nicely.
The band’s third album, Surfer Lady in 1963, contains “Catch A Wave” that has a superb lyric from Mike Love, “You paddle out turn around and raise, and baby that’s all there is to the coastline craze. You gotta catch a wave and you’re sittin’ on top of the world.” It made browsing sound inside everybody’s attain, whether or not you had been residing in Pittsburgh or Peterborough.
For the Seaside Boys’ Little Deuce Coupe album, Brian and Roger Christian write lots of the songs, but it surely’s one in every of Mike’s lyrics that resonated with so many. “Be True to Your School” personifies the perfection of teenage years and the highschool of everybody’s desires.
For the Seaside Boys’ fifth studio album Shut Down Vol.2, Mike wrote two of his best lyrics, representing the polar extremes of Brian and Mike Love’s creativity. “Fun Fun Fun” is a lyric that’s simply good in each method. The teenage dream of getting her dad’s Ford Thunderbird to not go to “the library, like she told her old man” however to cruise “through the hamburger stand” conjures up a superb visible picture, one thing that one of the best songs do, with what looks as if consummate ease. It additionally contains one of many best of all Mike’s traces, “She makes the Indy 500 look like a Roman chariot race.”
On the different finish of the musical spectrum is “The Warmth of The Sun.” Brian and Mike Love started writing the music within the early hours of the morning earlier than John F. Kennedy’s assassination. They accomplished it later that day, having heard about Kennedy’s dying. In response to Mike, “The melody was so haunting, sad, melancholy, that the only thing that I could think of lyrically was the loss of love, when interest slips and feelings aren’t reciprocated… though I wanted to have a silver lining on that cumulus nimbus cloud so I wrote the lyrics from the perspective of, ‘Yes, things have changed and love is no longer there, but the memory of it lingers like the warmth of the sun.’ I think it’s really impactful and memorable… one of my favorite songs from an emotional and personal point of view.” The poignancy is made much more good by one in every of Brian Wilson’s most good lead vocals.
Then got here the All Summer time Lengthy album that features one other one in every of Mike’s excellent homages to paradise, the good, “I Get Around”; it grew to become the Seaside Boys first UK high 10 single. The album additionally contains “All Summer Long,” “Little Honda,” “Don’t Back Down” and “Wendy,” which lined all 4 of the band’s lyrical touchstones; Mike wrote lyrics for all of them.
By the point of the Seaside Boys Right this moment! an album from 1965 at a time when Mike and Brian had been heading in the direction of their mid-twenties there was a shift to barely extra mature themes as may be heard on the chic “Please Let Me Wonder” and the even lusher “Kiss Me Baby.” The theme of change and maturation is completely captured by “When I Grow Up (To Be A Man)”: “Will I look for the same things in a woman that I dig in a girl? Will I settle down fast or will I first wanna travel the world? Now I’m young and free but how will it be, when I grow up to be a man?”
Later in 1965, The Seaside Boys launched one in every of their most achieved albums up to now, Summer time Days (And Summer time Nights). Facet 2 opens with one in every of their towering “pocket symphonies” – the complete flowering of the West Coast sunshine sound – “California Girls.” The genius of Brian’s orchestral intro is completely balanced by the lyrics.
1966’s Pet Sounds is commonly cited because the second that Brian and Mike started to develop aside as a songwriting crew. However Mike Love contributed to the lyrics of “Wouldn’t It Be Nice,” “I’m Waiting For the Day,” and “I Know There’s An Answer,” displaying that his lyrics had been nonetheless vital. Smiley Smile had much less of Mike’s lyrics but it surely contains one extremely vital music to each the album and the 60s as an entire: “Good Vibrations.”
With the approaching of the Summer time Of Love in 1967 and rock taking on from pop, the Seaside Boys started to search out they had been considerably at odds with the cultural style of the nation(s). There have been nonetheless collaborations between Mike and Brian however more and more different members of the Seaside Boys supplied lyrical enter. Mike nonetheless had standout gems from this era, although, together with “Do It Again,” “Add Some Music To Your Day,” “Cool, Cool Water,” and “All This Is That.”
So long as folks consider California, they’ll have a soundtrack of their head that’s supplied by the Seaside Boys. They will even have imagery that’s conjured up by Mike Love’s lyrics; lyrics a couple of time when there was hope and desires when the solar actually did appear to shine on daily basis. “T-shirts, cut-offs, and a pair of thongs,” we actually had been having enjoyable all summer time lengthy.
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