Brian Wilson on the greatest lyricist he ever worked with: “Very spiritual and very factual”
Brian Wilson never claimed to be the best at writing lyrics. While he has written some fantastic pieces of art with The Beach Boys, his simplistic approach to the words always paled in comparison to what he was able to do with complex harmonies and layering voices on top of one another. Wilson still had a great respect for every word of his songs, and he considered Mike Love to be the finest writer to ever contribute to The Beach Boys.
Then again, most people are probably listening to the group for the harmonies rather than the words. As much as people like to listen to ‘Fun Fun Fun’ every summer, it’s not going to be the equivalent of ‘Blowin’ In the Wind’ if you bother looking at the lyric sheet for more than two minutes.
But Love wasn’t about that approach anyway. He saw The Beach Boys as a way to make the world just that much more fun, and if you look at the kind of tracks where he did get political, like ‘Summer in Paradise’ and ‘Student Demonstration Time’, it’s clear that his time is better served writing about the beach, cars, and relaxing in the sunshine.
Love wasn’t the only artist bringing lyrics to the table, though. Throughout the recording of Pet Sounds, Tony Asher might be the finest wordsmith on the record, taking Wilson’s odes to love and devotion and penning tracks like ‘Wouldn’t It Be Nice’ around them so they became romantic rather than the standard boy-meets-girl romance tunes.
When talking about the way that they all operate, though, Wilson had to give it to Love for understanding the group on a much deeper level, saying, “Mike Love is probably the greatest lyric writer in the world. I think he’s my favourite lyric writer. He just wrote a lot of good songs. His lyrics were very spiritual and very factual, and he captured the mood of America and surf and California and Los Angeles; he captured the whole genre.”
That wasn’t necessarily by accident, either. Once The Beatles decided to practice transcendental meditation, Love was right there with them when they went to India alongside Donavon and Mia Farrow, to the point where he contemplated studying and teaching the same practices once he returned to America.
Love’s lyrics work well for The Beach Boys, but that didn’t mean that he couldn’t lay down the law when he wanted to, either. When working on the basis of ‘I Know There’s An Answer’, Love’s insistence on changing the words from ‘Hang On To Your Ego’ did end up kneecapping the album’s druggy overtones just a little bit. It didn’t serve the premise of the tune, but in terms of the romantic theme of the album, it fit right in.
There will always be Beach Boys that could be better, but Love’s abilities as a lyric writer were always about keeping their audience in mind before their own musical trips. And given the fact that ‘California Girls’ has become an anthem for the West Coast, maybe we can forgive what Love did on ‘Summer of Love’.
