The singer Brian Wilson never wanted to talk to again: “I can’t be around the guy”
It’s hard to find anyone in the music industry who seemed as in love with creating as Brian Wilson did.
Even though anyone else would have considered Wilson to be one of the almighty gods of rock that made everyone think about the genre in a different way, Wilson felt that every single song he ever made was done in service of him trying to make the best tunes that he could find. He was only happy to have written them and not focus on the showmanship of it all, but that’s easier said than done when he was a part of the biggest concert draws of the 1960s.
The Beach Boys weren’t going to quit performing live just because their musical genius didn’t want to perform anymore, and the plan of them going out on tour while Wilson cut most of their records wasn’t exactly a terrible idea. That way, Wilson could have a way to air out all of his creative ambition, and the rest of the band could show up in a few months and be able to sing to their heart’s content in the studio before going back out on the road.
Except there is one fly in the ointment here. You see, Wilson was the kind of person who wanted to experiment with anything and everything, and while that was all well and good, that doesn’t present a bit of a problem when everyone wants the same formula. Any other band usually likes to fight back against those who are trying to keep them in their place, but that kind of issue was also Wilson’s main problem with Mike Love.
Suffice to say, Love wasn’t exactly thrilled over the idea of making such upbeat music suddenly be about drugs, and given that Brian wanted to make the best music he could, Love turned into another stumbling block for him. He had to rewrite all of the lyrics to a song like ‘I Know There’s An Answer’ to make sure that satisfied Love, but that wasn’t the first time that the frontman would insert himself into places where he didn’t belong.
By the time that Wilson was out of the picture in the 1970s, the band had become a nostalgia act, and Love had decided to turn them into one of the more embarrassing casualties of the Love generation. Wilson’s troubled period with Eugene Landy was no picnic in the slightest, but the idea of him going along with whatever Love wanted to do and having the frontman insist on having a certain amount of time at the front of the stage wasn’t the kind of band that he wanted to form back in the day.
So by the time that Wilson reached his twilight years, he didn’t really have many kind words left to say to Love for the rest of his career, saying, “I don’t like Mike Love at all because I don’t like his attitude. He’s just too egotistical. I can’t be around the guy. Five minutes around him is about all I can take.” And even then, getting them all together again seemed to be pushing it after a while.
That’s Why God Made the Radio was a decent way for them to wrap up their career together, but it’s not like Love has been the easiest person to deal with, either. He was the one who insisted that he be given a co-write on a song like ‘Wouldn’t It Be Nice’ despite not writing any words and coming up with only one tag at the end of the song, and even when working on some of the band’s masterpieces with Van Dyke Parks, Love would want to rip the lyricist’s work up if he found out some of them were drug-related.
Love does get a bit more points for being the spirit of the band whenever they play live, but there’s not exactly a warm heart hiding underneath that sun visor hat. Wilson was always the soul of the band in many ways, and while Love could still churn out the hits every single summer, it wasn’t like the rest of the band was all that thrilled at how Wilson was treated by their leader.
