No Love lost between cousin Mike and Brian

News from the world of music doesn't usually make me mad. My reactions range from sadness (when Elliott Smith died) to mild annoyance (when the Beta Band broke up, for instance) to exasperation (anything involving Eminem), but rarely do I feel genuinely angry.

That changed yesterday when I found out that Mike Love is suing Brian Wilson over Wilson's Smile album.

I won't even pretend to look at this from an objective viewpoint. I hate Mike Love. He's selfish, he cares about nothing except money, he undermined his cousin Brian's confidence and mental health at the worst possible time (more on that in a minute), and he's so insecure about his baldness that he hasn't appeared in public without a hat for 40 years and counting. And as much as I hate Mike Love, that's how much I love Brian Wilson, the genius behind everything good the Beach Boys ever did, the mastermind, the architect, the brilliant songwriter who easily ranks as one of the best America has ever produced. He's fought through decades of addiction, depression, and a criminally manipulative doctor to make one of the most unlikely comebacks in the history of rock music, culminating with the completion of his long-lost masterpiece, the intended 1967 follow-up to Pet Sounds, Smile.

One of the main reasons for my anti-Love, pro-Wilson bias lies at the heart of this lawsuit: Mike Love is the single biggest reason Smile was never finished in the first place. He vehemently made his feelings known: that he had no idea what the album was about, that he wanted the Beach Boys to go back to making simple surfing songs, and that he considered Smile to be "Brian's ego music." There are many other contributing factors to Brian's abandonment of Smile, but the fact that his own relative and bandmate was attempting (successfully) to undermine the entire thing was probably the single biggest factor in deep-sixing it.

Of course, now that it's finally been finished, and released to near-universal acclaim, Love is naturally unhappy about it. Love, or his attorney, or both, are saying, without any trace of irony, that Brian promoted Smile in a manner that "shamelessly misappropriated Mike Love's songs, likeness and the Beach Boys trademark, as well as the Smile album itself." Never mind that Love wanted nothing to do with Smile when he had his chance back in the late 60's, or that he co-wrote exactly one (1) song that ended up on the album (that would be his lyrical contribution to "Good Vibrations," which ended up being dropped for Tony Asher's original lyrics for Smile anyway), or that the only reason Smile was released under the name "Brian Wilson" and not "The Beach Boys" is because Mike Love himself sued for exclusive use of the name (and won for reasons I can't even begin to fathom). I have no clue how Love's "likeness" is being misappropriated here. The only mentions of his name I can think of throughout the entire blitz of promotion and media coverage over the past two years have been along the lines of "Fellow Beach Boy Mike Love was extremely critical of Smile," and that's not slander, that's a fact.

So Mike Love wants re-imbursement for "millions of dollars in illicit profits," and meanwhile Brian Wilson raised $210,000 for Hurricane Katrina relief, and made 500 personal phone calls to fans who donated $100 or more (donations he also matched). Clearly Brian's the bad guy there. I don't know why I'm so surprised by this, but to me, it's more proof that Mike Love is a petty man with no class, no shame, and apparently no brain underneath that big bald dome of his.