Mike Love

Michael Edward Love (born March 15, 1941) is an American singer and songwriter who co-founded the Beach Boys alongside his cousins Brian, Dennis, and Carl Wilson and their friend Al Jardine. Characterized by his nasally baritone singing voice, he consistently contributed to their studio albums and usually served as their frontman on stage since 1961. He is credited with co-writing 15 songs with Brian that reached the U.S. Top 40, including "Fun, Fun, Fun", "I Get Around", "Help Me, Rhonda", "California Girls", "Good Vibrations", and "Do It Again". Drawing inspiration from Chuck Berry and Felice and Boudleaux Bryant, Love's lyrics primarily reflected the youth culture of surfing, cars, and romance, which helped fashion pop culture's perception of the "California Dream". Love also contributed to the Beach Boys' vocal arrangements – particularly the doo-wop element in their sound. Starting in 1968, Love was a student of Transcendental Meditation (TM) under Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, and he became a TM teacher in 1971. The experience influenced his lyrics to take on themes of astrology, meditation, politics and ecology. In the late 1970s, Love fronted Celebration, a short-lived band that consisted of Beach Boys touring musicians, and began working on solo albums, releasing his first in 1981, Looking Back with Love. His U.S. top 40 hits co-authored without Brian were the Beach Boys' "Getcha Back" and "Kokomo". Love is often vilified by fans and critics for his history of conflicts with his bandmates, a characterization he has disputed. Many of his lyrical contributions to the group's hits were not officially recognized until the 1990s, when he sued Brian for writing credits on 35 songs. Love remains uncredited for another 44 Beach Boys songs he claimed to have co-written. Following Carl's death in 1998, the band members and their corporation, Brother Records, Inc., granted Love...