Mike Love

Michael Edward Love (born March 15, 1941) is an American singer and lyricist 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 sang on their recordings and usually served as their frontman on stage. Drawing inspiration from doo wop, 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". 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".

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, he fronted Celebration, a short-lived band that consisted of Beach Boys touring musicians, and began working on solo albums, releasing his first, Looking Back with Love, in 1981. His U.S. top 40 hits co-authored without Brian were the Beach Boys' "Getcha Back" and "Kokomo". Often vilified by fans and critics for conflicts with his bandmates, 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 an exclusive license to tour under the Beach Boys' name. Since then, Love has maintained a near-constant touring regimen with his edition of the group and has released three more solo albums. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the Beach Boys in 1988. Beyond music, he has taken part in projects to promote international charities related to such subjects as environmentalism, juvenile diabetes, and music education.

Michael Edward Love, the first of six children, was born in the Baldwin Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles on March 15, 1941. Love's mother, Emily "Glee" Wilson (1919–1979), was the sister of Murry Wilson, a resident of Los Angeles since the early 1920s, and part-time songwriter. Glee married Edward Milton Love (1918–2013), the son of the founder of the Love Sheet Metal Company, in 1938. After Love's birth, the family moved to the View Park-Windsor Hills neighborhood. As a child, Love wrote his first song, "The Old Soldier", which Murry Wilson described as a "song in hymn form" in a 1971 interview. Murry reworked the song as "By His Side (When Jesus Calls His Soldiers)" with new lyrics, and Love's cousin Brian Wilson performed both songs at a concert held in Love's house. "By His Side" was copyrighted in September 1951.

Love attended Dorsey High School and graduated in 1959. He attended two semesters at Los Angeles City College, where he ran track and played basketball. Unsure of a career direction, Love joined his father's company, Love Sheet Metal, whose fortunes had begun to dramatically decline in the late 1950s. Later, Love also worked as a gas station attendant to help support himself and his first wife. Both Milt and Glee Love were active in sports, and Love's younger brother Stan Love later played in the National Basketball Association. Glee had a distinct interest in painting and the arts. Like her brother, Murry, however, she was also strong-willed and, according to her husband, a dominant personality. The family was close-knit and regularly socialized with Murry and his family.

Biography summary from English Wikipedia, photograph via Wikimedia Commons.