This summer, Mike Love is back on tour, leading the Beach Boys around the United States on a tour that will visit more than 70 cities.
At 83, Love is the last member of the classic 1960s Beach Boys lineup still touring with the group. He owns the Beach Boys name and oversees the band's business. The only other touring member with ties to the early edition of the Beach Boys is Bruce Johnston, who in 1964 joined the group to replace Brian Wilson, who had decided to retire from touring to focus on his role as the main songwriter and producer of the Beach Boys music and work exclusively in the studio.
Ostensibly, the Beach Boys are touring to celebrate a pair of projects. One is the 50th anniversary of "Endless Summer," the greatest hits album that revived the band's career in the mid 1970s after the Beach Boys' popularity had waned in the years following the groundbreaking 1966 album "Pet Sounds" and the innovative follow-up single, "Good Vibrations."
"We probably do 18 of the 20 songs on that album in our concert," Love said in a late-June phone interview, noting that the tour is titled Endless Summer Gold as a nod to that anniversary.
The group is also touring behind a new documentary entitled simply as "The Beach Boys" that's now streaming on Disney+.
Directed by Frank Marshall and Thom Zimny and written by Mark Monroe, the documentary traces the Beach Boys career from its inception in 1961 in the Los Angeles suburb of Hawthorne, where Love co-founded the band with his cousins, Brian, Carl and Dennis Wilson and friend Al Jardine mainly through the mid-1970s resurgence of the band.
The documentary has been dinged in some reviews for glossing over or omitting altogether some of less-positive elements of the Beach Boys history, including tensions that existed in the group, the drug use of several members of the band, Brian Wilson's struggles with drugs and mental health that initially culminated in a breakdown following the completion of the classic 1966 album, "Pet Sounds," and the controversial role psychiatrist Eugene Landy took in the years that followed in managing Wilson's life. In addition, the deaths of Dennis Wilson from a drowning accident in 1983 and Carl Wilson from cancer in 1998 are only referenced with a note at the end of the documentary.
But Love likes how the film came out and feels it touches on aspects of the group's history that some of the many other documentaries on the Beach Boys didn't highlight.
"I think it showed a bit more of my involvement than has been in other projects, and there have been some fallacies said about me, like I didn't like the 'Pet Sounds' album, which was stupid because I named the 'Pet Sounds' album and I went with Brian to present it to Capitol Records," Love said.
"I think this documentary really (depicts) how it was, how it really was, with the harmonies and the family connection and it more accurately told the story of the making of the music."
What is also memorable for Love is footage from a get-together last summer with all of the surviving band members, including Brian Wilson.
"The surviving members, and David Marks and Al Jardine and Bruce Johnston, we all got together at Paradise Cove, which is where we did our original album cover photo shoot," Love said, referring to the Beach Boys' "Surfin' Safari" album, which depicted the five band members on a beach in a vintage truck, carrying a surfboard. "So over 60 years later we got together at the same place and we actually sang some songs together and it was really nice to have that as the final shot of the documentary."
For now, it's back to touring for Love and his band, who come to Hayden Homes Amphitheater in Bend on Aug. 24. And the Beach Boys Endless Summer Gold tour will celebrate the 1960s hits that had them vying with The Beatles to be the pop music's most popular band, while displaying the sun-kissed, harmony-laden sound (not to mention lyrics about surfing, cars and beautiful girls) that helped create America's fascination with the idyllic California lifestyle.
The band lineup this year has a new musical director in guitarist Brian Eichenberger, a new lead guitarist (John Wedemeyer) and a new drummer (Jon Bolton). Love, Johnston, keyboardist Tim Bonhomme, sax/flute player Randy Leago, bassist Keith Hubacher and guitarist Christian Love (son of Mike Love) remain from previous lineups.
Love is pleased with this unit ("Actually, we sound better than we ever have," he said. He noted that Eichenberger, in addition to leading the band, handles the high harmony parts initially sung by Brian Wilson, while Wedemeyer is a "diversified and brilliant" lead guitarist and Bolton is "a show within a show" on drums. What's more, Bolton's vocals allow the band to perform a couple of songs Carl Wilson sang that couldn't be performed with some previous lineups.
"We're really doing more songs from more years of our band's existence these days than we ever have," Love said.
