{"id":554607,"date":"2026-04-28T06:50:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-28T06:50:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/554607\/"},"modified":"2026-04-28T06:50:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-28T06:50:08","slug":"the-charity-supergroup-mike-love-wanted-to-put-together-in-1988","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/554607\/","title":{"rendered":"The charity supergroup Mike Love wanted to put together in 1988"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Mike<\/p>\n

(Credits: Far Out \/ Takahiro Kyono)<\/p>\n

Tue 28 April 2026 4:00, UK <\/p>\n

For most music fans, Mike Love<\/a> captaining any band is the last project they\u2019d ever want to see materialise.<\/p>\n

He gets a bad wrap, really. Lore would have it that Love was the crass and commercially minded one of The Beach Boys, wringing his hands with exasperation at his genius cousin Brian Wilson\u2019s avant-pop brilliance<\/a> and urging him to stay closer to the safe waters of surf rock over the choppy terrain of Pet Sounds\u2019 lauded experimentalism.<\/p>\n

Coupled with later legal battles over song credits and his eager hobnobbing with Republicans, Love can\u2019t help but stand as the target of ire among the band\u2019s many fans.<\/p>\n

What his detractors won\u2019t really acknowledge is his solid input in many of The Beach Boys\u2019 biggest hits. Love was instrumental in many of the doo-wop-leaning vocal arrangements, as well as co-writing \u2018Fun Fun Fun\u2019, \u2018I Get Around\u2019, and \u2018California Girls\u2019, and lyrically dreaming up the bulk of \u2018Good Vibrations<\/a>\u2019. Still, ruthless litigious action in the early 1990s against Wilson and a perception that he was keen to keep slogging The Beach Boys through the nostalgia circuit still dogs Love to this day.<\/p>\n

But did he really consider jumping ship in a new venture with some of the day\u2019s biggest stars? \u201cI\u2019d like to see a Mick Jagger and a Mike Love and a Bruce Springsteen do something that is real, to fix something, rather than just a photo opportunity like Live Aid, which has no design to change anything,\u201d Love quipped to journalist Dean Goodman in 1992. \u201cIt was a great press opportunity, and maybe they shipped a few million dollars\u2019 worth of something to the docks to be stolen by the people in Ethiopia.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

The Beach Boys, in fact, played Philadelphia\u2019s side of the Live Aid bargain back in 1985, but what prompted such a cynical jab at the charity industry? In 1988, Love seemed to have plenty to be happy about. \u2018Kokomo\u2019 had scored a US number one, and The Beach Boys were to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame along with The Beatles, Bob Dylan, and The Rolling Stones. What could go wrong?<\/p>\n

Well, missing that day\u2019s Transcendental Meditation session meant Love\u2019s capacity for assholeism was alive and kicking. As well as beckoning Springsteen and Billy Joel to come and stage and jam, he called out Paul McCartney for letting business differences stop<\/a> his attendance, and accused Jagger of cowardice for not attending the event, never mind his actual presence in the audience watching Love\u2019s rambling tirade.<\/p>\n

It turns out that Love\u2019s industry jab was supposedly wrought from his fatigue with the music business\u2019 artifice and hollow spectacle, a concern likely to surprise longtime Love haters. \u201cIt is fake because they don\u2019t think any further than the footlights,\u201d he furthered. \u201cAnd I don\u2019t like that, I\u2019m not into that. I think black-tie benefits are great, but when they start losing money for the cause, or they don\u2019t address the issues with dynamic enough results, then it\u2019s like a Pyrrhic thing. It doesn\u2019t mean anything.\u201d<\/p>\n

The answer, then, is another charity jamboree with Jagger and Springsteen, according to Love. It\u2019s not entirely clear what the reviled Beach Boy is clamouring at, but it\u2019s safe to assume rock and pop haven\u2019t missed much on the absence of Love\u2019s mooted supergroup.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

ADD AS A PREFERRED SOURCE ON GOOGLE \"\"\/ <\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ Takahiro Kyono) Tue 28 April 2026 4:00, UK For most music fans, Mike Love…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":554608,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[15738,96,25722,108914,128,15745,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-554607","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-bruce-springsteen","tag-entertainment","tag-mick-jagger","tag-mike-love","tag-music","tag-the-beach-boys","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554607","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=554607"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554607\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/554608"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=554607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=554607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=554607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}