Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photos: Getty Images (Scott Legato/Rebecca Sapp)
We’d like to catch a wave right out of here. Mike Love apparently embraced his inner antonym at Brian Wilson’s funeral service, with fellow Beach Boys member Al Jardine telling Rolling Stone in a new interview that Love chose to make a speech all about his own achievements. “Mike wanted everybody to know that he wrote every single word of ‘Good Vibrations,’” Jardine explained. “I didn’t feel the compassion, let’s put it that way. Mike’s got some serious megalomania problems.” When it was Jardine’s turn to address the mourners, he recalls saying the following about Love’s behavior, which elicited laughs from the room: “Mike, I’ve written some songs with Brian myself. We wrote one called ‘Surfin’ Down the Swanee River.’ It just wasn’t as big as ‘Good Vibrations.’” He went on to speak more thoroughly about Wilson’s legacy as a musician. “I was focusing on Brian, and Mike was more focused on Mike,” Jardine added. “I think that is what it boiled down to.” A representative for Love, who was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame earlier this year for his Beach Boys oeuvre, disputed Jardine’s story. So they’re giving each other the excitations, but not in a fun way.
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