Credit: Far Out / Takahiro Kyono
Fri 7 August 2026 2:00, UK
Say what you like about Mike Love and his pernickety nature, but when you give him something he can truly be passionate about, you’ll always get a phenomenal performance out of him.
Throughout his tenure with The Beach Boys, of which he is the only remaining original member, Love has always been incredibly vocal about the direction he’d prefer to be taking, and that was performing pop music with a surf-adjacent feel. This is exactly how they got their start, showcasing their incredible ability for producing group harmonies more than having any songwriting chops, and that’s exactly how Love would have preferred things to be.
As a member who frequently took on the duty of lead vocals, you can understand why he’d want to dictate things in this manner, but unfortunately, Brian Wilson was the one who called the shots, given that he was the one with the most musicality. The more Wilson focused on expanding the arrangements of his compositions and writing more elaborate works, the more disenchanted Love got with being in the band, and the more he’d find himself entering disputes over the artistic direction of the band.
Love was almost incensed by the fact that Pet Sounds took a significant diversion from where they’d started out, even though it was evident from the quality of the material that it would propel them to even greater heights as a band. However, for all of Love’s protestations, at least they stuck to their quasi-nautical and barbershop origins for one song, which happened to be Love’s personal favourite song on the record.
“We were inspired by all the doo-wop groups with their harmonies, the bass guitar, the lead and all the harmonies,” Love admitted during an episode of the Red Bull Bulletin podcast, before pointing to the song that had always stood out to him from the band’s seminal 1966 album.
“Those were fun songs, like ‘Sloop John B’, which my cousin Brian Wilson did an incredible arrangement and production for,” he said, giving rare praise to the relative with whom he went on to endure a decades-long feud over songwriting credits and the overall creative control of the group. However, it isn’t necessarily their version of the song that Love adores the most, with the version he always looks to to put a smile on his face being a 1958 hit.
“This is the original,” he said, referring to the version recorded by The Kingston Trio. “A beautiful song with close four-part harmonies.” While Love may be wrong about it being the original, given that it’s a traditional song from the Bahamas dating back to even earlier in the 20th-century, it’s clear that this forms the basis for the version that The Beach Boys would go on to record.
Further reading: From The Vault
It was thanks to Al Jardine that the group were even aware of this recording and therefore inspired to record their own interpretation of it. The Beach Boys may well do a fantastic job of bringing their own character to a traditional song, but hearing The Kingston Trio’s version, it’s clear they were most closely inspired by the version they knew and loved.
What’s more, ‘Sloop John B’ doesn’t even sound out of place in context with the rest of Pet Sounds, still using all of Wilson’s lavish production quirks and being filled with a psychedelic sense of wonder. Why Love chose to complain so frequently will forever be a mystery, but at least there was one song that kept him content.
