Tucson will likely warrant a footnote or two in Mike Love’s forthcoming memoirs “Good Vibrations: My Life as a Beach Boy”:
- Tucson was the first place that his surf-soaked Beach Boys band played outside its California home base — a party at the Zeta Beta Tau (ZBT) Fraternity on the University of Arizona campus.
- Tucson was the first stop on the band’s 50th anniversary tour in 2012 — the first time founding member Brian Wilson joined the band on tour in 46 years.
• The band also is making a bit of Tucson history: On Saturday, Mike Love and the group that he has toured with as the Beach Boys since he licensed the name in 1998 will be the first artists to grace the Tucson Arena stage after its $8 million renovation.
“I’m really glad that we’re being invited to come to Tucson in that sort of a venue,” Love said in a mid-December phone interview as workers were installing signage and making the final touches on the downtown Tucson arena. “The past few years we’ve done the casinos, and the (Casino del Sol) amphitheater” — where they played that 2012 reunion show — “was nice, but this is going to be a whole other thing. This is going to be really great.”
The reunion tour hit nearly 80 cities including stops in Asia and Europe before wrapping up in September 2012.
Love plans to release his memoirs in conjunction with the 50th anniversary of the release of the breakthrough single “Good Vibrations,” the band’s third No. 1 hit and the first to sell a million copies. The song, written by Wilson and Love, was cutting edge for its time, with layered production that included recording it in pieces at four different studios over seven months in 1966.
Rolling Stone ranked it sixth on its list of 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.
Love said the book will be a tell-all of sorts that will explore Love’s life on and off the stage.
“There are lots of people being interviewed. Ex-girlfriends. Ex-wives. I think it’s cool. I think it’s fair, reality,” said the 73-year-old father of nine including a son who lives in Scottsdale. “The story of a person’s life is not just from their point of view. … There are a lot of great points of view and perspectives that ought to be heard.
“There is a whole lot of stuff people don’t know about me,” he added. “Outside of the group, I went to India in 1968 after learning transcendental meditation from the Maharishi (Mahesh Yogi). The Beatles were there. That was a fascinating time.”
He and Beatle George Harrison became close in India. After Harrison died in 2001, Love penned “Pisces Brothers,” a song inspired by Harrison and their time in India.
The song will be on the set list for Saturday’s concert, along with some of the Beach Boys biggest hits: “Surfer Girl,” “Surfin’ Safari,” “Fun, Fun, Fun,” “Little Deuce Coupe,” “Kokomo,” “Help Me, Rhonda” and “Good Vibrations” surely among them.
“This year’s been 50 years of fun, fun, fun,” Love said, the pun fully intended. “What’s great about (the show) is the multigenerational audience appeal. It’s ridiculous. In San Diego, we had a 90-year-old lady on stage and a 9 year old. And the 90-year-old lady said ‘That’s the most fun I had my whole life’.”
He might even talk to Saturday’s audience about his first time in Tucson 50-plus years ago.
“We drove with our station wagon and our U-Haul and took our amplifiers and equipment,” he said. “I was playing a saxophone at the time. We were invited to play a fraternity party. I think we were paid the lofty sum of maybe 500 bucks. We had a blast. We had such a good time we stayed a couple more days. … I remember David Marks was in the group because Al Jardine left to go to dental school. David Marks was the cross-the-street neighbor of the Wilsons. … He got into the bottle of vodka I carried in my saxophone case. His father who came out to road-manage us, was not happy at all. He was only like 14.”
