Mike Love is sitting in a blah-looking room in a Sheraton hotel in North Carolina, the garish pattern of his signature Hawaiian shirt popping against the ochre wallpaper behind him.
The 83-year-old Beach Boys frontman came to Charlotte the other day to play the Lovinâ Life music festival alongside Post Malone and DaBaby, and 36 hours later heâs still in the mood to brag: âWe had several thousands of people singing along to our songs,â he says in a Zoom call. âA lot of teenagers and stuff dancing around. Pretty phenomenal considering weâve been doing this a little over 60 years.â
As fans of the Beach Boys know, âweâ requires a bit of unpacking.
Six decades after Love formed the band in suburban Hawthorne with his cousins Brian, Dennis and Carl Wilson and their friend Al Jardine, a Beach Boys concert these days means a performance by Love and Bruce Johnston, who took over onstage for Brian Wilson after Brian quit touring in 1965, and a number of very capable backing musicians. (Jardine refers to this outfit as âMikeâs band.â) Brian, the acknowledged mastermind of one of Americaâs most transformative rock acts, eventually returned to the road and toured regularly under his own name with Jardine and other players until 2022, when health troubles forced him offstage again.
So: two sets of Beach Boys, driven apart by fights over money and creative control, neither containing any of the blood relatives whose crystalline harmonies lifted the groupâs music to a kind of celestial state.
Yet Love has old family ties on his mind as he discusses âThe Beach Boys,â a sunny if slightly wistful new documentary co-directed by Frank Marshall and Thom Zimny that premiered Friday on Disney+. The Beach Boysâ story has been told countless times in other films and shows and books and podcasts â âtoo many times,â Johnston, 81, notes with a laugh in a separate call. But this was an âopportunity to show that this is a family situation,â Love says. âA family band.â
Love, who co-wrote many of the Beach Boysâ biggest hits with Brian, recalls learning to sing half a century ago âat birthday parties and Thanksgiving and Christmas parties and New Yearâs Eveâ; he remembers blending his voice with Brianâs in the car on Wednesday nights as they drove home from Angeles Mesa Presbyterian Church in Windsor Hills. âWhen we had my Dorsey High School senior trip, I invited Brian to go with me,â he tells The Times. âI didnât invite a girl. I was a little shy and awkward and everything. But nice cousin Brian â we went to Catalina and back.â
In the movie, Loveâs blue-gray eyes well up as he describes his bond with Brian, whose mental health struggles could make it difficult to communicate with other people even as his music was expanding the scope of pop in the mid-1960s.
âThere was so much love and so much rapport between us at that time that it showed up on the records,â Love says from Charlotte. âThey talk about Elton John and Bernie Taupin. Well, it was Mike Love and Brian Wilson â Brian Wilson and Mike Love, whatever.â
With a blend of archival footage and interviews with the bandâs surviving members â Dennis Wilson died in 1983, Carl in 1998 â the new documentary comes at a moment of high visibility for the Beach Boys, who three years ago drafted Irving Azoffâs Iconic Artists Group to âpreserve and grow their legacy in a digital era,â as a statement put it.
BeyoncĂ© interpolates a bit of âGood Vibrationsâ on her hit âCowboy Carterâ album, while Lana Del Rey turned up with the band at last monthâs Stagecoach country music festival in Indio. âMy daughter Ambha, whoâs 28, sheâs been a fan of that person since she was Lizzy Grant,â Love says, referring to Del Reyâs former stage name. âShe even told Lana, âHey, Iâve been playing my dad your music since I was 12.â Lana got a kick out of that.â
Just this week, the Beach Boysâ âPet Soundsâ â the classic 1966 LP that set a new benchmark for expressive pop sophistication â landed at No. 20 on Apple Musicâs much-discussed ranking of the 100 best albums of all time.
Says Zimny, known for his earlier docs about Elvis Presley and Bruce Springsteen: âThey created a sound thatâs still active in our dreams today.â
Less happily, the Beach Boys have been in headlines this month as a result of Brianâs being placed under a conservatorship following the recent death of his wife, Melinda Wilson, whoâd been responsible for his care amid a diagnosis of dementia. Brian made a rare public appearance Tuesday night at the movieâs premiere at Hollywoodâs TLC Chinese Theater, where he posed for photos with the band for the first time since a 2023 Recording Academy tribute to the Beach Boys.
Yet light and dark have always been intertwined for a famously clean-cut group whose story encompasses substance abuse, mental illness and a bullying father-slash-manager. âThe Beach Boysâ glides pretty smoothly over much of the rough stuff, though it doesnât try to steer around Dennisâ ill-advised friendship with Charles Manson not long before the Tate-LaBianca murders.
âI only met the guy once and that was enough for me, but Dennis had him as his roommate,â Love says today. âThe whole thing was terrible. But it happened. It was the reality. It was the â60s â there were drugs, there was insanity, there was the Vietnam War going on. It was heavy-duty. But you know what? I always like to accentuate the positive. So itâs good vibrations.â
One way of thinking about the power of the Beach Boysâ music is to hear the essential sadness in even the most joyful of their songs. Loveâs not so sure about that: âIf youâre talking about âFun, Fun, Funâ or âI Get Aroundâ or âSurfinâ U.S.A.,â there ainât no melancholy in them,â he says. âEven in âThe Warmth of the Sun,â itâs about how you were in love but it didnât happen â she doesnât feel the same way anymore, so youâre left. But at least you have the memory of having felt that euphoria of being in love.â
According to Azoff, the veteran music industry insider who manages the Eagles and U2, âThe Beach Boysâ grew out of an offer from the cable network Epix (now known as MGM+) to make a documentary about the band. Azoff decided âwe could do better than Epixâ and brought in Marshall, a longtime presence in Hollywood, and together they went to Disney chief Bob Iger, who Azoff says personally made the decision to buy the doc for Disney+.
âTo me, their story hadnât been told for a while other than Brianâs personal story â and nobody really wants to see Dr. Landy anymore,â Azoff says, referring to the late psychologist whose controversial treatment of Brian in the â80s was depicted in the 2004 film âLove & Mercy.â
Marshall was drawn to the groupâs family dynamics in part, he says, because he grew up in a musical family: His dad was Jack Marshall, a jazz guitarist and composer who also worked as a producer at the Beach Boysâ record label, Capitol. In 2020 he directed HBOâs acclaimed âHow Can You Mend a Broken Heart,â about another band of brothers, the Bee Gees.
âBoth those groups had a father figure that was instrumental in their lives â in a good way for the Bee Gees and a not-so-good way for the Beach Boys,â Marshall says. The film examines Murry Wilsonâs domineering role in the bandâs affairs, including his battles with Brian over their work in the studio and his sale of the groupâs publishing in 1969 for less than $1 million. (Billboard estimates that today the Beach Boysâ catalog would be worth more than $200 million.)
âA father should never be a manager â that was really where it all stemmed from,â Jardine, 81, says over Zoom. âHeâd be all over the place with us, telling us how to tune up. His famous term was âTreble up, boys!â Heâd lost his hearing, apparently, and he didnât think it was bright enough. Things like that were maddening.â
The movie also hints at the tension between Love and Dennis Wilson â âcompetitive cousins,â Jardine calls them â as the two vied to be seen as the Beach Boysâ resident heartthrob. âAny time Dennis could upstage Mike, heâd do it,â Jardine tells The Times. âAll he had to do is stand up on his drums and hold his hands in the air with his drumsticks and the crowd went crazy. As soon as Mike was delivering a little gab, heâd time it just so that heâd get the applause instead of Mike.â He laughs. âDrove Mike nuts.â
According to Jardine, Love wasnât the only target of that energy from Dennis. He remembers the Beach Boys sharing a trailer with the Rolling Stones at a gig in Jacksonville, Fla., in the mid-â60s, âright when they first came over here. They sat at one end of the trailer and we sat at the other. We never spoke. I think Dennis had a problem with Mick [Jagger], as I recall.â He shrugs. âAlpha types.â
Beyond the bandâs complicated relationships, âThe Beach Boysâ tracks the groupâs friendly rivalry with the Beatles and highlights Brianâs pioneering role as the bandâs producer in an era when few if any pop acts were overseeing their own recordings.
âIn 2024 thatâs a common thing, but this was a world in which writers, producers and performers were all separate,â says producer Dan Nigro. Known for his work with Olivia Rodrigo and Chappell Roan, Nigro co-wrote and produced a Beach Boys-inspired tune by singer Stephen Sanchez, âBaby Blue Bathing Suit,â thatâs featured as a bonus track on the documentaryâs soundtrack. âBrian was the first person I knew of that was doing it all.â
Producer Mike Elizondo, who served as music director for last yearâs Recording Academy tribute, still uses the Beach Boysâ music as a source of motivation when heâs working with an artist in the studio. âEven if weâre not necessarily trying to make a Beach Boys-sounding record, itâs like, âLook, this is whatâs possible if youâve got a vision and you forge ahead,ââ he says.
Given Brianâs condition, nobody in or around the Beach Boys says they expect a reunion like the one the group convened to mark their 50th anniversary. But Loveâs band will be on tour all summer (including an Aug. 30 stop at L.A.âs Greek Theatre), and thereâs a limited-edition vinyl reissue of âPet Soundsâ on the way later this year. Last month, a handsome new coffee-table book, âThe Beach Boys by the Beach Boys,â was published with photos and detailed reminiscences from the members.
âThereâs a lot of nostalgia involved for somebody that was in the band,â Love says of all the retrospective action â so much that it can almost seem painful.
âWe were so close growing up,â he says of himself and Brian. âWeâd listen to KGFJ and KDAY in his Nash Rambler after we got kicked out of the house for making too much noise because my dad had to go to work at Love Sheet Metal in the morning. Weâd literally hang out in the Rambler, listening to the radio, singing things, just cracking each other up.â