To hear Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Mike Love talk, his upcoming area concert with the modern incarnation of The Beach Boys, with near-original member Bruce Johnston, could last forever.
How else would you fit most of the classic hits — “Surfin’ USA,” “Good Vibrations,” “Fun, Fun, Fun,” “California Girls,” Barbara Ann,” “Help Me, Rhonda,” “Kokomo” and we could be here all day — into one show in which you also need space for holiday tunes such as “Little St. Nick”?
You play for at least two hours, he figured. And, at age 80, approaching the 60th year of the band’s first album, he sounds as excited as ever to hit the road for another Christmas tour.
Besides, the current nine-member ensemble, including son and guitarist/keyboard player Christian, sold out two shows in December 2019 at the 2,000-seat Brown County Music Center in Nashville. The band revisits the venue, which Love said he loves, at 7 p.m. Dec. 19 for a show titled “Holiday Harmonies.”
The Grammy-winning singer, speaking by phone from son Brian’s home in Scottsdale, Arizona, reminisced a bit about the yuletide.
“In the ’50s, we would all get together for Christmas caroling with my parents and all my aunts and uncles, plus cousins Brian, Dennis and Carl Wilson, and sing,” he said, referring to his relatives and former bandmates. “So Christmas and holiday music has been a lifelong part of our overall experience.”
The Beach Boys’ only Christmas album was released in 1964 (a second in 1977 never was released). Love completed a solo holiday album “Reason For the Season,” in October 2018 with his children and others. The group will mix songs from those releases.
Plus, Love said they may even throw in covers such as The Ramones’ “Rockaway Beach,” which the original group did surf-rock style.
Love and his cousins grew up loving the harmonies of groups such as the Columbus-flavored Four Freshmen. Love’s ears seemed to perk up when he realized that the quartet’s brothers, Don and Ross Barbour, were from Columbus.
“They inspired us a lot,” Love said. “Once in a while, we still do their tune ‘Their Hearts Were Full of Spring,’ which was such a beautiful song that the Freshmen did a cappella. We may have to do that one there.”
Love’s latest song, “This Too Shall Pass,” was recorded during quarantine, with actor John Stamos on drums. The band is expected to croon the tune as part of an encore on this tour.
Sales proceeds for the number, which addresses the pandemic and the need for hope, benefit Feeding America’s COVID-19 Response Fund to help food banks across the nation help struggling families. Love believes so much in the organization that he is skipping exchanging Christmas gifts this year and instead making financial donations to the nonprofit in the name of family and friends.
“People can relate to the song,” Love said, referring to lyrics about teamwork and helping one another. “And that’s true even though it’s not really at all like one of our traditional hits. But it’s upbeat and it’s positive in that we’re trying to find a silver lining on the nimbus cloud of COVID.”
He loves travel, so spending so much time at his home in Lake Tahoe, California, last year — his longest such stay in more than a half century — was an adjustment. Love just spent Thanksgiving relaxing in Hawaii with wife Jacquelyne and two of his grown children. They have spent Christmases in places such as Bali and Mexico.
But Mike Love clearly still likes to travel to the past, where nostalgia takes him to the sand and surf that made him and his original bandmates so famous that, at one point in the early 1960s, their records even briefly outsold the Beatles among British buyers.
He need not live in the past. But he makes it clear that, every so often, it’s fun, fun, fun to visit.
