The "bad guy" in the band: who are the other Mike Loves in music?

I just read Peter Bagge's great defense of Mike Love. I don't buy it all, but definitely a good read: http://www.mbird.com/2012/05/beach-boys-101-peter-bagges-in-defense-of-and-praise-for-mike-love/

I'm wondering if there are others you can think of who fits the Mike Love role in the Beach Boys narrative that Bagge disputes. There's some villainy in Johnny Ramone's story, though he doesn't get the "untalented" rap Mike Love has (for good reason). Jagger seems like a bit of a dick, but doesn't quite fit the Mike Love role, I think.

What Mike Love, Johnny Ramone, and Mick Jagger do seem to share is their roles as the businessmen of their groups: the ones who got shit done and kept things together while their drug addict/mentally unstable/genius partners derailed things endlessly but still got the glory. The organization man is not a loved figure in rock n roll. McCartney gets a bit of this hate from some quarters too maybe.

And the keeping-shit-together skill isn't always a virtue - it could be argued that these three were the ones who pushed their bands into pumping out increasingly pedestrian work past their prime, and the Beach Boys, Ramones and Stones would have all been better off packing it in.

[

http://williamsstudio.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/2355_stamps_robbie_400.jpg

damn - how could I forget Robbie? it's right in the thread title

I don't know if this fits, but I like the story of Roger Daltry in the early days of The Who threatening to leave if the other guys didn't scale back their speed intake, escalation of volume and distortion, and destruction of equipment, and their response was basically "Dude, you need us more than we need you."

Axl

was just about to say Axl

Robbie Robertson, Gene Simmons, Eddie Van Halen

Feel like James Williamson had this rep in the Stooges for a long time, but has turned out to be/turned into a very likeable guy.

Fogerty

wrt Daltrey, he was actually kicked out of the Who for a few weeks in 1965. He dumped a box of Moon's amphetamines down a toilet and punched him out, pissed that the performances were suffering. He didn't mind the destruction and feedback -- if anything, he encouraged it -- but couldn't bear what he saw as overall sloppiness in the shows. After he was kicked out he realized, "shit, it's either sing with the Who, or go back to sheet-metal work." So he went back to them and promised to stop starting fights; his transformation impressed the rest of the band, who quickly got their shit back together.

Roger Waters obv

Is Lindsay Buckingham the bad guy in Fleetwood Mac?

Jon Anderson

Bun E. Carlos, apparently.

Seriously? I thought Cheap Trick were chill dudes.

I did too, but http://www.rttnews.com/2183231/cheap-trick-countersue-bun-e-carlos.aspx

feel like there's mike love in a combination of bono and clayton

or maybe U2 is just mike love: the band

Robbie Robertson, Gene Simmons, Eddie Van Halen

there's an interesting KISS article in a recent Rolling Stone in which Ace & Peter suggest Paul is the actual evil mastermind in Kiss ala Dick Cheney.

a la Keyser Soze, the limp being his guitar playing

wow, would take some doing to secretly be a bigger dick than gene simmons.

RZA, according to Raekwon, but to me it goes both ways.

George Clinton, kinda - self-professed non musician, ringleader, notorious business manager. altho he seems way more lovable and fun than Mike Love and actually had great ideas.

I can see how maybe Paul Stanley is only a dick within the band, whereas Simmons is a dick throughout the rest of the world.

Fogerty

don't think this is right, given that he wrote literally all the music

xps: Were Bootsy Collins and Maceo Parker all like, "I can't believe how badly George screwed up the band"?

I really don't know much about PFunk history.

It's the bullying of more fragile members that sets Mike Love and Johnny Ramone apart. Really vile behaviour.

lol at the suggestion that John Fogerty was a cold-hearted businessman. If only.

iirc, Stu and Doug had been hounding Fogerty about having more creative input. So Fogerty called their bluff and said, fine, each of you write a third of the new album. They complained about being forced to do that, the songs sucked, and that was the end of CCR.

re: Bootsy and Maceo - there were definitely serious fights about money and credits and publishing, not so much creatively I don't think.

yup Tarfumes is right. end of CCR is so sad.

http://www.depeche-mode.ru/media/photos/depechemode_010.jpg

Wayne Coyne

Btw, I recommend reading Johnny Ramone's memoir Commando if you want some insight into the mind of a total shit. The lack of self-awareness is so complete that he doesn't cover up any of his awful behaviour. He's proud of it.

the only non-JF post-CCR song i enjoy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8-pbsXBe24

http://i1222.photobucket.com/albums/dd488/sallylu1/harrisonband.png

and it ain't that great...

fyi: this is not a good album.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/a4/Doug-clifford-solo-album-cover.jpg

Lars Ulrich.

Doesn't everybody seem to hate on Bob Weir in the G.Dead threads?

bob is good cuz he is arguably the least talented member and he had a lot of the input and was the vocal presence on so much. a la mike.

but he seems like a nice enough guy?

I dont think Weir was one of the "keeping it together" guys, in fact he got canned a couple times in the early days for pinheaded behavior. He wrote some great songs, but he wasnt any kind of leader of that crew.

crosby
http://www.jmeshel.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/david-crosby-birthday-august-14-c.jpg

Most hated person by far in Deadhead fan circles is Donna.

Crosby owns this thread. Along with Robertson.

Btw, I recommend reading Johnny Ramone's memoir Commando if you want some insight into the mind of a total shit. The lack of self-awareness is so complete that he doesn't cover up any of his awful behaviour. He's proud of it.

― What is wrong with songs? Absolutely nothing. Songs are great. (DL), Thursday, May 22, 2014 10:39 AM (43 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Dee Dee didn't really represent himself very well in his books either.

both johnny and deedee's books come across, at least partly, as schtick.

i only have a problem with mike love when i have to see pictures/video footage of him. and all the latter-day awful live cheerleading he did with john friggin' stamos or whoever. he just LOOKS like such a jerk. but he has never lessened my enjoyment of the beach boys. i don't really pay too close attention to who does what on their albums. or even who is singing. bob weir has definitely lessened my enjoyment of the dead. i like some of his songs but most of them are nowhere near as good as hunter/garcia stuff and his voice has always been really annoying/not great. but, like i said, he seems like an okay guy. jerry always thought he was a great "original" rhythm guitarist but i think they could have almost any good guitarist playing with them and if anything they would have sounded better if someone else had been playing. i definitely think bob was the sloppy x factor.

that woman in bardo pond is kinda my donna & bob rolled up into one hippie with a flute. can't listen to that band because of her and i really like them otherwise! she ruins the experience for me. they totally would have been one of my favorite jam bands if she wasn't in the band. sad, i know. or mean. she's probably really nice. that violin though....ugh...

DON: A lot of critics, they think Glenn and I are "bad guys" *makes scare quoes with fingers*. But really if a band is a car, two guys gotta sit in the front. Those two guys in the Eagles are Glenn and myself. It would've have worked any other way.

GLENN: If two chicks had sat in the front seat, I an think of several ways we could work it.

DON: Well, yeah.

it's complicated in that he is also sort of the protagonist, but everybody else from Talking Heads sure seems to dislike David Byrne

Dean Wareham in Galaxie 500? Though I find him kind of likable these days.

great eagles quote. frey really pitches in to lift henley's prickishness to another level there.

what are the counter-examples, the good guys in bands of dicks? I always think of Gene Clark as the good guy of the byrds, but that's probably just because i like his stuff the most. maybe he was a dick too.

Byrne, Wareham are principal songwriters & musicians - something Mike Love never was. Feel like anybody who is that much of a creative leader of the band doesn't really qualify.

First: that Mike Love article is incredible.

I'm curious how many other examples there are where the dynamics play out like this--with the guy who handles the business of the band and is the asshole enforcer. A lot of times it is the main guy in the band--the David Byrne example, Jeff Tweedy kicking Jay Bennett out of Wilco by saying "a circle can have only one center," and then turning over the a huge chunk of his band's "personnel" 6-7 years into their existence.

I don't think anyone in Slint or the music-loving public at large considers him an asshole on any level, but Brian McMahan plays a role like this in Slint. The Spiderland 33 1/3 book basically paints him as an intense perfectionist that picked apart each component of their music obsessively until it met a certain standard of quality. But he's not necessarily the one with the chops or the ideas--that was Walford and Pajo.

And that recent Guardian article basically said he quit and imploded the band because there was no way this would ever be sustainable from the business/making-a-basic-living end.

That said, there is no evidence that he's an asshole on any level, or that the rest of the band resented him.

So he doesn't fit, so maybe he's just an example of that role on a smaller, non-asshole level.

fwiw yeah og post article is one of my favorite things Bagge ever did, had the accompanying drawing of Mike Love on the wall in our rehearsal space for a longtime, v motivating

altho the image in that link cuts off the "Motherfucker" on his t-shirt!

Definitely fans of early- to mid-period Wilco and Jay Bennett partisans viewed Tweedy as a Mike Love-figure.

Ginger Baker even though he's my favorite player in Cream. Does Sharon Osbourne count?

that Mike Love article is incredible.

yeah thanks for posting that. surprised it hasn't appeared here before.

I've referenced it, but it wasn't available online for a long time

but he has never lessened my enjoyment of the beach boys.

I honestly can't stand the sound of Mike Love's voice. You get these ethereal harmonies and then Mike steps in with his flat nasal bah-bah-bah's.

I dig Mike Love for ruining the Beach Boys

Cream might be 3-Mike Love band, but that Ginger Baker doc definitely makes the argument for him as king prick. I love the part when he just starts showing up at Blind Faith practices and they're all to scared of him to not let him in the band.

what a disaster for beach boys

feel like Lou Reed deserves a mention here for persecuting John Cale throughout the latter's time in the VU

The other guy from Supertramp, the one with the lower voice.

Andrew Eldritch is the Mike Love of the Sisters of Mercy

what would be the Supergroup of all Mike Loves?

Mike Love - lead vocals
Robbie Robertson - lead guitar, vocals
Johnny Ramone - rhythm guitar
Ginger Baker - drums

are there no hated bass players?

Crosby could play bass actually

Gotta be McCartney, right? Not a perfect fit given creative input, but tbh Johnny Ramine seems pretty creatively crucial to the ramones.

Paul McCartney - bass

xpost!

Definitely the dickies taskmaster of the Beatles, seems more business-minded as well

I'm sure Ginger wouldn't be thrilled with Crosby's bass work since he basically said Jack Bruce sucked once he switched to electric bass.

Dickish, I mean

Baker Ramone Love McCartney Army

God that'd be a terrible band

is Billy Corgan a Mike Love?

David Crosby was too high to be much of a problem to his bandmates. Stephen Stills, however, was exactly high enough to be a terrible problem to his bandmates.

Also Joey DeMaio or Peter Steele for asshole bassist in the asshole supergroup.

xp crosby was an egomaniac and agitator who played a big part in driving gene out of the band.

OK, fair enough on the Byrds. But CSN(Y) was a different story.

Billy Corgan doesn't fit, now that i think about it. You can't be the undisputed leader of a band and be a Mike Love. Need to be a pretender to the throne, more of a pre-torture Theon Greyjoy-type to be a Mike Love. Corgan's more of a Joffrey.

xp billy corgan is a brian wilson & a mike love

xps yeah i nominated crosby purely for his time in the byrds.

Lindsey Buckingham is the only member of Fleetwood Mac who isn't a Mike Love

Gene Simmons should actually be the bass player in The Mike Loves.

xpost sorry I don't actually know much of the ins and outs of Fleetwood Mac. Lindsey Buckingham is just a really dickish name.

and re crosby i don't dislike "mind gardens" but to most people it's the byrds' "student demonstration time".

lots of amusing search results here for it.

I thought that was Triad? or Chestnut Mare? Byrds have a few Student Demonstration Times.

"mind gardens" seems to be the most universally hated.

Dude wrote Ladyfriend. That's a Mike Love disqualifier in my book.

Steve Perry was surely the Mike Love of Journey, though putting Neal Schon at the same rank as Brian Wilson is making my brain laugh.

it's hard to think of three people who - after their initial stardom - made more records that you don't need to own than the members of cream. and believe you me i've heard a LOT of stuff that jack bruce is on. and you pretty much don't need any of it. if it weren't for that one masters of reality album (which i adore) i wouldn't have any ginger baker in my record collection.

wtf, "Triad" is like the 2nd best Byrds song

I want to second Stills; notice you don't see Stills & Nash solo records. Eat a peach, asshole.

Cream is the band whose rep has dropped the highest in the entire histoire de rock, selon moi.

I have all three West, Bruce & Laing albums in my iPod right now. But I'm insane.

Jack Bruce's first two or three solo records are pretty decent, certainly far better than any non-Dominos Crapton thing.

People, people, the first Jack Bruce solo album, Songs For A Tailor, the tailor being Jeannie Franklyn who, along with Martin Lamble, died when the Fairport Convention tour bus crashed, is actually a good album.
(xp)

Richard Thompson - Bruce - Baker would be a fun band, come to think of it.

you can live a very happy and wonderful life without owning a jack bruce solo album. man, i even tried to like all those kip hanrahan albums he is on. blah....

clapton is easy: yardbirds stuff, disraeli gears, layla, blind faith. voila, you are done.

I like the title track from Frank Zappa's Apostrophe that Jack Bruce plays on

and to be honest you can get away without owning clapton yardbirds stuff. they were way better after he left.

and if there was a great audiophile-quality 12 inch of "can't find my home" you could do without blind faith too.

disraeli gears is solid though. and it has sunshine of your love which was their only undeniably great song. not like you ever need to hear it again, but just in case...

Gene Simmons is obviously the king of fairly talentless business-minded asshole bass players

many xpps

who also doesn't describe himself as a "musician" iirc

yeah, definitely otm re:Simmons. Tricky thing there is that Kiss is full of a-holes and there's no one regarded as the visionary or the the "soul" of the group.

Gene is irrefutably a raging asshole, but he's not the business meister he asserts that he is (according to Paul Stanley's new memoir) and he CAN play capably. Peter Criss, however, is a crap musician and dragged proceedings down to a standstill.

Greg Ginn, esp of late

ding! ding! ding!

Anthony Kiedis

the "untalented" rap Mike Love has

i don't like him much as a human being either, but dude could sing, and wrote some damn good lyrics too.

Tricky thing about this is some of these guys are the creative forces behind their band. Ginn is a monumental a-hole, but is really a Mike Love if he's the guy who set the artistic vision for his legendary group?

Props on the businessman thing, though; Ginn's rep as a thief is legendary.

xposts i guess triad just creeps me out because it's david crosby trying to talk you into a 3-way

or the the "soul" of the group.

^closest thing is Ace

Yeah, after posting that I realized I actually had no idea if one of the Kiss dudes was regarded as the spirit of the band, in the same way Keith is in the Stones.

The way the Go-Go's got rid of Kathy Valentine makes them all seem like Mike Love.

i guess triad just creeps me out because it's david crosby trying to talk you into a 3-way

― brio,

what he did to Nash and Stills in '76 and '82?

A lesser known one of these is Derek Shulman in Gentle Giant. Wasn't the creative force, apparently called the shots, ended up an A&R guy - say no more.

Bun E. Carlos, apparently.

― Montgomery Burns' Jazz (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Thursday, May 22, 2014 10:59 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Seriously? I thought Cheap Trick were chill dudes.

― brio, Thursday, May 22, 2014 11:00 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I did too, but http://www.rttnews.com/2183231/cheap-trick-countersue-bun-e-carlos.aspx

― Montgomery Burns' Jazz (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Thursday, May 22, 2014 11:02 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

CT ousting Bun and putting Rick Nielsen's kid on drums Eddie Van Halen-style makes me think of Nielsen as the villain of the situation, unless something has come to light about the reason for the band's beef with Bun that i haven't heard

Birdman was the bad guy of Big Tymers

tommy hall from 13th floor elevators owns this thread, i think. he turned roky on to heavy drugs, and now he's a hippie racist living in an SRO.

and by all accounts he was a creep with delusions of grandeur.

how the hell are Glenn Frey and/or Henley not the first names on this list

b/c everyone in the eagles was the bad guy in the band?

Bob Markley from The West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band? If we're talking creeps with delusions of grandeur, which admittedly describes about 95% of musicians.

Being from Cheap Trick's hometown, I try to follow these kind of things. As far as I can tell, the other members of Cheap Trick realized they could pay a young guy replacing Bun E. Carlos a lot less, so that's exactly what they did.

Also Bun E. Carlos may have sued his bandmates, at no point in the band's history did that that guy call the shots.

lol at the related stories on the Cheap Trick upthread

Neal Schon Says Steve Perry Wanted Journey To 'Sit Still And Not Do Anything'
Gene Simmons Calls Peter Criss And Ace Frehley 'Losers'
KISS Sued By Eric Carr's Family
'Seinfeld' Actor John Pinette Dead At 50
Aerosmith Drummer Says Axl Rose Is Holding GNR Fans 'Hostage'
Ginger Baker Says The Rolling Stones And The Who Are Bad Musicians
Ace Frehley Responds To Gene Simmons
Ace Frehley Criticizes Paul Stanley's Hall Of Fame Induction Speech

supposedly the saxophone player california raisin was a real prick

CT ousting Bun and putting Rick Nielsen's kid on drums Eddie Van Halen-style makes me think of Nielsen as the villain of the situation, unless something has come to light about the reason for the band's beef with Bun that i haven't heard

― ςὖτ ιτ Οὖτ (some dude), Thursday, May 22, 2014 4:41 PM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

tbf, Daxx had done a fair amount of session playing prior to joining Trick.

I had no idea Bun had been ousted from CT. Does that mean ZZ Top is the longest-lasting major rock band with its original lineup intact?

Cheap Trick replaced Tom Petersson back in the 80s iirc

According to ZZ Top's website, yes.

i vote for mel lyman. he made everyone in the jug band do weird shit. and he started a cult. proximity to musical jugs in the 60's was just a bad idea apparently.

http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a44/moxievision/mel.jpg

tbf, Daxx had done a fair amount of session playing prior to joining Trick.

― Montgomery Burns' Jazz (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Thursday, May 22, 2014 4:55 PM (13 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah Wolfgang Van Halen might be an unfair comparison in some respects but i still think there's something icky about that.

supposedly the saxophone player california raisin was a real prick

can you blame him for wanting to stay currant?

supposedly the saxophone player california raisin was a real prick

^the guy is a fucking grape musician

Neal Schon Says Steve Perry Wanted Journey To 'Sit Still And Not Do Anything'

Steve Perry otm

lol

Truly insane Mel Lyman article by Kliph Nesteroff: http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2011/03/the-mel-lyman-personality-cult-revisited.html

plus, he wasn't the leader or lead force in the jug band but he had a lot of ideas about world domination. thus, he is mike love.

J Mascis in the 90s

cleese and idle

On March 19, 2010, Cheap Trick issued a statement that Carlos is not the current touring drummer for Cheap Trick but that he still remains a band member. Cheap Trick guitarist Rick Nielsen's son Daxx was named in the statement as the touring drummer.[3] Carlos had previously suffered from back problems, the recovery and treatment of which had caused him to miss portions of some Cheap Trick tours. However, Carlos has repeatedly stated that he is healthy. He has also stated that he hasn't heard from the band "in a couple years" and that "maybe we’ll kiss and make up".

In 2013, Carlos filed a lawsuit against his former bandmates, claiming that even though they claim that he is still a band member, he is not being allowed to participate in band-related activities, including recording a new album. The remaining three members of Cheap Trick filed a countersuit, seeking an official affirmation of their removal of Carlos. Their lawsuit was thrown out by a Delaware judge in late 2013. [4]

If he's missing road time because of his back, I could understand them wanting a more reliable drummer for tours. But apparently he's getting the total freeze out.

Some Tinted Windows jealousy up that, no doubt.

Glenn and Don as Evil Eagles Axis.

Bob Mould in Husker Du.

YES

Eazy Muthaphuckin' E

haha oh man totally

eazy e is a great call

so basically being the mike love of a band means being the band's resident republican, is that it?

they have to be relatively talent-less too imo

and kind of driven and bitter and charmless

but also crucial in some way to the band's history/success, such that you can't just be easily fired for being a dick.

yeah - best Mike Loves would be people you could make a Peter Bagge-style argument for their importance, but they remain relatively unloved if not hated by the stans

Yeah, like if Wayne Coyne is right and Kliph Scurlock is one of the most hateful assholes alive, he's still not a Mike Love.

Is Doug Yule a Mike Love?

Or is that a different beast altogether?

they have to be relatively talent-less too imo

that would disqualify virtually everyone who's been named in this thread so far.

yule is underrated!!

I think key term is relatively…Mike Love isn't THAT untalented, but compared to the rest of the Beach Boys, it's no contest.

Which is why Eazy E is such a great example.

I feel like the thing that makes Yule potentially qualify is mainly Squeeze. Without that record, he'd probably be a lot less hated, and also loom a little less large in the band's history.

i always thought of Buddy Miles as having this kind of role in Jimi Hendrix's post-Experience career, never really cared for the influence he seemed to have on Jimi's musical direction or the way he came off in interviews

xposts

hmmm good question - he does get a lot of hate from VU fans, and seems like a bit of a workhorse but doesn't really seem like he has the ego to be a Mike Love, and I don't think he had enough presence for anyone to think he was a dick or uncharismatic. If anything he seems subsumed into Lou, not a rival.

generally Mike Loves had the thankless job of hauling a beloved lunatic self-sabotaging genius around while trying to make bank - and end up totally resenting their meal ticket. I think Yule

cuz: the "relatively" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in "relatively untalented"... also I think it's more about fan perceptions and the narratives around bands than whether these people could actually play and sing

Mike Love isn't THAT untalented, but compared to the rest of the Beach Boys, it's no contest.

not trying to be, um, the mike love of this thread, but really? compared to dennis wilson? compared to al jardine?

Ray Manzarek seemed to develop a kind of Mike Love vibe as the decades of post-Morrison Doors activity dragged on

yeah, maybe 'no contest' is overstating it. I also really like Pacific Ocean Blue, so that's maybe influencing me.

also I think it's more about fan perceptions and the narratives around bands than whether these people could actually play and sing

that makes more sense to me -- with the stipulation that fan perceptions and narratives are not the world's most reliable things.

compared to dennis wilson?

them's fightin words

(Al could play guitar, and wrote a bunch of songs by himself. Mike could barely sqwawk on the saxophone, and never composed any music whatsoever)

mike was a great singer (i liked both brian and carl more, but that doesn't take away from mike's greatness for me in that department), and he composed a whole bunch of lyrics, some of which i like quite a bit.

but yeah I agree about the narratives thing (I also think the narrative about the BBs is mostly correct, altho Bagge makes some interesting devil's advocate sorta points)

xp

yeah the Peter Bagge pushback on fan perceptions and championing of the genius-child figures in bands is key - especially the idea that without the driven bitter dick you'd have a bunch of flakes who fell apart, which is a pretty convincing pro-Johnny Ramone argument as well

but doesn't make them less dicks or necessarily mean they had to be dicks about it

xp I like the idea of Manzarek as a Mike Love with the Ghost of Jim Morrison as his Brian.

Or maybe people who thought Manzarek's activities seemed silly and kind of pathetic were the Brian, I don't know.

Dennis Wilson's Pacific Ocean Blue does not inspire confidence (he wasn't a "bad guy" though, just a fuck up).

brio, if you really want to go down the lyman rabbit hole

Nobody's mentioned Noel Gallagher?

Byrne, Wareham are principal songwriters & musicians - something Mike Love never was. Feel like anybody who is that much of a creative leader of the band doesn't really qualify.

― Οὖτις, Thursday, May 22, 2014 6:06 PM (Yesterday)

Yes, this. Come on guys, you can't go around naming the MAIN DUDES from a band, even if they are dicks. The point about being a Mike Love is that you totally are not the main dude but you (attempt to) co-opt the band for your own purposes at some point.

cleese and idle

No wai, Cleese is merely a dude with opinions about his own work, Idle is a grasping cunt who repeatedly tramples the others in his quest for props and money, and actively fucked over Innes again and again (also funny, main m/s on the books, one most responsible for keeping the name an ongoing concern, etc – a total Mike Love package)

Eazy Muthaphuckin' E

I blame that manager feller.

That Solar dude who controlled Guru in his final days

"Definitely fans of early- to mid-period Wilco and Jay Bennett partisans viewed Tweedy as a Mike Love-figure."

Yeah and there was also this bit of weird nugget out there on the end of Uncle Tupelo from a former thread.

Jay Farrar on Uncle Tupelo split

Farrar does not necessarily disagree with all that, but has his own (juicier) side to contribute to history. In the lengthy Relix interview, Farrar tells journalist Antony DeCurtis that things started to unravel after he saw Tweedy stroke the hair of his girlfriend of seven years, Monica Groth (now his wife), as she was sleeping. "I found out later that he was telling her stuff, like, he loves her," says Farrar, who attempted to quit the band the next day. Tweedy was devastated. "[Tweedy's] parents called mine and said that Jeff 'wanted to be me.' I struggled with that...Then every other day for about a week he would call. After a week of sitting around with no prospects, I decided to continue."

Farrar departed the band for good in January 1994. Before leaving Tupelo, he met with Tweedy for another major confrontation. Farrar explains, "When I spoke to him about why I was quitting I basically laid it out for him. I told him that the dynamic had changed and that it wasn't fun for me anymore...His response was to call me a 'pussy.'"

Farrar's story definitely adds a different dynamic to Uncle Tupelo's end, which is what he hoped to accomplish upon ending his silence in the Relix interview. "One misconception that I find difficult to absorb is Jeff's portrayal of himself as a victim, which I find to be absurd," says Farrar. "There were steps we could have taken to have a better relationship and a better understanding. It could have happened. But it didn't."

The guy that should probably own this thread is Phil Anselmo.

Professor Griff. Minister of worthless ignorance.

Richie Blackmore.

I blame that manager feller.

― rage against martin sheen (sic), Thursday, May 22, 2014 5:23 PM Bookmark

Naw, Heller was an bastard but he was Eazy's bastard. Without Eazy there's no Heller and I've always gotten the impression that Eazy was always in on Heller's schemes and vice versa. Then again, I haven't read Heller's autobio but fuck that.

Lars.

I assume Eazy went along with Heller's schemes rather than v/v, but I just wanted to ref the line

Professor Griff. Minister of worthless ignorance.

He never attempted to exert any influence over the band in any way that we know of though. Plus Pawns In The Game is p good

If we're talking CSNY, I don't see how it can be anyone but Neil Young. The occasionally continued existence of the group is entirely at the mercy of Neil's whims.

Lindsey Buckingham is the only member of Fleetwood Mac who isn't a Mike Love

― i also enjoy in line skateing (spazzmatazz), Thursday, May 22, 2014 1:17 PM (8 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

christine? really? i'm not fully up on my mac lore

i mean to the extent that after Tusk I'm pretty sure the four of them were like "never again lindsey u crazy fuck- playing it safe from now on"

"THE BLOW IS NOT GOING TO PAY FOR ITSELF, LINDS"

People really hate on "mind gardens"?!?

ftr, Birdman was a very important addition to this thread

for the hand rub alone

Dr. C (Dr. C) wrote this on thread My vote for the worst song ever recorded on board I Love Music on May 24, 2004

The Byrds - Mind Gardens

pete s wrote this on thread Top 100 Most Skipped-Over Tracks In The History Of CDs on board I Love Music on Jan 19, 2004

26 The Byrds - Mind Gardens

dan selzer wrote this on thread Gene Clark S/D, C/D on board I Love Music on Dec 13, 2013

there is nothing good about Mind Gardens. I hate that song.

Euler (Euler) wrote this on thread My vote for the worst song ever recorded on board I Love Music on Jan 16, 2006

I'll second "Mind Gardens" by the Byrds. Crosby's songs are usually terrific but this one is a disaster; and to boot, they put an "alternate version" on the Younger Than Yesterday reissue, which really must have been a funny prank for someone...

etc etc

Brian Jones deserves mentioning. By all accounts he was an absolute monster.

Too bad Warren Zevon was a solo act because after reading his bio there's very little to like.

Sid Vicious?

ftr, Birdman was a very important addition to this thread

― The Reverend, Friday, 23 May 2014 03:42 (40 minutes ago) Permalink

thanks, i try

richard ashcroft

Somewhat unrelated, but I've been looking up which band members own the rights to their band's name.

I dunno, this guy would've been my third guess for this band.

he's been the only constant band member since they formed.

Such a weird last-man-standing rule though, but yeah. Little River Band's name is owned by some guitarist who joined in the 80s and stuck around after everyone else left. Chris Squire, bless him, owns the rights to Yes.

hasn't rhodes always been known as duran's leader? that's how i've always seen him.

Little River Band's actual members have to tour as Birtles Shorrock Globles and I refuse to google if that's correct

About Noel Gallagher above: I think Oasis would only fit into this if Bonehead was its Mike Love. Which would have been hilarious.

Joey Molland

if we reduce this to "one major dickhead, rest of the pack seem like reasonable dudes", Axl wins in a heartbeat.

tbh almost everyone in GNR was such a mess that they would've been the problem child in any other band

It's tough to say who in Pink Floyd fits the bill. Gut says Waters, but it was Gilmour who essentially turned the band into a corporation when he had Mason buy in for the reunion. Note how in the "Momentary Lapse of Reason" sleeve (which I'm sure you are all familiar with from when you listened to it yesterday) Gilmour and Mason get top billing and big pictures, even though Rick fuckin founder/singer Wright is in the band and on the album.

pains me to say but Wayne Kramer might be MC5's Mike Love? While his musical contributions are unquestionable his revisionist interviews make him sound like a major-league control freak

even though Rick fuckin founder/singer Wright is in the band and on the album.

Wright's barely on the album (if at all):

his contributions were minimal. Most of the new keyboard parts had already been recorded, and so from February 1987 he played some background reinforcement on a Hammond organ, and a Fender Rhodes piano, along with several vocal harmonies. The keyboardist also performed a solo in "On the Turning Away", which was discarded, according to Wright "not because they didn't like it ... they just thought it didn't fit."[24] Gilmour later said: "Both Nick and Rick were catatonic in terms of their playing ability at the beginning. Neither of them played on this at all really. In my view, they'd been destroyed by Roger"

Mason's contributions were negligible as well:

Gilmour employed extra session musicians including Carmine Appice and Jim Keltner. Both drummers, they later replaced Mason on most of the album's songs; Mason was concerned that he was too out of practice to perform on the album, and instead busied himself with its sound effects.[20][28] Some of the album's drum parts were also performed by drum machines.[29]

I think we're getting somewhere. ,
Can we get some consensus on the criteria of what constitutes Loveness?
I humbly submit the following points to consider:

1) Not every band has a Mike Love.
2) Mike Loves are not the "genius" figures in the band, or the principal songwriters. That's the Brian Wilson. So no Billy Corgans, John Fogertys, Noel Gallaghers, David Byrnes, etc.
3) Mike Loves are dicks, but not all dicks are Mike Loves. Mike Loves should have vocal haters.
4) You should be able to make a case for Mike Love as being important to the band's existence, like the Peter Bagge defense of Mike Love.
5) To be a true Mike Love, some people think you're a shitty musician. So Johnny Ramone and Paul McCartney, while having many Mike Love-esque qualities, can not be true Mike Loves. Ginger Baker might also be off the Mike Love list on these grounds too. Lars Ulrich is definitely a Mike Love.
5A) The musical ability debate is a bit of a red herring. It's not really about ACTUAL musical ability - it's about fans' perceptions and the narrative that has grown around the band. Mike Love may or may not be a great musician, but he is undeniably a Mike Love.

Is Lars Ulrich really Metallica's bad guy? I mean, is he any more of a dick than Hetfield?

yeah

he's definitely more of a vocal moron

Good question: I'm no Metallica expert, but is Lars really an oppositional force to Hetfield? Or is he just the one most likely to put his foot in his mouth during an interview?

I haven't read much metallica press in a while, but I was always under the impression that they were a sorta douchebag tag team, is all.

To be a Mike Love, does there have to be an oppositional force within the group? A member who, in the absence of the Mike Love, would likely take the group in different directions and/or allow the group to fall into total disrepair?

The group would lose something inessential yet distinct if the Mike Love were not there.
The group would lose something essential and gain a Jon Stamos if the oppositional force were to leave and the Mike Love were to remain.

lol

every mike love has its 'new jersey'

The group would lose something inessential yet distinct if the Mike Love were not there.

This is the orthodox view of the Mike Love, and as such is the central issue of debate with regard to Mike Loves.

Good question: I'm no Metallica expert, but is Lars really an oppositional force to Hetfield? Or is he just the one most likely to put his foot in his mouth during an interview?

― intheblanks, Friday, May 23, 2014 11:03 AM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Lars was very chill and personable when I interviewed him....

but it's my impression that Hetfield and him see themselves as the core of Metallica and that lots of their stuff was directed outward towards other members

I think we're getting somewhere. ,
Can we get some consensus on the criteria of what constitutes Loveness?
I humbly submit the following points to consider:

1) Not every band has a Mike Love.
2) Mike Loves are not the "genius" figures in the band, or the principal songwriters. That's the Brian Wilson. So no Billy Corgans, John Fogertys, Noel Gallaghers, David Byrnes, etc.
3) Mike Loves are dicks, but not all dicks are Mike Loves. Mike Loves should have vocal haters.
4) You should be able to make a case for Mike Love as being important to the band's existence, like the Peter Bagge defense of Mike Love.
5) To be a true Mike Love, some people think you're a shitty musician. So Johnny Ramone and Paul McCartney, while having many Mike Love-esque qualities, can not be true Mike Loves. Ginger Baker might also be off the Mike Love list on these grounds too. Lars Ulrich is definitely a Mike Love.
5A) The musical ability debate is a bit of a red herring. It's not really about ACTUAL musical ability - it's about fans' perceptions and the narrative that has grown around the band. Mike Love may or may not be a great musician, but he is undeniably a Mike Love.

― brio, Friday, May 23, 2014 10:36 AM (42 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I agree with all of these, and then also disqualify Robbie Robertson

Feel like maybe Mike Loves are not incredibly common. In this thread I feel like the Mike Loves that have met all the criteria are:

Steve Perry
Mel Lyman
Birdman
Eazy E
Mike Love

That said I don't know much about The West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band or some of the other groups mentioned herein.

And Birdman is an interesting one, because it's arguably not just about Big Tymers, but also related to the entire golden era of Cash Money records.

you have to come up w/ groups that do have inessential or at least clearly least essential members and then have that member be someone that manages to acquire a disproportionate level of power and influence over the band and uses that power generally for ill cuz they're an asshole. that's alot of conditions.

steve perry decidedly essential to journey so i'd disqualify him. eazy-e maybe, except he's also the bez of nwa so somehow simultaneously the least essential and most essential member of nwa. i mean eazy-duz-it was almost as big as straight outta compton at the time.

how is Steve Perry a Mike Love? I know he broke his hip and asked the band to wait until he recovered to go on tour--and then the band said we gotta get this cash and hired another singer

Do they have be inessential? Or do they just have to be oppositional to the resident genius/geniuses, and also influential in the group's direction?

I can't remember but wasn't one of the Jackson 5 kind of a Mike Love? Jermaine, maybe?

Yeah, scratch Steve Perry, totally doesn't qualify

there's a really good reality tv show somewhere in this thread.

jackson five didn't have a mike love. totally had a murry wilson though.

x-post America's Next Great Mike Love

Can we be shown weirdoes?

for someone to be truly Love-ish, it would seem that the family band aspect would be key. Like, Love's position therein was (I think) fortified in that as the wilson's cousin, he was not subject to Murry's abuse, and thus backed Murry a lot of the time? on the "help me rhonda" session tape where Brian stands up to Murry, Mike sides with Murry, if memory serves.

Jackson Five = Beach Boys/ Micheal = Brian; Carl = Jermaine; …I think I read somewhere that either Randy or Jackie took after Joe and thus are ruthless pricks. So maybe which ever one = Love.

I think yr recollection is correct but otoh Murry screwed Mike pretty hard with the royalties/publishing (which in turn fed Mike's financial obsession)

To be a true Mike Love, some people think you're a shitty musician. So Johnny Ramone.....

^did i miss the memo as to when Johnny Ramone was supposed to have turned into a great guitarist?

Johnny Ramone is a great guitarist

if you listen to Mike Doughty then the other guys in Soul Coughing were all Mike Loves

relative to the rest of the band

re: johnny

people could rightly argue that Johnny's style is super-simple and they would be right but I've never heard anyone argue that he is literally a shitty guitarist (which is certainly a charge levelled at other punk guitarists, ie Greg Ginn)

like it's really easy to imagine loving the beach boys but really having no use for love's vocals or lyrics while loving the ramones but having no use for johnny's guitar is insane.

now imagining Ramones as a dub act w just drums/bass/Joey

johnny IS the ramones, musically

also like he was in a band with a total fuck up deceitful junkie and a fragile child, i'd imagine from his perspective he was just getting shit done whether people liked it or not

again, I think actual musical ability isn't the question here. It's the perception of the Mike Love figure as being a weak link in the band musically - which no-one would accuse Johnny Ramone of being in The Ramones. If anyone was perceived as the weak link as a musician it was Dee Dee and then only on the first album mostly.

did Dee Dee play on the records or did Johnny ever pull a Steve Jones/Keith Richards and just play it himself?

Johnny Ramone is a great guitarist

― Οὖτις, Friday, May 23, 2014 1:35 PM (28 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^jesus christ, on what planet. I think when you gotta bring in session guys to play your parts, you lose some cred.

I love the guitar on the Ramones records, esp the first one, but it's not "great" by any stretch.

xp not that I know of, it all sounds dee dee-ish to me though it wouldn't be the toughest thing to sound like dee dee

upper missisppi OTM about how he saw his role in the band - and that's where the most direct Mike Love comparisons work for Johnny, the vision of themselves as the straight hard-working money guy who just wants to tour for the fans and the bucks, but saddled with a beloved OCD weirdo genius who wouldn't make it on their own

it does what it needs to do, very well. sorry there aren't enough fiery solos for you. a great musician is someone who has command of his instrument, can make it achieve the desired effect, which Johnny definitely did.

but yeah brio and balls etc. all otm musically Johnny is not incidental to the Ramones, he IS the musical center of the Ramones.

xp

again - it's not so much about how great Johnny Ramone plays or Mike Love sings, those are subjective arguments outside the totally objective Mike Love taxonomy game. The Ramones narrative is not that he was a shitty player riding on the backs of his more talented bandmates. He's no Yngwie, that's not the point.

Disagree. And im not into firey solos chief. I just dont see anything really great about the guy.

xpost

Plus he was a fucking douche

not trying to be a jerk, i do like the ramones, at least i like the first 2 or 3 albums. Gets sketchy for me after that.

hahaha 'chief'

yeah but the thing is Ramones fans don't generally hate on Johnny because they think he can't play as well as the other Ramones whereas Beach Boys fans hate on Mike Love for being a lesser musician than the other Beach Boys. It's about being a weak link in relation to others' talents.

If you were going to go after Johnny on his musical contribution, I think a better argument would be that Dee Dee and Joey wrote all the songs.

I think just to remove any possibility that anyone else can meet the narrow criteria we should just also stipulate that the band member's name has to be "Mike Love"

or Lars! yeah maybe I have made restrictions too tight to be a Mike Love. It's an exclusive club.

xp
And I guess the other Johnny/Mike comparison is the idea that they were the anti-experimentation force in the band - the ones who wanted to keep the band on a fan-pleasing familiar track and play 200 shows a year. Mike lost that battle at least for a time, while Johnny won. Whether that was best for their bands is open to debate I guess.

hahaha 'chief'

― balls, Friday, May 23, 2014 2:21 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I gotta whole bunch of those: "sport", "coach", "junior"- im good like that.

without even trying, I imagine

Was it you who called somebody "Wapner" on another thread, Bill? That cracked me up.

yeah "nice try Wapner" lol

I heard Walter Lure plays some of the guitar parts on the Ramones' records for Johnny, is this true?

yo- Stevie Nicks is absolutely a Mike Love!!

i don't think it's any big secret Walter Lure and Ed Stasium and others (Daniel Rey maybe?) played bits and pieces on some of the shitty mid-late 80's stuff

yo- Stevie Nicks is absolutely a Mike Love!!

― i also enjoy in line skateing (spazzmatazz), Friday, May 23, 2014 1:49 PM (17 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

wuuut no way dogg

Stevie absolutely fits all the criteria listed above. Relative weak-link in the band, became the breakout star, and didn't humor Lindsey's whims after Tusk flopped. Similar to Axl too: in the mid-late 80s when she did only like two weeks on Tango in the Night…

Plays it safe for the money, discourages the OCD weirdo savant, and becomes the perceived leader/face of a band she joined nearly a decade already into its existence. She didn't do much but sing on the records even though she wrote her songs/the germs of her songs. Totally a Mike Love.

FWIW I love Stevie

there should probably be some kind of rule that Mike Loves would be incapable of a highly successful solo career like Stevie was

ugh phrased that poorly, incapable of the kind of solo career Stevie was capable of i mean

what about the cure dude? LOL! no, really, that's his name. LOL! no, really...

maybe he was a nice guy. i dunno. i just remember they kicked him out and he sued them and yet still plays with them sometimes? and he helped start the band. and didn't really know how to play keyboards...

(though i guess he was an okay drummer.)

Is Otis Williams a Mike Love?

hard to say. it doesn't seem like he wrestled control of the group from anybody, just outlived them.

I always got the impression he was the de facto leader and he was mostly behind Ruffin and Kendricks' exits although he was arguably the least talented. I don't think he necessarily perfectly fits the Love profile but he definitely has characteristics.

Feel like maybe, in the interests of creating a greater pool for discussion, that the most crucial criteria for being a Mike Love are:

1) Being the practical, get-shit-done force in a band that has an oppositional hard-to-manage or self-destructive "genius"
2) Having a demonstrable track record of being an asshole about it.

Don't want to water the definition down too much or anything; I feel like the sticking points from earlier were mainly the "talent"/"essential to the group" components, and if we table those criteria there are potentially far more candidates.

It's the super-rare Mike Love that is also not really that musically talented, a key songwriter, or a shaper of the group's sound.

Williams definitely fits criteria #1, not really sure if he had a rep for being an asshole tho.

How about Greg Norton? It seems like Mould and Hart get along now, but still dislike him.

It doesn't seem like he wrestled control of the group from anybody
Isn't the preferred expression "wrested control"?
/nitpick

More i read the definitions of a "mike love" the more I am adamant that Johnny ramone was the penultimate mike love.

sorry James Redd and the Blecchs

most people would just say yoko.

Whats Greg Norton actually done to be considered for this? He was notable in not getting involved in whatever was going on in the band

After all this time, Hart's recent jab at Norton comes off as total bullshit, to the extent where I begin to doubt the last 25 years of passive aggressive slanging matches with Mould

the next-to-the-last Mike Love

Link for grant dig at Greg?

Finally, what’s more likely: a Hüsker Dü reunion or a Bob Mould and Grant Hart collaboration album?

Well, the first one is intriguing, but not so likely. I like what Bob does, but sometimes two people have had such an impact on each other’s lives that they need 20 years to really stand back and be able to appreciate that. The third member of Hüsker Dü, Greg Norton, has in the past demonstrated a lack of respect for our time, and dare I say our talents. There were times when Bob and myself would show up at the office at 10, while Greg would turn up at the golf course at 11. We both had musical and artistic goals, whereas he had this band that contributed to his lifestyle, rather than the opposite way round. There were two possibilities for the bass-playing job when we started Hüsker Dü. Greg was technically the better choice, but it may have resulted a whole lot differently if Bob and I hadn’t had to share the frustration of working with him.

Love the use of middle-aged white collar guy terminology to the operations of 80s hardcore punk band Husker Du.

to describe the operations of, i mean

everything i've seen w/ the three of them has suggested that norton is by far the most laid back and would easily be the one it would be easiest to spend a lot of time around.

Jeez. Let me just say I highly doubt this is something grant has been bottling up for decades.

1) Being the practical, get-shit-done force in a band that has an oppositional hard-to-manage or self-destructive "genius"
2) Having a demonstrable track record of being an asshole about it.

while mike love does indeed have both of those qualities, i don't think that quite define what makes him "mike love."

i think it really boils down to this simple two-part criterion:

1a) assuming control of a group in which you are not a primary creative force, and
1b) exercising that control in a way that goes against the interests of the creative force

i think if you meet those two criteria, you'll automatically be perceived as (2) an asshole, (3) relatively untalented and (4) a practical get-shit-done dude. those things don't have to be stated, or even be true; they'll be assumed.

chris kirkpatrick of 'nsync is a good example of a guy who fits my 1a but not, as far as i know, my 1b.

greg norton strikes me as a guy who doesn't fit a single criteria that anyone has proposed in this thread.

like the quintessential mike love act was him firing brian wilson from the beach boys a couple of years ago

yes

Relative weak-link in the band

I'm sure you think Freddie Mercury was the weakest link in Queen too.

ftr Christine McVie was most skeptical of Buckingham's experiments but because all the big hits post-Tusk are hers she was served well by them.

i figured that description of stevie nicks was so bizarre and delusional that it didn't even need to be commented on.

The penultimate Mike Love would be the guy who fired the creative genius and then got fired himself, like if the guy who kicked Robert Wyatt out of the Soft Machine got booted himself a few albums later.

penultimate
"ultimate"
/nitpick

Some heavy-duty developments in Mike Love Studies theory here. Intheblanks has identified one of the key weaknesses in first wave Mike Love theory, and I am finding it hard to find inconsistencies in the refined 2-point Mike Love paradigm as put forth by Fact Checking Cuz.

No, I meant "penultimate," fcc, because such a figure would be replaced by the later, "ultimate" Mike Love.

I thought somebody was going to get me for adding the unnecessary "the" before the band name.

who is the mike love of ilx

I meant "penultimate," fcc, because such a figure would be replaced by the later, "ultimate" Mike Love.

but if such a figure had serious mike love skills, he'd worm his way back into the band and fire the guy who fired him. as the student becomes the master, so does the penultimate becomes the ultimate.

I don't think Mike Love Theory can be applied to more equal partnerships like Lennon/McCartney or Mould/Hart. McCartney and Mould may have been marginally more Mike Love than Brian Wilson - but both have too much Brian in them to be Mikes.

there are basically almost no mike loves, and just as well

Also there are too questions being asked in this thread. One is "Who is the Mike Love of (insert band)?", while the other is "Is (musician) a Mike Love?" The former has a lot of latitude, as it is simply identifying the most Mike Love-like figure in a group of people, while the latter is trickier and harder to pin down.

The first question is probably better, or at least more fun in the long run.

two, not too

as long as it's acknowledged that lots of bands (probably most of them) have no Mike Love figure at all (xp)

^^^mike love of western blot

if only we could get mike love himself to join more bands. if he replaced any of the three singers in fleetwood mac, for example, he could become an even better mike love than he already is.

true, without the essential "is x a mike love" it degenerates into "who's the biggest dick?" pretty quick

ignore my last post, it sets Mike Love theory back by hours

how about in other realms? Is Larry Summers the Mike Love of the Obama administration (or was it Rahm?)

rahm is a lump of the purest mike love

Rahm Emmanuel is definitely a Mike Love type, but politics may be so Mike Love-heavy it might be impossible to apply this.

my glove is the Mike Love of my winter clothes, it's always going rogue and getting lost in the closet when it's snowing

this thread is amazing

Can managers count?

Matthew Katz of Moby Grape

Penultimate may have been a poor choice of words. My train if thought was that if mike love is the ultimate mike love , Johnny ramone is a close second. Cummings owns this thread.

this thread is amazing

― i also enjoy in line skateing (spazzmatazz), Friday, May 23, 2014 10:24 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Agreed. It's tasty.

this thread inspired tonight's karaoke rendition of "Kokomo"

*gasface*

I have been super-enjoying this thread, but probably a bit too much, as last night I very earnestly asked the singer in my band if I was the Mike Love. I think I might be the Mike Love. Nooooooooooooooo!

Thinking about this thread, it's amazing how many of my favourite bands are helmed by a single, unchallengeable creative genius, with loyal satellites in fealty, rather than a democracy of shifting power.

I suppose that if you have a powerful creative vision, you'll surround yourself by those who'll help you realise it, not those who'll distort it. Am now trying to think of counterexamples.

Uhhh... the Beach Boys?

amongst his faves, i think he means

or that haven't been mentioned here yet

I suppose that if you have a powerful creative vision, you'll surround yourself by those who'll help you realise it, not those who'll distort it.

This is just such a weird thing to say. Like, of course nobody sets out to play music with other people who are going to fuck up your shit. It's like saying "I suppose if you want friends you'll surround yourself with people who you get on with, not people who punch you in the face".

imago - not a fan of jazz?

I should have said - not those who'll potentially distort it (by imposing their own vision, which might lie at odds with one's own)

I like certain jazz-style groups, like Soft Machine, who've already been mentioned, although the artists involved were largely all so good that creative differences were transcended

yet still plays with them sometimes?

he's played a total of 80 minutes with them, in one 25-hour period, in the last 26 years (ie one section of two three-hour concerts)

I'd actually argue that bands are better with some friction between competing interests and aesthetics

Problem with the visionary and minions view is tons of corny motherfuckers w medium talent think they are geniuses but 1 in 10 million are.

oh, sure it's good to have players who synergise in interesting ways that abet the vision, and occasionally add to it, but I'm just saying - most of my favourite acts tend to have one principal songwriter who is usually regarded as the band's enduring totem

yes yes you mainly listen to rock music we get it

Miles Davis seemed to balance the tyrannical band leader/nurturer of creativity thing perfectly for decades. But I suppose it helped that he had a shrewd talent for recruiting nothing but the most exceptional musicians and he was actually a genius.

"I like certain jazz-style groups, like Soft Machine, who've already been mentioned, although the artists involved were largely all so good that creative differences were transcended"

weirdest soft machine albums are the late 70's ones where none of the original members are in the band. that's one way to work around the creative geniuses of a group.

Have we arrived at a single non-Mike Love Mike Love yet? Feel like the definition keeps getting more and more specific and now nobody can be considered for the position.

frank zappa has some definite mike love qualities.

How about Pink Floyd? You could say Syd was the main creative force behind it and everything past that has been a power grab?

lol, M@tt.

There is more to Miles Davis's leadership than just picking the best musicians. There is some quote to the effect that "maybe a guy could only play two notes, but if Miles LIKES those two notes..."

Yeah, totally. And to use one example, he recruited Keith Jarrett who had not only never played electric piano before, but was vocal about his hatred of the instrument. So Miles says, "Hey, you know that thing you hate? Do that."

Ha, it was Keith Jarrett who said it: http://downbeat.com/microsites/ecm-jarrett/post_3-inner-octaves-of-jarrett.html

lol.

Given his "diseased organism" comment, I'm thinking Keith Jarrett was the Mike Love of that Miles group.

it doesn't sound like he was a fan of Chick & Dave for sure!

Thinking about this thread, it's amazing how many of my favourite bands are helmed by a single, unchallengeable creative genius, with loyal satellites in fealty, rather than a democracy of shifting power.

More likely helmed by that one guy who takes all the credit for everyone else's work, no?

Axl doesn't fit?

ROGER WATERS???

Tommy Shaw would work except he's more talented than Dennis DeYoung and DeYoung's also the bigger asshole.

I have a vague sense of Tony Hadley being the Mike Love of Spandau Ballet, though I don't really know enough about the inner workings of Spandau Ballet to be confident that this is fair, he does meet the criteria of being openly right wing and generally coming across as chippy and bitter.

I thought Spiny Norman would have been the Spandau Ballet example? (Also Gary Kemp admits to being useless and only being able to play the bare minimum that Martin showed him.)

I was thinking about what would be the opposite of a Mike Love--as in, an individual who was not the main songwriter or creative force in a band, but who represented to many of the fans the true spirit of the band, and was sometimes pushing against the direction the "genius" leader wanted to take the band. I'm thinking maybe of one of the Stinsons in the Replacements.

Yeah, Bob Stinson. Or Brian Jones.

that's pretty close to the bez right?

Eddie Hazel sorta

Brian Jones was the genius leader in the early days of the Stones

sure...until he went bugfuck crazy

The anti-Mike Love of G'nR would be Izzy Stradlin.

Roxy Music was, and is, Ferry's band but all eyes, especially those of the Americans who saw Roxy on its late 72 US tour, were invariably fixed on the enticing, sinister, spangled and feathered vision at stage right that was Eno. The process of indentification / association was obvious and immediate. The whole band looked spectacular, but even so Eno stood out. You can't tell the players without a program or the leader without a bio, and audiences simply assumed that Eno was Roxy Music while Bryan pumped away at the opposite side, singing and sweating and getting as much recognition as a ventriloquist's dummy.

I was thinking about what would be the opposite of a Mike Love--as in, an individual who was not the main songwriter or creative force in a band, but who represented to many of the fans the true spirit of the band, and was sometimes pushing against the direction the "genius" leader wanted to take the band. I'm thinking maybe of one of the Stinsons in the Replacements.

― relentlessly pecking at peace (President Keyes), Saturday, May 24, 2014 5:13 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Lately, Richard Lloyd? Ppl vociferously wanting nothing to do with a TV sans him.

Lloyd is key when you realise how much of the parts on MM is him

Spiral Stairs? Bob Nastanovich?

I don't think Lloyd is a bad guy.

not a bad guy per se but the tone of his public statements has gotten more and more aggressively outspoken

i wasn't saying he's a mike love! just an example of the species president keyes was positing

Ozzy is an anti-Love as posited by Keyes. Probably the ideal anti-love.

I think an anti-Love would be like an Eno in Roxy, or John Cale in VU - a super-talented and well-respected member who pushed the band in experimental directions but was a bit of a thorn in the lead dude's side.

The "heart of the band" guy is something different - Stinson, Dee Dee, Bez...

Trying to work out how Mark E Smith fits into this, as the bad guy, the heart of the band and the main creative force all rolled into one.

xpost well Eno and Cale were major creative forces in their bands--the usual story of when there's more than one songwriter and somebody has to go (Lou Barlow, Jason Isbel, etc.)

I was thinking of someone who was not a major creative force, but was as loved/credited by fans as much Mike Love is hated/blamed by fans.

Anti-Love: Michael Nesmith

Some names that come to mind are ones from hit-making machines. Dennis DeYoung, Peter Cetera. Maybe Lou Gramm at one point with Foreigner. Steve Perry?

McCartney gets a bit of this hate from some quarters too maybe.

More than a bit, I'd say! It's a big inescapable part of the Beatles narrative that sort of forces you to take sides: was he the one hero holding things together when everybody else was too drugged out and angry to do anything, or was he the one in denial that shit was over who kept trying to force it to happen? I'm a huge Macca fan but still lean basically towards the latter.

This has now been covered pretty thoroughly but intheblanks is right that the enforcer is often the 'main' person, probably because the press/them have come to see the band as an extension of themselves. In some cases they might also be making a disproportionate share of the profits, I think? File under this slot all the bands that at one point claimed to be an inseparable unit, then at some point all of them were gone except the famous guy, with everybody else replaced by young, obedient hired guns. Some Everclear thread (?) touched on this recently re: Art Alexakis. But yeah - all that is distinct from Mike Love, somebody with no special claim to being a 'leader' of the band, who seized the role anyway as part of a longer-term campaign of maintaining the band-as-brand, band-as-corporation, band-as-empire.

Eric Idle is sooooooooooo oTM.

The group would lose something inessential yet distinct if the Mike Love were not there.
The group would lose something essential and gain a Jon Stamos if the oppositional force were to leave and the Mike Love were to remain.

― cwkiii, Friday, May 23, 2014 12:08 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^^^ getting kind of D&D rulebook here, I dig it.

Nesmith is the right kind of anti-Love for me: guy who leaves rather than follow whatever would enable the corporate vision to survive/triumph/reform, guy who contributes a number of important musical things to the band, but nothing that's ever essential to their sound, distinctive enough that some fans could side with him on everything, but not quite compelling enough in his own right that anyone could claim that his presence/absence makes or breaks the band.

Richard Lloyd is admittedly not well.

His wikipedia entry also seems to be self-written. I love it when people do that!

are Brian Jones and Syd Barret anti-Loves?

"Trying to work out how Mark E Smith fits into this, as the bad guy, the heart of the band and the main creative force all rolled into one."

Smith's like Zappa and Beefheart, he's the dictator/warlord.

James Brown would be another member of the dictator/warlord sect.

ROGER WATERS???

― i also enjoy in line skateing (spazzmatazz), Saturday, 24 May 2014 18:58 (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Roger Waters obv

― goth colouring book (anagram), Thursday, 22 May 2014 16:50 (4 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

gilmour is definitely the mike love of pink floyd. waters? fuck outta here

lol. op says "the ones who got shit done and kept things together". gilmour organized nothing in pink floyd.

as for waters, in 1967-8 he certainly had a "drug addict/mentally unstable/genius partner (who) derailed things endlessly but still got the glory"

I can think of someone so much like Mike Love in many ways outside of music: Stan Lee.

Sarah Palin

lol. op says "the ones who got shit done and kept things together". gilmour organized nothing in pink floyd.

In which era though? I thought he was sort of the singlehanded face of the brand following The Final Cut - kind of a classic case of a guy who wasn't really a creative leader, forcing the thing to keep moving and put out material and make big money. That's Mike Love, right?

Stan lee is worse than mike love imo

xp

In which era though? I thought he was sort of the singlehanded face of the brand following The Final Cut - kind of a classic case of a guy who wasn't really a creative leader, forcing the thing to keep moving and put out material and make big money. That's Mike Love, right?

― Doctor Casino, Tuesday, May 27, 2014 2:09 PM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otm, that's how i see it too

I don't recognize the post-Final Cut Floyd as Floyd but yeah ok

not familiar with comic book industry stuff....what's the basics on stan lee?

josh in chicago to thread lol

palin way off btw, she's a bez if politics has ever had one

not familiar with comic book industry stuff....what's the basics on stan lee?

― dollar rave club (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Tuesday, May 27, 2014 2:35 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Generally, that in developing his own legend as mister super-creative genius who whiz-bang created the Marvel Universe, he shortchanged his collaborators, particularly Steve Ditko and probably also Jack Kirby. There's a lot of varied opinion on this, mind you. See also Steve Ditko: Classic or Dud The Love-ness probably comes a lot with him just living forever and really making hay out of his media presence as a winking, lovable teenage senior-citizen - Nuff Said, True Believers!

Stan Lee seems to be a lot more genial than Love (in public at least, I don't really know enough about what went on behind the scenes at Marvel), he can actually pull off winking and lovable, though maybe I just think that because I've been aware of him since I was a kid?

Kind of wary of stepping into another classic era Marvel argument because they often go on forever. I think EC's Gaines/Feldstein/Kurtzman is the only other comparable argument in comics.

Stan Lee was a writer and editor at Marvel when their most famous characters and stories were coming out but he had more skill for hype and business, he really was the ultimate cheerleader. He made Marvel seem like a cool club and created a sort of fan loyalty and obsession that didn't exist for DC until quite a bit later (some fans got called "Marvel zombies", it would be funny if they created that comic title of the same name to dispel that insult).
He had a distinct cheery writing style but not many would ever call him a great writer; he kept adding all these cringeworthy elements to appeal to hip young people, including a word I'm sure Wild Honey era Beach Boys used a couple of times: "Outtasight!" (Other examples being repeated mentions of Harry Orborne's "Fu Manchu" moustache and Mary Jane's "ginchy" new haircut. Also Mary Jane referring to friends as "dad".
Stan Lee always confessed to having a terrible memory and it really shows, he would reuse plots, ideas, character names and even specific bits of dialogue as if he had forgotten he used them before. He even forgotten names of main characters and tended to use alliterative names to help him remember.

He taken credit as if he were the sole creator in most of his media appearances for a long time unless he was challenged about it (he even joked he would take credit for anything that wasn't nailed down). It taken a very long time for it to be common knowledge that people like Kirby and Ditko were the ones with way more creativity. Some have even referred to Lee as a mere "instigator" or "word balloon filler" of the main Marvel characters. Much like Mike Love, Lee fought against his collaborators less commercial tendencies: Ditko's critique of youth culture and student protest, Kirby's ideas of killing Thor in an Asgardian apocalypse, Gil Kane's "faggy"(according to Lee) looking characters. Many more examples exist.

Lee shamed Marvel for keeping movie money from him but he stood against the children of Kirby in court so they couldn't get money.

So many have remarked on how Lee charmed people so much that he could screw them over and they wouldn't resent it too much. There are accounts of Ditko and Kirby meeting Lee at separate times in the 90s where they hugged and (sort of)forgiven him for all the things they had criticized.

I haven't been able to get much info on how Stan Lee Media turned against Stan Lee but it sounds crazy.

The main difference between Mike Love and Stan Lee is that he wasn't a bully, he sort of smoothed over injustices as if there were none.
I'd agree that Lee turned Marvel into a multimedia phenomenon and that those characters wouldn't have survived for more than a decade without him but I don't think that would be a bad thing at all.

Bob Kane was way worse than Mike Love.

I'm surprised at how little has been written about Love's disowned son, but I saw a small documentary about it.

actually, one way in which Stan Lee is similar to Mike Love is that a 'can we be shown weirdos and Stan Lee' thread would probably be viable xp

http://37.media.tumblr.com/141159766357b498e2912be675de5f5c/tumblr_mw6fqmr8u61rfrzmko1_500.jpg

cool thanks guys that is enlightening wrt to Lee who as a very very casual comic/comic book movie fan i guess i thought was like "the man" of comics

if anyone (Robert?) feels like telling the Bob Kane story I'd be interested to hear it. And thanks for Stan Lee enlightenment.

Bob Kane is more of a Mike Love than Stan.

Stan lee and mike love are both horrible greedy egomaniacs I think its a good analogy

(some fans got called "Marvel zombies", it would be funny if they created that comic title of the same name to dispel that insult).

if?

http://img4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20091119155018/marveldatabase/images/8/88/Marvel_Zombies_2_Vol_1_1.jpg

Also Mary Jane referring to friends as "dad".

wtf lol

Anyone with a passing interest in Batman needs to see this one page comic about what a Bob Kane solo comic would look like...
http://tytempletonart.wordpress.com/2014/01/18/giving-comics-the-finger-bun-toons-yay/

Bob Kane was an old school humour cartoonist who got into superheroes because it was a successful new trend and he had real difficulty writing and drawing in that mode so he had has friend Bill Finger (who wasn't an artist but redesigned Batmans costume into the way it has more or less always been, he made most of the stories, characters and ideas) and Jerry Robinson (initially an inker but ended up drawing most of it for a while before some other artists worked under Bob Kane's name. Robinson claims to have basically created Joker) who he met just by chance at a tennis game when Robinson oddly had drawn on his own clothes (!?) and Kane asked him to draw for him on the strength of those drawings.

Kane doesn't have much of a cult because he got most of his work done for him (usually anonymously) and somehow managed to be the only early creator to get rich under DC (maybe the higher-ups appreciated his ruthlessly exploitative ways). Some people enjoy the slightly spooky crudeness of the early Batman art but it's hard to say how much that is owed to the inkers. Other early DC artists frequently mocked Kane's drawing ability and generally didn't like him as a person. Robinson said that Kane's peniciling got increasingly lazy to the point that he ended up just writing what was supposed to be drawn in some panels.

It has been said that Kane treated Finger horrendously and even demanded that Finger greet Kane a certain way each time they met. In later decades when Robinson written pieces about how it really was, some DC people treated this with total contempt as if nobody should have the nerve to do such a thing.
Finger spent his later years in desperation, finding it difficult to get writing work, eventually taking cheques and running away without doing the work; I think he died of scarlett fever. Apparently DC creators used to talk about "getting Fingered" when they were treated badly. Somehow the "created by Bob Kane" credit became so solid over time that it seemed there was no hope to ever officially credit Bill Finger, I don't know if that has changed.

Robinson is a really talented illustrator and done really nice work (I wouldn't bother with his Batman stuff, he never got to show his fully formed style on that work), especially with Mort Meskin; he ended up doing a lot of political cartoons and helping out political illustrators in russia.

Bob Kane is way worse than Mike Love.

Re: Marvel Zombies, I meant "if" that was their reason for creating the title, but I don't believe that. The insult doesn't get thrown around because there are just Marvel/DC zombies now.

Funny thing on that page you gave is that in the comments there is a flame war erupting w people accusing each other of ripping off their work (the work being comics about Bob Kane ripping other people off).

Yeah I just saw that, I once heard Kane meant Batman's costume to be yellow.

wow that is really interesting - thanks again, Robert!

Incontinent Batman just didn't appeal to the right demographics unfortunately

Based on brio's 5-and-a-half point list, and cwkiii's corollary, I nominate Tina Weymouth.

(I'm leaning heavily on David Bowman's book here.)

My reading of that book is that Weymouth and Byrne were both stiff weirdos who didn't communicate well.

So many have remarked on how Lee charmed people so much that he could screw them over and they wouldn't resent it too much. There are accounts of Ditko and Kirby meeting Lee at separate times in the 90s where they hugged and (sort of)forgiven him for all the things they had criticized.

Whose accounts? Kirby died at the beginning of ’94, and Lee, AIUI, hasn’t seen Ditko face-to-face since 1965. (When Ditko pressed for a plotting credit on Spider-Man, due to writing and drawing the entire book each month before Lee saw a single page to add dialogue to, Lee agreed but refused to set eyes on him again; Ditko had to deliver the finished pages to Sol Brodsky.)

a vague claim from lee in '99:

CraveOnline: What was your last contact with Steve Ditko?

Stan Lee: Quite a few years ago I met him up at the Marvel offices when I was last in New York. And we spoke, he's a hell of a nice guy and it was very pleasant. I really don't know what he's doing. I haven't heard from him since that meeting.

any mention of Weymouth/Byrne enmity automatically thinks of the story about her calling friends of the band up in the '90s and telling them that Byrne had a "baby penis"

automatically makes me think of the story, i mean

Lee is def more of a mealymouthed coward than Love, who does not shrink from confrontation

http://kirbymuseum.org/blogs/dynamics/2012/05/02/ditko-the-mystery-behind-the-man-article-2002/
http://www.paulgravett.com/index.php/articles/article/jack_kirby1/

This is where I found out about Lee meeting Kirby and Ditko in the 90s

kirby's "You have nothing to reproach yourself about, Stan." is also reported in the marvel untold story book, though the hug isn't mentioned. it doesn't sound like the most forgiving of statements. prior to that they'd had a frosty conversation when lee was on a radio show and kirby called in unexpectedly.

Kirby and Lee were always polite to each other in person, but that oft-repeated line - so personally whispered! - doesn't ring true, and the mere fact that Lee has used it so often points to unreliability, given his usual reportage.

Ditko's attitude to Lee is clear in his self-published writing on the topic over the last 15 years.

If Bob Kane is Mike Love then who is Jim Steranko at SDCC?

Jardine and Steranko about the same height.

Not sure I can imagine Al slapping Mike though.

Not sure I put too much weight in a 70-yo bullshit artist bragging about publicly "bitchslapping" a 75-yo poseur for being patronising in an elevator twenty years ago tbh

Personally, I thought those stories sounded fishy too and I wouldn't have been surprised if they were embellished.
I've read quite a number of Ditko's essays and letters, they can be fascinating but also quite mind numbing in places. I could never finish that 20 pager he wrote about the industry in the early 90s, even when I was at the height of my adoration for him. He does have a great memory though and can go into detailed accounts that few others are able to.

Can someone tell me about this slapping incident?

There is a popular myth about a comic artist hanging an editor out a high window by his legs in the late 50s to early 60s, some say Alex Toth did this (Scott Hampton even based a short story on this) but there are lots of different versions with different people. It was even mentioned in Mad Men, so I'm inclined to think it was a myth that circulated among various businesses where people worked in skyscrapers. But I still like to think Alex Toth really did this because he might have been nutty enough.

There is a book by Bryan Talbot called The Naked Comic Book Artist with lots of similar stories.

Found it

http://comicsalliance.com/jim-steranko-twitter-slap-bob-kane/

Sic, is Steranko a known liar?

The other thing that raised my suspicion about the Lee/Ditko meeting is that Blake Bell didn't include it in his Ditko biography book, he said he left out a lot of stories that didn't have enough evidence.

Let's stop clogging up a decent and fun ILM thread with this diversion.

Yes back to the serious business of finding a non-Mike Love Mike Love.

Are we still at 0? Is this a futile exercise? I think the best bet would be bands that are past their prime and more or less over yet keep going on reunion tours w 1 or 2 original members.

Tons of great Mike Loves identified upthread, esp. Robbie Robertson, Lars Ullrich, Johnny Ramone, Eazy E, Gene Simmons.

I mean nobody's going to be a 100% perfect fit, but these dudes are all Mike Loves.

Re: CSNY

It's tempting to say Crosby, Stills, Nash AND Young were the bad guys. There was a thread on the Steve Hoffman forum not so long back titled something like "Was Graham Nash the real a$$hole in CSNY", but that was never going to last very long over there.

Eazy E is def the best fit imo

Noel Redding, maybe? He always tried to get the Experience to do more of his songs, he's not particularly rated as a bassist, and he only did his last Experience tour on the condition that his other band would open.

if i wasn't such a big fan of Fat Matress, Road, and The Noel Redding Band i would agree. he added good stuff on his own away from jimi though and that's something mike love has never done. plus, i think jimi just wanted to do other stuff anyway, didn't he? it wasn't gonna last forever.

not a big fan of Wrinkles, Scott?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCSJ3DRhs7g

b wilson
5 months ago

really nice song from Mike Love

Stills is the Mike Love by far

I have to admit I've never heard CSNY other than the classic rock radio hits. High school hippies put me off em and I've never bothered checking them out because they seem so drippy. Am I totally missing out?

no they are horrid

don't listen to him, they're gr8

Noel Redding, maybe? He always tried to get the Experience to do more of his songs, he's not particularly rated as a bassist, and he only did his last Experience tour on the condition that his other band would open.

― Montgomery Burns' Jazz (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Wednesday, May 28, 2014 2:15 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

hmm yeah i mentioned Buddy Miles upthread as a Mike Love to Jimi, but Noel is probably a better fit.

Joey Molland of Badfinger?

The only "bad guy" surrounding Badfinger was their manager, who Pete Ham mentioned in his suicide note.

Stills is the Mike Love by far

― dollar rave club (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Wednesday, May 28, 2014 5:44 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i love csny btw

yeah i mean stills is pretty talented, but he was so full of shit and his weird hatred/jealousy/neediness towards neil young...his bullying behaviors, it's all there

Revive!

This article: http://pitchfork.com/thepitch/260-the-jesus-lizards-book-reviewed/

... seems to point to Wm. David Sims as the Mike Love of The Jesus Lizard. Or at least he and Duane Denison as the guys who wanted to "go professional" during the major-label period and the David Yow-Mac McNeilly axis as the creative weirdos.

From Mick Jagger to Mike Love: all hail the money-grabbing men of rock

Mike Love, naturally, is the ultimate Mike Love and he is widely despised for it: for being a bully, for forcing Brian Wilson into things he was unfit to do, for claiming credit for things he deserves no credit for, for turning the Beach Boys into his personal fiefdom. Well, faced with the incapacities of Brian and the wildness of Dennis Wilson – the man who, let’s not forget, brought Charles Manson into the Beach Boys’ camp – what was he meant to do? Love, as the Beach Boys might put it, kept the summer alive.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/low_concept/2010/11/please_allow_me_to_correct_a_few_things.html

Classic thread

http://www.furious.com/perfect/hounddogtaylor.html

This is a great interview from quite a few years back with Bruce Egnater about Hound Dog Taylor. This one is up there with the all time greats I think for hard band members.

PSF: How was he as a bandleader?

Whatever they (the Houserockers) had a show, they didn't rehearse. That was sort of a rule. They followed that rule very closely. They also followed the rule that you REALLY shouldn't perform unless you had a reasonable amount of alcohol. He set an example for that. In that regard, he was sort of an exemplary bandleader. His concept of the band was that he would get a gig, call up the other guys and tell them where to be and they'd get there on their own and get home on their own. When they were on the road, he bought a vehicle big enough for the three of them. I remember the time that he got mad at Ted and Brewer. Brewer called me from Ohio and said 'Hound Dog left us here. He went home.' I called Hound Dog and he was home and I asked him what happened. He told me 'I said I'd take 'em to the gig but I didn't say I'd bring 'em BACK from the gig.' As a bandleader, he made his own rules and they were very loose. Having a fistfight with somebody else in the band would fall within the band rules. That was acceptable and in fact, sometimes encouraged.

Off the bandstand, he could be very angry and vindictive, especially to the guys in the band. He had a very short temper. When people didn't see him, he'd attack them. I saw the guys on the band pull knives on each other at various times. But sometimes he'd also attack them as amusement. One time when we were driving across the country (I'd usually drive since I was the sober one), Ted was in the front with Brewer and Hound Dog in the back. Hound Dog woke up at 6 in the morning with a cigarette in his hand and slapped Ted in the back of the head and yelled 'wake up and argue!' They drove across the country once arguing whether WOPA was an AM or an FM station for about 700 miles (of course it was both).

They also liked to tease each other about having sex with each other's wives and girlfriends. I remember when Brewer said about one of Hound Dog's girlfriends 'yeah, I knew her when she was a whore on 43rd Street.' In fact, it was a remark like that, directed at Hound Dog about his wife that led him to shoot Brewer in 1975, luckily not fatally.

Ralf Hütter in Kraftwerk, maybe? Not that Bartos and Flur were "geniuses" per the OP but they certainly got edged out of the band while Ralf busied himself with endless archival projects.

Billy Corgan.

he pretty much did all the music and lyrics but it seems he was kind of a dictator and a dick to everyone in the band.

We already went through Billy 3 and a half years ago:

Billy Corgan doesn't fit, now that i think about it. You can't be the undisputed leader of a band and be a Mike Love. Need to be a pretender to the throne, more of a pre-torture Theon Greyjoy-type to be a Mike Love. Corgan's more of a Joffrey.

― brio, Thursday, May 22, 2014 2:13 PM (three years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

same goes for David Byrne & Greg Ginn.

now, was he the Mike Love of Zwan? Absolutely

also Lars Ulrich should definitely be added to the (v short) list of people that fit all criteria of being a Mike Love: relative asshole, fame & credit hog, businessman, questionable musicianship.

such a classic thread
anyway, i finally found another Mike Love:

http://www.mikelovemusic.com/

I was really enjoying that Mick letter until I realised it was fictional

The keyboard player and bassist in Soul Coughing, if M Doughty is to believed.

Dolores Cranberry?

Phil Lesh

Phil Lesh

Peter Hook

Can a manager count? If so, Bernie Rhodes

In Springsteen's recent memoir he mentions that one of the E Street Band once came to him and asked for a raise, and Springsteen told him, "If you can find someone else in your position making more than you do, I'll pay you that much, but I'll save you the time because there isn't anyone." That struck me as indicative as this kind of behavior. (He doesn't say who it was, but I suspect his name rhymes with Shmary Shmallent.)

i.e. the guy asking for the raise was practicing "bad guy" behavior, not Bruuuuuuuuuuuuuce

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DL84W9sV4AArG8T.jpg

he may be a notorious punisher, but Mustaine doesn't fit the criteria for a Mike Love in Metallica or Megadeth. in the former, he wasn't the taskmaster/businessman, and in the latter, he's the primary creative force.

i.e. the guy asking for the raise was practicing "bad guy" behavior, not Bruuuuuuuuuuuuuce

asking for a raise is bad guy behavior?

(also, i once tried to rent a manhattan apartment owned by a man whose name rhymes with shmary shmallent but he wanted way too much $$ for it. probably, i can now assume, because he hadn't gotten that raise.)

Peter Hook is a great one, if from an alternate universe where Brian Wilson had kept the band name. I think Stamos may actually be the drummer for Peter Hook & the Light.

Gene Simmons

Andrew Ridgley of Wham!

Andy Taylor in Duran Duran

Simmons been discussed upthread. Some talk about how Paul Stanley was actually the Mike Love of KISS.

Ralf Hütter in Kraftwerk, maybe? Not that Bartos and Flur were "geniuses" per the OP but they certainly got edged out of the band while Ralf busied himself with endless archival projects.

― heaven parker (anagram), Thursday, October 12, 2017 6:57 AM (ten hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I disagree. Bartos had quite a fair bit of creative input, particularly on the last three albums he worked on.

If one posits core Mike Loveness as "takes over the band from its originating genius and subverts it to his or her own ends," then I can't agree with choices like Tina Weymouth.

Mould, Robertson, Byrne, Corgan, etc. may be dicks - but none yanked an existing band away from its original inspiring spirit.

Gilmour fits, but Gilmour is also awesome in ways that Mike Love can never be. Stevie too, perhaps, even if you love her inordinately (as I do).

Has there ever been a Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame speech as cantankerous as Mike Love's?

xp I encourage everyone to read this relatively short thread to avoid repeating stuff that was already covered in 2014. also just bc it's a great read, this thread rules. We've already gone through why Corgan, Mould, Byrne, Robertson, etc. don't qualify.

tony banks?

Yes!

"Oh shit, Gabriel is singing over my bit! Let's bury his vocal in the mix!"

gotta be the breadhead of the band with a name like banks amirite?

His solo project was called Bankstatement!

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/03058/genesis_3058306b.jpg

That pic must have been taken during the filming of the Genesis documentary that came out a couple years back. Safe to say judging by body language, Tony Banks and Peter Gabriel do not exchange Christmas cards.

Man, all Banks did in that documentary was complain. It was like Noel Redding being bitter that people paid more attention to Hendrix than to him.

Yes, he came across a total dick in what was all most certainly the most boring rockumentary of all time.

Banks was talking shit about everyone while they were sitting there and they were looking at each other like "WTF" it's so great it's up there with Some Kind of Monster for me

love peter gabriel's look these days

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/91/1a/ee/911aeeb253fab87272590b0124ee4e59.jpg

How about Dave Rowntree who played drums in Blur?

There’s a couple of videos and stories of him being obnoxious to everyone.

Here he is bullying my man Nardwuar:

https://youtu.be/AkNvk2MgiCc

jfc how much of a dick do you have to be to hate on nardwuar

Actually Nardwuar seems like a good litmus test to see which band members are cool and which ones are dicks.

first few times i saw Nardwuar he was so intensely positive that it seemed ironic. soon i realized he is just incredibly sincere and it made me love it all the more but i could see someone not knowing and walking into that and thinking he is pulling something over on you.

"The keyboard player and bassist in Soul Coughing, if M Doughty is to believed."

Mark Degli Antoni or Steinberg or both?

Antoni did a great solo album at some point which I think is arguably more interesting than anything SC or Doughty ever did.

"if M Doughty is to be believed" is the part where i'd start asking questions tbh

Well, he wrote this book much of which was devoted to detailing how generally awful all of his colleagues in SC treated him, the keys and bass guys came off worse.

How true it is of course possibly nobody can truthfully answer.

jfc how much of a dick do you have to be to hate on nardwuar

i don't understand the shtick and i think he's a fucking dick and can only imagine he's enjoyed by dicks and Blur still come off worse in that video

he just exists in a world of what the fuck is wrong with you people? to me and still comes off as a reasonable human being compared to Blur

jfc how much of a dick do you have to be to hate on nardwuar

― Οὖτις, Thursday, October 12, 2017 5:17 PM (four hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

not that this excuses his behavior at all, but dude was up all night the night before doing so much blow & was coming down hard when Nard came in. again it is completely unacceptable to be anything but deferential to Nardwuar no matter the circumstances. at least Thurston & Lee atoned in 2002.

i don't understand the shtick and i think he's a fucking dick and can only imagine he's enjoyed by dicks

the second part of this statement is especially insane

Soul Coughing is an interesting example. Steinberg and De Gli Antoni both come off pretty poorly in the book, but the not-so-hidden subtext there is that all four of them were assholes. To some extent Doughty would be good candidate for this thread, if not for the fact that he never really got his way in the band. For all the complaining he does in the book, if you read it and then listen to his CD of Soul Coughing "covers" (idk if they count as covers if he wrote them in the first place) you could make an argument that Doughty would've single-handedly ruined the band and torpedoed their chance at commercial success if he had full reigns over the band. Not to mention the fact that he was (by his own admission) fucked up all the time, was often late to the studio, and half-assed pretty much everything as the band went on.

someone mentioned Spiral Stairs way upthread and there was no discussion but i think he has a lot of the qualities. maybe not all, but definitely a few.

SM is such a cock though

Dave Grohl in ways

Phill Judd

Matt Sharp

Bev Bevan

Brian Ritchie

Stewart Copeland?

would be hard to be worse than Sting tbh

yea I don't see how Copeland fits here. Sting doesn't really either, he wrote like 80% of the band's material and 100% of their hits.

well he wrote the lyrics and claimed the credits and then you get him absolutely coining it in when puff samples the EBYT riff and andy doesn't even get a whiff of the royalties

i don't understand the shtick and i think he's a fucking dick and can only imagine he's enjoyed by dicks

the second part of this statement is especially insane

we may need to consider that NV is ILX's Mike Love

Copeland only gets credit for like 2-4 songs per album. I didn't think he wrote all that many lyrics.

Summers getting screwed out of the Pupp Daddy money is definitely pretty egregious though. IDK how much of that was on Stew though

Bear in mind I generally like Copeland as a musician, songwriter, composer, etc.

But in any interview, any documentary or video where he gets to talk, and in his fluffy-as-fuck memoir, he absolutely cannot ever shut up. He tries to come off as a genial goofball, but he keeps changing the subject to himself, and also never shuts up. On the "Certifiable" reunion tour DVD, he keeps talking and talking and you can see the other guys just rolling their eyes. "Oh, god, there he goes again." He makes Sting - STING - seem reserved and modest and shy.

They did this little faux-nonchalant Whisky appearance and they were like, "what should we play?" and Sting turns to Andy and says, "Do you know 'Message in a Bottle'?" So they start playing, and it sounds great. But Stewart doesn't realize the joke is over, and he's still pretending that they don't really know the song. So he is - get this - AUDIBLY CALLING OUT THE CHORD CHANGES, including the inversions/extensions and bass notes.

They were taking questions from a mainly-press audience and Questlove happened to be there, and Stewart gets all goofy about it, while clearly not knowing who Questlove is.

I mean, this guy is responsible for some of the purest joy I've ever felt, but whenever he opens his mouth it just sounds like the most show-offy class clown in the whole 8th grade. Andy's pretty cool, and Sting is... Sting. But Stewart always wants more of the spotlight than he's earned. Which makes him a Mike Love in my book.

I've always thought all of that band were dicks tbh.

Very compelling case, YMP. But Copeland's musicianship cannot be questioned. This is crucial in being a Mike Love.

tbf you could probably gather all that about him just by listening to his music. I think the big difference here is that Copeland contributed a ton to the band, in fact if you listen to his Klark Kent record next to Sting's solo stuff, you can make a pretty good argument that Copeland architected the whole sound in a way.

I believe Copeland wrote "Does Everyone Stare" and "On Any Other Day"; a few others that I can't call to mind right now. I see where you're going, flappy. If being an unquestionably good musician means you're not a Mike Love, I will defer to the hive-mind wisdom.

Mike Love's not really a good musician but he is a good songwriter

Mike Love's voice is his instrument!

it is not that great

tho I do think he made the most of it

Aruba, Jamaica, ooo I wanna take ya; Bermuda, Bahama, come on pretty mama

https://media.giphy.com/media/NzRf8Kx3AsrXa/giphy.gif

Hah. Left to right: L: Mike Love; R: Mike Love.

He sits behind his microphone: Johnny Carson
He speaks in such a manly tone: Johnny Carson

Ed McMahon comes on and says "Here's Johnny"
Every night at 11:30 he's so funny

^^^possibly the best song on "Love You" (not written by Mike tho)

So. In the movie "Frank," Domhnall Gleeson's character joins an existing band led by a reclusive visionary genius.

He proceeds to push the band in a more popular, less obscurantist direction, alienating the other band members.

Guess who else joined an existing band led by a reclusive visionary genius, then proceeded to push the band in a more popular, less obscurantist direction, alienating the other band members?

Anyone care to opine on who was the Mike Love of the New York Dolls?

John Stamos? (xp)