David Marks found himself on the outside looking in when Mike Love continued with a scaled-down version of the Beach Boys after their 50th anniversary tour.
The singer/guitarist has since joined a separate tour featuring Brian Wilson and Al Jardine in the wake of this latest split.
Yet Marks takes up for the oft-maligned Love in a talk with Rock Cellar magazine, crediting Love with key elements of their core sound — and with keeping the Beach Boys going through a series of personnel shifts.
The latest followed a celebrated reunion in 2012 featuring Wilson, Love, Jardine, Marks and Bruce Johnston, including a well-received new studio effort and smash tour. Marks had been part of the Beach Boys’ first four albums between 1962-63, and returned for a stint in 1997-99, as well.
When the originally scheduled dates ended last year, however, Love found himself at the center of a firestorm for continuing with a smaller unit — featuring only Johnston — that’s been playing smaller venues.
Marks counters with his own take on Love’s contributions over the years.
“Mike doesn’t get the credit that he deserves because he’s not a virtuoso on an instrument,” Marks says, “but when he sings the bass parts to those Four Freshman harmonies, that’s so hard to do. You have to be a really talented musician with a great ear to sing those interval spreads and keep them on pitch with three other people doing three other harmony parts. The guy deserves a lot of credit for that alone not to mention the hooks and the lyrics that he came up with for Brian’s songs. Mike also kept the band together through a lot of crises. As far as being the villain, people need a villain and he got chosen.”
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If by keep the band together, you mean exclude Al, Brian, and David from future touring in favor of Stamos and some ringers.
Not really a full-blooded defense of Mike, even his vicious detractors acknowledge his terrific bass vocals and contribution to the harmony stack. He’s a decent enough frontman but a villain not because he was chosen but because he’s said incredibly stupid, meanspirited things for decades.
As far as not being a virtuoso, that’s for sure. Get on youtube and watch him try and play the tambourine. He doesn’t even know how to keep time or change tempo when the rhythm section does!
Love’s tour is selling out while the Brian/Al/David/Beck tour is playing to half-empty houses. The Houston show was 2/3 empty.