The father-son pair share their family memories from a lifetime of travel and how it shaped their relationship.
Courtesy of Brian Love
The Beach Boys have always been a family affair.
Our teacher would come out on the road when they were probably doing 150 to 180 shows a year.
Brian Love and Mike Love.Credit:Courtesy of Brian Love
Brians sister Ambha loved to come out and dance around on stage on “Surfer Girl.”
But Brian is quite the entrepreneur.
When he was about five years old, he would sell our autographs to fans.
Courtesy of Brian Love
I’d say, “Brian, where did you get all this money?”
Hed say, “I worked really hard selling autographs.
Id sell them for 10 to 20 bucks.
Courtesy of Brian Love
Fair deal.Mike:Cost of living has gone up.
If you did it now, it would be 50 bucks.
One year, we went to Bali for Christmas.
We had a little Christmas tree that wasn’t very pine-looking, but it was fantastic.
I remember going to a Balinese temple.
We all dressed up appropriately and we stayed at the Ritz Carlton, which is beautiful.
And we had our own little pied-de-water, a palapa.
Another Christmas, we rented a couple of houses in Puerto Vallarta right on the beach.
What lessons have you learned from your dad being on the road, Brian?
Brian:Just having an open-mindedness to culture, and really like being able to dive in.
But also, there’s two sides of the coin.
So I got the Spanish bug, and ended up getting a minor in French and Spanish in college.
I lived in Spain for a year and studied in Salamanca.
That travel bug has continued.
I really took a like to photography in high school.
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For Catholics, it’s the Vatican, and for musicians, it’s Royal Albert Hall.
Alsothe Ryman Auditoriumin Nashville was a former church.
There’s something about being on those spots that are fantastic.
Outdoors, Red Rocks in Denver is phenomenal.
Its like playing in a little bit of the Grand Canyon.
All over the world, there are great places, but the main thing is the people.
So that’s pretty incredible.
Let’s see my favorite?
Oh yeah, that’s it!
I don’t have a favorite because it has to do with your mood.
What’s your favorite place that’s named in Kokomo?Mike:That’s a hard one.
Bermuda is beautiful, the Bahamas are great.
We were there four or five times last year.
It must have been 25 years ago, but I still remember.
It was just wildly different from any other culture.
You’re eating on the floor.
You’re eating off of banana leaves.
There are mules in the street.
To see that at a very young age, something clicked.
Its like, not everything is as we have it, or as we know it.
We get in trouble for going back and forth with the dad jokes.
We say, “The curse is the worst when your mom is a nurse!”
Its a family tradition to joke around.
Plus we had Mr. T. with us!
It was hot on the train going up, so he knocked the window out of the train.
That was Mr. T’s solution for a little fresh air.
Then, that evening we had over half a million people in DC at the Monument grounds.
So we played for about a million people in one day.
But he graduated from Colorado College with a degree in international economics with a minor in French and Spanish.
You got to be pretty proud of that.
I’ve been to more colleges than he has, but in an entertainment capacity!
He doesn’t have to be out there doing 120 shows every year, but he chooses to.
Hes gotten involved in spearheading [Club Kokomo Spirits] and doesn’t have to.
He meditates twice a day, which I do not.
He’s also in amazing shape at a tender age.
Oh, and we’re doing about 17 out of the 20 songs in our show.
These songs are immortal or something.
We call the tourEndless Summer Gold.
And weve got the Kokomo gold!
