Mike Love

Mike Love is an American singer, songwriter, and lead vocalist of American rock band The Beach Boys whose six-decade music career — primarily as the lead singer and co-founding lyricist of The Beach Boys across 1961–present — has produced one of the foundational documents of 20th-century American surf-rock-and-pop music. He was born Michael Edward Love on March 15, 1941, in Los Angeles, California, into an American Jewish-and-Mormon family. His father Milton Love was a Los Angeles-area Mormon-and-Jewish sheet-metal-business owner, and his mother Emily Glee Wilson was an American Mormon homemaker. He is the first cousin of Brian Wilson, Carl Wilson, and Dennis Wilson — his Beach Boys bandmates.

His 1961 founding of The Beach Boys — at the Wilson family home in Hawthorne, California — with his three Wilson cousins (Brian, Carl, and Dennis Wilson) and Beach Boys friend Al Jardine, launched his 1961–present 60-year Beach Boys career. His 1962 first commercial Beach Boys single "Surfin' Safari" — released by Capitol Records — launched his early-1960s American surf-rock-music public profile.

His 1960s Beach Boys collaborations with cousin Brian Wilson — across which Mike Love provided lead-vocal performances and co-wrote many of the Beach Boys lyrics, while Brian Wilson primarily composed the music — produced multiple foundational 1960s American surf-rock-and-pop singles. The 1965 single "California Girls," the 1966 single "Good Vibrations," and the 1967 single "Heroes and Villains" produced the foundational documents of 1960s American surf-rock-and-pop music.

His lyrical contributions to The Beach Boys's 1966 album Pet Sounds — which has been continuously cited as one of the foundational documents of late-20th-century international rock-and-pop music — produced his 1960s American rock-music public profile. His subsequent late-1990s and 2000s commercial-control disputes with cousin Brian Wilson over the Beach Boys touring-and-merchandising rights shaped his later biographical narrative. His later 2010s and 2020s touring engagements have continued under his ongoing Mike Love-led Beach Boys touring band. He has been married multiple times — to Frances St. Martin (1965–1969), Suzanne Belcher (1976–1981), Catherine Martinez (1981–1985), and Jacquelyne Piesen (1994–present). He has six children.

His name Mike is the English short form of Michael (from the Hebrew Mikha'el). Mike has been continuously among the most-popular American boys' names since 1880.