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Mike Love is heading back to the beach.
Love, and his incarnation of classic California pop-rock outfit the Beach Boys, are back on the road. With a catalog of hits going back half a century, they’ve found room for at least one new old song in this year’s setlist: “Goin’ to the Beach,” a Love-penned number that had been recorded for the band’s 1980 album “Keepin’ the Summer Alive,” but remained unreleased until its inclusion in the 2013 box set “Made in California (1962-2012).”
“It’s one of those songs that we recorded and, as we have done many times on an album project, we had more songs recorded than would make it to the album,” Love said. “Now, the song had been languishing in the vaults for 30 years or so, and we discovered it and said, ‘Hey, that’s pretty cool.’ ”
The song’s so cool, in fact, that it will be featured in the opening sequence of this year’s Beach Boys touring show, coming to the Great Auditorium in Ocean Grove on Saturday, July 26 and Thursday, Oct. 23 at the Mayo Performing Arts Center in Morristown.
“I like to start retro and do our surfing songs and so on,” Love said. “And so, the song ‘Goin’ to the Beach’ fits perfectly, and it’s very catchy and up-tempo and fun. So, it works really well in the early part of our show.”
This year’s show, Love said, will also feature “Pisces Brothers,” a 2004 tribute to George Harrison that Love released this February on what would have been the late Beatle’s 71st birthday.
“There’s been a lot of promotion or whatever you call it, news, made about The Beatles’ 50th anniversary of coming to America in 1964,” said Love. “In light of that, I put out this tribute called ‘Pisces Brothers.’ ‘Pisces Brothers’ is reminiscing on a time in India at Maharishi (Mahesh Yogi)’s place in February and March of 1968, when George Harrison had his birthday on Feb. 25 and I had mine on March 15. ”
The show, Love said, will also feature “a couple of songs that maybe aren’t the biggest hits but are a little bit more esoteric,” such as the 1967 track “Wild Honey,” which will serve as a vocal showcase for drummer John Cowsill, formerly of hit-making ’60s band the Cowsills. Plus, famous longtime friend of the band John Stamos is scheduled to make a guest appearance in Ocean Grove.
Of course, Love still remains steadfastly committed to giving the people what they want.
“There’s some newness to our show, along with what you would expect from the Beach Boys, which are all of our hits from ‘Surfin’ Safari’ and ‘Surfin’ U.S.A.,’ ‘I Get Around’ and ‘Fun, Fun, Fun’ and ‘California Girls’ and ‘Help Me, Rhonda’ and ‘Good Vibrations,’ and ‘Kokomo’ and more,” Love said. “So, we’re blessed to have a pretty big amount of Top 40 hits to perform. But, like I said, we intersperse those with some things a little bit new or just maybe not heard in a while.”
For his part, Love said he’s also particularly looking forward to the band’s return to the Great Auditorium in Ocean Grove.
“I love that place, it’s great, it’s one of the classic venues that we perform at,” he said, adding with a laugh that “also, one of the great things about Ocean Grove is the proximity to some fantastic ice cream parlors. We find a lot of pleasure in coming there.”
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