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SOUTH BEND -- If it's summer, it must be time for The Beach Boys.
According to their "fact file," the group "has not taken summer off in 40 years." Last year, the band was on the grandstand stage in July at the Elkhart County 4-H Fair in Goshen. This year, the concert will be at 6:30 p.m. Sunday in St. Patrick's County Park.
Wherever they take the stage, Mike Love & Co. turn back the clock with one stroke of the guitar.
"All ages enjoy our music," said Love, including audiences around the world. "They like the feeling and the sound and that we're from America. And there are no Top 40 stations in Iraq."
"We have a great band," said the lead singer with understandable pride.
It's a band that, despite internal strife and personnel changes over the years, has managed to stay at the top of its game and give the listening public exactly what it wants.
It's all to do with sound.
"We're distinguished by our harmonies," said Love. "It's not difficult to keep the sound. If you have a good lead singer (Love) and a good lead guitar (Scott Totten), you can replicate the songs."
"Just close your eyes for 'California Girl.'" he suggested. "It sounds just like the '60s."
And that's just what the listening fans want to hear.
"People always think things were better a generation ago," said Love.
It's a sound that has kept the Beach Boys music alive and in the air for more than four decades. In fact, the biggest hit of their career, "Kokomo," came 27 years after their first song, "Surfin.'" Both were co-written by Love as was "Good Vibrations," the song voted "Number One Song of the Century" by Rolling Stone.
Among their litany of musical honors, the Beach Boys were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in '88 and received the Lifetime Achievement Award during the 2001 Grammys.
The original group was mostly a family affair with Love joining his cousins Brian, Carl and Dennis Wilson and Brian's college roommate, Al Jardine, to form a California band that made history singing about the state's favorite sport.
In 1965, Bruce Johnston joined the band, replacing Glenn Campbell, who filled in for Brian when illness made him "unsuitable for touring." The first five expanded to eight, including John Cowsill, whose family had its own share of '60s hits. Love is the only original, with Johnston a close second. Between the two, they have penned hit songs too numerous to list.
And as audiences never get tire of hearing them, they never get tired of singing them.
"I'm the old man of the group," Love said with a laugh, noting that his routine includes twice daily meditation. He has seven children, including Christian, 30, who is, according to his dad, "very talented singing harmonies and playing guitar." The youngest are 16 and 9 and, Love said, he frequently plays "Mr. Mom."
Between times at home, the band plays 150-plus dates a year, sometimes doing two shows a day.
So, when will the Beach Boys decide to rest on their musical laurels?
Not going to happen, according to Love, who noted that they are now in the studio working on songs for another CD and "We have 14 tracks already."
"The guys all get along," he said. "It runs like clockwork today and we're all having a good time."
Sounds like more than enough "Good Vibrations."
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