Brian Wilson at Pitchfork Festival 2016
photo by Ben Stas

Brian Wilson speaks out against Mike Love's Beach Boys hunting convention show

UPDATE: Mike Love responded.

Brian Wilson has spoken out against an upcoming show from the current, Mike Love-led Beach Boys, as Pitchfork reports. On Wednesday (2/5), the Beach Boys are scheduled to headline the Safari Club International Convention in Reno, NV, a hunting convention that has been criticized by the Humane Society for its “agenda of advocating and celebrating the killing of the planet’s most threatened species.”

In a series of tweets, Wilson writes, “it has been brought to my attention that on Wednesday February 5, The Beach Boys touring group licensed by Mike Love are headlining at the Safari Club International Convention in Reno, Nevada…This organization supports trophy hunting, which Both Al and I are emphatically opposed to. There’s nothing we can do personally to stop the show, so please join us in signing the petition at https://www.change.org/p/beach-boys-stop-supporting-trophy-hunting.”

The petition includes a letter to Beach Boys manager Elliott Lott, which reads:

We the undersigned pledge to stop buying or downloading all Beach Boys music, going to Beach Boys concerts, and purchasing any Beach Boys merchandise until the Beach Boys withdraw from the SCI Convention and publicly state their opposition to this sick ‘sport’ of killing animals for ‘fun’.

We will call on the Beach Boys’ record label, agent and publicists to disown the Beach Boys, and on members of the public to protest at forthcoming Beach Boys concerts, unless they do so.

UPDATE: Mike Love responded.