Murry (Part 1 of 4)
Is there a consensus opinion of Murry Wilson?
Note to reader / Preface
This essay (to be posted in four parts) is intended to provide some additional context for any other posts on the site that significantly deal with Murry Wilson’s relationship with his sons, Beach Boys Brian, Dennis, and Carl Wilson. The essay is intended as a sort of all-purpose addendum to those posts. Also, for any readers who remain interested in the subject of Murry while at the same time believing my treatment of his role to be unnecessarily bleak (or unfair to him), this will hopefully provide a fuller explanation of my thinking.
It’s not pleasant to think, write, or read about, but the topic of what is now euphemistically referred to as “maltreatment” or “interpersonal child trauma” is essential to a full and accurate understanding not only of Brian Wilson’s life as a person, but his music too. It must be dealt with. I have been addressing it on an as-needed basis in the A History of Brian Wilson posts. Because this site is about Brian more than his brothers or the Beach Boys generally, these posts will more often than not focus on the relationship between Murry and Brian in particular.
Please note further that this essay is grouped here, in the “Appendix” because I don’t intend its subject matter—purposeful and sustained child abuse in the two-parent home—to be the focus of A Book of Brian Wilson. My intended focus—provided that this newsletter survives—is more positive and redemptive in nature: the way Brian Wilson dealt with the circumstances of his upbringing (both positively and negatively) and ultimately persevered, against tremendous odds, and created great art. Brian is commonly celebrated in the media as a “survivor,” but it’s not certain that the public—even Brian’s greatest fans—have full awareness of what it is, exactly, that he has had to survive. And if that’s true, one reason would be the various difficulties inherent to the study of Brian and the Beach Boys. That is a separate subject which I have been writing about in this series of postings.
It is possible I will write more extensively about this topic in the future. It is only my opinion, but I do believe that this type of analysis is long overdue in the world of Brian Wilson and Beach Boys commentary. My hope is that there are readers who feel the same way, and understand the spirit in which this is offered.
Thank you for taking the time to engage with the material on this site.
—JH
…it has become very apparent to me that our family can no longer exist under the worrisome and trying conditions that have been going on for the last five or six years, and I think the time has come for us all to face facts straight in the eye.
—Murry Wilson, letter to Brian Wilson, May 1965
i.
As of 2025, it will be about 63 years since the Beach Boys’ first real hit, “Surfin’ Safari,” and 62 years since the band achieved national superstardom with “Surfin’ U.S.A.” 2025 will also mark the 21st anniversary of the Brian Wilson Presents Smile album—a relatively late work in Brian Wilson’s career that itself had existed in a state of incompletion for around 35 years. Back in the 1960s and ‘70s, “Beach Boys” was a household name and the band’s hit songs were widely recognized, even by non-fans—people who didn’t really like the Beach Boys or even the genre of rock ‘n’ roll. Today, the number of people familiar with the group inevitably grows ever smaller. This doesn’t mean the Beach Boys will be forgotten, but that their music and story will become increasingly less “relevant” in the public mind and more “historical.” To some extent this already occurred long ago.
Among the current population of Beach Boys listeners—those of us who stream their tunes, upload them to our phones, assemble playlists with Beach Boys tracks, and scan YouTube videos—what portion is aware of the personal, extra-musical story of the band? And even among that group, how many have actively researched the Beach Boys by reviewing at least some of the available books, articles, and documentaries?
Only those who have done this will know the name, “Murry Wilson” and who it refers to, and retain a sense of his significance in the story. They will have read about Murry’s treatment of his sons in childhood, particularly oldest son Brian and middle son Dennis. (A concise summary of the most memorable of Murry’s reported acts was included in Part 2 of A History of Brian Wilson.)
When confronted with this kind of information, we are challenged to deal with it in different ways. First is the choice between thinking about the issue at all or leaving it unaddressed, behind a locked door of privacy or secrecy. (The nature of this choice and its relevance in the study of Brian Wilson was discussed first in this post and again in this post.) If we decide to give our attention to the matter, the next step is to decide whether or not to believe what has been printed (and said). If we don’t believe it, the matter is closed, but if we do give it credence, the next step is to think about what those acts meant—both at the time Murry committed them and in later years. Why did Murry do these things? What was his purpose, and how might the boys, from their separate perspectives, have understood it? And the last question concerns the long-term impact on the Beach Boys personally and musically: what effect, if any, did the violence have on the lives of the Wilson brothers (and therefore the history of the Beach Boys group)? How, if at all, did it affect Brian Wilson’s music?
Is there an identifiable public consensus on these questions? Who knows. It is comparatively easy to get a sense of public opinion of a piece of recorded music—just look at the chart ranking, the cash receipts, or the number of streams. When it comes to Murry Wilson’s treatment of his sons and its long-term impact, each reader, fan, journalist, or critic arrives at his own conclusion. Only a small handful will voice their opinions in print media or on the internet. That leaves who knows how many others whose opinion remain unknown.
ii.
This wouldn’t be a problem if the Beach Boys themselves—the key principals, the members of the Wilson family—had been able to definitively take hold of the matter and make their collective voice heard. The family organization was, theoretically, in the best position to shape public perception of Murry and tell us how to understand him. But they never did this. They probably never could do it, but if it ever was to happen, it understandably would have to wait until sometime after Murry’s death in 1973. By that point, however, the Beach Boys family was in the midst of a protracted and ultimately permanent fragmentation.1
Individually, Brian Wilson spoke about his father many times—with sensitivity and insight, but also indirectness, obscurity, and contradiction. Brian never addressed the subject (publicly) with the depth it demands. And he shouldn’t have been expected to; it seems, from an outsider’s perspective, that Brian was never been able to fully confront whatever it was that occurred—an outcome whose root cause is likely to be the severity of the abuse itself. Brian knew he was badly abused, and was honest in his commentary. Yet he was less than authoritative on the significance and meaning of the abuse. In late years (notably in his 2016 book I Am Brian Wilson) he expressed ambivalence, noting both positive and negative aspects of Murry’s parenting methods, and among other things giving Murry credit for instilling toughness and the ability to survive.2
Carl Wilson’s comments about his father were few and superficial to the point of silence—a kind of abstention, at least as far as the public is concerned. In contrast, during those years between Murry’s death and his own passing 10 years later, Dennis Wilson used blunt, profane language to convey what he and Brian had endured in childhood. Al Jardine has been circumspect and diplomatic, and can’t necessarily be expected to have any real knowledge of what happened in the Wilson home. As an important member of the extended Wilson family, Mike Love can be assumed to have had more knowledge than Jardine, and more personal investment. Mike has indeed not hesitated to criticize Murry as both Beach Boys manager and overall human being. However, Mike’s criticism is more often than not centered on Murry’s mistreatment of Mike himself, particularly with respect to the matter of songwriting credits—an issue on which Mike seems to view Brian not as an abuse victim, but a bad actor in cahoots with Murry to cheat Mike. Overall, it could be that the actions of the non-Brian Beach Boys have spoken more clearly than words ever could. The show must go on, until death. Any other concern is, at best, secondary.3
Meanwhile, Wilson wife and mother Audree acknowledged no more than that the boys received “spankings,” that Murry was “high-strung,” and that, yes—he did compete with Brian. But she tempered that with explanations of how hard it was for Murry to raise three sons and that Murry’s competitiveness benefited Brian by spurring him to greater heights. There were “no real problems,” she said in the 1970s, and claimed in later years that her son Brian had in fact been “a happy kid” in childhood. “I don’t know if he’ll admit that today,” she said.
Murry himself took pains to explain to the press, publicly, and to Brian, privately, that whatever he did was an expression of love and protectiveness, while also providing the boys with “security.” In a 1965 letter, Murry told Brian that he could “remember giving all three of my sons love in many forms,” and in 1971 he explained to Rolling Stone that “there’s more than one way to give love to kids, you know, for their own good.” It was then understood—as it should still be today—that Murry was referring to the beatings and other “forms” of his violence.
About 35 years later, Brian, then around age 65, wrote a song called “Good Kind of Love.” Brian subsequently put out another record on which he clarified that the good kind is in fact the only kind of love. By conceptualizing, writing, and singing these songs (and “Love and Mercy,” and a bunch of others over his career) Brian did not necessarily contradict his dad’s views, but nevertheless provided food for thought about alleged “forms” or “kinds” of love, and the ways that love might be expressed. (With Brian, music was often—and remains—the medium through which he is most verbally and emotionally articulate.)
iii.
During the height of the Beach Boys’ musical career in the 1960s, the Murry problem was completely unknown to journalists and the public alike. Instead, it was the Brian problem—Brian’s emotional and psychological profile, Brian’s intrinsic strangeness—that first made its way into print, via Jules Siegel’s landmark “Goodbye Surfing” article.4 Researched during the early days of the “Smile-era” in 1966 but not published until October 1967, Siegel’s piece discussed Brian’s eccentricity, fear, and paranoia, while Siegel and his readers remained ignorant of Brian’s family life and childhood history. However, within only a month or two, former Beach Boys business consultant David Anderle (who had been close to Brian during the Smile-era) became the first to comment publicly on the troubling relationship Brian maintained with his parents.
Speaking to journalist Paul Williams in late November of 1967, Anderle said, “sometimes it's very negative, sometimes it's very positive. Extreme in both cases. I mean, it's not a normal son/parent relationship, it's a very active relationship between family. Extremely close to the mother, and a very tight bond between father and son.” Anderle wasn’t saying that there was anything inherently wrong about close parent-child relations, but that in this particular case, there was something unusual, something not normal.
As an outsider not privy to the backstory, Anderle could not speak to any abuse as such, relaying only his general impression of the parent-child dynamic. Using detached, idiomatic phrasing, Anderle referred to it as “a strong mother and father thing” that Brian had going with his folks. Whatever that thing was, in Anderle’s view it seemed neither admirable nor enviable for a young man to have this kind of relationship with his parents. It was strange.
Today things are different. The public has since obtained information that Anderle didn’t have in 1967. Today, we can “do the math,” and pair Anderle’s observations with what we know about Brian’s background. We ought to now understand how and why those mother and father bonds remained so tight.5
It is unlikely that either Jules Siegel’s article (printed in an obscure and short-lived magazine called Cheetah) or Paul Williams’s interview with David Anderle (published in Williams’s upstart Crawdaddy) were read by that many people at the time of their publication in 1967 and 1968. However, within a few years the counterculture (or what would become “rock culture”) was extending its reach—notably through Rolling Stone magazine, which printed an in-depth profile of the Beach Boys in 1971, across two consecutive issues. This article, written by Tom Nolan, was the first piece of journalism to address (glancingly) the violence in the Wilson home. For that reason alone, it is historically significant.
This essay continues in “Murry” (Part 2 of 4)
A list of sources relevant to this essay will be provided at the conclusion of Part 4, when posted.
In 1976, The Beach Boys organization made an ambivalent gesture by including Murry within the collage of family photos in the gatefold of the Beach Boys’ 15 Big Ones album. The group’s first album of new music since Murry’s death (1973) and the band’s triumphant resurgence on the charts with the Endless Summer retrospective compilation (1974), 15 Big Ones was tied to the “Brian-Is-Back” marketing campaign, a celebration of Brian Wilson’s purported return to the group as sole producer for the first time since Pet Sounds in 1966. In the gatefold spread, the Beach Boys optimistically presented themselves as a loving, extended family, still united after 15 years in the business. A young Murry might be detectable in one or two old photos, but “dad” Murry is included in only one prominent photo—in which he is alone. Though recognized and acknowledged as part of the family, Murry seems somehow cut-off from the more joyful and lively scenes depicted in the rest of the collage. Weren’t there any nice photos of the adult Murry with other family members? If so, how come they weren’t included? If such photos were never taken in the first place, how come?
In I Am Brian Wilson, Brian acknowledged the inherent contradiction: “People might say [Murry] was one of the things I had to survive, but he also helped me figure out how to do it.” This passage suggests that Brian, privately, thought very deeply about his own life and Murry’s role. Brian’s comment points to one of the cruel paradoxes that certain kinds of abused children—those like Brian, whose emotional bond with the abuser(s) is commensurate to the cruelty and sadism of the abuse—must live with. Brian was both wrong to credit his father with instilling toughness, and right. Murry was a horrible father to Brian, but he was a father. For Brian, more than any other person, the issue of Murry—and indeed Brian’s entire family—was extremely complicated, paradoxical and, it seems, unresolvable. As Brian said around 1992: “Unfortunately, the same people who are heroes are villains to me. And it’s hard for me, it’s very difficult.”
This is the message, arguably, the family organization communicated (to the public and itself) during the “Brian-Is-Back” campaign of the mid-1970s. If we give the family the benefit of the doubt, we might see that they wanted to help Brian any way they could—but just as long as (per Mose Allison) business came first.
It is true that by the time of Siegel’s article, it was already known in the business (and within whatever rock ‘n’ roll journalism community existed) that Brian had experienced some sort of a breakdown at the end of 1964. However, in those days the breakdown would not have been linked to anything like “mental illness” let alone parent-inflicted childhood trauma. To the extent the breakdown was known about, it would have been understood merely to be the product of overwork and/or a sensitive artist’s benign eccentricity.
It might appear contradictory to imply that a stream of parent-administered abuse can result in very close parent-child bonds. Shouldn’t such treatment alienate the child from the parent, fostering resentment (if not hatred), ultimately resulting in a distanced relationship by the time the child is a gainfully employed young adult? In some cases, yes, in others no. Brian’s situation was of the latter-type, as he had been both horribly abused and at the same time recognized in the family as “special.” It is a pernicious form of child abuse in which extreme physical violation is blended with “coddling,” “special treatment,” and the parents’ intimate involvement in the child’s life (school, music, sports, social relations, comportment, etc.). In a case like this, the bonds of parental attachment can remain very strong, while resentment, hate, and illness nevertheless metastasizes beneath the surface. David Anderle was very astute to notice that something was off about Brian’s relationship with his parents; how Brian’s moods would oscillate in accordance with his interaction with them. In the Pet Sounds and Smile-era during which Anderle was close to Brian, Brian was at once making his greatest music and cracking under the accumulated pressures of his life.