Father and Son
Part 7 of A History of Brian Wilson.
As of this point, it is the fall of 1961. The Beach Boys (who have yet to assume that group name) are on the cusp of becoming a performing band. Hite and Dorinda Morgan have told the boys that their company, Guild Music, would be interested in publishing (buying) a song about the local surfing craze, with the goal of getting it pressed as a single on one of the local labels. The boys capitalized on the opportunity and wrote the simple but catchy “Surfin’.” Murry Wilson learned of these events somewhat belatedly (so it would appear), and after a momentary burst of anger, he lent his approval.
Continuing:
Things happened fast. The Morgans at Guild Music liked “Surfin’.” They agreed to publish the song and shepherd it through the appropriate channels. The group recorded the tune at a professional studio, the recording got shopped around to various contacts, and a small label agreed to release it.
The group had neither the credibility nor the autonomy to name itself. Needing a name that would stress the surfing theme of the “Surfin’” song, the record men thought long and hard and came up with “The Surfers.” That name was already taken, so then somebody came up with “The Beach Boys.” The group learned about this when the single came out with their new name on the label. Whatever irritation they might have felt dissipated when they heard themselves on the radio and the single began climbing the local charts. Kids liked the song; it was positive and friendly, with the group inviting the listeners to go surfing with them. By the end of 1961 the Beach Boys had joined the radio & T.V. performers’ union, and Murry Wilson had signed on in his predestined role as group manager.
As 1961 rolled over into ’62, “Surfin’” was still gaining traction on Los Angeles radio and by February, the song would even gain a low spot on the national Billboard chart. At this point, “Surfin’” could easily have become just another one-time local hit, with the Beach Boys on the charts for a while and then vanishing. Al Jardine in fact left the group in early 1962. It seemed to him that after one single, the thing had played itself out. Neither he nor his group-mates had made any money from the record, lending credence to the idea that they would never make decent money with this, let alone have a career for a few years. The sensible, cautious Al returned to the straight world, leaving the Beach Boys as a 100% Wilson-family endeavor: Brian, Murry, Dennis, Carl and Mike.
In early 1962, the Beach Boys organization had yet to take form. Certain things needed to be settled: who was in the group, who wasn’t, what would be the group’s musical approach, what type of songs would it perform, and where those songs would come from. Would the group have a leader, and if so, who?
The Beach Boys also needed to improve their musicianship. They of course had been singing all their lives, but had not honed their instrumental skills, or found a true, collective voice before getting a chance to put out their first record. Nor were they accustomed to performing in public for an audience of strangers. And they had leapt right past the crucial, character-forming phase during which a group, without a label and without a record, is repeatedly rejected, dismissed and ignored. This meant that when they first began to book live dates off the success of “Surfin’,” they weren’t ready.
Carl Wilson—generally considered the best instrumental musician in the Beach Boys—already had a couple years of guitar study under his belt, and could play lead. Brian was always more of a thinker and conceptualist at the keyboard than a technical performer, but he of course could play what he wrote. He was also teaching himself the bass guitar, picking it up quickly. Dennis was learning drums. Mike was not an instrumentalist, but had successfully performed as lead vocalist on “Surfin’” and, if needed, could blow some notes on a saxophone in the honking style of ‘50s R&B. After the departure of Al Jardine, they had to find a replacement on rhythm guitar. They drafted 13-year-old David Marks, a neighbor of the Wilsons who, like Carl, had already been playing a while and was familiar with the rock ‘n’ roll guitar styles of the day.
The band also needed more original material. A little taste of success was good motivation, and by February of ’62, the Beach Boys had two new and notable songs written. Brian and Mike collaborated on “Surfin’ Safari,” which was basically a revamped “Surfin’”—a marked improvement on the idea of inviting the listener to surf with the Beach Boys. Brian had at some point also come up with the words and music to the ballad “Surfer Girl,” the first of his signature songs and one in which the surf hook was paired with the more universal theme of romance.1 And certainly Murry, the proven songwriter in the family, had material too. Not satisfied with his newly-acquired position as Beach Boys manager, he tipped his hand by directing Brian to have the group record Murry Wilson compositions—the Beach Boys to be a vehicle for Murry’s songwriting. Brian’s response: No.
It can’t be known how, exactly, Brian communicated his refusal to his father, but he obviously did: the Beach Boys never recorded any of Murry’s songs and Murry would have to wait a couple of years before he would find himself in a situation—amongst an entirely different group of young musicians—in which he carried enough weight to get his stuff recorded for the teen-pop singles market.
Brian’s refusal to sing his dad’s songs raises some questions. If, as it seems, Brian was able to stand firm and deny his father’s wishes in this regard, doesn’t it mean Brian held some degree of power in the father-son relationship? And if so, how was that possible? After all, if Murry the fearsome tyrant had governed and abused Brian for so many years, wouldn’t it have been easy to condition Brian to have reflexive fealty to Murry’s every whim? If Brian retained an instinct or faculty for defiance, does it follow that Murry’s treatment of him hadn’t really been as severe as has been reported (and argued here, in this very series of postings)? Maybe Murry never ordered Brian and the Boys to sing his songs, and instead merely requested, or asked, that they do so? But if that is so, why didn’t Murry press harder? How can a young man—now around 20 years old—who had been raised under a regime of strict and capriciously violent paternal oversight and control retain the fortitude to stand up to that father and effectively say no to him—at least on the specific issue of what kinds of songs he and his band would record?
Such questions cannot be answered with definitive, factual finality. Yet asking them provides an opportunity to get inside the intimate psychological relationship between this father and son.
My relationship with him was very unique.
—Brian Wilson, on his father, mid-1990s
There are certain universal constants common to every scenario in which the parent purposefully and repeatedly mistreats the child. Beyond these, there are countless variations and idiosyncrasies, not only between different families, but even within the same family. The Brian-Murry relationship was very special. The story of Murry forcing Brian to defecate on a newspaper in front of the family is outrageous in its depravity. (The inclination to disbelieve this story as the invention of an unethical journalist, a lie planted by a malicious family outsider, or a delusion of a mentally ill drug addict is natural but misguided.) A book could be written about the meaning of this one incident, but to start with, it expressed two of Murry’s overlapping goals.
First, to break Brian’s will and innate human drive, a feat to be accomplished by reducing Brian to a state of infantile helplessness. Second, to seize control of Brian entirely, at the level of both physiology and psychology. One human being’s control over another’s most basic, animal-level excretory functions is a time-honored method of destroying autonomy, individual power-of-will, and sense of self. Also, forcing a person to partake in a disgusting act creates visual, tangible evidence of what the aggressor internally wants and needs to be true: that the victim is a sub-human animal—and therefore deserves still more contempt and abuse. As an undiluted expression of authoritarianism and might-is-right ethics, this sort of thing occurs in the concentration camp, political prison, hostage situation, detention center, and abusive single-family home.
When he was a kid, Brian appeared outwardly normal, but in reality he would have been struggling to maintain psychological mastery over his being because there was always a deranged Murry Wilson to contend with. The only constraint on Murry’s behavior were the limits of his own perverse psychological appetites. Brian never knew what his father would do next and when he would do it.
It is impossible for a child to grow in a healthy way under such circumstances. Yet to his credit, Brian managed to carve out a secure, autonomous space for himself with music. There, alone “in his room,” with the Four Freshmen and whatnot, Brian was master. To stop Brian from doing this, Murry could have easily employed a regimen of coarse, stimulus-response conditioning: every time Brian sat down at the keyboard, Murry could have bashed him with a plank. But Murry didn’t do that. He allowed Brian a circumscribed but free space in which to develop musically.
This selective freedom points to a particular type of implicit, reciprocal “arrangement” between parent and child that exists in chronically abusive but otherwise intact homes. Neither father nor son could ever voice it openly or articulate it intellectually, but the relationship was understood at a submerged, animal-level of knowledge and communication. On Murry’s end it translated as: I need to violate you, and I will continue to do so, but I acknowledge that you are special, and I will allow you this particular musical freedom. For Brian it was: we both know what you are doing to me, and that I have no choice but to absorb this treatment. But you will grant me this particular musical space, and I am entitled to certain dispensations from you. For both Brian and Murry Wilson, this also meant: I love you.
There’s more than one way to give love to kids, you know, for their own good.
—Murry Wilson, to Rolling Stone magazine, 1971
Why did Murry relent in this manner? The sentimentalist will attribute it to his idiosyncratic expression of paternal love (his “love language”) or the way Brian’s musical talent soothed his dad’s otherwise savage breast. That could be part of it, but there are other things to consider.
One is the surrounding environment in which the abuse took place. The Wilson home was an arena of chaos and immorality, but it was not what is commonly thought of as a “broken home.” The violence did not occur in the stereotypical setting of an urban tenement, the ‘hood, or some whiskey-saturated rural zone. In the home of Murry and Audree Wilson, extreme brutality occurred within the ostensibly stable framework of middle (or lower-middle) class propriety, during a time of regional economic growth, upward social mobility for the middle classes and an otherwise correct and proper respect for the nuclear family. In this place, honesty, morality and a strong work ethic were exalted. Men and women got married, then had children, and then stayed together, come hell or high water. Murry therefore had cause to reconcile his acts with rectitude, so as to rationalize and justify them. His quotable statements in various interviews demonstrate his efforts to convince others (and himself) that he was a loving, protective father. Allowing, and at times facilitating, Brian’s pursuit of music was one way through which Murry could maintain his self-image as a good father and good person—an exemplar of respectable American manhood.
And there were additional incentives for Murry, derived from his egotism and need to sustain an inflated self-image. When Murry looked at his firstborn son he was not seeing a separate human being; he was instead looking in a mirror. It is common for parents to see their own reflections in their children—this is normal, even beneficial to the young child’s security and survival, provided the parent can gradually learn to respect the child’s individual identity as it grows up. A person like Murry Wilson hasn’t the capacity for this. So, there were those countless days during Brian’s childhood when Murry despised what he saw in the mirror and acted accordingly, in effect smashing the mirror out of hate and spite.
Yet there was another part of Murry that could swell with pride when Brian succeeded—but only insofar as the success was achieved not by Brian, but by Murry’s mirrored reflection. This was the part of Murry that could allow, and even encourage, Brian to develop his musical skills. Murry could then attach himself, appropriating Brian’s accomplishments outright as his own. All that was required was for Brian to allow his father to do this; to allow Murry to stand on his shoulders, arms raised in triumph. Yet if Brian somehow expressed resistance, conflict would be unavoidable.
When authoritarian governments rule their citizens through fear and capricious violence, it results in wars, revolutions and crackdowns. When you raise your child the same way, who knows what the end result will be, but you are raising him to be your enemy, whether or not the kid ever becomes aware of it. The parent and child may appear to share a close and therefore positive relationship, but there is a roaring undercurrent of hostility that can never be spoken of or otherwise acknowledged between them.
In the Wilson home, the concepts of cooperation and genuine respect between parent and child did not exist. They were anathema, and Brian never had any choice but to acclimate himself to the mode of human interaction that had been thrust upon him. From day one there had been parental authoritarianism instead of parental authoritativeness, coercion instead of cooperation, fear instead of trust. By the time the Beach Boys got going in early 1962, what 44-year-old Murry and 19-year-old Brian had wasn’t teamwork but brinkmanship. Certain territorial boundaries were in place. Though invisible, the boundaries would manifest themselves behaviorally—in how one was allowed to act—and psychologically—in how one was expected to think and perceive. As long as the boundaries were respected by both father and son, a certain stability could perhaps be preserved.
There would be no such thing. Murry and Brian clashed immediately. Right from the jump, Murry tested the balance of power by pressuring Brian to record Murry’s songs with the Beach Boys. Murry was of course attempting to establish a precedent, whereby he would be a writer of songs the Boys would sing (if not the sole, or at least primary writer). Brian stood his ground though, and Murry backed off, as he had done at the legendary (but still somewhat mysterious) rehearsal session when the boys calmed him by playing “Surfin’.”
With that song and “Surfin’ Safari” too, the group may have actually been developing its own Murry-free writing team of Brian Wilson and Mike Love. On the other hand, maybe not. Maybe Murry could stomach the idea of a family insider—his own nephew, his sister’s kid—writing with Brian. Maybe not. Who knows what Brian thought about it, but one fact is fairly certain: it was not Brian’s initial preference to write songs with the assistance and input of Mike Love. Brian instead sought to do some boundary-testing of his own.
Keep reading in A History of Brian Wilson, Part 8
Selected References for Part 7
deMause, Lloyd. “The Evolution of Childhood.” In The History of Childhood. New York: Harper & Row, 1974.
Fromm, Erich. The Heart of Man. New York: Harper & Row, 1964.
Gaines, Steven. Heroes and Villains: The True Story of the Beach Boys. New York: Signet/New American Library, 1986.
Herman, Judith. Trauma and Recovery. New York: Basic Books, 1997.
Hillman, James: The Soul’s Code: In Search of Character and Calling. New York: Warner Books, 1996.
Kubernik, Harvey. Turn Up the Radio! Rock, Pop, and Roll in Los Angeles 1956-1972. Solana Beach, CA: Santa Monica Press, 2014.
Levi, Primo. The Drowned and the Saved. New York: Vintage International, 1989.
Lifton, Robert Jay. Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1961.
McParland, Stephen J. Murry: The Many Moods of a Beach Boy Dad. CMusic Books, 2022.
Mones, Paul. When A Child Kills: Abused Children Who Kill Their Parents. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991.
Murphy, James B. Becoming the Beach Boys 1961-1963. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 2015.
Ochberg, Frank. “There Is Reason in Action.” In Charles R. Figley, ed. Mapping Trauma and Its Wake: Autobiographic Essays by Pioneer Trauma Scholars. New York: Routledge, 2006.
Preiss, Byron. The Beach Boys: The Authorized Biography of America's Greatest Rock 'n' Roll Band. New York: Ballantine Books, 1979.
Storr, Anthony. Solitude: A Return to the Self. New York: Ballantine Books, 1988
Wilson, Brian, with Todd Gold. Wouldn't It Be Nice: My Own Story. New York: HarperCollins, 1991.
Early 1962 also marked the period when Brian first made contact with Gary Usher, with whom he would quickly form a songwriting partnership. Usher is further discussed in the next chapter of this History series.