The first part of this supplementary essay began to trace the history of how the “question” of Murry Wilson has evolved over the years. In the 1960s, Murry was known, if at all, only as the “Beach Boy Dad”—a brash, protective, and perhaps pushy father who had blazed the way for the Beach Boys’ success in the music business.
By 1971, that success had diminished, and, as revealed that year in a Rolling Stone article, Brian Wilson had become a mysteriously directionless figure, only partially involved in the Beach Boys’ music; beset by emotional problems. As discussed here in Part 2, that article marked the first time Murry’s violently abusive treatment of Brian was ever mentioned in a public forum.
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It was not abuse, per se, that came up in the Rolling Stone piece. (In 1971, the idea that a parent would strike a child was, as it remains today, unremarkable, as such treatment is justified across humanity as a legitimate method of pedagogical discipline.) What was more notable was the possibility that Brian Wilson—one of rock ‘n’ roll’s most accomplished composers—had sustained a violent trauma of such magnitude that it caused permanent deafness in his right ear. “There’s a rumor going around that you might have hit him on the ear when he was young,” Murry was asked, point-blank, in print.
This was how the issue was first raised in the media. The writer, Tom Nolan, was slyly contemptuous of Murry throughout the piece, and the question of Brian’s hearing loss—as potentially the outcome of a specific act of abuse—was broached with delicacy, as a mere “rumor.” In the article, Murry summarily denied the allegation.
At the time, could anyone appreciate that the semi-famous “Beach Boy Dad” was being outed as a child abuser?
Yes. Murry knew it, along with at least one other person: whoever it was that slipped this information to Tom Nolan and Rolling Stone. Who might it have been? Who knows, but an outraged Murry demanded a public retraction (or correction) from none other than Brian Wilson himself. Brian—who by now was effectively retired from music, afflicted by auditory-verbal hallucinations and depression, dabbling in drugs, and not yet 30 years old—refused, basically telling his father to shove it.
This father-son exchange raises an interesting question: why weren’t the brothers ever moved to correct any supposed misconceptions about events that allegedly took place during their childhood?
The 1971 Rolling Stone profile marked the first time the brothers would have had cause to speak up in defense of their beloved supporter and protector. They didn’t. Other opportunities to defend Murry would follow soon enough, as more unflattering articles and books were published during the 1970s. In his influential article for Britain’s New Musical Express in 1975, journalist Nick Kent recounted a particular beating Dennis received in childhood as well as the opinion of Pet Sounds lyricist Tony Asher that Murry was “a really sick man” who resented Brian. Former Beach Boys publicist Derek Taylor was quoted similarly—he called Murry “a daft man,” who “scared the hell out of his boys.” Echoing David Anderle’s earlier comments about Brian’s “strong mother and father thing,” Asher commented on Brian’s personal shortcomings (his irresponsibility, mainly) and suggested that Brian had been “self-destructive” in the way he had maintained a “claustrophobic scene with his family.”1
Looking back, there’s at least one major reason that neither the brothers nor any other close family members could ever unify to preserve the reputation of their recently-deceased father: the main attack would come from “inside the house” so to speak, from Dennis Wilson, one of their very own (though always the black sheep). While youngest brother Carl remained quietly diplomatic, and Brian vanished into the comorbidity of clinical mental illness and drug addiction, Dennis raged.
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In David Felton’s extended profile of the Beach Boys for Rolling Stone in 1976, Dennis said, “our father beat the shit out of us; his punishments were outrageous.” Dennis explained to another reporter that “we had a shitty childhood. I mean my dad was a tyrant. He used to whale on us, physically beat the crap out of us. I don’t know kids who got it like we did.” This was the same Dennis who, when asked about Brian’s mental problems in a radio interview, said, “I could sit here and tell you atrocities, stories, things that have happened to Brian.” In Steven Gaines’s important article for New West in 1976, Dennis again explained: “My father just had a unique way of showing his affection, which consisted of beating the shit out of us. He burned my hands for playing with matches and beat me up in front of my friends.” By the time Gaines’s book Heroes and Villains was published in 1986, Dennis had passed on, so the effect was as if he was speaking from the afterlife: “My dad was an asshole, and he treated us like shit, and his punishments were sick.” And finally: “The motherfucker hated us, or he would have loved the shit out of us. It’s that fucking simple.”2
Here, Dennis reduced it to a question of love and hate. He was obviously unable to forget what had happened to him, and now, in his early thirties and with his father deceased, was saying (coming to realize) that he had felt no love. And to Dennis, that meant it had been Murry’s hate that he experienced. In other words, getting beaten up and burned by a stranger is one thing, but when your own father does it to you, it’s hate. It’s that fucking simple.
But if it’s that simple, why couldn’t Dennis change his life in accordance with this knowledge? As of those mid-1970s days when he was speaking so candidly, he was falling into a years-long tailspin. His life would soon become a series of sordid and depressing episodes, ending with his drowning in 1983 at the age of 39.3 That a young man of Dennis’s physical strength and intelligence could accurately pinpoint the problem in his life, yet remain helpless to turn himself around (by, among many other things, getting off alcohol and drugs) tells us that in reality, it’s not so (fucking) simple after all.
It’s simple only at the level of theory—the level of words easily written on paper (or here on the internet) or spoken in an interview. In real life, the matter is very difficult. That is to say, maybe Dennis got it wrong when he said that his father’s actions could be simply reduced to hate. Then again, maybe Dennis did get it right, but his subsequent difficulty in life was because he didn’t go far enough into the darkness of his (and his brothers’) childhood past. That is, the lack of simplicity was because things may have been even worse than what the words, “the motherfucker hated us” already imply.
If it is agreed that the issue is very complicated, it should be clarified that it’s the subject that’s complicated, not Murry, himself, as an individual person. Murry was not nearly as complicated a man as he is now commonly assumed to be. Nor was he “conflicted.” In layman’s terms, he was basically a psycho. That is, you wouldn’t want this man in your life, period. What was complicated was having to deal with this destructive and uncomplicated phenomenon if for some reason fate had firmly embedded him in your life. For example, if he was your father. It was difficult being his son and growing up in his home, as the lives of Brian, Dennis, and Carl have borne out.
And it has remained difficult for the many fans, critics and historians of later years. We are the people who commonly describe Murry as “complicated,” “complex,” or “conflicted,” but what we are really saying is that it is complicated, or difficult for us to understand. It is hard for outsiders to understand the “father thing” (to use David Anderle’s phrasing) that occurred within the Beach Boys. Murry himself was not saddled with uncertainty and doubt.
He understood everything there was to know—about himself, his sons, the past, present and future; about good and bad, friend and enemy, right and wrong. It is the rest of us who are confronted with the various questions Murry was unburdened by: Why was Murry the way he was? How did he get away with his crimes, and how come the brothers seemed unable to fully stand up to him, even in adulthood? What was the effect of all this on the brothers and the Beach Boys’ intra-band relationships? In hindsight, what would have been the best course of action for the Wilson brothers collectively or individually?
Interestingly, these kinds of questions have not been the main focus over the years, perhaps because they are too negative, implying that Murry committed crimes and then got away with them, that the brothers were mistreated, that they should have stood up to him and didn’t, that they somehow remained vulnerable to mistreatment, even in adulthood. Instead, a different line of critical inquiry has developed, to a happier, more positive end: how might Murry’s behavior have benefited his sons? In what ways were the Wilson brothers lucky to have Murry as a dad?
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Murry himself lectured Brian in 1965 that “I’ve protected you for 22 years” and that Brian should be grateful to have received “the security a punishment gives.” So those are two benefits, straight from the horse’s mouth: (a) protection and (b) security-through-punishment. Anything else?
It has mostly been the journalist, fan, and critical community, more so than the Wilson brothers themselves (or for that matter any of the Beach Boys), that has stepped in to the breach on Murry’s behalf, contextualizing him with a verbal clarity Brian Wilson doesn’t possess and the nuance Dennis Wilson was unwilling to express.4 Among the Beach Boys fan and critical community, Murry Wilson is not a figure of opprobrium.5
Of course, this doesn’t mean Murry hasn’t gathered his share of criticism. But it seems that the strongest opposition comes not from music critics or fans of the Beach Boys and Wilson brothers, but from people who knew Murry personally and interacted with him. Among this class, Murry has his champions, but critics far outnumber supporters. A sampling of the salty, anti-Murry terminology that has accumulated: “maniac,” “total control freak,” “really sick man,” “wheedling toad of a man,” “sick fuck,” “angry guy,” “motherfucker,” “asshole,” “brutal, narcissistic, insane psychopath,” and “ornery fart.”
Still, along with the name-calling Murry has secured recognition as an important contributor to the band’s success without whose guidance and support the band—and therefore its great music—would not exist. In 2017, author Christian Matijas-Mecca concisely summarized what is true: “For every horrific story about Murry and Brian’s relationship, there is a story that gives credit to Murry for his persistence and dedication to the group.” Because of this widely-accepted balance between competing stories, critics, fans and even various members of the Beach Boys’ circle have made peace with Murry, and in a few isolated instances, celebrated him.
It would take too long to provide a full and comprehensive catalog of Murry’s positive attributes, as recognized over decades of published Beach Boys commentary. Here is a composite summary (“mash-up”) pieced together from a variety of sources:
Murry was a complex person, "but he was a good person.” His aggressive bluster was really just a facade masking the “pushover softness” within, which revealed itself at “the sound of a beautiful chord” or “the thought of his wife and three sons.”6
If people of today have a problem with Murry’s actions, they should remember that he was “not unlike any other father of the era,” those men who had been through tough times in the 1920s, ‘30s and ‘40s. When it came to his sons and the Beach Boys, Murry was just a normal dad “who’s really doing what a dad should do”—among other things, counseling Brian to “stay humble” and not hang out with “phonies” in the record and entertainment business. He was “very protective of his family,” fighting for the Beach Boys as “stalwart advocate,” “ferocious defender” and “loyal promoter” of the band’s interests. Murry was “like a mother bear watching over her cubs” in the early days of the Beach Boys (it was Murry himself who said this), and he “can only be praised for trying to protect his kids,” which was “a difficult task.” And even if Murry failed in his efforts, he did the best he could.
If he hadn’t been manager, the Beach Boys “probably would not have survived in the early years.” Murry of course helped Brian set up his own song publishing company in those years, which was a “good decision” reflecting both Murry’s protectiveness and promotion of the band’s interests. And Brian needed that protection, because he had none of the business skills—namely the “corporate steeliness”—needed to succeed in the music business. For the Beach Boys, success demanded that Brian’s musical talent be paired with “Murry’s will” and “perseverance.” It was Murry, the “hard-assed businessman,” who provided the “fearless” and “tenacious drive” that “rocketed the Beach Boys into a phenomenal career.”
At least one Beach Boys-affiliated observer has said that Murry’s ouster as manager (in April 1964) was a principal reason for the Beach Boys’ decline. It is this line of thought, maybe, that would lead one published author to comment (recently, within the past 10 years) that the Brian Wilson-Tony Asher song “I Just Wasn’t Made for These Times” from Pet Sounds (1966) is “possibly quite close to expressing the sense of nostalgic longing that Brian had for earlier, simpler days, when the word of Murry was final and no one messed with it.”
You never know what people think and why they think it. The fact that something like this could reach the printed page in recent years is, at best, the result of both Brian Wilson’s inscrutability and a general indifference to Dennis Wilson’s words and life story. And surely, it must also be an indication of how difficult it is to figure out, exactly, who Murry was, what he did, why he did it, and what the impact was.
“Murry” continues in Part 3
The timing of these and other articles in the 1970s probably was not random. What seems to have happened was that once Murry died in 1973, various people were left freer to speak. One notable exception had been former Capitol Records A&R man Nik Venet, who had no qualms about ripping into Murry while he was still alive. In Tom Nolan’s 1971 Rolling Stone article, Venet classified Murry as a “motherfucker” who “really fucked up the group for a couple of years,” and “kept trying to worm his way into a recording deal” with Capitol by leveraging his relationship to Brian and the Beach Boys. Venet recalled how Murry eventually succeeded, when (in 1967) Capitol “made a whole album and released it for that asshole,” which was “hilarious.”
Dennis had so many opportunities to speak to the press in 1976 because that was the year of the Beach Boys’ celebratory “Brian-Is-Back” media campaign. Aided and abetted by Dr. Eugene Landy and now commonly recognized to have been premised on willful ignorance of Brian’s situation (as distinguished from overt malice toward him), the campaign presented a damaged and creatively-depleted (in the commercial sense) Brian Wilson as a hitmaking genius returning to lead the Beach Boys as sole producer on the 15 Big Ones album. Whatever benefit the Beach Boys reaped came at a price: media scrutiny. Dennis—who was then still capable of writing new music and was, at best, ambivalent about the flagrant mediocrity of 15 Big Ones—cast a pallor over “Brian-Is-Back” by giving journalists the opportunity to juxtapose the group’s happy family reunion with tales of Murry’s sadistic cruelty. As Dennis’s life spun increasingly out of control and his behavior became more noxious, erratic, and embarrassing, his relations with the Beach Boys and the family would take an even darker turn in the 1980s.
Still, before he was done Dennis managed to step outside the band situation (sort of) and make Pacific Ocean Blue (1977), an artful but utterly uncommercial album that gained little notice, was quickly forgotten, and effectively “lost” for about 30 years. The angry, disgusted Dennis of the 1976 interviews is the same man who could summon the determination to make this album, whose defining characteristic is neither anger nor disgust, but emotional honesty and pain. The creation of the album was no small feat. It was again David Anderle who could appreciate its importance, saying at the time that Pacific Ocean Blue was “a much more critical move than people think. That’s amazing that [Dennis] actually did it. It is significant because it’s something that Brian couldn’t even do.” According to Brian Wilson biographer David Leaf, that something was the act of completing a solo album whose very existence threatened the Beach Boys band. Leaf: “Ironically, ten years after Smile almost destroyed Brian and the Beach Boys, Dennis Wilson’s solo record was a key factor in their temporary break up in the late summer of 1977.”
On the other hand, Dennis’s declaration that Murry “had a unique way of showing his affection, which consisted of beating the shit out of us" is more nuanced than it seems at first glance (and even if subtlety wasn’t Dennis’s intention). Dennis wasn’t saying that he and Brian didn’t receive affection, or that his dad couldn’t be affectionate. He was just saying that the affection was expressed in a particular way, or to use Murry’s lingo, “form.” Murry would have agreed with what Dennis said here (though not approving of the sarcasm and profanity). See Murry’s comments to Brian in 1965 about “forms of love” and to Rolling Stone in 1971 about the existence of “more than one way to give love to children.”
Author Jon Stebbins should be noted as an exception, in his willingness to acknowledge reality: “Murry was also an abusive parent and a ruthless, jealous tyrant who ultimately swindled his boys and their bandmates out of millions of dollars of earnings. He left his sons psychologically damaged for life, and died a lonely broken man.” Based on my own survey of the available commentary, few have been willing to recognize even this much, in such plain language, without equivocating in some way.
Dennis himself said Murry “would cry ‘boo-hoo,’ like the lion in The Wizard of Oz, when he heard music,” as music “was the only thing my father really loved.”