The extended comment on Murry Wilson continues here in Part 3. The previous section recounted how during the mid-1970s, Dennis Wilson condemned his father’s abuse of himself and older brother Brian. It left off with a summary of Murry’s historical reputation, as it has developed among the loose community of Beach Boys journalists, authors, critics and fans. Notwithstanding Murry’s reported acts—taken either as “fact” or mere “rumor”—and Dennis’s vitriol, Murry is today viewed as not such an awful person. (However, as mentioned in Part 1 of this essay, the opinion of the public, beyond those who write articles and trade opinions on the internet, remains less knowable.)
Read introductory preface to this essay
Part 3 below:
I know a carpenter who had a dream / killed the man but you couldn’t kill the dream / who said it was easy? / people gotta be free
—“Dreamer” (Dennis Wilson-Gregg Jakobson)
vii.
David Leaf is the preeminent journalistic and critical voice on the subject of Brian Wilson. In his 1978 book, The Beach Boys and the California Myth, Leaf was partial to Brian above all others, framing Brian’s story in a way that convincingly justified any apparent “bias” in his favor. Leaf expressed sensitivity to Brian’s difficult situation and a degree of empathy with him as both man and artist that had been non-existent in the print media up to that point.
The book commented incisively on the art-commerce tension, the burden and responsibility of being an artist, and the relationship between suffering and art. It included insightful commentary on Brian’s personal psychology, and outlined (or maybe even exposed) the less-than-optimal relationship Brian had maintained with his family and the Beach Boys group. Leaf contrasted Brian’s standing as an artist in need of personal security with the Beach Boys’ need for a different kind of security—to stay securely in business—and described how the competing security needs clashed. In the 1985 edition of the book, Leaf efficiently expressed the sad truth about what had become of the Beach Boys as a family of musicians: “the Beach Boys have always been most unified in failure, and success seems to be the catalyst to disagreement.”1
The impact of The Beach Boys and the California Myth was such that it became an important turning point in the Beach Boys’ historical saga, permanently altering public perception of Brian and the group. The book would become (and remains) a touchstone for virtually any serious commentary on the Beach Boys. Leaf himself at some point transitioned from reporter-outsider to become a not-insignificant figure within the story of Brian Wilson’s later years.
It is because of Leaf’s overall importance and influence as a journalist that his handling of Murry Wilson can be assumed to itself have been influential, shaping the parameters and setting the tone of future opinion.2 The following passage, first published in the 1978 book, deserves special attention:
Murry Wilson was a harsh parent, but there was no overt malice involved in his actions. Murry was bringing his boys up to make them men the best way he knew how. If this included physical violence and tongue-lashings, Murry still had his boys’ interests in mind. That makes his actions more understandable but no more excusable.
Given the complexities that are inseparable from the Beach Boys’ story and the Wilson family past, these words are markedly declaratory and conclusive. The tone is judicial—as if in the course of researching this topic, Leaf privately conducted his own trial of Murry, in which the defendant’s actions and state of mind were considered, important witnesses gave testimony, and excuses and mitigating circumstances were presented. All of it then given due consideration by Leaf, who issues this judgment.
What is the essence of that verdict? Overall, it boils down to the distinction between Murry’s actions and his state of mind: Murry was physically (and verbally) harsh, but in his own mind, his motivation was decent—to raise the boys the best way he knew how. There was “no overt malice involved in his actions.” The motivation instead was the brothers’ best interests. And this—Murry’s true motive of acting in the boys’ interests—is what makes his actions understandable. Still, those actions did take place—Murry committed them—and Murry’s subjective state of mind is no excuse for what he did. Therefore, as Leaf basically says, those actions were inexcusable, regardless of motive. If this really had been a criminal trial, the verdict would be something like: acquitted on the charge of hate and malice, but guilty on the lesser count of excessive harshness.3
Is this judgment fair to Murry? Is it fair that the “understandable” actions of a man, undertaken without overt malice and for the benefit of his sons, be pronounced inexcusable in the media by a journalist who wasn’t even there?
And for that matter, is it fair to Dennis Wilson? What would he have thought if he read these words in 1978? How would the righteous, profanity-spewing Dennis of the mid-1970s react if he ever read in print that the man whom he remembered as a “motherfucker” who “resented the fucking kids to death” and “hated us,” was actually doing the best he could and was consciously motivated by Dennis’s best interests? What would Dennis think if he read that the man whose punishments were “sick”—who beat him with a board, burned his fingers, and force-fed him food until he vomited—acted with no overt malice? Arguably, Leaf’s comment is at the same time unfair to both Murry and Dennis; to both father and son.
Undoubtedly, this was not David Leaf’s intention. It can only be assumed that he was making a good faith effort, as a journalist, to be judicious and fair to all sides. Unfairness is what he would have wanted to avoid. But this is how it is with families in which children are treated like this. A genuine middle-ground is difficult to locate, probably because it doesn’t exist. To live in a state of war is to be forced to abide by the realities of war. You must choose the side you are on.
The point of bitterest contention is not whether the acts themselves—the slap, the fist, the wooden board (“the stud” as Brian Wilson remembered it in his 2016 book), the force-feeding, the tying to the tree—took place. Nor is it a question of severity or harshness. In the case of the Wilson family and the Beach Boys, everyone—Brian, Dennis, the journalists, the adequately-informed fans—is in agreement that something happened back there and that it was unusually harsh. Even Audree Wilson conceded that Dennis got “some pretty hard spankings.”4 Murry remains in agreement too, as evidenced not only by his public comment to Rolling Stone about “more than one way to give love to kids,” but also his notorious 1965 letter to Brian in which he acknowledged (privately) more than his wife ever would: not only did he administer “spanks on the bottom” but also “more violent punishment.”5
The underlying (and likely unacknowledged) issue that divided the Wilson family was that of parental character, intent, and state of mind. Of right and wrong. What was the true meaning of these acts? To Murry, it was love, protection, and security for the boys. Knowing that a recalcitrant Brian believed otherwise, on May 8, 1965 Murry took pains to lecture him (then nearly 23 years old) on this point, in writing. That same day Murry wrote a separate letter to Dennis (age 20) in which he dispensed with the pedagogy and simply trashed him for his “total failure on all levels as a son.”
Murry took his stand: love, security, protection, morality, etc. And in the mid-1970s, so did Dennis: it was sick. It was hate. As things have stood for the past several decades, it is Dennis who has been losing the war—at least at the level of public opinion. His father Murry has so far proven victorious, not because people do not believe he beat the boys severely (among other acts), but because he is recognized as a man of sufficiently beneficent motive. As a fundamentally decent man without whose drive, protection, and sacrifice the Beach Boys would not exist.
This framing might be too pessimistic. (Or it could be optimistic, depending on one’s point of view.6 ) But if so, the pessimism mostly concerns Dennis, who drowned 40 years ago. There is of course another of Murry’s abuse targets—Brian Wilson, who in terms of historical significance is more important than anybody else in this entire “California Saga.”
“Murry” continues in the fourth and final part (which includes relevant citations)
Leaf surely meant that artistic failure was what unified the Beach Boys, and artistic success was what catalyzed disagreement. Commercial failure and success is a different matter. (Also, it’s probably not fair to say that the group was always like this.)
As previously noted, there had been journalists pre-dating David Leaf who called attention to Murry’s behavior. The ice was forcefully broken no later than 1976, with Steven Gaines’s article for New West, which Leaf duly referenced in his book two years later (notably quoting Gaines on Murry’s “arsenal of sadistic punishments” and citing Gaines for the staring-into-the-empty-eye-socket-treatment and infamous “newspaper” incident). But Leaf was the first to really take the time to discuss the matter not only as a journalist, but as critic, weighing the evidence in print, and then, as noted in the main text above, arriving at a sort of definitive summation.
Further into the book, Leaf devoted several more pages to Murry. However, that analysis dealt only with Murry’s later role as Beach Boys manager, weighing the pros and cons of Murry’s involvement in the Beach Boys’ fortunes as a working band. The foundational issue of Murry’s acts against the boys in childhood was dealt with only in the early pages, where the assessment quoted above is to be found.
Steven Gaines’s 1986 book Heroes and Villains (which originated with the article he had written for New West 10 years earlier) included a couple of passages in which he attempted to convey the egregiousness of Murry’s cruelty. Having interviewed virtually every Beach Boys insider (save the deceased Murry) over a span of years, Gaines editorialized: “In a neighborhood of simple values, where a swift crack for a misbehaving child was thought to be a good thing, a disciplinarian father was not out of the ordinary. But Murry’s discipline went beyond any swift crack.” And: “…if beating the boys had been all Murry did, it would have been one thing… On many occasions his punishments went beyond simple beatings into the realm of the sadistic.”
For Brian Wilson’s recollection of Murry’s milder category of punishment—the “spanks on the bottom”—see Brian’s reenactment in the 1995 documentary film I Just Wasn’t Made for These Times. See also Ben Edmonds’ 2002 article for MOJO, “The Lonely Sea,” which includes an eyewitness account of how Brian and Dennis were remembering the whippings as they tried to write music together in the early 1980s. (Drugs were likely involved; this may have been during the so-called “cocaine sessions.”)
See for instance the comments of Rushton “Rocky” Pamplin, former Brian Wilson bodyguard, minder, and fitness-coach. Pamplin repeatedly clashed with Dennis (and on at least one occasion, Carl Wilson) in the late 1970s and early 1980s. In his 2018 book, Pamplin fingered Dennis as “the source of the many nasty rumors” about Murry’s abuse. Citing intimate sources within the Wilson family, Pamplin cast doubt on the “rumors” and recalled Dennis as a “habitual liar” who likely “exaggerated the severity of physical abuse meted out by Murry.”