The Founding of the Beach Boys (Part 4 of 4)
The formation of the band and the theme of Brian Wilson's survival.
The previous three installments recounted how, as of 1960-61 (1) Beach Boy dad Murry Wilson retained an important personal connection to the independent recording industry in Hollywood; (2) the soon-to-be Beach Boys group eventually made critical inroads into the business via that same connection; and (3) the band curiously seems to have accomplished this without Murry’s involvement or knowledge. Part 2 characterized this as “usurpation” on the part of Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys—perhaps occurring unavoidably, and likely inadvertently.
In an attempt to explain how these events make sense under the specific interpersonal circumstances of the Wilson family, Part 3 included some inferential leaps. It introduced the element of Brian Wilson’s individual psychology and the idea that Brian might (instinctively) elect to remain passive when confronted with a delicate situation involving his father. Part 3 speculated as to both Brian’s internal decision-making process, and his father’s internal (or even externally demonstrated) state of mind with respect to his sons’ sudden entry into the music business.
This admittedly unsentimental (and perhaps cynical) view of the Beach Boys’ founding recognizes that, as of the band’s formation in 1961, Brian Wilson and his brothers had long been required to adapt to an unhappy and dysfunctional family situation. It is on that point where Part 3 left off. The post below, Part 4, will touch on the theme of “environmental adaptation” as it particularly applies to Brian. Finally, the essay will conclude with an attempt to explain the relevance of all this to Brian’s career and Beach Boys history.
Previous sections of this essay/comment:
“The Founding of the Beach Boys” (Part 1 of 4) (subchapters i - iii)
“The Founding of the Beach Boys” (Part 2 of 4) (subchapters (iv - vi)
“The Founding of the Beach Boys” (Part 3 of 4) (subchapters vii - viii)
ix.
The process of the Wilson brothers’ behavioral and psychological adaptation during childhood was briefly addressed in Part 3 of the History of Brian Wilson series. It will not be analyzed in detail here, yet it should be noted that for the purpose of cracking the band’s complicated origins in 1961, it is Brian’s method of adaptation that is most relevant.
Darian Sahanaja, one of Brian’s late-period musical collaborators and a member of his live band, once observed:
Something that’s constantly reinforced to me is that he works on a completely primal, intuitive level… Sometimes I think that, with music, Brian’s feelings are connected with what he needs to do. He’s like an animal on the plains of the Serengeti—they don’t even think; they just do: ‘This is what I’ve got to do to survive…’ 1
In strict terms, the observation is limited to how Brian makes music. Sahanaja frames it in terms of survival. And he uses the simile of animal existence in the unforgiving natural environment of the African plains. It summons images of danger and violence—animals left vulnerable to attack as they take water from a stream; the risk of straying from the relative safety of the herd; some unfortunate creature chased down and torn to bits by a group of predators; a pack of scavengers banding together to steal a kill from a larger, more dangerous predator that is simply outnumbered. What Sahanaja alludes to is both the necessity of brute physical survival and the obvious conclusion that “thinking” is useless under conditions of immediate threat. The animal must react, or be killed.
It is an unavoidable reality that human beings are often compelled to live under similar circumstances—in times of war, but also even during peacetime, as violent conditions persist in everyday life. This is what it was like growing up in the household of Murry and Audree Wilson. Violence existed as both constant threat and proven reality. Home was not a sanctuary from the hostility of the outside world; it was the very place in which violence reigned. Growing up there was in a sense a test of survival, and like animals in nature, the brothers “evolved” in childhood so as to withstand the “natural” environmental conditions at 3701 W. 119th Street in Hawthorne.
The late-period Brian Wilson knows this about himself and his brothers. In his 2016 book, he said:
Kids who get hit don’t just turn into one thing. They turn into all kinds of things. Dennis turned into one thing and Carl turned into another thing and I turned into a third thing. We had something in common, of course. We had my dad. And that meant that we all had to deal with it, though we all had our own ways of dealing with it.
Brian didn’t elaborate on what he and his brothers “turned into” or how that occurred. However, the point remains that the brothers responded to the conditions of their childhood in different ways. And that late in life, Brian has learned things about adaptation and survival that he couldn’t have known back when he was a kid who—day after day, week after week, year after year—was gradually adopting and sharpening the survival strategies that would make him the particular “thing” he would later become.
The instinctual quality of survival that Darian Sahanaja sees in Brian the musician isn’t limited to Brian’s decisions in the recording studio. It is deeply rooted, and tied to his very existence. He was raised in an environment that was both extremely abusive and at the same time rigidly controlled. The Wilson home was “dysfunctional,” but not “broken.” To the contrary, the family was intact—mother, father and sons were firmly in place (except to the extent Dennis was scapegoated and treated as outcast). Father was a self-made bread-winner, mother dutifully prepared the food on the table, and a roof was over their heads in a decent middle-class neighborhood. Carl was strongly attached to mother, while father employed a regimen of capricious and sometimes sadistic violence to cement the attachment bond with Brian. Taken as a whole, a chronic pattern of physical and psychological abuse was taking place behind some very strong walls, within an ostensibly sound family culture. It should be clear in hindsight that getting out from behind those walls in order to do something—anything—in life wasn’t going to be easy.
Yet it seems, at least at first glance, to have been easy for Brian to take the first critical steps back in 1961. According to the available evidence, a rapid sequence of events commenced that summer with Al Jardine and Brian contributing to the Morgans’ aborted “Rio Grande” session, and progressing from there to Labor Day or thereabouts, when the nascent Beach Boys began work on “Surfin’.” Brian Wilson and Mike Love officially became professional songwriters no later than September 15 (the date of their songwriter-publisher contract with Guild Music), and by the end of the year, it all came to fruition with a hit Beach Boys single on local radio. All told, it was maybe a six-month process, and seemingly frictionless—except for Murry’s suspicious burst of anger and the possibly additional (and quite believable) detail that has Murry tossing Brian across the room at the famous practice session.
Not only did it occur “easily” but inadvertently too, or by happenstance. Brian certainly couldn’t have plotted this chain of events in advance. But inadvertence is not the same as randomness, for in this case, everything happened within a relatively small circle of music-business aspirants—the Morgans, Murry Wilson, Al Jardine, Brian Wilson—who knew each other (or at least knew of each other). It was not pure random chance that led Brian to the recording studio of his father’s very own music publishers. It was something else.
Brian was well aware that his father had friends in the music business, that those friends had friends, and so on. But as a matter of hard-earned intuition and his own particular psychology (which is very distinguishable from that of both Dennis and Carl), Brian does not seem to have eagerly pursued that obvious route into the business. (Again, there’s little to no evidence Brian looked to his father for assistance.) But when it wasn’t Murry, but Al Jardine, who innocuously invited him to a session at the Morgans’ tiny studio, Brian said yes.
When offered this opportunity, did Brian analyze the implications of his decision? Was he thinking about it strategically? Did he anticipate how his father would react, or did that question remain “compartmentalized” or otherwise stashed in Brian’s unconscious? Did Brian even consider informing his father that he was spending time in Hite and Dorinda’s studio? Upon receiving Al’s invitation, Brian could have responded: The Morgans? Sure, but let me talk to my dad first. He didn’t though, did he? No—he just showed up and said to Dorinda Morgan, “I bet you don’t remember me.”
This was not a matter of conscious deliberation but of instinct. An opportunity materialized, and Brian, about 19-years-old, instinctually (and/or unconsciously) weighed the costs and benefits, risks and rewards. It was a good opportunity: a chance to get active in the local, independent recording scene without his dad’s involvement. Brian moved on it, and moved quickly, without conscious, intellectual awareness that he was acting in such a strategic manner. That’s what was required if you wanted to make music but had lived all your life as Murry Wilson’s very special punching-bag. You had to be like an animal on the Serengeti.
x.
At its best, Beach Boys music is uncommonly beautiful and moving. Once overlooked (if not disrespected outright) by the rock ‘n’ roll-listening public, the harmony blend of the Wilson brothers, their cousin Mike, and Al Jardine (and at times Bruce Johnston) has proven to be both durable and inimitable. And that may be why some fans and commentators are predisposed to view the Wilson family through rose-colored glasses. How bad could it have been in that house if something as beautiful, honest and harmonious as “In My Room” or Pet Sounds resulted from it? According to that outlook, it might seem outlandish, if not offensive, to liken the Wilsons’ intra-familial relationships—including that between a father and son—to wild beasts competing for survival in the state of nature.
Admittedly, the “positivity” stance doesn’t necessarily prescribe total denial of the Wilson family’s problems. An informed fan or critic can conceptualize the overall story in a positive light (a loving and talented family comes together to bring harmony and positivity to the masses) while still remaining aware of the troubles. However, problems arise when positivity unduly colors important events in the history of the group. The group’s very founding in 1961 could well be one such example.
When viewed through the lens of positivity, the origin story reveals a unified family working as it should—with a strong father applying his knowledge and resources toward the benefit of his young sons, so as to motivate and “drive” them to leave the nest and make their way in the world as men. And if this is true, it means that the Beach Boy drama, trauma, and dysfunction only occurred later, in the years after the band’s formation. In other words: the members of a fundamentally normal and talented All-American family were blessed with the rare ability to sing beautifully together. They joined forces and started a family-centered music enterprise. And it was only later when problems began to surface, as the Beach Boys fell victim to the pitfalls of fame—easy success, easy money, easy sex, drugs, the Sixties, hangers-on, egocentrism, and for some mysterious reason, mental illness.
The truth is that the Wilson family was in trouble long before its musical manifestation—the Beach Boys—ever came into existence. Accordingly, it’s not just money, success, artistic hubris, or drugs alone that crippled the Beach Boys. There was this element of family difficulty that was a Wilson birthright, duly perpetuated by the likes of Murry “Dad” Wilson. And if Murry’s sons were ever going to get to a place where they could make enjoyable, meaningful music while leading adequately stable lives, they would have to navigate through the trouble they were born into. They would have to figure a way out of it, or around it. Or maybe just learn to accept it and peacefully coexist with it. Or perhaps, in the end, succumb to it.
The boys were very unlikely to know, intellectually, that they were facing such a challenge, for this life was normal to them. As Brian now says, “I didn’t know anything else.” But the challenge was real, and it remained. And this is where Brian’s method of “instinctual survival” comes into it.
For Brian, survival would entail a variety of behavior, depending on the times and circumstances. During those critical years between early childhood and the formation of the Beach Boys, Brian would have had to do any or all of the following: absorb abuse without demonstrating injury; play music; study harmony; behave differently than Dennis; behave differently than Carl; develop a keen sensitivity to his father’s many moods. He would watch, wait, and perceive the conditions of his life as best he could. (Brian’s effort to think and perceive—to not be stupid—is demonstrated in his high school essay “My Philosophy.”) And also, Brian would remain passive, quietly accepting the conditions of his life as he encountered them—but not too passive, for when an opportunity arose to change those conditions for the better, he would pursue it. From a distance of many decades, it can be said that this is what Brian was doing during the approximately 18-month period between high school graduation and the formation of the Beach Boys.
It may appear far-fetched to presume knowledge of the mechanics of Brian’s psyche. That would be fair criticism. However, it should be noted that the pattern of Brian’s behavior proposed here (the pattern enabling Brian to get going with the Beach Boys in 1961) is consistent with his actions at a number of points during the Beach Boys’ critical years in the 1960s. A review of Beach Boys history reveals several points at which Brian engages in his curious combination of passivity and activity: where he appears to passively accept an unfavorable personal or professional situation, only to quietly exploit a momentary change in circumstances and seize the upper hand for just enough time to allow him to achieve a goal. Circumstances then change again, and Brian adapts along with them, sometimes reverting to a state of passivity.
In these instances, Brian’s actions (or nonactions) communicate the idea expressed decades later by Darian Sahanaja: this is what I’ve got to do to survive. It worked for Brian in 1961, just well enough to get the ball rolling for himself and the Beach Boys. Yet things reached a point, around 1966 and ‘67, where this method of survival backfired on Brian. It would work for him until it simply stopped working.
References for “The Founding of the Beach Boys,” Parts 1-4
Doe, Andrew G. “In the Beginning.” Bellagio 10452.com. At: bellagio10452.com/Beginning.html
__________ , and John Tobler. Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys: The Complete Guide to Their Music. London: Omnibus Press, 2004.
Gaines, Steven. Heroes and Villains: The True Story of the Beach Boys. New York: Signet/New American Library, 1986.
Leaf, David. The Beach Boys and the California Myth. New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1978.
McParland, Stephen J. Murry: The Many Moods of a Beach Boy Dad. CMusic Books, 2022.
Murphy, James B. Becoming the Beach Boys 1961-1963. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 2015.
Priore, Domenic. Smile: The Story of Brian Wilson's Lost Masterpiece. London: Sanctuary Publishing, 2005.
Stebbins, Jon. The Lost Beach Boy. London: Virgin Books, 2007.
__________. The Beach Boys FAQ: All That’s Left to Know About America’s Band. Milwaukee: Backbeat Books, 2011.
“The Fall 1961 Mexico Trip.” Comment thread at Endless Harmony Forum. At: https://endlessharmony.boards.net/thread/1959/fall-1961-mexico-trip
“The legendary Labor Day weekend, 1961.” Comment thread at The Smiley Smile Message Board. At: http://smileysmile.net/board/index.php/topic,9656.0.html
White, Timothy. “Still Waters Run Deep: A Child is Father to the Band, Part Two.” Crawdaddy, July 1976.
__________ . The Nearest Faraway Place: Brian Wilson, the Beach Boys and the Southern California Experience. New York: Henry Holt, 1994.
Wilson, Brian, with Ben Greenman. I Am Brian Wilson. Boston: Da Capo Press, 2016.
Quote from Domenic Priore, Smile: The Story of Brian Wilson's Lost Masterpiece (2005), p. 168.