.png)
.png)
Brian Wilson's life was more twisted than you thought
- Jul 3
- 9 min read
Brian Wilson was a musical genius. But his life was a pretty twisted story…
So, in 1961, the Beach Boys formed. It was a family affair, with brothers Brian, Dennis and Carl Wilson at the helm with their cousin Mike Love and friend Al Jardine.
The brothers had a difficult childhood. Their father, Murry Wilson, was an aspiring song writer and musician, which gave them their love of music. But he was also incredibly cruel.
In his autobiography, I am Brian Wilson, Brian spoke of the physical abuse he and his brothers were subjected to.
'He drank too much and became a monster - and he didn’t know how to deal with his son’s fears. Whenever I got afraid, he would yell at me or slap me.’
When it became clear that Brian had a talent for music, Murry quickly became very overbearing. The Beach Boys formed with Wilson's father constantly pushing them for more and more.
He wanted them to rehearse all the time. He wanted them to be the best. He would scream at them when they got it wrong. You can probably see why Brian would go on to have such severe mental issues later in life.
Murry became their manager and promised them he would get their song Surfin’ recorded.
Give the song a listen. You can already hear the complex vocal arrangements that the Beach Boys would become known for. At this point, the band were called The Pendletones, and they released Surfin’ on the label Candix. It was with the release of this song that the label changed their name to the Beach Boys, perhaps wanting to be super clear that these guys were kinda beachy. As though the song name Surfin’ didn’t give it away.
Now there is one thing - and only one thing - that we can credit Murry with, and that’s being relentless after this point in trying to find a major label to sign the boys. He went round, using every contact he had, until he eventually convinced Capitol Records to offer them a deal.
But the abuse just got worse. It would be years before the band were willing to speak about what actually happened to them that time, but Murry thrived off humiliation, perhaps in part because his own father had been the same.
Brian sadly bore the brunt of it, as the key song writer for the band and the eldest brother. Some suspect that it was at least in part due to jealousy; Brian was immensely talented, and was achieving everything that Murry had always wanted for himself.
Things allegedly hit their peak in the recording sessions for I Get Around. This was in April 1964.
Sick of Murry’s aggressive behaviour, Brian and Mike decided it was the end of the road for Murry. It wasn’t an easy decision… despite the abuse, Murry was Brian’s father and Mike’s uncle. It was very much considered a family band. But his behaviour was so disgusting in these sessions that they decided they couldn’t do it anymore.
Brian and Mike’s accounts of how they did it are slightly different. In Brian’s account, he claims that they sent a formal letter of termination. Mike says that he and Brian went to confront Murry in person. Some stories talk of a physical altercation in the studio. Either way, they let him know he didn’t have a future with them.
However, that didn’t seem to stop Murry. He kept turning up to recording sessions and being disruptive despite having been fired. The Help Me Rhonda sessions give us solid evidence of this. On a salvaged recording, you can hear Murry constantly interrupting the session and trying to show Jardine how he thought he should sing it. Brian tries to defend Jardine, and Murry gets defensive.
Listen to 1:14 to 1:22 of this clip to hear them arguing in the studio.
While they did eventually get him to stop showing up, the damage had clearly been done - not just for Brian but his brothers too. Mike Love told Goldmine in 1992:
“He was awful. I’m so glad he wasn’t my father. He definitely did some damage. Carl’s gotten a grip on life, but Dennis sure didn’t. He kind of lost his grip."
Any hope of things getting better after getting rid of Murry sadly didn’t happen. Brian suffered from severe mental health issues throughout most of his life, and in December 1964 he quit touring with the band after having a nervous breakdown on a flight between LA and Houston. He also started to develop a severe drug problem - everything from LSD, cannabis, cocaine as well as alcohol and prescription medication.
However, he still wanted to work with the band in the studio.
And thank Goodness for that, because not long after he created the masterpiece album that is Pet Sounds.
Widely considered one of the greatest albums ever written, the likes of Paul McCartney couldn’t have higher praise for it. He told David Leaf in 1990:
“It was Pet Sounds that blew me out of the water. First of all, it was Brian’s writing. I love the album so much. I’ve just bought my kids each a copy of it for their education in life—I figure no one is educated musically ‘til they’ve heard that album. I was into the writing and the songs.”
Containing songs like Wouldn’t It Be Nice and God Only Knows, you can understand why they got such high praise.
However, the process of making this album was anything but straight forward - there are countless stories on Brian’s complete, total, obsessive perfectionism during the sessions for Pet Sounds. He poured his mental health struggles, drug use, and this uncontrollable desire to create a masterpiece into immensely intense studio sessions. He drove his bandmates and session musicians crazy in trying to achieve his vision.
Amazingly it paid off - today, of course, Pet Sounds is considered one of the greatest and most influential albums ever made. It directly inspired Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, which tells you everything.
Following the success of Pet Sounds, Wilson wanted to outdo it - which is, let’s be honest, an impossible task. The album would be called SMILE.
But he struggled intensely to produce it because his ambitious, fragmented recording ideas clashed with pressure from The Beach Boys, resistance from bandmates, his worsening mental health, heavy expectations after Pet Sounds, and a chaotic, experimental process — all of which made the album impossible to finish at the time. And so the project was abandoned. Brian couldn’t achieve his perfect vision. And that failure sent him spiralling even more.
Although we did get Good Vibrations from these sessions. He started writing it during the Pet Sounds Sessions and it was finished around 4 months after the album’s released. It was originally intended to be a part of SMILE, but of course never was. That song is widely considered one of the most complex, sophisticated and pioneering songs in pop history - 14 key changes, 90 hours of tape… now imagine a full album with those sort of songs and you begin to get an idea of how ambitious SMILE was.
Things went from bad to worse when in the late 60s his younger brother, Dennis, got involved with the Manson cult after meeting a couple of the Manson girls. He even co-wrote a song with Charles Manson, who would obviously go on to orchestrate some horrific murders. While not involved with the murders, Dennis was deemed by the police close enough to the cult to question when they were investigating them.
From this point on, the relationship between Dennis and Brian got more and more tricky, adding to Brian’s mental load. More problems like drugs and the death of his father in 1973 meant that Brian essentially became a recluse in the mid 70s. He cut himself off completely from the music industry, spending years at home, heavily abusing drugs.
By the mid 70s Brian admitted he needed help.
Enter Dr Eugene Landy, a psychologist who told Brian he could help him.
Landy was unorthodox and very involved. Too involved. He was also charging Brian millions across the years for his services. He said in his autobiography:
“He got some results, but he went too far. He was getting too involved, and then I found out what he was charging. I confronted him about it. I was pretty angry … I threw a punch and he threw one back and that was the end of it – that time, at least.”
The pair would go on to have a toxic relationship for many years after this. Brian knew he was controlling - even getting involved in the creative processes for the band - Landy even managed to get himself producing credits for some solo Brian Wilson songs over the years, despite not really producing anything. He was exploiting Brian, but he was convinced Landy was the only one who could help him.
Landy would spy on Brian, telling who he could or could not see. Every part of Brian’s life had to be approved by Landy, and all the while this psychologist was making a fortune off him. He would even give him a cocktail of drugs under the guise of medication, aiming to keep him complacent.
From every angle, it was exploitation. You have to really feel for Brian… going from an abusive, controlling father to an abusive, controlling psychologist meant the mental wounds were dug even deeper.
And at the time, people weren’t as willing to question Landy’s methods. He said:
“Back then, mental illness wasn’t treated in a straightforward way. People wouldn’t even admit that it existed. There was shame in saying what it was and strange ideas about how to deal with it.”
During this time Dennis was also struggling, and there was constant tension between him and Brian. At one point, Dennis allegedly convinced Brian to spend $15,000 on cocaine.
In 1983, Dennis Wilson sadly died by accidental drowning after a day of drinking which had a profound impact on Brian. From there he grew even more estranged from the Beach Boys - largely due to his mental health struggles but, perhaps moreso, because of the chokehold Landy had on his life.
Famously, Brian Wilson doesn’t feature on the Beach Boys hit Kokomo because Landy demanded a producing credit on the song in order to allow Brian to participate. So, they did it without him. Although he does appear in the music video.
In 1989, Landy finally had his medical license revoked after he was reported for misconduct. The reasons stated were Brian’s psychological dependence on him and also wrongfully prescribing Brian medication he didn’t need.
Regardless, Brian kept seeing Landy into the early 90s. In Brian’s first memoir, Wouldn’t it be Nice: My Own Story, there are parts that many suspect were ghost written by him.
Though he denied it, the book heavily glorified him and he stood to make 30% of the book’s profits. Brian himself later disowned the book, saying he had only done interviews rather than actually writing it himself.
In 1992, Brian’s family finally had enough. When they discovered Brian’s will had been changed to make Landy the main beneficiary, they orchestrated a restraining order which banned Landy from seeing Brian.
This - finally - was the positive push Brian needed. With Landy out of the picture, he ended up marrying talent manager Melinda Ledbetter. She had befriended him when he was still under the influence of Landy, and had been one of the people to report Landy to the medical board.
Together, they went on to adopt 5 children and spent the rest of their lives together. While some have accused Melinda of exploiting Brian by heavily encouraging him to continue his music career - Brian’s daughter even referring to her as ‘Melandy’, a reference to Dr Landy - Brian credited her with helping him maintain his career.
He experienced a significant artistic and personal revival, breaking away from years of erratic behaviour to launch a successful solo career. He transitioned from being a reclusive figure to a touring artist, completing long-abandoned projects, like Brian Wilson Presents Smile - finally completing his project he began in the sixties, and he was receiving widespread recognition for his legacy as a music producer.
In 2004, Melinda revealed that Brian had suffered from Schizoaffective order throughout his life. This included constant auditory hallucinations that affected his depression and general mental well-being. No doubt spurred on by LSD abuse.
From there, although constantly struggling with declining health, he continued to release solo albums, toured globally and even reunited with the beach boys.
His wife, Melinda, died in January 2004 and not long after Brian was placed into a conservatorship, managed by his long-time representatives. It was revealed he was suffering with a neurodegenerative disorder, similar to dementia.
Brian died in June 2025. Which of course opened the floodgates to countless tributes from the greats of music.
If you would rather watch these stories than read them, check out my YouTube channel!
Comments