APRIL 2, 1964—Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys are at Western Studios in Hollywood to begin sessions for a very important album, the one whose music will demonstrate what the band can do in this new post-Beatles reality. “I Get Around” is the song scheduled for this date. Although by this point Murry Wilson has worn out his welcome as the group’s manager, he is present in the studio to participate in the session. He is in particularly fine form, as his contemptuous demeanor, words and actions obstruct his son Brian’s efforts to record the new song.
Would it have been sensible for John Lennon and Paul McCartney to allow Brian Epstein to manage them if Epstein had beaten them with boards during childhood? What if Albert Grossman had burned Bob Dylan’s fingers with matches when Bob was little? Or if Andrew Loog Oldham had force-fed food to Keith Richards to the point where Keith puked? Would it have made sense for Pete Townshend to work with, rely upon, and trust Kit Lambert if Kit had tied Pete to a tree? No. But it seems Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys are a special case. Brian is the only major figure in rock ‘n’ roll history who is commonly said to have benefitted from having a manager who did these things to him and his brother Dennis.
Part 18:
Mike Love has said that he and Brian, together, fired Murry: “Brian and I fired him as our manager after a couple of years. He was insufferable.” The band couldn’t take it anymore. And they had taken enough. Because Murry was father and uncle, the Beach Boys had tolerated more mistreatment, mismanagement, and abuse from him than they would have from anybody else. The group had accommodated Murry in his role as manager (though drawing the line at letting him be a Beach Boys songwriter), going back to the very formation of the group in 1961, when he belatedly discovered them in practice/rehearsal, reacted negatively, and then had to be “calmed” or “soothed” by the band.
In the two-and-a-half years since then, the Boys had given Murry plenty of rope with which to hang himself, which it seems he finally did during the Australia tour. For Brian and Dennis, Murry’s transgressions dated back much farther than Australia.
Brian’s 1991 autobiography is not inconsistent with Mike’s recollection that firing Murry was a joint Mike-Brian effort. That book says that even before the fateful “I Get Around” session, Mike had been the first to suggest canning the old man, and the other Beach Boys agreed. The book says that the group eventually wrote and sent a formal letter of termination. In his own 2016 memoir, Mike mentions no letter, but claims that he and Brian showed up at the Wilson home where Brian informed his father verbally, in person, that he was fired and that “nasty words were exchanged between father and son.”
Whatever form this initial salvo (which would have occurred before the studio confrontation over “I Get Around”) took, Murry ignored it. If it is true that a letter was sent, Murry brushed it aside; he could never respect a gesture so laughably civilized. Murry only understood jungle law. He and his wife Audree had raised their sons under the authoritarian, physically violent principle of might-is-right. Unseating Murry as manager would require an act of real force, and it had to come from the only Beach Boy who was positioned to stand up to him for control over the band.
Brian had to do this. It couldn’t have been anybody else. Mike Love had taken the critical step of being the first Beach Boy to openly acknowledge the truth: Uncle Murry—Dad—had to go. This couldn’t have been a decision to be made lightly, by either Mike or the Wilson brothers. Murry was Mike’s uncle—not only the husband of sweet Aunt Audree, but the brother of Mike’s mom, Emily Glee Love. Having grown up with Murry and witnessed how he had tried to protect their mother from their father’s violence, Glee adored Murry (or at the very least perceived him through rose-colored glasses). She wouldn’t hear a bad word spoken of him. And Glee was not necessarily a mother to be trifled with. What would she think about her son pushing Murry out of the managerial seat? Did Mike think at all about what his mother would say? Did he care one way or the other?
Even if Mike wasn’t concerned about blowback from the Love side of the family, his hands still would have been tied. As much as Mike might have wanted to just fire Murry back in Australia (or even earlier), it was inconceivable that he alone could square off with Murry and say “you’re fired,” while Murry’s three sons silently observed from the sidelines. If the brothers were to allow that, it would have meant the Beach Boys was Mike’s band—which in 1964 it most certainly was not.
It was a family band, and while Mike was a member of that family, he was outsider to its nucleus. The core of the Beach Boys was the Wilson Family of Hawthorne: Murry, the boys, and Audree Wilson too, the mom who always maintained exalted status as the Beach Boys’ patron saint, positioned high above any factional strife. If Mike was to be so audacious as to take the lead in firing Murry, he would be overstepping his bounds as they were defined in 1964. And who knows, he may have even been risking expulsion from the group—in effect falling into the trap fate had set for young David Marks.1
Nor for that matter did Dennis Wilson carry sufficient weight to fire his dad unilaterally. Dennis was the crazy middle brother nobody took seriously.
Brian had to do it.
Brian was the one driving this whole thing from the beginning, and it was time for him to act in accordance with his de facto status as group leader. And to his credit, it seems he had tried to do so. With Mike backstopping him, Brian had either signed a letter of termination, or told his father in person, verbally, that he was fired. (Or done both?) Whatever he had done didn’t work. Murry wasn’t going anywhere. What were the remaining options? Calling the police? Petitioning for Audree Wilson’s intervention? Going on strike and bringing Capitol’s corporate power to bear on the situation? Just surrendering and letting Murry have his way with the band?
Or how about some good old fashioned physical violence? Considering how he had treated Brian since childhood, Murry had earned, at the barest minimum, a severe ass-kicking from Brian. Brian, however, was not the type of person to throw punches—not at his dad, not at anybody.
Still, this did not mean that Brian was a wimp or a beatific, spaced-out naïf who could effortlessly turn the other cheek. Some people who are abused the way Brian was come to abhor sadistic, capricious cruelty and are determined to carry themselves with the modicum of dignity their predators lack. Rather than capitulate to their abusers’ world view by becoming boorish, ignorant, and disgusting, they develop a peculiar sense of pride that does not permit violence, meanness, chest-beating, and egotistical theatrics.
At a deeper level, nonviolence is a way to maintain control, self-possession and even a sense of personal responsibility: I could be like my father if I wanted, but I won’t, because it’s my choice not to. At an even further inward region of semi-consciousness there is fear—not of the aggressor necessarily, but of the violent and destructive feelings that have accumulated over time and lie coiled within oneself.
Meanwhile, from the point-of-view of the deranged parent, the child’s ability to absorb the assaults with what seems to be aplomb—while still continuing to achieve—is vexing, threatening and infuriating. That too gives the abuse target a sense of control over his attacker. And further, it is a way to exert power through an act of omission: you fight the abuser by refusing to fight him.2 It was not only as a songwriter, but overall human being, that Brian was vastly superior to his father. And they both knew it.
Unlike his brothers, Brian posed a difficult challenge for Murry. Carl didn’t rock the boat. He had never threatened the status quo so it was needless for Murry to go after him. Dennis fought Murry, but was sloppy, needy, and self-defeating about it, and Murry would always hold the upper hand. Brian, however, had been able to quietly drive a shiv into the tyrant: Brian could hold it together while continuing to triumph in the very business in which Murry had for the most part failed. This had been the truth of the situation, formally unacknowledged but understood on some level between father and son.
From Murry’s standpoint, it was painful to be so easily outclassed by Brian in the music business, but the injury went beyond that. Murry’s competitiveness with Brian went back to the very beginning, to Brian’s birth. In 1965, about a year after the pivotal “I Get Around” session, Murry would write a candid letter to Brian in which, among many other things, he claimed that his wife Audree had “transferred” her love from Murry to the boys after their birth. This wasn’t true, but Murry believed it so. Simply by being born, Brian had been guilty of a very serious crime: as firstborn son, he had stolen Audree’s love from Murry. For Murry, that was bad enough, but the fact that the boy had then grown and achieved great musical success cut even deeper, and was simply unbearable.
It is commonly assumed that the Beach Boys formed as family venture in which father, sons, and nephew-cousin were unified in pursuit of the common goal of musical success. However, the presumption that Murry selflessly ran interference for his sons in the music business—willingly and generously brokering the critical relationship with Hite and Dorinda Morgan of Guild Music in 1961—is not well-supported by the (current) evidence. It would appear more likely that the Wilson brothers, led by Brian, inadvertently executed an “end-run” around Murry’s tyrannical control: without Murry’s knowledge or permission, Brian and his bandmates naively exploited Murry’s connection to the Morgans to get the group going with the “Surfin’” single. Perhaps it can be seen how, from Brian’s perspective, Murry was several different things: a father to be loved, hated, needed, and feared, and also carefully accommodated or circumvented as dictated by prevailing circumstances. In short, father and son had never really been all that chummy.
Even in those early days, the relationship was one of mistrust, conflict, and parental competition. Murry probably never wanted Brian to succeed in music. Perhaps it would have been okay for Brian to be a performer only—a beautiful singer of ballads, including some written by his father—but certainly not a songwriter-producer, for that was Murry’s exclusive territory, in which he still maintained an ambition. During these early years of the Beach Boys’ success, Murry still believed himself to be in the game; he hadn’t given up on his goal of being a successful songwriter in his own right. Yet Brian had quickly and easily outperformed him in that field. And moreover, Brian had then refused to share the songwriter-spotlight with Murry. Sure, Brian had stepped aside and let his father enrich himself financially via the Sea of Tunes publishing company, but he had refused to allow the Beach Boys to be exploited as a platform for Murry’s songwriting. Murry had been shut out.3
All this helps explain Murry’s antagonism toward Brian as of the “I Get Around” session in April 1964—a point at which Murry would otherwise seem to have very little to complain about.4 Over the course of the preceding 2 ½ years or so, something like a revolution had taken place in the Wilson family—if not recognizable in form, then in substance. Murry remained father, Brian remained son, but their roles had reversed. By forming the Beach Boys and then succeeding with them to such an extent, Brian had first bucked his father’s authority and then supplanted him as family provider.
Even a good, decent man might understandably feel a sting if his 21-year-old son was to surpass him like this, but Murry was neither good nor decent. He was a man whose sense of identity and self-worth had been tied up with his horrible treatment of his sons. (The worse he treated them, the better a man he became—stronger, more “protective,” more “loving.”) In the case of Brian and Murry, the son’s musical success resulted not just in the father’s injured pride, but his abject humiliation. While the money Murry raked in from Sea of Tunes improved his financial situation (enabling him to retire from the machinery business while in his forties), it was a mere consolation prize. All that money didn’t do a thing to assuage his jealousy and shame.
If all this is accurate—if it is true that Brian had effectively superseded his father’s predominance in the family—did that mean Brian was family “leader?” And if so, did he therefore have to start behaving differently, in accordance with his true status?
Easier said than done. As of the time of the “I Get Around” session it had never been Brian’s place to push back against Murry directly, head-on. Overt rebellion had instead been Dennis’s “role” in the family—it was expected of him. In contrast, Brian had always been expected not only to excel (and now, provide wealth) but do so while passively absorbing abuse and exploitation without complaint and without openly fighting back. Over the course of Brian’s life, each time his father beat, degraded, or insulted him, it was (among other things) an implicit challenge for Brian to absorb it, maintain stability, and then succeed—all while remaining a dutiful son, subordinate to his father’s authority.
Brian had been locked into this existence for most of his life. It wasn’t fair or just, but Brian had handled it so far. As of mid-1964, he had never broken down, never capitulated, never shown defeat. Neither did he resort to violence or other forms of delinquent behavior, nor did he emulate his father’s narcissism and become an insufferable horse’s ass. All he had done was get better and better at his craft and generate gobs of money for his parents.
But getting from June 1942 to this point in the first half of 1964 had been punishing and exhausting. Brian had been dealing with Murry all his life, and had been battling him over the Beach Boys since Day One: that early practice session in the Wilson home when Brian, and no one else, was the one Murry fixated on and threw across the room.
Brian could have, and maybe should have, pushed back on that fateful day in 1961. He didn’t. But now, in April 1964, as Murry battled him over “I Get Around,” Brian acted. Having been pushed to his limits, he grabbed Murry, shoved him backwards and summarily fired him as manager of the Beach Boys.
This event almost certainly marks the first (and presumably last) time Brian laid aggressive hands on his father in an act of physical self-defense. It was a shove, or a push, or maybe something a little more forceful, but nothing more. After so many years of malicious violation, there would have been—there must have been—an inferno of murderous rage inside Brian. But he kept a lid on it. If he hadn’t, things could have gotten rather messy. It was a shove only, and Murry responded with his true cowardice: he retreated from the studio. Brian had used the minimal amount of physical force necessary to get the job done.
Back in 1962, when Murry drafted a contract declaring that Brian would be the “leader” of the Beach Boys vested with the power to fire any of the Beach Boys at his discretion, this was not the outcome Murry had envisioned. Yet there it was. This was leadership.
A History of Brian Wilson continues in Part 19, with a discussion of the song “I Get Around” and a further look at the implications of Murry Wilson’s dismissal. Click here for Part 19.
Selected References for Part 18
Beach Boys, The. “Help Me, Rhonda” session recording. March 1965. At: WFMU’s Beware of the Blog. At: https://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2005/10/im_a_genius_too.html (last accessed September 5, 2023).
Brian Wilson: Songwriter 1962-1969. Produced by Prism Films, Chrome Dreams Media. Sexy Intellectual Productions, 2010.
Endless Harmony: The Beach Boys Story. Directed by Alan Boyd. VH1 Television/Delilah Films, 2000.
Gaines, Steven. Heroes and Villains: The True Story of the Beach Boys. New York: Dutton/Signet, 1986.
Granata, Charles L. Wouldn’t It Be Nice: Brian Wilson and the Making of the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds. Chicago: A Cappella Books, 2003.
Love, Mike, with James S. Hirsch. Good Vibrations: My Life as a Beach Boy. New York: Penguin/Blue Rider, 2016.
Mones, Paul. When A Child Kills: Abused Children Who Kill Their Parents. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991.
Stebbins, Jon. The Beach Boys FAQ: All That’s Left to Know About America’s Band. Milwaukee: Backbeat Books, 2011.
White, Timothy. The Nearest Faraway Place: Brian Wilson, the Beach Boys and the Southern California Experience. New York: Henry Holt, 1994.
Williams, Paul. Brian Wilson & The Beach Boys: How Deep Is The Ocean? New York: Omnibus Press, 1997.
Wilson, Brian, with Todd Gold. Wouldn't It Be Nice: My Own Story. New York: HarperCollins, 1991.
__________, with Ben Greenman. I Am Brian Wilson. Boston: Da Capo Press, 2016.
Wilson, Murry. Letter to Brian Wilson. May 8, 1965. Collection of Hard Rock International/Hard Rock Memorabilia.
David Marks’ exit from the Beach Boys was discussed in the latter portion of Part 13 of A History of Brian Wilson (“The Road vs. The Studio”).
With respect to Brian’s practice of achieving goals through acts of omission (i.e., not taking direct action, not confronting people head-on, and instead remaining “inactive” or passive), see other posts in A Book of Brian, particularly Part 12 of A History of Brian Wilson (discussing the method through which Brian first came off the road in 1963), and also Part 3 and Part 4 of “The Founding of the Beach Boys” (arguing that when he first got the Beach Boys together in 1961, Brian accomplished a goal while avoiding a direct confrontation with his father).
The complicated relational dynamics between Brian and Murry—including the matter of Brian’s refusal to have the Beach Boys sing Murry’s tunes—were the subject of Part 7 (“Father and Son”).
As of April 1964, things were going splendidly for Murry and the Beach Boys. 1963 had been a year of triumph. Surfing and hot rods had paid off, Brian had creativity to spare, and the Beach Boys were by now seasoned professionals, touring the U.S.A. and overseas (Australia & New Zealand). Brian was on the road with the group full-time and the money was pouring in. Notwithstanding the looming threat of Beatlemania and the British Invasion, “Fun, Fun, Fun” had recently made it to No. 5. And Brian and Mike were working well together, still generally aligned in their goals. (Though Shut Down Volume 2’s “‘Cassius’ Love vs. ‘Sonny’ Wilson” wouldn’t have been made if there hadn’t already been some problems.)