← DISGRACELAND
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- [00:05]
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Double Elvis. So I try to stay disciplined with work and I try to do my creative task, mainly the writing of the podcast in the morning hours. But you can't always control when inspiration is going to hit. So last night I'm up until about midnight researching and then I start writing, which I didn't want to do, but I had to go with it. I'm in the flow. I stay up way later than I want to. I still gotta get up early in the morning and I'm bone tired. Coffee isn't helping. So thankfully I've got my stash of five Hour Energy and they've got this new Confetti craze flavor that I love. It's fantastic. Tastes great. Tastes like a party in a bottle. Which when you're dragging in the morning, believe me, is much needed. Fantastic flavor with this new five Hour Energy Confetti. Great. It's just vanilla y buttery. That's my jam right there. One of the things I also like about five Hour Energy, the bottles. As you probably know, they're tiny and resealable. I can take em anywhere I want. So if I'm gonna hit a wall later in the day, I'm prepared. I just tap into my five Hour Energy stash and I am good to go. Wherever I go, this is a little party in a bottle. It's gonna pump you up. It's gonna get you rolling into your day, whether it's the morning, whether it's the afternoon, whether it's nighttime. Five hour energy confetti is available online. Head to www.fivehourenergy.com or Amazon to order yours today.
- [01:35]
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Disgraceland is a production of Double Elvis. This is a story about the quiet one, the genius in the bathrobe, the savant, the ghost. And it's a story about murder, about theft, about manipulation. It's a story about the cost of music and the way a sound can save a person and the way it can drown them, too. It's about the Beach Boys, yes, but it's also about the wave that never stops pulling. And this is a story about love and mercy and about family and the violent cracks that split these things apart. It's about the man who made Pet Sounds, and it's about the people who nearly destroyed him for it. People who medicated him, isolated him, rewrote his contracts, manipulated his mind and stole his future. It's about a murder that marked his descent, a theft that changed his legacy, and a manipulation so complete it turned a fragile artist into a legal hostage. It's a story about Beach Boy Brian Wilson, a man who made great music. Unlike that loop I played for you at the top of the show. That wasn't great music. That was a preset loop from my melotron called Pick and Cass Forever. I played you that loop because I. I can't afford the rights to Monday Monday by the Mamas and the Papas. And why would I play you that specific slice of your mother's Laurel Canyon cheese? Could I afford it? Because that was the number one song in America on May 16, 1966. And that was the day Brian Wilson's Beach Boys released Pet Sounds and changed the course of pop music forever. On this episode, murder, theft, manipulation, Love and murder, Mercy and the broken beauty of Brian Wilson. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is Disgraceland. The surfboard hit Brian Wilson's head so hard that it brought on total blackness. But when he opened his eyes under the wave, the salt brought a sharp sting. The pins and needles that bit at his hands and feet brought fear. And a voice in his head, not his own, told him it was going to be all right. He was young, not much older than 10, but he was physically strong. Soon he'd be a high school athlete. He'd survive this scary incident off the beach a couple miles from his family home in Hawthorne, California. But he'd never surf again. The hits kept on coming back in the Hawthorne home throughout Brian's childhood. Hits to the head, close fist hits to the face, to the stomach, so hard his knees buckled, and down he went. Above him, he heard his father's voice screaming at him. Whatever Brian had done, Murray Wilson believed it justified the beating. His sons, especially his oldest son. Brian, needed to be tough if Brian was going to survive in this world, if he was going to make something of himself like Murray had. And Brian Wilson was tough. Brian Wilson, the songwriter, producer, composer, singer and beach boy, passed away in 2025 at the age of 82, and much has been said and written about him. When it comes to 20th century musicians, Brian Wilson stands among a small group of giants. Paul McCartney, Miles Davis, George Gershwin. And the list pretty much ends there. In the first paragraph of Brian Wilson's Wikipedia entry, and in the first paragraph of his New York Times obituary, you'll see the word genius, which is entirely justified. But Brian Wilson was, of course, much more than that. He was, as the Times obit points out, damaged. He was mentally ill, he abused drugs, the kind of drugs that exacerbated his mental illness. He was also partially deaf. And creatively, he was as controlling as he was collaborative, as focused as he was untethered. He was a son, a brother, a cousin, a friend, a husband, an ex husband, a husband again, a father, a dad, both loving and unintentionally unloving. He was also a forever child who, like a kid, found it difficult to rein in his impulses. And that childlike quality persisted throughout his life. And it was, in my opinion, part of what contributed to his genius. That ability to see around creative corners other musical geniuses hadn't yet approached, and other so called professionals were too grown up to even notice. That childlike quality helped Brian Wilson create America's band, the Beach Boys. With his family, his two little brothers and his cousin Mike, as well as a couple of kids from the neighborhood, all under the guidance of his domineering father and loving mother, the Beach Boys gave the world. I'll repeat that, the Beach Boys gave the world a glimpse at what the best of America could be, son. Surf, young love, fast cars and all the rest. And then Brian Wilson reached deep down inside of himself and largely of his own creative volition, gave the music world the greatest pop record of all time up to that point, Pet Sounds later on in life, it was also that same childlike quality that somehow, perhaps ironically, helped Brian reemerge from his madness as not only a survivor, but to regain his position in pop music as a unique voice capable of penning one of the most poignant and inspiring pop songs that ever heard, Love and Mercy. And then becoming the literal embodiment of what that song offered to the world. To do all that, however, Brian Wilson had to endure three devastating crimes. Murder, theft and manipulation. Brian Wilson's life, to put it mildly, was an incredible life. And this is an incredibly brief look at his story. Chapter one. Love. Families are built on love. And families, as we all know, are messy. By now we've learned that there are different ways of building a family. Families in the past, back in the 1940s and 1950s worked that different. I have two young kids and I was a kid back in the 80s and the 90s. So I try to raise my kids with some of the same Gen X independence and grit that I grew up with, but it's very difficult. The world is a different place. During summers when I was my 11 year old son's age, I left the house in the morning on my Mongoose BMX mostly without a plan. Maybe came home for lunch if I wasn't scarfing down food at my friend's house and otherwise didn't return until the street lights came on. Nowadays, my son leaves the house to walk the dog for 20 minutes with an apple watch on his wrist, which I can track on my phone. And he walks to the edge of the neighborhood and back again on time, thank God, because if he doesn't, my mind starts imagining kidnapping and child trafficking rings and worse. God forbid he should go into a friend's house without checking with me first. And visiting a friend's home means my wife and I will be googling his friend's parents like amateur detectives to make sure they're not lunatics. Like I said, it's a different world and my kid's a different kid. But back in the 50s, it was a little closer to what it was like when I was a kid. In the 80s, families had more of an open door policy in their neighborhoods and kids came and went with less oversight. That was America. And that was the America in which Brian Wilson formed the Beach Boys with his little brother Dennis and his youngest brother Carl, and their cousin from the neighborhood, Mike Love, and their buddy from school, Al Jardine. When the band took off, in large part due to the Wilson boys dad Murray, helping steer them toward a recording contract while they were still in their teens. And when the band started to tour, Al quit the group to get his college degree. It was a sensible thing to do, what with. With rock and roll not being anybody's idea of a stable career choice. And when Al quit, Carl's buddy from across the street, David Marks, took his place. And there were no auditions. It was that simple. After the band took off, after they'd spent 1964 jockeying with the Beatles at the top of the charts with incredible singles like I Get around and Fun, Fun, Fun, A year in which the Beach Boys would release four full length albums. Problems when all the pressure caught up with Brian Wilson and brought for the first time his mental illness to the forefront of the band. After he suffered a massive anxiety attack on an airplane flight. Brian simply decided that he wouldn't tour anymore. He was quickly replaced by a friend, a burgeoning singer songwriter named Glen Campbell. And when Glen's own solo career took off, requiring him to leave the Beach Boys, the Wilsons and the their cousin Mike turned to their buddy Bruce Johnston to replace Glenn as Brian's replacement on the road. Shortly after, David Marks quit. But that was no sweat. By then, Al Jardine was ready to rejoin. It sounds complicated, but it wasn't the Beach Boys. Their revolving personnel door reminds me of a neighborhood pickup game of football. Oh, Stax has to go home early for dinner, but the game's not over. No sweatshirt. Go knock on Mike's door and get him to come out and replace Stacks. Wait a minute. Barney has to leave too. Grab Seth from over on the other side of the park and let's keep playing. There were no egos, no hurt feelings. Just boys being boys. Just Beach Boys. The Brothers Wilson and their cousin Mike loved the music they were making with the Beach Boys. And they loved the music they'd grown up on. The Four Freshmen, the Everly Brothers, the Ronettes, the Ventures Link Ray. And they loved channeling that music into a vision of America that they were almost solely responsible for exporting across the world. But despite the subject matter of so many of their songs, the Beach Boys did not love to surf. With the exception of Dennis Wilson, the Beach Boys, they spent little time at the beach. We covered this in our previous two Beach Boys episodes, which you can revisit if you like. But the point here is that the Beach Boys from their earliest days were less of a band and more of an idea. An idea of what America could be. And that came from their love of what their lives and family had been up to that point. The same love drove the band's one for all and all for one approach to making music. At home, in the studio and on the road. It didn't really matter who was in the Beach Boys at the time, as long as the train kept on chugging. The band. Mike, Dennis, Carl, Al and Bruce toured incessantly to sell the songs that Brian stayed home to write. Eventually, Brian would begin recording on his own with an incredible group of LA studio musicians known as the Wrecking Crew, who worked with superstars ranging from Frank Sinatra to Elvis Presley. The idea was that the boys in the band, upon returning to la, would help Brian finish the songs by laying down their patented tight knit voice vocal harmonies. By 1966, the result was to Paul McCartney anyway, undeniable. Pet Sounds, the Beach Boys 1966 album was a masterpiece. Brian created a Technicolor version of what his hero, the producer Phil Spector, had established before. Pet Sounds took Phil's layered wall of sound technique and raced it towards the Summer of Love in a way that no one at the time thought was possible. Few Paul McCartney aside, even understood it. And even some of the Beach Boys themselves were skeptical. Notably Mike Love, who lobbied for a return to what had always worked for the group, songs about Sun, Girls and fast cars. Over the years, Mike Love has become known as the Pet Sounds boogeyman. But that's not quite fair. Pet Sounds was a commercial flop. Partly anyone got it at the time? Be honest, when you first heard Pet Sounds, did you love it? Did you really? I didn't. I didn't pay attention to it. I didn't pay attention to whatever Pet Sound single I heard first as a kid. But I did pay attention to Barbara Ann and Help Me Rhonda. Like I said, I was just a little kid after all. Not sophisticated enough to understand the genius of Pet Sounds. And that's pretty much what the world was like, with few exceptions in 1966. Not sophisticated enough to understand Brian Wilson's genius just yet. He was breaking the mold with Pet Sounds. There was no comparison, no roadmap. I don't blame Mike Love, whatever his ignorance or lack of understanding was for Pet Sounds. The dude wrote the lyrics to Good Vibrations, so he gets a pass. But Brian Wilson's genius wouldn't let him off the hook. Fragile as he was increasingly running off the rails with LSD and marijuana and alcohol, all of which were echoing the literal voices in his head. With dread, Brian was unable to complete the Beach Boys next record, Smile. And from there he was in and out of the band for a string of records. Smiley Smile, Wild Honey and Friends. And this period of the Beach Boys had some incredible moments. Like the aforementioned Good Vibrations single in Heroes and Villains from Smiley Smile, the title track from Wild Honey, and Little Bird from Friends among them. But these moments were mostly about a group trying to find their place in a culture that had left them where it thought the Beach Boys belonged in the past. By 1969, Brian Wilson was back underwater. Figuratively, yes, but sinking nonetheless. Smacked down by endless waves of addiction, self doubt and growing mental illness. He was down under the surface, his chest filled with dread. He couldn't breathe, never mind create. And by the end of the decade, the love that Brian Wilson had used to fuel the Beach Boys rise. The love for his family, for his brothers, for rock and roll, for an idealized version of the America he was lucky enough to grow up in. His love of Phil Spector, for the Four Freshmen, the Everlys Gershwin, his love of harmony so tight they made Lennon and McCartney burn with jealousy of melodies nobody but he was able to hear, of sounds and arrangements that made Bach's ghosts smile. All that love by 1969 was being drowned out. It was no match for the drugs and alcohol and the growing mental illness. By the end of the decade, a darkness like the dead of the ocean had consumed Brian Wilson just as it had the rest of 60s culture. And for America, all that love had curdled into something worse than hate.
- [18:37]
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Thanks for selling your car to Carvana. Here's your check.
- [18:39]
A
Whoa. When did I get here?
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C
What do you mean?
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A
I swear it was just moments ago that I accepted a great offer from Carvana online. I must have time traveled to the future.
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C
It was just moments ago. We do same day pickup. Here's your check for that great offer.
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A
It is the future. It's.
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It's the present and just the convenience of Carvana. Sorry to blow your mind.
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A
It's all good. Happens all the time.
- [19:00]
C
Sell your car the convenient way to Carvana. Pick up. Times may vary and fees May apply.
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D
In 2013, two brutal murders left the city of Davis, California, paralyzed in fear.
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The victims were an elderly couple. It was up close and personal.
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I'm 48 Hours correspondent Erin Moriarty. I thought I had seen it all until I encountered the mastermind behind those murders.
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He's. I think the word is psychotic.
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This is 15 Inside the Daniel Marsh Murders. Follow and listen to 15 Inside the Daniel Marsh Murders on the Free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts.
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This episode is brought to you by Amazon. Sometimes the most painful part of getting sick is the getting better part. Waiting on hold for an appointment, sitting in crowded waiting rooms, standing in line at the pharmacy.
- [19:56]
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Or that's painful.
- [19:57]
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Amazon one Medical and Amazon Pharmacy remove those painful parts of getting better with things like 24. 7 virtual visits and prescriptions delivered to your door thanks to Amazon Pharmacy and Amazon One Medical Healthcare just got less painful.
- [20:14]
A
Chapter Two Murder By 1969, with the culture turning its collective back on the decidedly unhip Beach Boys, with Brian Wilson increasingly isolated and unavailable creatively to the point of being admitted into a Psychiatric Hospital in 1969 to address his growing mental illness, specifically the voices in his head that he was hearing alongside all those great harmonies that were driving him mad, the Beach Boys needed Songs. Songs that would resonate with a record buying public that the band now felt disconnected from. Dennis Wilson had an idea. His little guru friend, the one who had all the young girls following him around, the girls that Dennis and his friend Terry Melcher were sleeping with, that little dude Charlie, he had songs. Now, Terry didn't hear it, but Dennis did. So Dennis brought Charles Manson into the studio. The knife flashed out of Charlie's pocket in an instant and Charlie waved it all around the room, crazy, like a shithouse rat. He aimed it at the vocal booth and then wheeled it towards Dennis right next to him in the control room and pressed it to his throat. The blade was warm on his neck and the fear was cold in his veins. And Dennis froze and felt that now familiar Charlie chill ride his spine. If I hear one more fucking note from you, I swear, man. Respect the prison fuckers. He then put the knife away. Everyone acted as if this was somehow cool, Dennis included. Things in the studio were not going well for Brian Wilson's brother Dennis with Charles Manson. But Dennis wasn't so easily dissuaded. In the summer of 1968, he went back and forth between wanting to do right by Charlie to getting Charlie and the girls out of his life. Knives to the throat aside, no pussy was worth a hundred grand in a rotting package. He brought Charlie and the girls into the studio to try to get something down himself. It was nothing short of a nightmare. The recording session devolved into an orgy, the results of which were captured on tape and to this day have never been heard. And aside from occupying a rather large swath of music history's collective imagination, imagination, they are buried somewhere deep in the Beach Boys vault. They Ceased to Exist. Which was the title of the Charles Manson song Cease to Exist that Dennis Wilson decided to purchase off of his wild eyed guru friend in one last desperate attempt to propel the grifter prophet out of his life of hippie squalor and into music industry stardom. Cease to Exist, a simple folk blues number that Manson penned about, well, who the fuck really knows, was purchased by Dennis Wilson for $100,000 in a BSA motorcycle that Charlie coveted for use at Spahn Ranch. Dennis brought the track in to record with the Beach Boys, passing it off as an original song that he'd written. Once they had the track in the studio, Dennis, unusually engaged in the process, got down to arranging and producing the track with his brother Brian and Carl and the rest of the group. They modified the feel from a traditional blues to something more pop, more of A psychedelic ballad that only the Beach Boys and their tremendous harmony singing along with Brian's arrangement prowess could pull off. They altered Charlie's lyrics. Cease to Exist became Cease To Resist. And a bridge was added to avoid the monotony of Manson's original. Finally, the title was changed from the bleak Ceased to Exist to the hippie zeitgeist sounding Never Learn Not To Love. And the results were pretty stellar. The track is, in a couple of words, fucking awesome. It was featured as a B side to the December 1968 Beach Boys single Bluebirds over the Mountain. It was later featured on the Beach Boys album 2020. The A side charted and the B side was met with positive reviews. But Charles Manson was not impressed. In fact, Charles Manson was pretty pissed off, pissed off at Brian Wilson's brother Dennis. And Dennis, who Charlie believes screwed him over, screwed him over by messing with his song and screwed him over by not working hard enough to get his friend, producer Terry Melcher, to help Charlie launch his career. As one version of the story goes, this is why Manson directed his followers to the house that Dennis and Brian's friend Terry Melcher once lived in and where director Roman Polanski and his pregnant wife, the actress Sharon Tate, now lived. A house that was in 1969. All over the news on Brian Wilson's television set.
- [25:03]
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We have a weird homicide.
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Late last night, another bizarre murder in Los Angeles, the second in two days.
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Roman Polanski, the film director and husband of Sharon Tate, called newsmen to a hotel in Hollywood today. And there he made a long emotional statement, told a good deal of what had been on his mind since his pregnant wife and four others were killed at their home on August 8th.
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21 year old Susan Atkins is involved in still another murder case. She appeared in the Santa Monica City courtroom this morning to enter a plea in a trial stemming from the July 31st murder of 34 year old Gary Hinman. Los Angeles police have placed Ms. Atkins, also known as Sadie Glutz, at the scene of the Tate murder. Taking into account the published report in the Los Angeles Times, the story that Susan Atkins told about what allegedly happened that night after the murder at the Tate house. We drove from Cielo Drive at the base of Benedict Canyon up here we found some trousers and some shirts, appeared to be turtleneck shirts or something dark in color. Did they appear to have any stains on them?
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This is where they live among the stables, barns and phony buildings of an old rundown movie location 20 miles from Los Angeles. They call themselves the Family. Five members are now in jail on other charges in the desert town of Independence. The family's leader, Charles Manson, is jailed here. It is expected that he will be charged in the Tate murders.
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It was Dennis Wilson who brought the Manson family into the Beach Boys family, and the guilt he felt for his involvement, no matter how unintentional in the Manson murders, would drive Dennis harder into drugs and alcohol and further away from his brothers. In the creative center of the band. Brian Wilson and the rest of the Beach Boys did what they could to distance themselves from what was about to become known as Helter Skelter, the crime of the century. But in 1969, the bottomless black water that Charles Manson left in his wake flooded the band, nearly drowning Brian. And the worst thing to come that year hadn't even happened yet. We'll be right back after this.
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Word, word, word.
- [27:42]
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Hey, it's Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile.
- [27:43]
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Now.
- [27:43]
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I was looking for fun ways to tell you that Mint's offer of unlimited Premium Wireless for $15 a month is back. So I thought it would be fun if we made $15 bills, but it turns out that's very illegal. So there goes my big idea for the commercial. Give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment.
- [28:04]
C
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- [29:13]
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Chapter 3 Theft it was November 1969, and Brian Wilson was alone with his father, Murray, in the house he grew up in. But his and his father's voices were not the only voices Brian was hearing. Brian heard his father shouting above all the rest, and Brian exploded in anger, fear and disappointment, trying to quiet the sounds that were consuming him. Brian grabbed plates, glasses, silverware, whatever he could get his hands on and rocketed them with his father. His father's voice only grew louder and Brian cried out in response. A cry of anguish, of deep pain so deep, so painful, so dark he didn't recognize. Only made his father raise his voice more and Brian pinned himself to the kitchen wall and exploded in Tears. A grown man, 27 years old, crying for his father to stop yelling. But the pain kept coming. It rose up from his feet, past his ankles, above his knees. He was waiting in it now. And the only thing stronger than the rising anguish was the power of his father's voice screaming at Brian. And the pain rose up into his chest and filled his lungs. Brian began hyperventilating. His father explained that there was no other way. Brian was no good. He was washed up. He'd never write hit songs again. The public had moved on from the Beach Boys, from Brian Wilson. He wasn't Bach, for God's sake. He wasn't Phil Spector either. He wasn't even Lawrence Welk. Brian would be lucky to get a job fetching coffee for Burt Bacharach at the rate he was going. The pain was up to his neck now, and Brian, still pinned against the wall, arched his head up, chin first, to stay above it. But it was no use. He was drowning, right there in his father's kitchen. His father's voice rang out still, louder now, in some sick harmony with the voices inside Brian's head. Chuck Berries. Just who the fuck did Brian think he was trying to cash in on his rock and roll? Letting his little brother rip off all those wrists? And Paul McCartney's Brian. Pet sounds was good, but it was no peppers, was it? And what happened to Smile? Brian, we made the White Apple. What have you done? And of course, Phil Spector's voice. You never should have come for the wall. Somehow, kid, you shoot for the king, you better not miss. But his father's voice eventually drowned out all the others. I had to do it, Brian. You're finished. That's why. Don't you see that? Don't you see that? I got as much for us, for you as anyone could. More, because Brian Wilson's father, Murray, had just sold Brian Wilson's songs. And before we get into the mechanics of this crime, I have to explain what this means for a songwriter. I've done so in past episodes, but it bears repeating. Aside from their children, a songwriter's songs are literally the most important things in their lives. For Brian Wilson in 1969, his soul was wrapped up in his songs. I Get Around, Surfin usa, God Only Knows, Good Vibrations. Those songs were his identity. Being the composer of Beach Boys tunes was who Brian Wilson was. And for Brian Wilson, it wasn't just his history tied up in all those enormously popular songs. It was his family history which made his connection to his toons even stronger. And his father his father had just sold them to someone else. Making matters worse, it's arguable, almost certain actually, that his father did so illegally. Thus stealing from Brian, his son, the things that mattered most to him in this world. Back in 1964, leading up to this theft, Brian and his brothers and cousin Mike fired Murray from his role as their manager. Largely because Murray Wilson had become a major pain in the ass for the band, inserting himself into the creative process on top of being a world class dick to his kids and to his nephew. The deal was that Murray would get to continue his involvement with the band. A band, let's be fair, that he did help launch toward their initial success. But he a band that by 1964 definitely did not need him in any creative capacity, or even in any real business capacity anymore. So Murray was allowed to stay involved and handle the Beach Boys publishing. That was it. There's another way of saying that Murray was now tasked with managing the band's songs and finding ancillary ways for the Beach Boys music to make money. But one of the first things Murray did in his role as publisher of the Beach Boys songs was make sure that Brian, and only Brian, was registered as the songwriter. Thus cutting out his nephew Mike Love from his share of the songwriting royalties and making sure that all of the songwriting revenue flowed into the Wilson household alone. Murray then pressured his son Brian to reassign the publishing share of his royalties, essentially 50% of the revenue to him. Murray, in exchange for Murray handling the administration of the songs. According to Murray, Bryan agreed. Also according to Murray, Brian later agreed to give up his own control of his songwriting share, which is something that Brian absolutely never did. These so called negotiations around the Beach Boys publishing happened while Brian's drug use in the 1960s was at its peak and his mental illness was rearing its head and spinning him out of control. For much of 1969, Brian Wilson didn't even get out of bed. And when he did, he spent his time playing piano in an indoor sandbox. Or at least imagining what it would be like to play piano in an indoor sandbox. He wouldn't actually have the indoor sandbox installed for a couple more years. But the point is that Brian was spiraling. In 1969, he was in no condition to negotiate with his domineering father for control of his song catalog. And his father, of all people, knew this. But that didn't stop that sneaky Murray Wilson from selling the Beach Boys song catalog for $700,000 in November of 1969. And this development Absolutely wrecked his son. The rationale that the Beach Boys were washed up and had to sell their catalog in 1969 in order to get anything for their songs while they still had some juice is beyond short sighted. The catalog is estimated to be worth $200 million today, and the Beach Boys still don't own it. In 1989, Brian sued to reclaim the copyrights and some royalties. And he was forced to settle out of court for an undisclosed amount. And in 1994, Mike Love had to sue Brian for the credit his uncle Brian's father screwed him out of. And Mike won. But again, the songs are still not theirs. These days they're owned and controlled by Universal Music, the biggest music company on the planet. So when you see a Beach Boy song in a Chili's commercial, don't blame Brian and Mike Blame Murray. 50 plus years ago, when Murray sprung this news on Brian, it devastated him. And it only drove him harder. Into drugs and alcohol, deeper into paranoia and drowning beneath the sounds of the voices in his head. Brian Wilson needed serious help. A doctor, doctor, 24 hour medical care. Instead, what he was about to get was falsely imprisoned. Chapter 4 Manipulation it was the mid-80s. Brian Wilson was sitting at his piano. The Beach Boys were no longer a part of his life. They were on the road or in the studio or somewhere, somewhere far from Brian's thoughts. The voices in his head were all he could concentrate on at the moment. Which was a problem because Brian had to concentrate on the song he was trying to get down. The longer he went on without writing anything of importance, the more upset his doctor would get. And Brian didn't want to upset Eugene Landy. Dr. Landy wanted hits. Dr. Landy wanted genius. Dr. Landy wanted to be the one who brought the genius Brian Wilson back to the top with a hit record. A hit record that he, Dr. Eugene Landy, would co write and produce. It was possible, the good doctor reasoned. After all, he himself was a genius. Even more so than Brian Wilson. Brian had brains, sure, but they were all over the place. It was only through the strength of his genius that Brian Wilson was even still alive. Never mind recording music again. By the mid-1970s, Brian Wilson was a barefoot recluse in a bathrobe, chain smoking in bed for months on end, surviving on cocaine and cheeseburgers and wracked by fear while his brothers and bandmates carried on without him. They themselves too burned out to stage an intervention, but still too caring not to. It was decided that Dr. Eugene Landy, a showbiz shrink with a messiah Complex should be hired. And so he was. And in 1975, the good doctor went to work, dragging Brian out of his bedroom exile and back into show business. Miraculously, his efforts worked. Brian lost weight, cleaned up a little, and rejoined the Beach Boys on stage. And so Landy was dismissed and Brian was better. And then he wasn't. When Brian crashed out again in 1982, Dr. Landy was rehired and this time given tighter control. A year later, when Brian's brother Dennis drowned, Dr. Landy put his control to the test to help manage Bryant's grief. And Brian was in such bad shape by then that Dr. Landy was granted legal guardianship, working under a mandate to do whatever it took, however he deemed necessary, to help save what was left of the broken beach boy. Once Landy had full control, he medicated Brian into imprisonment. He dosed him into submission with meds, cut him off from his family, and went as far as rewriting Brian's will to include himself. This is on top of paying himself $35,000 a month and attempting to insert ownership of Brian's songwriting, publishing, and eventually to collaborating with Brian on his new album, which Dr. Eugene Landy wanted to call brains and genius. Brian being the brains and him Gene being the genius. Get it? And Brian was too sedated to fight back. He sat at the piano and pecked out noises while the doctor screamed that he was doing it all wrong. Dr. Landy was on the precipice of taking everything, not just Brian's possessions, but his physical and mental capacity. And now not just his songwriting, but his creative process. Brian was powerless at the piano, a broken down musical genius, heavily drugged against his will, his mouth agape, drooling, being screamed at by a quack doctor telling him, Brian Wilson, how to write songs. It's a scene so absurd that it's hard to believe, but it happened. And that's right around when Dr. Landy's own unraveling began. He pushed to be credited as co writer and executive producer for his efforts in shaping Brian's solo record. He nearly made it happen. He did succeed in getting his girlfriend listed as a lyricist on multiple tracks. But those efforts raised suspicion and other people around Brian started asking questions. When they did, Landy shut them out. And this raised their suspicions further. Brian's new girlfriend at the time, Melinda Ledbetter, wouldn't back down. She was. We worked with Brian's daughters, Carney and Wendy Wilson, and together they built a legal case to free Brian from Dr. Eugene Landy's unethical treatment and guardianship. Ultimately, Landy would not be criminally prosecuted, but a Los Angeles Superior Court judge ruled that he'd violated professional boundaries and ethical standards, and he was legally barred from contacting Brian Wilson again. As a result, California's Board of Psychology revoked his life, his license to practice. It was also deemed in court that Brian Wilson had been mentally incapable of making informed legal decisions at the time Dr. Eugene Landy inserted himself into Brian's will. Mercifully, those documents were voided and the doctor was completely extricated from Brian Wilson's life. Landy's girlfriend did manage to retain her songwriting credits, and it is suspicious, expected that she received some royalties from Brian's solo album. Eventually, however, her credits were struck down and it is believed that those shady royalty payments ceased. And one of those songs was one of Brian Wilson's greatest achievements, the song Love and mercy. Mercy. After Dr. Eugene was banished from his orbit, Brian Wilson began the long, slow crawl back to himself. He married Melinda Ledbetter, the woman who helped save his life, and for a time, he found peace in her steadiness. He reunited with the Beach Boys in fragments, patched things up with his brother Carl before cancer took him in 1998, and stood beside the surviving bandmates on anniversary tours. But the real triumph came when Brian, backed by gifted musicians called the Wonderments, led by bandleader Darian Sahanaja, finally finished Smile, the lost masterwork that had driven Brian mad and haunted him for decades. In 2004, he brought the album to the stage alive and whole for the first time to triumphant standing ovations. And then came more albums, global tours, a biopic, and the long overdue recognition that Brian Wilson wasn't just a fragile genius, he was a survivor. A man whose voice was erased for a long time by the voices in his own head, had finally succeeded in quieting the noise and found himself for his final act. I believe that Love and Mercy, the simple lead off track from Brian's self titled album, which Dr. Landy tried to Svengali. That song to me is Brian Wilson at his core. It's not a particularly robust production. It's a simple melody with simple, beautiful harmonies. It's not trying to be something it's not. It's a man in pain at his piano, singing into a microphone, putting himself aside and trying to ease the pain of others. In researching this episode, I purposefully avoided learning about how that song was produced. I know that it was part of the era when Brian was being abused by Dr. Landy, but I don't know much else except how the song came out and what the song sounds like and what it says. And I like my vision of how I imagine Brian made that song better than anything I could read in a book or online. When listening to interviews with Brian Wilson and reading his autobiography, you get a pretty good look into the man's soul. He was delicate, childlike, funny, generous, aware, filled with life and love and mercy. Brian talks about his struggles with his father and with his doctor and to a lesser degree, with his cousin Mike and his bandmates, his brothers. And in all of that, you hear zero spite and somehow very little judgment. You even hear forgiveness. It's quite beautiful, actually. It's a story that began with love, somehow overcame the true crime hardships of murder, theft and manipulation and ultimately still somehow ended with mercy. Love and mercy. I like to picture Brian Wilson at his piano writing the song Love and Mercy under the full weight of psychotic oppression. And there, at his lowest moment, he's choosing to sing about bringing love and mercy to others. It's what a big brother would do. And it's anything but a disgrace. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is Disgraceland. All right, I hope you dug this episode. Discos. Listen Apple podcast listeners. Make sure you get auto downloads turned on so you never miss an episode of Disgraceland. This week's question is, which musician is the best example of a tortured genius? Is it Brian Wolf? Is it someone else? I want to know who and I want to know why. Tell me whose pain shapes something beautiful, Whose story hits you hardest, and why it matters? Hit me up voicemail and text at 617-906-6638. You can also find me on Instagram, Facebook x and his gracelandpodmail.com. leave a review for the show on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and win some free merch. This is mythwork, baby. We uncover the truth, confront the story, and reclaim the music. Brian Wilson did that with Pet Sounds with every note, and so do you every time you listen. All right, here comes some credits. Disgraceland was created by yours truly and is produced in partnership with Double Elvis. Credits for this episode can be found on the show notes page@gracelandpod.com if you're listening as a Disgraceland All Access member, thank you for supporting the show. We really appreciate it. And if not, you can become a member right now by going to Disgracelandpod.com membership rate and review the show and follow us on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter and Facebook Disgracelandpod and on YouTube@YouTube.com Disgracelandpod Rocka Rolla He's a bad, bad man.