Murry Wilson: father, manager and abuser of The Beach Boys
“I can make anyone a star, and I’ll prove it,” declares the cartoon Murry Wilson in Rock ‘n’ Roll Dad. Though written for an animated web series focusing on The Beach Boys‘ notorious manager, such boasts were the calling card of the real Murry Wilson. Violent, power-mad and convinced of his own genius, he was, by all accounts, a deeply unpleasant man.
Talking to Goldmine about the famously tyrannical music manager, The Beach Boys’ Mike Love made it clear that Murry was indeed a “prick”, as he explained: “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”. Murry Gage Wilson certainly has a lot to answer for. The American songwriter, talent manager, recorder producer, music publisher and band manager was the father of Brian, Dennis and Carl Wilson – the founding members of The Beach Boys. Murry became the group’s defacto manager in 1962 and subsequently founded the publishing company Sea of Tunes with Brian. He was fired in 1965 and later accused of physically, emotionally and verbally abusing his children.
“[He was] very abusive and gruff and terrifying and intimidating and negative,” Love said of Murry. “Stuff like, ‘You guys don’t know what you’re doing’. Those kind of remarks. Very unsupportive. However, he was an aspiring songwriter and he knew that there was a value to songs. I didn’t even know what publishing was when we started out. I wasn’t from a show business background.”
The son of a violent alcoholic, Murry grew up wanting to be a popular singer. When he graduated in 1938, he left those dreams behind to take up a position at the Southern Californian Gas Company, leaving for Goodyear Tire & Rubber following the birth of his first son, Brian. it wasn’t until 1951 that Murry began making musical connections. Having landed a position at Palace Records, he started writing songs for artists on the label’s roster, with Jimmy Haskell recording two of his compositions, ‘Hide My Tears’ and Fiesta Day Polka’. He later had his song ‘Two Step, Side Step’ – previously recorded by The Bachelors – performed by Lawrence Welk And His Orchestra on live television.
By the time rock and roll came along, it was clear Brian shared his father’s gift for songwriting. The Wilson brothers already had a firm grasp on complex vocal arrangments, and Carl had made great progress on the guitar. It was around this time that Mike Love, the eldest son of Murry’s sister Emily Glee, began playing music with his cousins. What Emily regarded as a bit of harmless fun, Murry saw an opportunity to fulfil his own goals, and in the late summer of 1961, he promised the boys that he’d get their new song ‘Surfin’ recorded. He made himself the band’s manager and got in touch with old music industry contacts Hite and Dorinda Morgan, who agreed to record the group. The Pendletones, as they were then known, released ‘Surfin’ on the Candix label that same year. Murry then went door to door trying to convince A&R reps from major labels to sign the band. All that knocking paid off, and The Beach Boys landed a deal with Capitol Records.
But no amount of success could disguise the realisation that the Wilson brothers had made a grave error. It quickly became apparent that Murry was as vicious a manager as he was father. While they felt unable to publically address their father’s abusive behaviour for many years, the Wilson Brothers would later the full extent of his abuse, recounting one rumoured incident where Murry disciplined Brian by forcing him to defecate on a plate.
As the songwriter of the group, Wilson was in a uniquely dangerous position. Many have argued that, as a frustrated songwriter, Murry became increasingly jealous of his eldest son and began punishing him and the rest of the band as a result. Recording studios were a famously tense environment, with Murry exerting his hockey dad mentality to the detriment of the session. Things reached a head when The Beach Boys were in the studio to record their number one single ‘Help Me Rhonda’, during which Murry insisted on showing Al Jardine how to sing his part. “Let him sing it once,” Brian interjects in a salvaged recording from the session. “You want me to leave, Brian?” comes his father’s reply. “Mother and I can leave right now.”
Things only got worse, with Murry torturing the boys for “screaming” rather than singing. Unsurprisingly, Murry was fired as The Beach Boys manager during that same session. Depressed, he retreated to his bed and stayed there for four months, from where conducting some of the band’s business and grew increasingly angry. As an act of revenge, Murry convinced Capitol to release his own album, The Many Moods of Murry Wilson, around the time Pet Sounds came out, putting him in direct competition with his sons.
Slowly but surely, things fell apart. Sick of his destructive and aggressive behaviour, Murry’s wife Audree moved out of the family home, leaving him to manage a Beach Boys knock-off called The Sunrays. Alone with his thoughts, Murry wrote a letter criticising his adult children’s unwillingness to bend to his will. After accusing Audree of raising the Wilsons “like girls”, he addresses Brian directly. “No matter how many hit songs you write,” he says, “Or how many hundreds of thousands of dollars you may earn, you will find when you finish this short cycle of business success that you didn’t do it honestly and for this reason, you are going to suffer remorse.”
Of course, it was Murry who should have felt remorseful. Having refused to accept any wrongdoing, he died of a heart attack on June 4th, 1973. Brian and Dennis did not attend the funeral.
