If they'd had a strong manager in 1967-70 (who wasn't Brian's dad)?

[harrisonjon]

Who would have been the ideal manager? I'm thinking perhaps of someone who was a hard bastard but had his heart in the right place and the band's best interests in mind. He would have needed to coax and cajole the best out of Brian and somehow keep him off harder drugs. He'd have to be good cop and bad cop; iron fist in velvet glove. A very tall order but not impossible.

[GuyOnTheBeach]

Someone like Allen Klein?
He would probably have caused a few problems (he seems like he could have been another Murry) and isn't remembered by history as being one of the most trustworthy people, but I think that he could have kept business affairs ticking over and probably carried enough talk and intimidation to get the stations to play their records at that time.

[Youre Under Arrest]

I'm thinking Stan Polley from Badfinger.

[Chocolate Shake Man]

Would it have been possible for any manager to thwart Brian's increasing mental illness?

[The Heartical Don]

Would it have been possible for any manager to thwart Brian's increasing mental illness?

I don't think so. Mental problems have the characteristic of presenting themselves in a manner that can only very slightly be modified by the environment. If your hypothetical manager type would exist, he/she would be the best psychiatrist in the world.

[Chocolate Shake Man]

Exactly.

[♩♬🐸 Billy C ♯♫♩🐇]

Peter Grant...

[Theydon Bois]

I'm thinking Stan Polley from Badfinger.

Holy cow.  The mind boggles.

[SMiLE Brian]

Phil Spector

[cablegeddon]

Phil Spector

Didn't he manage Ike and Tina Turner when they flopped here but had a hit in UK?

[Myk Luhv]

Albert Grossman seemed like a behemoth from what I've read in Joe Boyd's memoir, White Bicycles (great read, by the way) but then he worked for Columbia or something, didn't he?

[GuyOnTheBeach]

I think whoever it could have been would have had to have been a musician, someone who could find a healthy balance between creativity and nostalgia, who would encourage both Brian's pursuits (however strange they may have seemed at this point in time) yet at the same time made sure that they could deliver as a live act that people wanted to see.
The reason I think it would have had to be a musician is that when you're trying to make money, I'd imagine it would be very easy to sell someone out, or get them to sell out, I think a musician with similar sensibilities to Brian would have helped a lot, maybe not in a collaborative sense, but as a creative support for Brian so to speak.

There is still the issue of mental health though, I don't think many people would have been able to have been much help to Brian in 1967 I'm sorry to say, but proper awareness of mental health was really quite a recent thing back then, I mean they were only a few years out of electroshock therapy and other such horror tactics. That being said, I think correlations had been made between drug use and mental illness and while they probably couldn't have "fixed" Brian, maybe the rate of decay could have been stemmed. (don't quote me on any of this last paragraph, I know nothing about psychiatry, outside of what I have read out of my own personal interest)

I think the combination of all of this would probably have never been reached by anyone in the 60's, it also makes me wonder about how different the long run would have been, Brian was already showing signs of a schizophrenic disorder and depression by this point in time which tells me that some of the damage had already been done, maybe he wouldn't have spiraled so bad in later years leading to no Landy. I would say in 2012 The Beach Boys story would probably not be too different, maybe two or three stronger albums in that time-frame and possibly a Brian with a normal level of cognitive function, but with the demons still there the same as they are today.

[rn57]

Well, heck - if Allen Klein had taken up the BBs' management in '67, the guys probably would have ended up spending half their time in courtrooms much earlier than proved to be the case.  And Stan Polley - sheesh, the guy killed half of Badfinger without even trying.  The upside, of course, is that Dennis would have beaten up either of those guys a few times, but that wouldn't be compensation enough.

I would say that in 1967 - had he been available, and able to devote the time needed to handling the multilayered Wilson/Love madness - the guy who might have really worked as a manager could well have been Steve Blauner. Not a musician per se, but a guy with a deep understanding of the history of popular music - who would have immediately understood that a longtime career for the guys had to be founded on something other than Shut Down Vol 3. 

When he worked with Bobby Darin from '59 to '65, Blauner a) got Atlantic Records to support Darin's moving into crooner territory from rock'n'roll, something the Atlantic brass were very reluctant to do at first; and b) after "Mack The Knife" made Bobby the hottest entertainer in America, helped him move into an acting career that resulted, within two years of its inception, in an Oscar nomination.

And when it came time to move on from Atlantic, Blauner put together a marvelous deal with Capitol that gave Bobby total artistic freedom and the ability to develop stars on his own - like Wayne Newton. (Indeed, had he been managing the guys, they might have been able to get a new contract with Capitol that gave them more leeway than even Warners provided.)   For example, had Blauner been on the Brother team, there's no way the Flame album would have ended up distributed by a nickel-and-dime outfit like King Records and vanished into near-oblivion.

And since Blauner, for six years, was able to handle a guy as thoroughly mercurial and moody as Darin, you gotta figure he could have lasted at least half a decade with Brian.

But the thing is, in 1967 Blauner was busy putting together the BBS production company with Bert Schneider and Bob Rafelson, which, building on the trio's work with The Monkees, went on to be one of the most important and groundbreaking outfits in the "new cinema" of the 1970s.  So it doesn't seem likely he could have done both that and worked with the BBs, unless the guys had been ready to get into filmmaking in a major way.