The Smiley Smile Message Board

Now that a lot of people seem to be re-evaluating their opinions on Mike (though not me i might add), I was wondering what everyone's thoughts are on some of the other opinion-dividing individuals from BB history. Namely:

Murray Wilson

Jack Rieley

Eugene Landy

Do the negatives outweigh the positives or vice versa? I've got very concrete opinions on the latter two (Rieley - definately a hero, Landy - villain). Murray however, though undoubtedly something of a tyrant, I'm less sure of... Funny how as soon as he died the BB's creative juices by and large evaporated. Was his presence a spur for Brian, Dennis and Carl's creativity? (POB of course slightly dispproves this particular theory...)

Anyway, heroes or villains....?
 

Murry - Hero. He fathered the 3 Wilson brothers.

Jack - Hero. Came into their fold just at the time when they needed someone out there to give the band and their new music a postive spin.

Landy - Hero. First time around, he saved Brian's life. Villain second time around. Without the results from the first time, the second time would be meaningless and would have never happened.

Landy is scum. they've could've gotten another doctor.

But they didn't.

Landy tried to kill Brian the 2nd time around.

Not only that, but his lyrics are TERRIBLE!!

Can't disasgree with you there.

Did Landy write the Everybody Wants To Live lyrics? I can't stand 'em. 'The cigarette but when you throw it in the water... If you start laughing you're just a coward...' Horrid, horrid, horrid. Rieley's lyric's have their detractors but personally I think he's up there with Van Dyke and Asher.

Brian definitely wrote those words.

... and then proceeded to screw them up for life.


... and lied his balls off to get into that position.


First time round he got Brian out of bed, second time he saved his life... and then proceeded to f*** it up far more than anyone or anything had previously. The vast majority of the damage to Brian is down to Landy. he nearly killed him.

It's a complex thing and all of them are complex people so it's hard to just say Hero or Villain although some of the things people like Landy and Murry done are unforgivable.

Murry, say what you will, but those boys needed to be alive first before anything that came after.
Jack, no matter how he got there, he got the job done.
Landy, can't argue with you much there. You know more about the story than I ever will.

Yeah, Landy and Murry are pretty much indefensible.

 In terms of Murry, the only thing we have to thank him for is not being so much of a bellend that he let Brian be around music and start The Beach Boys. Apart from that, he was abusive and petty and emotionally damaged his children. I don't think 'he had a gleam in his eye thrice' is really a solid defence.

In terms of Landy, AGD is right. He would have turned Brian into a vegetable. To quote Mark Twain, I would never wish anyone dead, but there are some obituaries that I have read with great pleasure. He is the biggest 'villain' in The Beach Boys' story, imo.

Reilly, on the other hand, doesn't belong in this company. He inspired and pushed The Beach Boys to their productive early 70's albums, and notably wrote Carl's finest songs with him. Dude is a hero, give or take a small fib  ;)

hypehat, you think Murry is that terrible? As bad as he was, his kids still loved him and his death had a pretty significant impact on them. Murry is a guy you can place in both rolls.

Murry was truly one of the great sperm donors of our age.

Doc - 'His death had a significant impact' - it sent Brian, Dennis, and Carl on a self-destructive cycle that killed one, led to Brian being what he is today, and Carl was lucky to escape from. Of course having your father die would have an impact on anybody, but the damage that Murry had done to his children in terms of their emotional security and self esteem made it that much worse. Yeah, they loved him (well, maybe Brian and Carl) but he did abuse them and f*ck them up for life.

Which I don't mean to say 'How dare Murry die!', rather that his death was a turning point for his children that didn't end so well. I'm a little incoherent today, so I apologise if I'm not clear.

I understand where you are coming from. My father was similar to Murry (not as bad), so I am aware of the impact it has on one's self esteem, etc. No matter how you slice it, he is still a hero. Those 3 boys had to be born just as they were to become who they are/were. And, I'm only looking at this as posed by the OP; from a Beach Boys / Fans perspective.

Yeah, I do see where you're coming from too - after all, he kept the music in their house for them and was their father for better or worse, and without that we wouldn't be arguing about him.  ;D

Murry- not only fathered them, but was crucial in getting the band started and promoting them in the early years.

Jack- I don't know much about the episodes that led him into BB management.

Landy- it's a shame that he seemed to be the only solution at the time. They could have gotten someone else but, alas, they did not.

When, after the release of the WIBN book Brian was asked who would be heroes and villains in his life, he said:

Hero- Mike
Villain- Spector

I don't know about Jack, Landy was obviously a Villian, drugging and defrauding a mentally ill man is pretty villianous behaviour.

Murry was a Hero.  He did a lot of bad things but in the end he was Brian's father.  Even the totality of Murry's abusive behavior wasn't enough to erase the goodwill/inspiration/love that simply being a father to Brian provided.... even if it was only by default.   

Ron? Do you have kids?

No hero would abuse his children. Period.

I understand that he was crucial to the band's success. But helping create a band is bullshit compared to loving -- and actually showing your love -- to your kids. Beating them, abusing them, is never excusable.

Wirestone?  Do you have a father?

No father would be a Villian to me.  Period.

Yes. And I am one, as well. And child abuse is an evil, evil thing.

Are we actually debating this?

Wirestone, you're right.


Murry is evil.  I"m wrong.


He never did anything good, he's a Villian. 

I apologize for my criticism of a man who regularly physically and emotionally brutalized his sons and wife.

No need to apologize, you're exactly right. 

How naieve of me to look for good in such a dispicable human being. 

I forgot everything was so black and white when it comes to how we love our fathers, Brian most certainly sees his father as a Villian. 

It's equally absurd and reductive to say hero or villain. Child abuse is obviously horrible. But similarly, praising someone as a hero just for having shot a load into his wife and having had one of the swimmers take hold ..l. I think reasonable people can agree that making a baby isn't necessarily heroic in itself. Raising a child, more so ... but if that child-raising involves abuse, less so.

Get it? People usually aren't heroes or villains. They're both. It's not even a complicated idea.

Yes Sir, I get it.  Thank you for enlightening me.  I'm going to try and live my life and make my own decisions about people without you or Wirestone to guide me, is it alright if I get your phone number in case I need any more life lessons?

Ergh.  I can't stand it.  Let me tell both of you what I really think.


When you're born, you see your father as a Hero.  It takes a lot of sh*t to diminish that.  Your father can treat you like hell and you still see him as a hero.  It's not rational, it's not logical, but it's human.

Brian Wilson saw his father as a hero, and wanted his appreciation, STILL sees his father as a hero, and wants his appreciation, and will ALWAYS see his father as a hero, and want his appreciation.

So take all your lecturing about what's right and wrong and shove it up your ass. 

:)

Class dismissed.

Sure. You're a hero for asking (and being a dad).

They're so cute when they're sassy.

But what does any of that have to do with anything? Does the fact that someone loves someone else make their behavior irrelevant? Does the fact that an abused wife loves her abusive husband make him less of a heel? Abused children often love their parents. It doesn't excuse the real and lasting damage that such parents do.

I also -- it must be said -- find it remarkable that I have to make an argument that child abuse is wrong.

Do you really want to have that debate, Ron? Because I would say that society has rendered a general verdict on that some time ago.

     How can anyone defend a man who physically hurt his children and damaged them emotionally and on purpose? Things ARE black and white...if you (any person) hit your child for any reason, just like if you hit your wife for any, you are doing irreparable harm to them (and in the case of a child you are attacking someone 1/5 your size) and are most likely continuing the cycle of violence that your own father abused you with. Imagine how beautiful the music would have been had violence and fear not been the way the Wilsons were raised...

Wirestone - of course child abuse is wrong, and of course Murry was a villain (if we are just choosing one option here). He mentally and physically abused his sons. What you are dealing with is a troll. Don't feed the trolls.

Well they suck.

Wow, didn't mean for this thread to turn into a debate on child abuse. Calm down, people! How's about we forget about Murray and move onto Rieley?

I don't really know the history at all re Rieley's lying (I know Al called him 'a great manipulator'), but really... who cares? So what if he lied when the results were so good! Don't forget, he was directly responsible for/helped contribute enormously towards the following:

Surf's Up and Holland. A drastic improvement in record sales and critical standing. Aruguably the top three greatest Carl songs ever. Some tremendous live shows and set-lists. Those terrific A Day In The Life... vocals. Some fantastic album cover artwork. The Mt Vernon narration. Blondie and Ricky joining the group. Two under-rated Brian co-writes. Some great withering remarks about Mike. Bruce buggered off.

Just how unforgiveably appalling must these lies he supposedly told have been to offset all of the above?

Well, from my understanding (and this could be incorrect), Jack Riely allegedly lied to everybody in the Beach Boys camp about having cancer, and took their money for his alleged cancer treatments. That is a pretty big, bad lie... But I still think out of Murry, Landy, and Riely, Riely isn't even in the same league as the other two.

Both Murry and Landy are responsible for Brian being alive today; unfortunately, both are also responsible for an immense amount of damage to the man. Murry is almost doubly culpable, as is shitty parenting is the likely cause for Brian's desperate need for a father figure, which was a role that Landy was all too willing to fulfill.

Lest we forget, Landy also became involved creatively with Brian, even letting his girlfriend Alexandra Morgan write many lyrics, to horrible horrible effect.

Murry was a manic child abuser, enough said!

Seriously, if I hear someone say "But Landy saved Brian's life" just once more, I may not be responsible for my actions. Yes, he did, but consider the context - there's this 300 pound, chain-smoking, food-guzzling, coke-snorting semi-alcoholic who you've worked with before, and you're given carte blanche (and a blank check) to stop him killing himself. It's not rocket science: Stevie Wonder could see the problem.

I'll give you some more villains: The Beach Boys for thinking Landy was the right man for the job 2nd time around. Lord knows, they'd made some calamitous career decisions before then but in terms of what happened to Brian and, indirectly, the band, that has to be totally the stupidest thing they ever decided was a good idea.

One by-product of the 2nd Landy era was that Brian met Melinda. That one spans the spectrum.

Murry himself was a victim of child abuse and he unfortunately never dealt with that and carried the cycle of abuse onto his sons.

From here on out, I'm staying out of any threads that get into their personal business. No matter what is said on either side of things, you can never have a normal discourse on a subject without nastiness to everyone else's views. There is no right answer here on Murry. People who grow up with parents who discipline like he did, have real love/hate relationships with them. When I answered the question, I said hero. You know why? Because they would have been different people with completely different histories. It was a benign statement not meant for nothing else but being happy that we were blessed with three brothers who brought a lot of happiness into our lives through their music. Had Murry not been their father, most likely there would be no Beach Boys and we wouldn't be here doing any of this stuff.

That's a sad fact of a lot of abusers and the reason Brian was scared to raise his daughters.

Let us not pass the blame here. Brian is responsible for his actions or lack of thereof with his daughters. Bearing his own upringing and being mentally ill sure did not help, but he is just as responsible for his fatherhood as Murry was for his, or any of us for ours.

Being "a father" gets nobody any points.  There is no role in life for a man that puts him closer to being an absolute unredeemabel f-up "just by default" than being a father.  You have to actually succeed in that role for it to mean anything.

Being a father means you have unlimited power to completely screw somebody's life up forever just by failing or being absent, but if you take it even farther and actually knock them around physically or undermine their development emotionally or both, I think you go way past forfeiting any goodwill for the job you're doing.

I cannot imagine the kind of blinders it takes to look at a destructive narcissist like Murry through rose colored glasses, especially if you're not even related to him.

I agree, I just remember an interview where marylin explained that Brian was scared to raise his kids because he knew only one way, the Murry Wilson way.

Where did the 'Reiley lied about having cancer' story originate from? Sounds like The Royal Tenenbaums made real...

Without Murry as their manager, there would probably be no Beach Boys.

(http://static.fjcdn.com/pictures/i_3a7a95_436520.jpg)

1977 or thereabouts. He also lied about working for NBC in Puerto Rico and winning both a Peabody Award and a Pulitzer Prize. He also produced a personal letter from Bobby Kennedy welcoming Ricky to the USA when he was having some difficulties with the immigration people. Bobby Kennedy was killed in 1968.

Well, getting Ricky into the US was kinda a good thing really, though some of the rest is admittedly suspect... Still, I still say the positives which I listed earlier far, far outweigh these negatives.

A+. You are right on the money, and we could all give the troll examples of fathers who are decidedly not heroes, but the troll will continue to argue its trollish point. Best thing to do is ignore it.

Murry - I often wonder what level of abuse was handed to his kids. Some say this is a black and white issue. I disagree. I don't believe that spanking a kid is child abuse. I was spanked when I deserved it. It was not child abuse, and my parents never did it out of anger. Plus this was a different time. Perhaps he crossed the line a little bit, perhaps a lot. I don't know. Perhaps he would verbally abuse them as well. I would like to point out that he fought hard for his sons to get them signed. I wonder if the BBs would have been treated the same by Capitol after Pet Sounds if Murry was still manager to take up for them.

Jack - Personally, he is my favorite 'manager' in terms of pushing the BBs into an artistic direction. He got the best out of them during that time I think. There also seem to be some negative things about him that got him fired.

Landy - AGD has a good point. He can't be a hero at all because of how it ended up. I think he used Brian for his own ends, so he made him look healthy and gave him mind control drugs to keep control long after his work was done. He should have let Brian go in 85. Had he done that, then I would say he is a hero. But he didn't. He probably would've done the same thing the first time around had he not been fired.

Murry did awful things but he did push for the group when they needed it. I don't condone Murry but I understand Murry after reading Tim White's book and learning about his truly evil dad. Murry was a jerk but getting to know Fred Vail and The Sunrays' for my book does throw new light on him. Also we know he was sick but Mike Love (who openly hates him) has said that some of the stories were not completely true. Close to a villain but with one or two heroic qualites that's my take on him. See Joe Jackson and The Jackson 5. About the same where Michael and Marlon said he was terrible but Jermaine defends him. Carl always stuck up for Murry where Brian and Dennis were a lot more open or had a different POV.

Jack did some dishonest and plain creepy things. Like Murry he did help them when they needed him, like Murry he stole from them. Maybe not as plain sick as Murry but obviously not someone to trust with your bank book. I don't know if I would call him a villain. I like his work but not the man so much.

Landy wasn't good either time as he never let Brian really recover before he was back in the studio, back on stage, and giving interviews. That Landy himself even in 1976 was doing press tells you all you need to know. He may be the only true villain in the whole story. Or at least complete villain.

It's not really surprising The Beach Boys were enamoured with a hustler, no matter how much Reiley probably did like them -- I just wish it could've been one who lied a little better and had more lyrical acumen!

Rieley's lyric's are great!

I think it is generally accepted that Murry did a lot more than just spank his kids. And that he was not someone who worked or disciplined in an atmosphere of calmness.

Yes, he was a child abuser - both physically and mentally. Spaking your children is one thing; tormenting them and causing them to live in fear of you is quite another. Murry was a world-class asshole. Sure, he was not "evil..." evil is not a concept that really holds much weight in the real world. People are varying shades of selfish, altruistic, etc. Murry was clearly a frustrated composer and vicariously lived out his dreams through his sons, and a side effect of this was the Beach Boys' enormous success.

It hurts to imagine Brian's life if Murry hadn't been such a huge asshole. Maybe he would not be famous, maybe we would not have all this great music... But he wouldn't have his father's voice yelling at him onstage almost forty years after tge man died. Murry caused an incredible amount of damage to Brian.

I see Rieley as somebody who basically started from the position of being a fan who was frustrated with the band, and who somehow clawed his way into a position of influence, to where he got to kind of impose his own vision of the group on the group itself.  There have always been so many competing ideas of what the Beach Boys actually are: artistic vs. commercial, Brian's baby vs. communal effort, etc, and these go on both within the band and among the fan community.  So you see people who have ended up in the inner circles, but who are still acting on their sensibilities as fans: Foskett obviously has his own ideas of how Brian should be presented, and the Wondermints guys as well, and they come from the perspective of being fans.  Rieley was kind of the start of all that interplay.

That is amazing  :lol

Landy = Villian.

I don't care how he saved Brian, he could have just fixed him and let go, but he was GREEDY.

Murry and Landy both had redeeming qualities but all villains do and they both loved the men they destroyed but they did destroy them.  And by the end, I do believe Landy was trying to slowly kill Brian.  He wanted to give him a comeback so that when he died, he'd be a martyr which would start up a ton of record sales (like Lennon with Double Fantasy), money that would have certainly gone Landy's way plus all of the will money.

I believe that Jack Rieley was one of the most creative minds in the Beach Boys story outside of the band.  He was very smart and he brought out the best in Carl Wilson and brought out the best in the band as a whole.  I mean think about it.  Once he left, we got 15 Big Ones.

Yeah, Landy didn't love Brian. He loved Brian's bank balance

When the Beach Boys and Marilyn got Brian away from Landy the first time, they recognized he needed another psychiatrist and sent him to Dr. Steve Schwartz. Wasn't Brian doing pretty well in his brief time with Dr. Schwartz until the doctor died while rock climbing?

I think that's one of the great what-ifs of Brian and the Beach Boys. If Dr. Schwartz hadn't died, would Brian have avoided the backslide that led to the second, destructive tenure with Landy?

John Stamos hero or villain?

ha!

Asshole.

I assume you are referring to John Stamos and not the one who posted the question. :)

He couldn't possibly be referring to you. There aren't (M)any assholes in this place. ;)

Indeed.