The Smiley Smile Message Board

Just wondering if there have ever been any people, online or otherwise, who have ardently defended Murry or Landy's actions? I'd imagine if these exist, they would be people best suited for an insane asylum... but perhaps there are actually people (non-trolls) who actually feel this way in their hearts.

And I'm not talking about people who just defend a few, select things that Murry or Landy did, but generally defend their actions and characters on the whole? Maybe is this akin to trying to find the yeti... 

There was a video where some people waiting to get an autograph from BW in the 80's said Landy was a great guy that savead his life.  Makes me really think: would we all think this now if we didn't find out Landy's abuses?

I think Landy is made out to be worse than he actually was.

I think it will be harder for the Landy defenders to rally to his side after the film comes out.  The film will put it into the public consciousness that Landy was an unsavory character and then he will be harder to defend in the public forum.  Most of the people who defend Landy these days are of the opinion that Brian Wilson's life could've not be salvaged from the dire straits it was in without some desperate measures being taken.  Enter Landy...

You'd think Murry would be easier to defend, in theory, because he at least helped get the band going and was a source of some of their early "drive" as professionals.

Drive off a cliff.

To me, Murry is a tragic figure.  What he lost out on by being such an a$$hole to his kids and with the band and their legacy (selling the song catalog) - it's just really sad.  Without him though, there would be no Beach Boys.

Landy, I suspect, was always probably a bit of a sleaze, but he may have had some good intentions to begin with when he came to work with Brian.   It could maybe be said that without him Brian would have died, so without him we may not have Brian.   His second go around with Brian though nearly destroyed Brian too, so ultimately he has no defense really - he was a sick guy who abused his position and power. 

Fred Vail, when discussing Murry, has emphasized his positive qualities - though he's acknowledged that he didn't personally witness that much of Murry's interactions with his sons. See

http://prayforsurfblog.blogspot.com/2008/12/fred-vail-on-break-away-and-murry.html

for an example.

It's hard to think of any pluses with Landy.  George Benson's autobiography, published last year, describes Landy's work with him as a manager back in 1953, when Landy was a high-school dropout in his late teens.  Even then, his modus operandi was in place - a desire to whisk Benson (who was ten years old)  off to the West Coast, tie him up with a bunch of contracts, and cut his family out of the picture. Benson's mother said no go, and put her son's musical career on hold, instead of going along with this.  His actions involving Brian were not the only things that resulted in the forfeiture of his licence to practice in California. I've sometimes wondered how he managed to stay out of trouble in Hawaii.

Certainly back in the 80's (and specifically around the time of Brian's debut solo album and then pseudo-autobiography) every single hardcore Brian Wilson fanatic I knew was a Landy defender. We could only go by what Brian told us and whatever the Wilson/Landy party line was. The general consensus was that the rest of The Beach Boys were ingrates and they were jealous of the terrific music Brian was creating under Gene's supervision and wanted to screw it up. We had that drilled into our heads so much that it was accepted as gospel truth. I remember when Brian crashed that Stan Love press conference and gave that "I'm in control of my own life" speech, fans were practically cheering him on from the sidelines.

..but then you'd read article after article about Brian being monitored around the clock and shadowed by these "surfnazis" wherever he went, and you'd have that seed of doubt in the back of your mind. Something was just not right about all this. Eventually the stories just got weirder and weirder and there were just too many of them. As some of you might remember, Carl was once perceived as the villain in this story and now more and more hardcore Brian fans (we didn't have the term "Brianista" back then. lol) were jumping ship and siding with him. Eventually, EVERYONE was seeing Gene for what he truly was. The emperor had no clothes.

I doubt there are any hardcore Brian fans who were part of the fan community back then who would defend Gene at this point. Way too much has come out. It's true that he DID save Brian's life, and we can be grateful to him for that. Unfortunately, he was also the colossal a**hole/manipulative swine who saved Brian's life.

Murry was a jerk, Landy was evil.

I almost got killed on this thread for saying something positive about Landy. Even after he literally saved Brian's life, what he did after that was undeniably wrong. All I'm going to add is that Landy got Brian back writing songs again, and he was VERY active during the Landy tenure.

http://smileysmile.net/board/index.php/topic,20080.0.html

I just can't defend someone who abuses their kids. Landy was awful in countless ways, but Murry is the primal source of so much of the pain and dysfunction in BW's life.

Yes, perhaps that pain fueled creativity, but I would willingly sacrifice the band's greatest music to see three little kids and their mother be truly happy in the 1940s.

That's a disgraceful comment.

Agreed, having now seen the film myself.  I originally read that Giamatti was "over the top" in his portrayal of Landy.  I didn't get that impression at all.  I would also tell you that Bill Pohlad's comments at the Friday night Q&A were interesting in this respect.  He said that after Brian attended the actors' readings of the script, he said that the Landy character's portrayal wasn't as tough as he actually was. 

Also, having been there when Brian was near the bottom and being aware of a lot during the Landy years, I can say from experience that Brian always saved his own life.  If we were lucky, we could offer an assist.  As far as his creative spirit, Brian never stopped writing stunning music as far as I know - certainly not when I was there.  Some of it became product sooner and some later, some during the Landy period, some not.  

I have no idea what Landy's original intentions were...and which time, for that matter?  Do the intentions mean anything, given the history that ensued?  What I do know is his intentions were very, very lucrative for him, and no increasingly enormous amount seemed to be enough...he seemed to continually need a bigger and bigger piece of the man - right up through the will...

Murry:  I only met him once.  A blustery fellow that I actually sort of liked at the time (I was 17 years old) who greeted me with, "You're cute!  Can we adopt you?" followed by a loud laugh.  He wasn't a subtle presence.  Obviously, I saw him on his good behavior.  When I mentioned him to Audree long past his death she paused for a minute and said, "No, I've let that go."  It's sad that he was an abused abuser in a long line of abusers, apparently.  I guess one good thing we can say is that it stopped with him, thank heavens.  His kids channeled the positive and negative power/domination/high-energy stuff that they may have dealt with into killer bass lines and powerful music.  Hopefully, that redeems him in a way - he DID love music and his boys did what he couldn't or wouldn't do.   

It's easier for me to feel at least something for Murry, as despicable as he was. He probably thought to a degree that he was doing the right thing for his family. And early on, he did help them. I imagine he had to be insanely jealous of Brian's genius and success. And all three Wilson brothers have expressed love for him over the years despite all the terrible things he did to them. If he had grown up under different circumstances, it's possible Murry could have been a good person.

Landy was nothing but a person who exploited others for his own gain and took advantage of people who were mentally ill or addicted to substances. Besides Brian, there are many other people he hurt and some like Gig Young and his wife ended up dying and I'm sure Landy contributed to that in some way. Murry was a monster, but Landy was a demon, IMO.

Neither one of them can or should be defended.

Murry had a kind of excuse, in that abuse ran in the family (his father was, by all accounts, even worse) and that at the time, it was more acceptable. That said, his later actions remain despicable.

Landy, simply, was a complete sh*t, out for his own good only. Yes, he saved Brian's life but seriously... how tricky was it to work out you had to get him off the drugs, booze, cigs and binge eating ?  The drugs Landy pumped into Brian were directly responsible for the vast majority of Brian's problems today: bluntly, having saved his life didn't give him the right to almost end it again. Morgan ? She was there, she saw what was going on. She was complicit. Doesn't matter how good she looked in a bikini. As a friend of mine has said, Landy can't stay dead long enough.

Other than neurological issues, does Brian have any kind of lasting health problems that can be directly traced to what landy gave him? I've never seen that asked here before.

One million percent agreed

I say this with great love for this board and its contributors: This thread is a drag

I'm not saying I object to the discussion or want it stopped. It just points out the worst parts of Brian's life and the horrible people who contributed in those instances.

It's worth noting that Murry was mentally ill himself, it just manifested itself in a different way to Brian's.

So you're not going to watch Brian's movie?

Murray Wilson?  He had a pretty remarkable career.  In 7 short years he won the Stanley Cup 4 times...appeared in the playoffs 7 times [6 with Montreal/1 with Los Angeles...scored a total of 101 goals and added a further 116 assists while [over the course of 454 regular season and playoff games combined] he also added 211 minutes of penalty time...over 3 1/2 games worth...to his stats.  Not bad at all.  But that was entirely and only in the 70s. :hat

Huh?  Oh.  Sorry.  You meant Murry Wilson?  Brian speaks positively of his father's EARLY musical influences...of his teaching him how to play stuff on the piano and of his providing instruments and encouragement in THAT regard.  Brian also adds some pretty scary insight into Murry as a frightening and a physically abusive 'father figure'.  The results?  3 sons in various stages of needing help in order to deal with the lifelong after affects...none of them getting it early on and all of them suffering as a result.   Murry?   :o  Indefensible really.

Is it not true that Landy saved Brian from the brink of death...at least at one very crucial point in round one...before it all got stupid?   ???  To get Brian going again at the piano, as Mikie pointed out, was also a considerable accomplishment.  [again in round one]  Otherwise?  It would seem that he's where he belongs.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 


[Oddly...Wilson's name, by the way, is incorrectly spelt on the Stanely Cup as Murry Wilson 3 out of the 4 times it's been engraved there on it.  In 1973. 1976 and 1977 they got it wrong.  Only in 1978 did they spell it Murray instead of Murry]

I was 13 when the "Auto-Biography" came out.  I believed every word.  Maybe it was because I was 13, but I had no reason not to believe it.  I was a Landy defender.  It wasn't until I started diving deeper into the saga that I realized he was terrible.

The chapter on Murry in Jon Stebbins' The Beach Boys' FAQ pretty much summarizes what good points he had, along with all the negatives - with special attention paid to the disgraceful way in which he forced Dave Marks out of the band in '63.

Where Landy is concerned....here's something curious I found yesterday:

http://www.cantstopthebleeding.com/dr-eugene-landy-1934-2006

This is from the blog of Gerard Cosloy - yes, the famed label honcho/A&R guy who masterminded Homestead Records and then the Matador label, whose name was painted by Kurt Cobain (or maybe Courtney Love) on the wall of the latter's LA apartment in '91, as memorialized in a couple of photos often seen online.

I've known Gerard for decades and he isn't a BBs/Brian fan to any spectacular degree - he just put up a link to Peter Ames Carlin's Landy obit, and cut-and-pasted a chunk of it. But a few of the seven comments attached to it are interesting.

The first is from one M. Coombes, who says:

"It is interesting to see this all mapped out. I am also a former employee of Dr. Landy aka the Brains in Brains and Genius. I was there for 2 months in 1988 and it was 2 months too long. Dr. Landy was a real piece of work. When you worked there you had to sign a legal agreement stating you wouldn’t talk about what went on. So that’s why people were scared to speak up. It was all very sad."

No more than that, but I'm wondering as to whether one of these nondisclosure agreements could be found now, and what it might say. Did it bind the signer to silence in perpetuity? Was it across-the-board, or did it focus on speaking to media? (Since this is Landy, perpetuity and across-the-board would be safe bets.) And what did it say about Brian - if anything?

And, of course, Coombes was there when Landy was involved with Brian - what might he have seen and heard?

Second comment is from a Tracy Botelho:

"Something made me look up Dr. Landy and see what I would find. Reading the article was very interesting, and said information that I did not know. But it also gave me the thought of “right on, he’s not perfect too”. I have been a patient of his from Nov. 2001 – until his death. That man helped me to live again and realize that I am going to be okay in this crazy world. I have been clean and sober for 4 1/2 years, and I know I couldn’t do it without him. Yeah he was definitely a character, and use to crack me up all the time with his ways. But I am forever grateful for the life he helped me to find. He showed me that I could love and be loved, and he was right. I have been married for 3 1/2 years to a beautiful, loving and caring man. I will miss Dr. Landy immensely. Because of the gratitude I have for him I got a tattoo that reminds me of him. So I say and will always say, YOU ROCK Dr. LANDY, keep testing the waters and never stop being you. Love you always, Tracy"

So there it be - an ardent Landy defender, albeit one who apparently knew little of his involvement with Brian.  Ms Botelho has an extensive social media presence, although I gotta admit I'd be not so much interested in asking her about what Landy's Dr Jekyll side looked like as finding out what the hell that tattoo would look like.

Two more comments are worth cut-and-pasting. Here is a cryptic one, from a man giving his name as James Linderson:

"I met him in 1981. He used to travel to various countries while on vacation.

He was a psychiatrist until July 1 1988 when he was forced to leave the profession due to bad conduct and bad medical ethics with paitents.

He practiced psychiatry in secret until his licence was revoked.

He resigned as a mental health nurse in 1986. (August 13)

I met him again in 1987, 1988, 1991 and 1995.

He was a chronic smoker of tobacco.

Richard Wickham is like this doctor in New Zealand. He was struck off four times as a psychiatrist twice as a psychologist and three times as a mental health nurse.

Doctors need to be accountable and nice to their clientell.

They need to respect themselves and their clients and to be responsible and honest.

I am an anonnymous emailer."

(An emailer who raises a curious question because he says that Landy "was forced to leave his profession" on a specific day, well before his license was actually revoked. Did the California board handling medical qualifications quietly send him a request to stop practicing while it reviewed his license, which he disregarded?)

And from another defender of the Dr:

"Aloha Dr. Landy… It’s been a year since you left. I’m sorry you are still so maligned and misunderstood. You were the MOST effective therapist I’ve ever had. Your understanding of artists was remarkable! The controversy that still surrounds your methods astounds me. Your critics are mostly by those that didn’t know you. I was privaledged to be a patient of yours.
Thank You, I Love You, Camille [Komine]"

(Ms Komine, also known as Camille Hendrickson, was a makeup artist on Baywatch when it was shooting in Hawaii, and now has a food truck in Oahu that's been featured on Diners, Drive-Ins & Dives and has its own site. She also was the producer of the video "Playboy: Playmates In Paradise.")

Can you post which food truck so I'll know which to avoid, on the chance I get to Hawaii? 

And then legally speaking, would anyone know whether non-disclosure agreements are binding after the death of the instigator?

Some of you may have been around in the Beach Boys Internet world long enough to remember many years ago that someone happened to know the Wilson family's attorney, who agreed to answer questions from the fans. What was said even in that e-interview did reveal some not-terribly-horrible stuff about Landy. But some bits that I remember from the Q&A:

- Regarding Wouldn't It Be Nice: "[Landy] wrote the whole thing."
- Regarding rumors of Landy's homosexual interest in Brian: something like "We've heard those rumors, but we don't believe them to be true."
- Regarding Landdy's intentions: the attorney said they believed that in the beginning Landy had good intentions in the beginning. (The implication was that the control and $$$ came later on.)

And just like with Murry, Brian has said different things. Sometimes Brian is bitter about Murry and once said that the reason he's mostly deaf in his right ear is that Murry hit him in the head with a two-by-four. Sometimes Brian is bitter about Landy and at least once simply referred to him as "that guy." Other times Brian remembers Murry fondly. "He was my hero." He worked his ass off for the Beach Boys.  (And Brian also has said no, his bad ear isn't a result of Murry; he was born that way. Or someone accidentally hit him in the head with a board.) When Landy died Brian said he was "devastated" by the news. Lately he seems to have been more positive about Landy.

And no matter what, the fact is...Landy did save Brian's life, like it or not. He was the only person out there who actually could get Brian away from the drugs, the overeating, and what have you. No other shrink, hospital, whatever...could do that.

Going back to what I said about Landy's initial intentions versus what he eventually did...read The Wilson Project; I think even the recent reissue is once again out of print but you can still find copies online...but it is interesting about how in the beginning of the book when Gary Usher was first approached to collaborate on Brian's first solo album, it seemed that Landy was kind of scrutinizing Usher to make sure that he wasn't out to hurt Brian, but by the end of the book -- which covers about a couple of years later -- it's clear that Landy was all about the money and not much else.

Question for longtime BB fans: Did alarm bells go off with any of you when you first saw Brian's doctor was receiving co-write credits on songs?

bgas brings up an interesting point. By 1988, the California Board of Medical Quality Assurance, which issued and supervised licenses for professionals, was investigating Landy and not just regarding his association with Brian. If he was making people who worked him sign nondisclosure agreements, then if those agreements could be viewed as having been deliberately used to impede such an investigation, that would be reason enough to revoke his license.  

One reason why I wonder if this Coombes fellow could recall what the wording was.  Of course, it's also interesting to find someone who once served on the Landy team who is willing to say that two months with the doctor was two months too many. We've had very little in the way of firsthand accounts from the people who worked under Landy about what he was doing to Brian, no doubt partly due to nondisclosure agreeements and such.  I remember a while ago an SS'er was trying to track down Kevin Leslie and Evan Landy, but apparently without a reply, and on several threads here what Alexandra Morgan has had to say, ie not much of significance, has been discussed.

https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1144&dat=19711104&id=NawpAAAAIBAJ&sjid=mlAEAAAAIBAJ&pg=7272,1287935&hl=en

It probably doesn't need its own thread, so might as well toss it on here.  Above, an interview with Landy published in a Pittsburgh paper in '71 when he wrote The Underground Dictionary.  It differs in some significant ways from his standard biographical info.

For one thing, it's stated here that he dropped out of school not in the sixth grade, which would have been in the mid-1940s, but, he says, from high school "about 1950" when he was 15 or 16, that is, as a sophomore or maybe a freshman.

It is stated in the article that his problem in getting through school was "a hyperkinetic condition" caused by "brain chemistry" - which would be a diagonosis of ADD. Which is different from dyslexia, though since he says he spelled "at about a third grade level" before he went back to school, dyslexia probably factored in too. The article states that the condition was medically brought under control - presumably via Ritalin which was, at the time this was published, practically the only drug used for ADD. If Landy was indeed Ritalin dependent, it would explain to no small degree why he was as comfortable with overmedicating Brian as he was.

WTF?  And "ya sure!!!" were approximately my reactions...although it was good to see Brian composing and recording again so I, for one, just let it pass like water off a duck's back.  That was phase one again.  Landy likely wrote almost or exactly nothing.

Right. I was so happy to have an album from Brian, that I tried to write off any doubts about Landy. Still, I kept having those nagging thoughts.

I'd argue that Murry had his place in lighting a fire under Brian and helping get the band signed to Capitol...but after a year or so the band was light years beyond him and his influence. On the topic of Landy, love the guy or hate him, had Marilyn and Carl NOT intervened to get Brian some help Brian might not have survived past the early 80s.

Landy definitely saved Brian's life, much like Hitler built great roads.

Apples and oranges.

It seems really odd to me that abused children have a tendency to abuse their own children, but for whatever reason, that's the case. I wish Murry had been the one to break the cycle in the Wilson family, but he probably deserves at least a little sympathy for the rough life he had.

Landy gets no pass from me. In addition to everything that have been mentioned in the thread, does anyone else remember the bizarre story of Landy and "Eve of Destruction"?

http://www.goldminemag.com/article/perception-reality-singer-songwriter-p-f-sloan (http://www.goldminemag.com/article/perception-reality-singer-songwriter-p-f-sloan)

Oh, HA! wait a minute. You must have meant the bizarre story of PFSloan and Eve Of Destruction.
PF's mind, it is exploding....

This is my first actual post here, except for my intro on the New Members.

I met Evan Landy briefly in the late 90s through a mutual friend. This was some time after the Surf Nazi period. He was a very nice guy with a wonderful wife. At the time, I had a vague notion about Eugene Landy but didn't think much about it. What I did learn is that Landy-father was no less a control freak mind-fcuker with his own child than he was with Brian Wilson. When Evan was a teen, if he gained more than a couple of pounds he was sent off to rehab. If Eugene Landy did what he did to Brian, imagine what it was like to be his child.

My friend met Eugene Landy and described him as a guy with dyed hair wearing a sparkly track suit. Very friendly. Very slick. 

My vote goes to Landy as the worst, as he was exploitative without the love.  I think Murry did love Brian and recognized his talent, but Murry's great narcissism, insecurity, and his own abusive childhood superseded his love--a love I think was there.

PS. I've edited this because I realized that some info is unsubstantiated.

so basically he was like a car salesman...lol
(http://i59.tinypic.com/izahzm.jpg)

c'mon..Murry was way better than Landy,,,at least he had an album (the many moods of Murry Wilson) and didn't have to steal other peoples music.. :lol

Shudder...  I almost think that Landy might have tried to do an album of his own, produced by Brian, if he could have finagled it. The horror...

"Sweet Psychiatrist." would be the perfect name for it,,,,

He did; it's called Sweet Insanity.

Thanks for posting that.  

BTW, May Pang's book Loving John has a dedication to Landy...a very syrupy dedication. Anybody know what that was about??

I think Henry Edwards, who was May's co-author, was the one who thanked Landy. I think Landy was a friend of Edwards.

Back in the 80s, someone (who I won't name, but you'd know them) said to me with a completely straight face, "if you love Brian, you have to love Gene too".

That's very disturbing.

there was a time when many of us who were adults at the time and long time BW fans, thought it was great that some mental health guy had gotten Brian Wilson out of bed, got him jogging, had him back to writing songs.    but I would say, as someone mentioned, that many of us had mixed feelings when BW88 surfaced with so much credit going to Landy.  then the rest was revealed and we now have the bigger picture of what happened:    a guy with a psychology degree who had credentials and worked alongside respected and noted psychologists at the University Of Hawaii,   Got into a highly unethical dual relationship with a famous client.   everyone in the field knows above all to NEVER enter into a dual relationship and to seek peer input if there is any doubt about the possibility of such a relationship developing.   Landy deliberately went full steam ahead into such a relationship.    guilty on all counts.

Murry Wilson was Dad warts and all.    and Dads, often have dual relationships with sons, especially in a family business such as your children being entertainers.    Mommy dearest maybe.  but not criminal abuse within a professional therapeutic relationship.      BTW,    Who here has had a perfect relationship with  his or her dad?

Jesus ?  :-D

Seriously, like everyone else back in the early 80s I was thrilled to see Brian pulled back from an obvious precipice, and (also like everyone else) soon increasingly concerned at how Landy was infiltrating every aspect of Brian's life. The 1985 Musician article gave the spider senses a good workout and thereafter it only got worse. I only met the man once, at the legendary 1988 Stomp convention in London when Brian turned up, played three songs and signed something for all 350 attendees. The word that instantly sprang to mind was "odious", closely followed by "ingratiating", "smarmy" and "untrustworthy". God bless everyone who was instrumental in freeing Brian from this leeche's grasp, those known and unknown.

If you want an example of landy's behavior with other patients, read "Here's The Story" by Maureen Mccormick. It's quite disturbing, to say the least.

I would willingly sacrifice all the music ever made for everyone to be truly happy. Beat that.

I would willingly sacrifice all the happy people in the world for more great music. Beat that.

We could start sacrificing unhappy people for more great music, but once you start sacrificing people... it's hard to know when to stop.

You sound as if you speak from experience Ontor.  ;)

let's just say, there's a reason there are so many albums out by The Residents.

Exactly what I was saying earlier.