The Smiley Smile Message Board

I know that Barbara Charren Wilson is quoted as pinpointing Dennis's and Brian's further declines to the death of their father in 1973.
I would have thought that, with the amount of abuse they endured from him, they would have found peace when he finally died. Does anyone know or undertsnad why they went the opposite way?
Why did Dennis still seek to bond with his Dad over watching the fights etc, after they way his dad had treated him? Why didn't they all just abandon Murry after Sea of Tunes was sold (allegedly without permission)?

Does anyone else think that Dennis got away with far too much crap just because he was good-looking and charming??

Well they loved their dad despite it all and he loved them too. It's a matter of never being able to tell each other the way they felt or treat each other the way they intended. Brian and Dennis were using drugs already but he perhaps kept them (as Peter Carlin said) grounded.

That's an interesting point in human psychology, because that's often like that. They probably hated Murry for what he did to them, but on the other site the abuse also brought dependence. Most of all, they wanted to be loved and accepted by their father. That's what I think.

I am not convinced that Murray abused his kids despite all that's been written. In todays "don't spank your kids" world, he is probably thought of that way.
He probably had a temper and went too far a few times, but I don't think he was constintly beating and berading them. 

What Murry did was way beyond spanking.  If even half of what was written is true, he was a sadist.  Mike Love has said that most of the stories about Murry were true, and I don't think Mike Love would lie about something like that. 

I think Murry probably did some horrible things but I don't see him as "evil". Now Murry's father seems to be a real pr--k but Murry was well intended if wrongheaded

Even aside from the abuse of the boys as children, what makes Murry evil was selling Sea of Tunes right out from under Brian.  Its bad enough to do it to anyone else, but to his own son?  For me that would be far more difficult to forgive than his disciplinary methods (since as others have said, back in those days what he did wasn't considered as bad as it is today).  As Mike once said, "my darling uncle didn't die soon enough."