How much did drugs do to brian's mind?

[Wirestone]

For what it's worth, my experience with Brian -- in an tiny, backstage setting -- was similar. When he's in a small group, and around people he knows, he can be kind of a take-charge guy.

There's also something here that people sometimes don't understand -- Brian has fears that are kind of logical. He took John Lennon's death very hard, and has talked about his fears of something similar happening to him. And I recall about three or so years ago that some FBI files were released that showed Brian had indeed been threatened over the course of a year or two in the late 90s, early 2000s, by a stalker. The person had his home phone and would call him up.

How would that make a lot of us act in public situations?

[Ron]

Melinda claimed once that Brian was scared to death to say anything publicly detrimental about Landy, because he was afraid that Landy would show up at his house. 

Now, that sounds kind of crazy at first... but hell we don't know what Brian knows about Landy, or if Landy ever threatened him, or hell maybe Brian knows Landy had somebody hurt, or whatever. 

So there's a couple ways to look at it

1. It could have been mentally ill Brian emotionally not wanting to deal with Landy

2. It could have been an irrational fear that a mentally ill man can subscribe to anybody or anything ("I'm afraid of lighting bugs!!!")

3. It could have been a rational fear, based on prior experience with the man.

Of course all that is moot now with Landy gone. 

As for the drugs, drugs are drugs.  I agree with everyone that Landy did more harm than the recreational drugs did, but I'm not in the camp that excuses his use of those.  Someone with mental illness should absolutely not be using recreational drugs. 

[Ron]

One more thing I just noticed, the original question was "how much did drugs do to Brian's mind?". 

Personally, and you can call me naieve if you want, I think Brian's overcome all the issues drugs (Landy's, or recreational) caused in his life.  His 'mind' may have been messed up for periods of his life, but I think he's pretty straight now.  Now, the illness is still a factor, etc.  .. but if you're saying Brian's a burn-out, I disagree.  I think he's as sharp as he ever was, and some of his erratic behavior you see hints of, PRE drug use. 

[Runaways]

I think Brian's mind is as straight as it could be post landy.  I think a drug less 1970s Brian would be sharper.  But I guess you could say that about most people, but 70 isn't that old.  Harrison ford is 70, he could still kick ass.  Wasn't there an interview recently where Brian said he was amazed at how fast his young self could talk?  That's kinda telling. 

[Dunderhead]

What do you guys think thorazine did to Brian?

[Amy B.]

Obviously the only time many of us have seen him is either in a staged M&G or when there's a camera on him, and both of those situations are bound to make him clam up. Wasn't there a story of someone who went to interview him (a friend or acquaintance) where Brian was totally charming and verbose...until the tape recorder went on. He then clammed up and asked the guy to turn off the tape recorder. Then, with the recorder off, he became his talkative, friendly self again.

[♩♬🐸 Billy C ♯♫♩🐇]

What do you guys think thorazine did to Brian?

f***ed him up, probably.

I often wonder though what kind of damage was done to him in 1968 when he was institutionalized. Electro-shock, perhaps,  which probably didn't have the best possible effect on Brian.

[Dunderhead]

What do you guys think thorazine did to Brian?

f*cked him up, probably.

I often wonder though what kind of damage was done to him in 1968 when he was institutionalized. Electro-shock, perhaps,  which probably didn't have the best possible effect on Brian.

Have we ever narrowed down the dates for this? I've heard I Went To Sleep was based on that experience, and the track for that was done June, 4 1968. So it had to be before than right?

[Iron Horse-Apples]

I've also heard a lot about how Brian can be quite normal under relaxed conditions. Hasn't he always used bizarre behaviour as a shield?

[Dunderhead]

What do you guys think of May, 1968 for the period of Brian's commitment? April seems like it would have been a hard month for him. As soon as Mike got back from India, after two months of not playing any shows, the very first gig they were supposed to do was called off. Martin Luther King Jr. had been killed. Though this was probably not an overwhelming blow for Brian, I imagine the news was a little hard for him to swallow.

The Friends single came out April 8th, it was the worst charting single A-side since "10 Little Indians".

April 29th Carnie was born. I've heard Marilyn said Brian first became noticeably different around this time, and sometimes cried in the middle of the night.

Less than one week later, Sunday, May 5th, the band's Maharishi tour was canceled. In a January '68 interview Brian sounds fairly hopeful about The Maharishi, and said he wanted to write some songs about meditation. Now The Maharishi dumped the band, and according to AGD cost them $250,000 (upwards of $2 Million in today's money). This cost was on top of the band's existing financial trouble, and the money they owed Capitol for canning SMiLE.

May just feels ripe for renewed mental health issues, hell, May, 1968 must have been a very unpleasant month for the entire band. No recording was done, no shows were given. The conversations that month could not have been fun. I imagine Brian was committed sometime in there, maybe a few days later when the rest of the guys made it back to LA and started talking about their continued solvency as an organization. Brian went away for a couple of weeks, and when he came back things had maybe settled down a bit. Brian had a few new ideas he wanted to try out, and he likely consented to writing and recording a commercially viable single at the behest of Mike and/or the rest of the band. They talked things over, spent a few days regrouping and banging out some ideas and returned to the studio May 26th.

These sessions however did not go well from everything I've heard. All of the old problems surfaced again, Brian's time in the institution hadn't cured him and he went back to his compulsive recording habits on Old Man River. I've never read anything about how exactly the arguments played out, but the fact that those sessions didn't pan out speaks pretty loudly.

That's just what I came up with for a timeframe after a little thought, does anyone have anything they can add?

[Runaways]

Interesting stuff.  I really love the recording sessions of that time.  Was walk on by in the same time period?

[Myk Luhv]

Fishmonk, you said somewhere on this forum -- maybe this thread in fact -- that "I Went To Sleep" was written by Brian about his time institutionalised. I've also heard it suggested the song is about coke. I'd be very curious what makes you suggest this, not because I disagree but because that song is over before it even begins and little is known (at least to me) about its writing.

[runnersdialzero]

"I Went To Sleep" about being institutionalized? Or cocaine? That's a fuckin' baloney sandwich and a half, if I ever heard it. Why does everything Brian writes have to be about doing drugs or some horrible thing that happened to him? Can't a guy just write a nice little song about going to the park, spacing the fuck out and falling asleep?

[MyGlove]

So Much

[Iron Horse-Apples]

Hello Kitty, how the f*** did you bypass the swear machine?

[Chocolate Shake Man]

What do you guys think of May, 1968 for the period of Brian's commitment? April seems like it would have been a hard month for him. As soon as Mike got back from India, after two months of not playing any shows, the very first gig they were supposed to do was called off. Martin Luther King Jr. had been killed. Though this was probably not an overwhelming blow for Brian, I imagine the news was a little hard for him to swallow.

I would say late summer or early autumn, after the songs were sold by Murry and after a productive series of recordings. After that period, there is virtually no involvement by Brian in the recordings in 1968 to the extent that he was involved in them from the rest of the year. There are no new Brian songs, and the band begins taking stuff out of the vaults or contributing their own material.

[pixletwin]

"I Went To Sleep" about being institutionalized? Or cocaine? That's a fuckin' baloney sandwich and a half, if I ever heard it. Why does everything Brian writes have to be about doing drugs or some horrible thing that happened to him? Can't a guy just write a nice little song about going to the park, spacing the fuck out and falling asleep?

QFthefuckingTruth

 

[Aegir]

Hello Kitty, how the f*ck did you bypass the swear machine?

It's really fucking easy.

[Dunderhead]

"I Went To Sleep" about being institutionalized? Or cocaine? That's a fuckin' baloney sandwich and a half, if I ever heard it. Why does everything Brian writes have to be about doing drugs or some horrible thing that happened to him? Can't a guy just write a nice little song about going to the park, spacing the fuck out and falling asleep?

Possibly, but I also very much dislike the whole "Brian never wrote a song with any subtext" thing. I've heard this little rumor for years, it very well might not be true. My post was just an attempt to make sense of things, if Brian went to the hospital in May, and started working on I Went To Sleep a few days after he got out...well...

[b00ts]

"I Went To Sleep" about being institutionalized? Or cocaine? That's a fuckin' baloney sandwich and a half, if I ever heard it. Why does everything Brian writes have to be about doing drugs or some horrible thing that happened to him? Can't a guy just write a nice little song about going to the park, spacing the fuck out and falling asleep?

Possibly, but I also very much dislike the whole "Brian never wrote a song with any subtext" thing. I've heard this little rumor for years, it very well might not be true. My post was just an attempt to make sense of things, if Brian went to the hospital in May, and started working on I Went To Sleep a few days after he got out...well...

Yes, who knows... From personal experience I can say that people ascribe weird and entirely unrelated things to lyrics - the sky's the limit, really - especially when the lyrics are abstract. It is still a worthwhile discussion.

However, Cocaine? It is not a drug that is conducive to sleep, from what I understand. Perhaps after he used it, he would go to sleep...

[Wirestone]

Yeah, it's likely not a song about coke. But that being said, "I Went to Sleep" is definitely suggestive of drug experiences.

[Jim V.]

I don't think "I Went to Sleep" is about coke at all. Mostly because of all the things coke makes you do, none of them is sleep.

[runnersdialzero]

I don't think "I Went to Sleep" is about coke at all. Mostly because of all the things coke makes you do, none of them is sleep.

Haha, exactly.

[ivy]

 Brian leans in, grabs my hand, and says "I can see you've had some dark times in your life."

Wow! Great story. That's a memory for life. I wonder how many other stories like this are out there.

How did you react to that statement from him?

What do you guys think of May, 1968 for the period of Brian's commitment? April seems like it would have been a hard month for him.

I don't think that these type of guesstimations are particularly useful when considering with mental illness. Most of the time there is no outside cause.  Mostly likely he was just getting sicker and sicker until he did or said something or felt something that got him committed. 

[Dunderhead]

I don't think that these type of guesstimations are particularly useful when considering with mental illness. Most of the time there is no outside cause.  Mostly likely he was just getting sicker and sicker until he did or said something or felt something that got him committed.  

Brian seems like he has a pretty atypical case of mental illness. It seems to combine panic attacks, schizophrenia, and bipolar mood disorder. He likely checked himself into the hospital in 1968 after a severe panic attack. There's a story of him doing the same thing when work started on BWPS, and his panic attack on the airplane in the early sixties is well known.
I don't think it was a case where he got so crazy he had to be committed by his family because he was rambling on for hours about incomprehensible nonsense while calling himself Jesus. I don't know to what extent Brian has auditory hallucinations, but it seemed more like a combination of marijuana/amphetamine use and a panic disorder that caused some of his serious problems 1966-1968. I simply think the question of when he entered the hospital is interesting in of itself.

I Went To Sleep seems too oppressive to me to be simply about zoning out. It always reminded me Brahms' 4th Symphony, there's just something about the e minor key, it's a song with an ambivalent sort of melancholy. It's not a happy song about about taking naps, there's something depressed about it. The lyrics too are a little strange,

Again at the park on a nice summer day,
high up above me the trees gently sway,
a bird flew away,
and I went to sleep.

It's the link between the bird and the singer that seems so odd to me. The singer isn't able to fly away free like the bird, he falls asleep. There's also something sort of hopeless in the repetition of the park. Like the singer isn't getting anywhere, he's right back where he started.

Even the shared lead vocal makes the song seem very impotent and depersonalized. It isn't even Brian singing, it isn't anyone. The singer is lost and unable to find himself, confused, voiceless.

All these things paint a different picture of the song for me. I wouldn't be surprised at all to find out the song was about Brian being administered sedatives, it's a very beautiful song and I think you can't discount interpretations like this, it has a more complicated set of emotions behind it than you're giving it credit for.