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Author Topic: creepiest Brian/Landy article I've ever read  (Read 4785 times)
Emily
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« on: November 19, 2015, 08:25:30 AM »

I'm going to put the text in, because I don't know if the link will last. If this is the wrong place to put this, sorry ---

http://articles.philly.com/1991-10-23/news/25815256_1_eugene-landy-surf-and-sun-drugs

A Beach Boy's Blues For Brian Wilson, The Days Of "Fun, Fun, Fun\" Have Ebbed. Although He Has A New Book, He's Also Involved In Several Lawsuits. \"drugs,\" He Says, \"put A Gash In My Mind."

By Karen Heller, Inquirer Staff Writer
Posted: October 23, 1991

NEW YORK — Brian? Brian, are you there?

Brian Wilson's pupils have rolled northward so that only the whites are exposed; his head has snapped back, his mouth is agape. Though not a pretty sight, it is becoming a familiar one. Wilson, famous for creating the Beach Boys and the California surfing sound, equally famous for being pop music's great burnout, has just passed out for the sixth time in an hour.

His lapses in consciousness are brief, a matter of seconds, but there are other indicators that part of Wilson will never be in his $900-a-day hotel suite, never be in his Malibu house, never be anywhere that anyone, including Wilson, will be able to reclaim it.

In Manhattan to promote Wouldn't It Be Nice, his sad, sordid autobiography, which reached bookstores this week, Wilson cannot remember names. He has trouble counting, trouble concentrating and frequently asks, mid-answer, for the question to be repeated. He does not know his age. He starts to laugh and then forgets what caused his joy. Concepts are like the Himalayas.

"I don't know," he says, at the end of a convoluted answer. "I took a lot of drugs."

This may be an understatement. Wilson took a lot of drugs for 19 of his 49 years. "Drugs put a gash in my mind, in my functioning mind," he admits, his feet propped up on a formal coffee table. "When you have $3 million in the bank, do you think about writing a $2,000 check for cocaine? Noooooooo. It's nothing. SHOO! BANG! The next day, 'I'll take two kilos of grass, pleaaaase.' 'Give me a couple prescriptions for amphetamines.' All the time. Over the years. It screwed with, with . . . What did it screw with?"

He pauses. "Everything."

Wilson, the man who wrote some of pop's sunniest music, who sang of a world where the surf and sun were always up and the women were preternaturally girls, has been diagnosed both manic-depressive and schizophrenic. He was never been a cheery person, he concedes, and was always afraid of the Pacific surf. His once attractive face is twisted in a perpetual frown; his blue eyes are unfocused. And when he speaks, Wilson's voice is slurred, his lips somewhat frozen, as if he's recovering from a stroke.

Over the years, this California boy says, he has consulted more than 20 therapists. Since 1983, he has been guided by Eugene Landy, who practiced radical "24-hour therapy." In 1989, Landy was brought before the California Board of Medical Quality Assurance on charges of gross negligence, illegally prescribing drugs, having sexual relations with a female patient, and having a dual relationship with a patient as both a therapist and business partner. Landy acknowledged prescribing the drugs and surrendered his license to practice therapy. He was barred from treating patients for a minimum of two years.

While no longer his therapist, Landy remains Wilson's business partner, for which he is paid at least $300,000 a year, and lives in his former patient's spacious home while Wilson rents a smaller one. (As Wilson's therapist, Landy says he was paid $420,000 annually.)

''GOOD FATHER"

Wouldn't It Be Nice is dedicated to Landy, who will receive 30 percent of its proceeds. As Wilson tells it - through co-author Todd Gold - Landy is his ''good father" (even though he is only six years Wilson's senior) while Murry Wilson, his natural father who died in 1973, was a brutal terror, the source of Wilson's destructive tendencies. Wilson also accuses his father of striking him with a two-by-four, causing total deafness in his right ear.

Today, much of Wilson's life is taken up with lawsuits. His extended family - which includes his mother, Audree; brother Carl (the other brother, Dennis, drowned in 1983); daughters Carnie and Wendy (of pop trio Wilson Phillips) and cousins Mike and Stan Love - believe that Landy has reaped far more than the $3 million he says he has earned during his eight-year association with Wilson. What's more, they say, he stands to receive 70 percent of the singer's estate.

STAN LOVE'S SUIT

The family believes Landy has brainwashed Wilson. Stan Love has sued for conservatorship, and there are many who believe that Wilson wrote Wouldn't It Be Nice at Landy's prodding in preparation for the conservatorship battle. The book, they say, is supposed to serve as evidence of Wilson's independence and that he's benefited from his former therapist.

"It is shaping up to look like Brian is the victim, the family are the heroes, I am the villain in this piece," Landy recently told the Los Angeles Times. "(The truth is) he's on his own . . . self-sufficient."

Wilson is a wealthy man, who receives royalties every time such Beach Boys recordings as "Good Vibrations," "Help Me, Rhonda" and "California Girls" are played. But he could have been a great deal richer.

In 1969, Murry Wilson sold his son's song-publishing catalogue to a division of A&M Records for $700,000. Today, Brian Wilson estimates the catalogue is worth $20 million, a musical well for the creative minds on Madison Avenue. He has filed a $100 million lawsuit against A&M and the law firm involved in the original sale, claiming that his father falsely represented himself as the sole owner and forged his name on the transfer-of- copyrights forms.

He is engaged in another suit, this one against Sire/Reprise Records, which released his 1988 solo album. Wilson is unclear about the reason for this suit, however: "It has to do with money, I guess."

Wilson is in New York with assistant Kevin Leslie, said by some to be a longtime Landy aide. By Wilson's side, a tape recorder monitors the interview. On the desk rests a computer. "I use that to type up my daily reports on what I did - my thoughts on sex or a television movie - for my doctor," Wilson says. What doctor? "Dr. Gene Landy."

When he speaks about Landy, Wilson straightens his back and suddenly raises his voice, as if his partner might be listening in the next room.

"You see, he's a mystery to me, too, even now, maybe even to you," Wilson says. "He's a mystery because he's always here. He's always, he's like somebody who just doesn't not be there. He'll won't just not be there. He'll always be there, and I'm the type of guy who is always going to be here, too. So we get along great. We joke a lot to each other. How crazy and insane we all are. Our biggest chuckle is, 'We're crazy, aren't we?' "

POWER AND PRESENCE

Wilson speaks of Landy's power: "Gene has a lot of control over other people, but not the Beach Boys. He can control just about everybody else, but not the Beach Boys."

Landy's presence, he says, is with him always. "Maybe it's like, you know, you see ants going down the sidewalk, and then you see cars going down the highway, and then there's airplanes flying, and then they're these higher minds flying even higher.

"So maybe he's one of those higher minds. Maybe he's even God. God is such a nebulous way to explain reality away," Wilson says. "It's very, very nebulous when you think of the word God. So in order to understand life, I had to make some people God, or else I would never have understood it."

Long divorced, estranged from his family, Wilson's life is simple, the basic existence of a surf bum - without the surf. He gets up about 9 a.m. and works out, but most of the day is unstructured.

"I get down to business and do some really wild stuff, like musically," Wilson says as he tugs manically at his too-tight T-shirt. "I goof around. I have fun. I like to have fun." He has written songs, with Landy, but he is currently without a recording contract.

It is a rather solitary life for this one-time prince of the eternal summer. "I don't have very many friends. No close friends. I have a lot of distant friends. Women come after the important stuff," he says.

"My life centers around maybe two or three simple things: my music, Gene and, of course, my own spiritual well-being and my own spiritual personal goals.

"In my personal ambition, I have Gene and my career ambitions. And I have my personal secret ambitions, things I would like to evolve into, get better at. I'd like to get a little better at being assertive and thinking positive. I could use a little help. I'm a late-bloomer."

WILSON'S WORST

Landy and Wilson used to see each other for most of every day. Now, Wilson says it's only once a month. By all accounts, Wilson would be long dead without Landy. At his worst, Wilson weighed 340 pounds, smoked five packs of cigarettes a day, and could ingest four grams of cocaine in a single sitting. For two years, he hardly rose out of bed, never took a shower. For a while, he kept a two-ton sandbox in his den. Landy got Wilson to clean up, cut out the illegal drugs, the cigarettes and lose the weight.

Today, Wilson says, he takes five drugs prescribed by a doctor: Xanax, Eskalith, Navane, Serentil and Cogentin. Xanax is an anti-anxiety and anti- depressive medication. Eskalith is used to control manic-depression. Navane and Serentil are given to curb anti-psychotic behavior. And Cogentin is used to control the side effects of anti-psychotic drugs.

Used together, says Jeffrey A. Bourret, director of pharmacy services at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, they could cause small seizures and muscle spasms.

ALIENATED FROM FAMILY

There is no longer any family in Wilson's life - except for Landy and Landy's family.

"My mom is off the list," Wilson says, waving her aside as though she were a fly. "She sided with Stan Love and his conservatorship." Wilson is no longer close to his brother Carl, still very much a part of the Beach Boys, as he has long had a nasty battle going with the band. Group leader and cousin Mike Love is frequently criticized in Wouldn't It Be Nice.

Then there are his daughters, Carnie and Wendy, who are in their early 20s. He was, by his own admission, a dreadful father. In his book, he recalls trying to get his daughters, then not yet in grade school, to snort cocaine with him. He also recounts an incident where he failed to recognize Carnie.

''BAD MEMORIES"

In each of the last five years, Stan Love asserts, Wilson has seen his daughters for roughly one hour. (The same is true with his mother.)

If he's gotten off drugs and drinking, and is at what he calls his ''evenest," why doesn't Wilson try to mend relations with his daughters?

"Bad memories. Isn't that terrible? That I have to say my daughters give me bad memories," he says, calmly.

"When they were growing up, I was having some hell. I really was. I have some really tough hell, more hell than I ever thought I deserved. Bad vibes. Scared, lost, frustrated, angry and jealous, the whole bit," he says.

"With three No. 1 records and a No. 4 record, I would imagine they're doing fine," he adds, smiling.

It is suggested that Wilson, who points a long finger at his father for being neither proud nor supportive during his success, is doing the same with his own children.

"The thing is so off-the-wall I can't see them. It's like I pulled the curtain on them - or something like that."

Before Landy entered Wilson's life, "I was a loser. No, I was not a loser, strike that. I was impulsive and idiotic. That's it, impulsive and idiotic. I did drugs, acting stupid at parties, running around from place to place, making a fool out of myself, absolutely screwing up, absolutely acting like an imbecile."

And today, "I like who Brian Wilson is. I think that, see, not withstanding, not holding anything in check. . . . But you still can't argue with the fact, that higher minds and higher beings in the world, one or two people, if they're in the right place, can affect billions of people with music, with journalism - the right kind of journalism - and movies. The right people can gain control, could do a great, real great, kind of thing so I think . . . WHAM! RIGHT THERE! It's really great!" Wilson says, becoming agitated and squirming in his chair like an infant at dinner.

GREATEST SONGS

"Excuse me, what was the question again?"

Wilson has not written a big hit since "Good Vibrations." That was 25 years ago. He is bitter that his solo effort did not fare well and, in his book, blames this largely on the record company. He has only written three great songs, he says: "California Girls," "God Only Knows" and "Don't Worry, Baby." That's it. OK, he concedes, perhaps "Good Vibrations."

Brian Wilson, at age 49 (which he incorrectly remembers as 43), is well aware that his best songwriting is behind him, the days of gold records and swarming fans a memory now a quarter-century old.

"I think I'm still a little hung up on the fact that I'm stuck. Well, I'm stuck in a business that is competitive."

So he lives on the beach in his rented house, seeing a few distant friends, trying to make his brain with the gash in it function as well as he possibly can. Wilson says he is stronger, more independent than he once was, and that Landy does not control him. So, can he ever see his life without Landy?

"Yes," Wilson says, with some authority.

Then, seconds later, he slumps in his chair. "Within, I can see my life not completely without him."

More seconds pass. Wilson slides lower.

"No, no," he shakes his head.

"I can't see my life without Gene Landy," Wilson says. "It would be kind of like empty."
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Peter Reum
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« Reply #1 on: November 19, 2015, 01:18:43 PM »

This article illustrates the insanity that being around Landy generated. The author cites the drugs Brian was prescribed,  and the diagnoses. To put things succinctly, Landy was not even in the ballpark, and for that matter, the right planet. Thanks for posting this!
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Emily
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« Reply #2 on: November 19, 2015, 02:26:11 PM »

This article illustrates the insanity that being around Landy generated. The author cites the drugs Brian was prescribed,  and the diagnoses. To put things succinctly, Landy was not even in the ballpark, and for that matter, the right planet. Thanks for posting this!
I understand that you helped the recovery. Yay on you!
« Last Edit: November 19, 2015, 06:56:14 PM by Emily » Logged
tony p
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« Reply #3 on: November 22, 2015, 05:42:53 PM »

two kilos of grass??  Shocked

how long would that have lasted i imagine?

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SteveMC
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« Reply #4 on: January 05, 2016, 06:14:46 AM »

That's a heavy article.
I read Wouldn't It Be Nice when it came out in the early 90s now I think it was basically a Landy-controlled project.
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Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys said of Reynolds: "[He's] just about a god to me. His work is the greatest, and the Freshmen's execution is too much."
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