Murry's eight page letter

[c-man]

Who is "Gwen"? 

I don't read 'Carl and Gwen' as being Carl Wilson if that is the interest.

This Carl was Carl Korthof, Jr. (Audree's brother).  The Gaines book says Gwen(n) was their sister, but more likely Carl Jr.'s wife (Audree's sister-in-law).

[PrayForSurf]

Gees bloody wizz!  :o

No wonder the Wilson clan was so screwed up!

 - - - -

And, to my amazement, their father (aka, Reggie Dunbar) is a co-writer of Break Away! How'd that happen? I find it hard to believe he had a significant role in the writing of lyrics or composing of the music though Alan and Carl talk about his involvement ("he helped voice some of the parts" (Hawthorne CA )). Might this be a sign of forgiveness/reconciliation?

All I've got is speculation; anyone have reliable info?

[MBE]

As off as Murry was or envious, there were still moments where I felt he was all too correct as to what would happen to his sons.

[Wilsonista]

The man was toxic to his children. Plain and simple. If he was "right" about how they would end up, it's probably because he knew deep down that he was a shitty parent. 

[Rob Dean]

Blimey , very very sad and interesting to read - No little wonder why Brian ended up the way he did !!!
Its makes you realise how good our parents were (even though we didn't think so at the time)....
If my dad had written a letter like that to me , i would have &^***£"&^^^^^ (no i wont go there , but you know what i mean)

Jealous comes to mind !!! But what a wonderful insight to us die-hard fans to read such stuff ??

[♩♬🐸 Billy C ♯♫♩🐇]

Did anyone else think of Landy when Murry was talking about love transference?

[Dancing Bear]

It wouldn't take a parent to notice those things in the Wilson Brothers. In fact, it would take barely one day to see that Brian had a need of approval from the 'cool crowd, that Dennis was self-destructive etc. Murry is mostly pointing all those frailties in his favour, but I think he's genuinely worried about their future too.

[Wirestone]

Murry's life is breaking down, no question. He knows his marriage is in dire straits and his kids have practically disowned him. The letter is in some ways very, very sad.

But in such circumstances, Murry doesn't reflect on himself at all. He paints himself as the ultimate victim. Victimized by Audree (of all people), by Brian, by the band. Never mind that he caused most of the problems in their relations with him.

[Chris Brown]

Murry's life is breaking down, no question. He knows his marriage is in dire straits and his kids have practically disowned him. The letter is in some ways very, very sad.

But in such circumstances, Murry doesn't reflect on himself at all. He paints himself as the ultimate victim. Victimized by Audree (of all people), by Brian, by the band. Never mind that he caused most of the problems in their relations with him.

Exactly right.  Murry seemed eager to be the martyr, to make Brian feel guilty for the dysfunctional state of their relationship at the time.  It was indeed a sad letter to read, as we really get a sense of just how alone Murry was.  He had alienated his entire family, yet, like you point out, he chose to blame everyone but himself.  Such a troubled man he was.

Thanks so much for posting that.  It was an absolutely fascinating read.

[Reggie Dunbar]

Guess some of you missed the numerous admissions of guilt and remorse reiterated
in this sad document. Easy to vilify the man but he was plainly injured and chose to
write what he probably couldn't verbalize. We can speculate all day long on the truth
of the matter, but it's apparent that perhaps his "angels" may not be as they have
been deified, personally or professionally. I'm willing to give him the same benefit of
the doubt. If you don't have kids, it's beyond your comprehension. The frustration of
unconditional love under duress is enough to put you in an early grave, as it did with
Mr. Wilson. It's not the love of The Beach Boys, a sandwich, B.J., ad infinitum - it's the
perpetual responsibility of making sure your kids don't repeat the same mistakes as
their elders and trying to secure them a better life simultaneously. Guilty or not, his
family shat on him when he needed them the most. Where's the love ?.

The apple never falls far from the tree.

Thanks for the link, insightful reading on a much maligned figure in the B.B.'s saga. Let's
hope for more forthcoming.

[Wirestone]

Preposterous.

Nothing Murry says isn't immediately backed up with "I was just trying to do the right thing." Yeah, like physically and verbally abusing your kids. He actually criticizes Audree for not hitting them hard enough.

His regrets are that he tried so darned hard to be honest, and he loved his kids so much, and now they just can't stand him for some darned reason. If only they would use his mixing skills! (Perhaps someone can find that quote from Chuck Britz about how they rigged Murry a fake mixing board so he wouldn't actually screw up the tapes.)

Practically every word is a strained self-justification. Yeah, he fell short, but there were reasons! Audree betrayed his natural leadership role. Brian is just so egotistical.

So how did the kids turn out?

-- Brian is an honest, decent guy. He's mentally ill. Yes, drugs damaged him greatly, but Brian would likely be some version of himself today without drugs. He has serious mental problems, and it's not a moral defect. It's a problem in his brain. It would have happened no matter who he hung out with, or whether or not he was a musician. We can debate triggers and extents, but if any of you know folks with severe bipolar disorder -- it can wreck lives. You don't have to be famous or hang out with "phonies."

-- Carl, likewise, was an honest, decent guy. He had some battles and scars, but everyone thought the world of him. Cancer took him from us too soon, but it happens to many folks.

-- Dennis was messed up. But that had little to do with music -- most accounts have him acting in exactly the same way though his preteen and teen years. It's hard to see how his story would have ended differently -- you don't have to be rich and famous to be an alcoholic.

I think the kids turned out okay, really. They married, sometimes more successfully than others. They had kids of their own, who by all accounts have done pretty well. So Murry's prognostications of doom are bunk. Things actually worked out okay. Not always perfectly, but things worked out. And the sooner everyone got free of him, the better off they were.

[Andrew G. Doe]

Guess some of you missed the numerous admissions of guilt and remorse reiterated
in this sad document.

No, not at all... but they were invariably expressed in a "poor me, pity me" tone. The comparison with Landy was perceptive - in this missive, Murry sets himself up as the one trustworthy figure by denigrating everyone else - even his nephew and wife, fer crissakes !

The reference to the band's 'novelty tunes' was particularly snide and underhand: remember, this letter was written in spring 1965, not fall 1962. My father used to say, "can't tell someone something they don't want to hear".

[Shane]

That is the most interesting thing I have read in a long, long time.  It's so personal, I feel as if I shouldn't be reading it.

This letter must have been written around the time when the relationship between Murry and his sons was at rock bottom.  I get the feeling the tension subsided over the next few years, though there's no doubt the relationship was probably still irreparably unhealthy.  By the beginning of the next year, Murry was attending the "Caroline, No" tracking session, and things seemed rather peaceful.  By 1969, Brian and Murry were working on "Break Away" together. 

[Surfer Joe]

Is there any chance someone would have the patience to save/screen cap and upload the pages? I'm not using a computer, so I can't download the software needed to view it. Sounds interesting, though.

I'm very patient  

There you go: http://img156.imageshack.us/img156/1135/murryslettermay8th1965.jpg

Thanks so much Day Tripper, Sloop, and everyone else who made this staggering document available.

Ho...Leee...Caaaa....rap.

I've always found the "Rhonda" session meltdown sort of pathetic, and empathized with Murry on that one night as a sad figure who had lost his manhood.  This is another matter.  This is truly malevolent. This is pathological. Besides the lethal cocktail of illnesses and disorders that I'll leave to the more qualified analysts- narcissism? paranoia?- it's just clear and unmistakable emotional abuse of every kind, and an unintended admission to all kinds of past guilt. What an insight into what the Wilson brothers really came from.  

I have to concur completely with claymcc and Andrew here. Murry was a failed cult leader.

And Audree is always tagged as an enabler...someone who stood by and did nothing to save her sons.  Here Murry has her as just another traitor in his personal jihad against everyone else.

This is, to me, final and conclusive proof that the Wilson brothers were victims of serious childhood abuse.

I think this was probably just one of many, many lapses into an episode of severe depression, probably an extension of the (obviously) life-changing moment (and well-documented severe depression episode) when he was fired by his sons, and clearly at the end he's still looking for a reckoning from that.  This one just happened to be documented for us.  And this wasn't Murry every day of the week. But ignore that- whether or not he actually sent it, whether or not he would have said all these things the day before or the day after, whether or not be actually did try to convene a meeting disbanding the Beach Boys in 1965 (!!!!!) because they wouldn't let him manage them, or pressed his barely veiled blackmail threats into the open, this is the real Murry, right here. This is fallout from the nuclear waste that was inside, eating away, all the time. The world treated him wrong. No one understood him or his genius.  He had been cheated.  "How can I help them if they won't listen to an intelligent man?"

You know what rant this reminds me of?  I really hate to say this- (get ready with the tired Internet gag term about the inevitability of bringing up the Nazis)- it sounds like the final Political Testament Hitler dictated in the bunker right before he shot himself. Justifying his mistakes, obfuscating, blaming everyone else, fatalistic; calling everyone else a traitor, predicting the bleak future of a world without himself, and trying desperately to scorch the earth he left behind. In other words, the ravings of a disordered mind that can only see the world as it serves him to see it, can only see others as they fit into his world. What he did to Dave Marks was right, because he did it, and did it out of love, or maybe it didn't even happen in his world.  But Brian singing with his friends Jan and Dean...well, that was actually immoral, because it hurt Murry.

I leave you with this definition of narcissistic personality disorder from Wikipedia:

Hotchkiss[10] identified what he called the seven deadly sins of narcissism:

   1. Shamelessness - Shame is the feeling that lurks beneath all unhealthy narcissism, and the inability to process shame in healthy ways.
   2. Magical thinking - Narcissists see themselves as perfect using distortion and illusion known as magical thinking. They also use projection to shame dump onto others.
   3. Arrogance - If a narcissist is feeling deflated, he can reinflate himself by diminishing, debasing or degrading somebody else.
   4. Envy - If the narcissist's need to secure a sense of superiority meets an obstacle because of somebody else, he neutralises it using contempt to minimise the other person's ability
   5. Entitlement - Narcissists hold unreasonable expectations of particularly favorable treatment and automatic compliance because they consider themselves uniquely special. Any failure to comply will be considered an attack on their superiority and the perpetrator is considered to be an "awkward" or "difficult" person. Defiance of their will is a narcissistic injury that can trigger narcissistic rage.
   6. Exploitation - can take many forms but always involves the using of others without regards for their feelings or interests. Often the other is in a subservient position where resistance would be difficult or even impossible. Sometimes the subservience is not so much real as assumed.
   7. Bad Boundaries - narcissists do not recognize that they have boundaries and that others are separate and are not extensions of themselves. Others either exist to meet their needs or may as well not exist at all. Those who provide narcissistic supply to the narcissist will be treated as if they are part of the narcissist and be expected to live up to those expectations. In the mind of a narcissist, there is no boundary between self and other.

[END QUOTE]

You could plug in excerpts from Murry's letter after each of those seven.

[juggler]

Did Murry do the hand-edit of "HATiNG" on the 8th page?

'Cause there it is again... The idiosyncratic, SMiLE-style lower case "i" in the middle of capital letters.

[Smilin Ed H]

"Guess some of you missed the numerous admissions of guilt and remorse reiterated
in this sad document."

No. It had the ring of someone excusing himself before a jury for abusive behaviour towards his children.

[Cam Mott]

I think I agree with Reggie.

I don't think we can draw a lot of conclusions from this letter, for instance, how do we even know this letter got sent? Seems to be a draft. Is this a response to some communication from Brian?

I feel for all of them.

[Amy B.]

No, we don't know if Brian wrote an equally accusatory letter and Murry was responding to it. But one difference is that Brian was still in his early 20s and very immature (we know this because in many ways he still IS immature), and he was under a LOT of pressure, still trying to understand who he was and what he was supposed to do with his talent (possibly the reason why he hung out with all those guys who thought he was cool), and a sensitive parent would have recognized this. Yes, Murry tells Brian he's intelligent and talented, but always in a negative light, as in, "You're so intelligent, but you're arrogant about it." Not once does he say, "I'm proud of what you've accomplished." It's always "Look how far you've come (under my guiding hand), and now you're in danger of throwing it away." I think Murry loved his children dearly, but he had serious problems when it came to communicating with them. Not only did Murry tear at Brian, but he tore down Brian's mother in that letter. He basically said, "Everyone you love except me is a bad or dysfunctional person." It's easy to see why Brian has the problems he does.

[c-man]

By the beginning of the next year, Murry was attending the "Caroline, No" tracking session, and things seemed rather peaceful.  By 1969, Brian and Murry were working on "Break Away" together. 

I don't think Murry attended the "Caroline, No" session in person...IIRC, he was on the phone with Brian, who held up the receiver to the control room monitor speaker at one point.  He eventually suggested Brian speed up the master tape, which Brian did, so obviously his opinion still mattered.  But as far as I know, after "Rhonda" Murry didn't attend another Beach Boys sesson until he sang on "Be Here In The Mornin'".

[Beach Head]

This is what happens when you have too much free time on your hands ...

Is anybody interested in having a transcript of the letter posted in this thread?  (I ran images of the pages through an OCR program, then meticulously corrected the results.)

[urbanite]

Doesn't anyone feel a little uncomfortable reading the private letter of a father to his son?  I don't know anything about how the Hard Rock obtained the letter, but some things are family matters and don't belong in the public domain, even the family life of a member of the Beach Boys. 

[Dancing Bear]

Brian told us all about shiting on a plate and 2 by 4s. I'm sure he wouldn't mind if we read this letter.

[Cam Mott]

I did feel uncomfortable reading it, but I did anyway.

This is a letter from a father to an adult son. Probably not what Murry considered his proudest father moment but desperate parents of progeny in what they see as desperate situations do desperate things sometimes.

[Amy B.]

Interesting...I guess the uncomforable feeling comes from the fact that it's relatively recent, and Brian is alive. If this were a letter from Mozart's father to Mozart, it would be a historical artifact and nothing more.

[PongHit]

He basically said, "Everyone you love except me is a bad or dysfunctional person."

Right, just like Landy would many years later.

Was Murry threatening to 'leak' nasty info about the band to the press??

Do you think Brian really did feel guilty, as Murry predicts in this letter?

This was a fascinating document to read.