12.06.2009

The Beach Boy and the Surf Nazi: Brian Wilson Finally Comes Dirty on Dr. Eugene Landy and The 24-Hour No-Party People

SMiLE album coverImage via Wikipedia

Brian Wilson: a Beach Boy's own story

The Beach Boy and the Surf Nazi:

Brian Wilson Finally Comes Dirty on

Dr. Eugene Landy 

and

24-Hour No-Party People
Alison Powell
Published: 12:01AM BST 15 Jun 2008

At the peak of his success with the Beach Boys, Brian Wilson suffered a mental breakdown - and he still wakes up hearing voices. but he can hear music, too. As he prepares to 'bring the summer' to Britain, he talks to Alison Powell


It is morning in Southern California and Los Angeles wakes up to wash in the basin of another sun-soaked day. High atop Mulholland Drive, perched on the crest between the Pacific Ocean to the west and the San Bernardino Mountains to the east, one man yawns and stretches much like any of the other seven million residents. He's successful, but he's not the richest man in town. His face is well known, but there are others more readily recognisable.
As many handsome, well-groomed local burghers do, he gets into his Mercedes to cruise down to the local deli for breakfast. While driving, our guy turns on the radio to catch the weather and traffic and a few nice tunes for the road. Like every other southern Californian with a taste for oldies (and there are a lot of them - it is always 1968 or 1976 somewhere in California) he sets the dial to K-EARTH 101 and hears the DJ boom, 'The sound of the Southland!' But this is not just anyone. The 'sound' and the Southland itself owe their souls to the driver of this sleek sedan.
That song curling out of the speakers is California Girls and the driver of the car came up with the chords in less than a half an hour - after taking LSD. He is Brian Wilson, arguably the most important composer in American pop history. Self-taught, deaf in one ear and plagued by voices that tell him he is about to die, he produced one stunning hit single after another.
Being Brian Wilson has to be one of the world's hardest jobs: adored, revered and unable to run free from the things you did when you were young. Yet when I arrive at his house on a quiet Thursday morning his chaotic back story is nowhere on display. The one-time permanent resident of his own room has, for years, started his day with bracing exercise - once it was running, but now it is a walk through his serene, bougainvillea-filled neighbourhood. It is early and Wilson, his walk and trip to the deli completed, descends the sweeping staircase of his Spanish-style Beverly Hills home, where he has lived for the past eight years. He is trim and crisply groomed, with his hair swept back from his face in a careful alignment that would make The Sopranos' Paulie Walnuts jealous. Phones are ringing, most of his 16 dogs are barking, and on the foyer table sit two new paintings created just for him - on coconut husks. It is a busy but normal day. Right now they are all busy days as Wilson rushes to mix his forthcoming album, 'That Lucky Old Sun', in advance of a summer tour to Britain.
The life of Brian Wilson is complicated - and then some. His history is so vast and ornate that it is often necessary to arrange it into the key set pieces. Not that you'd know it by listening to his music, which conjures up images of surfboards, panelled cars, drive-in movies, sand, sun and cresting waves.
 MUCH MORE SURF NAZI DOCTOR AFTER THE WAVE

Wilson was a musical prodigy who, along with his late brothers, Dennis and Carl, his cousin Mike Love and friend Al Jardine, created some of the most beloved and enduring pop music ever. Wilson invited the world to California's new Gold Rush: tanned torsos danced across the 1960s, addicted to the layered harmonies of such classics as Good Vibrations, Surfin' USA, God Only Knows, and I Get Around. It was Fun, Fun, Fun. Except, for the Wilson brothers, it wasn't. The brutality of the family household is well documented, with their father, Murry Wilson, terrorising his talented sons, especially the sensitive Brian. The deafness in his ear is most likely the result of a punch to the head by his father when Brian was a child. It was the kind of house where hiding under the bed was a good idea, rather than a rascally eccentricity.
Fame, constant touring and the demands of the economic machinery of the Beach Boys dealt Wilson another blow, and this time he didn't get back up. In 1965 he stopped touring with the band so that he could stay home and do the job God laid out for him: write songs. But the demons kept on coming. He famously installed a sand box in his living-room so that he could feel his feet in the sand while he composed; he also ran, for a time, a health food store in West Hollywood called the Radiant Radish. It stayed open all night and Wilson manned the till himself; at one point Wilson wanted to open a 24-hour telescope shop in case someone got the urge to glimpse the stars when they were actually visible. No rock star has ever been as creative as Wilson was in his brand of lunacy. Brian the Man got very lost for several years; but Brian the Musician hung on, hearing melodies along with the voices, and it is that creative survivalist that made it through the dark back into the sunshine.
On the day we meet, the musical icon, who turns 66 this month, is a little itchy and eager to get going. He needs to get to the studio and, more to the point, tonight is 'Dad's Night' at his daughter Daria's school. What happens on Dad's Night? 'I don't know,' he says. Staccato answers are always a possibility with him. Melinda, Wilson's second wife, says later that she doesn't know either what is planned for the dads but, one year, there was a square dance. When asked what a day in the life is like for him now he says, 'Well, I get up and I feel a little crazy for a couple of hours and then I go to work. I take my exercise and go to the studio and stuff like that.' For better or worse, that crazy feeling is his, as much as the famous blue eyes, his 6ft-plus frame and a rapid-fire laugh his friends hear often. He suffers from schizoaffective disorder, a mental condition that went undiagnosed for years. It will probably always remain, and it means that Wilson hears voices in his head and suffers from painful bouts of depression. When things start to get bad, says Melinda, she sends him to his psychiatrist for a tune-up.
But one wants to veer away from the dense forest of Wilson's history because, looking at the man before me, it feels churlish to hack into the vines. The reasons for this are all around him. He has been married to Melinda, a blonde California beauty with the delicate features of Meryl Streep, for the past 14 years. Throughout the house there are family portraits of their three adopted children, two daughters, 11 and 10, and a son, aged four. It feels like a happy home. Wilson has only occasional contact with his older daughters, Carnie and Wendy.
The family lives comfortably but not ostentatiously. The Wilsons' swimming pool is no bigger than most of the others in town, and is probably a lot smaller than pools owned by TV writers and dentists. Upstairs sits Brian's music room, a cosy, masculine-feeling study, decorated in tartan and anchored by a gleaming piano. 'The other place was a dump,' he says of the previous house. 'My head was a sling. I was having a really bad time of it there. This place is much better. It is much more emotionally secure here.' Melinda explains why this home works so well. 'With Brian, it is all a vibe thing.' Of course, good vibrations.
His forthcoming British tour is designed to celebrate summer and, if necessary, will it into being with the sheer force of 10,000 Hawaiian shirts. He plans to perform classic Beach Boys hits the crowd can sing along to. 'It's like I'm bringing summer to them,' he says with genuine zest. The thought makes him happy. Mention Britain to him and, as the surfers say, he looks stoked. 'They like me there,' he says. When he performed at the Royal Jubilee gala in 2002, Wilson could not contain his excitement and, as Her Majesty passed by, he erupted, 'Hey, Queen!'
There are plans to release 'That Lucky Old Sun' one day earlier in Britain than in the States, and for good reason: it owes its existence more to the South Bank than the Southland. Commissioned by Wilson's musical holiday home, the Royal Festival Hall, the 36-minute piece gave him an opportunity to explore his relationship with his native land, being a sequence of shimmering, catchy pop songs rife with southern California characters and linked by a spoken-word narrative. Co-written with band-mate Scott Bennett and his long-time collaborator Van Dyke Parks, it calls to mind the complex and perfectly delicious structures of 'Pet Sounds' and 'SMiLE'.
The most haunting song on the album is also Wilson's favourite, Midnight is Another Day. He likes it because it is, in his words, 'pretty'. But he also describes it as 'self-introspective' and 'dynamic'. Wilson has spent a great deal of well-documented time on the dark side, and so has his aggressively cheerful California. The song asks a question he has no doubt pondered countless times, in his bathrobe, staring out at the lights of Los Angeles: is midnight the end or the beginning?
Wilson has often said that what makes Beach Boys music so rich is its yearning quality. One could add that this quality is a great part of what allows his music to bridge cultures and time. The source of that connection is, as might be expected, universal. 'The voices have a yearning feeling to them,' Wilson explains. 'When they all sing together, in harmony, it is one big yearning.' As he speaks, his hands are turned palm up, as if to receive - what - a gift from heaven? Except that he already has. 'He has a gift from God,' says Melinda. 'That is what it is. His art comes when it comes and it's not every day. He can't force a song. '
'He's like Mozart,' says Scott Bennett, in whose tiny one-bedroom apartment Wilson now does most of his work. But Wilson was born a long way from Salzburg, into a Californian culture where brilliance was something you strove to achieve on your chrome bumper. As much of a flatland of gas stations and burger joints as LA County is today, California generally was even more bereft of culture in the 1950s and 1960s, when the Beach Boys began to weave together Brian's complex harmonies. He is self-taught and made the most of the gentle but often dulling landscape by using it as a foil for his intricate ideas. The trials of his past - the physical and mental abuse by his father, the loss of his brothers, and the constant struggle for inner peace - never drove him away from home. Nestled in the arm of California, he appears to view it with the same wide-eyed acceptance with which he adores his family and friends. Life may have battered him with both fists, literally, but the eyes tell a different story. Piercing, yes, but full of wonder.
There is a similar current of joy that lies under the surface choppiness of his life. Of his own music Wilson says, 'I play because I like to hear the chords.' When asked what makes California Girls his favourite song, he says, 'I just like the bass line, dum be doo be dum be doo…' Cutting through the years of musical theory and criticism that often threatens to engulf him, Wilson says love is his inspiration - love of his family, friends, and the spirit of music. 'Love is important,' he says. 'I think it's a good thing and it makes you feel good.' Not for nothing do those closest to Wilson value him for his child-like innocence.
What about the 16 dogs? Even the Osbournes don't have that many. Is this one of the manifestations of the mental illness? Apparently not. Melinda describes an experience familiar to many families: they pass by a window, or a pet adoption centre, the kids fall in love and, oh, you know what happens when you gaze into the eyes of a puppy. Except most families stop at two, maybe three, depending on the garden. As Wilson and I speak, a small herd of terriers and chihuahuas stampedes back and forth in a corral in the back yard. One is named 'Ringo'. Does the real Ringo know that Wilson has a dog named after him? 'No.' Their yapping is relentless. 'God,' says Wilson, 'you know, I stepped on one of them one time. It scared the hell out of me so I'm always watching where I'm going now.'
One can see how Wilson could be spooked easily. When Melinda met him 22 years ago, she says, 'I felt sorry for him. He was clearly a guy who was in very bad shape. But it is hard to meet Brian and be with him when he opens up to you and not feel some kind of love for him. On our first date he told me everything. It wasn't romantic love at first. It was almost like how you would love a child.' At the time, Wilson was in thrall to his domineering therapist, Dr Eugene Landy, from whom Melinda, a former model and, at the time, car salesperson, rescued him. She fell in love with his kindness, his intellect and his compassion. 'And he wasn't demanding. You know, so many guys are demanding.' So are most geniuses.
Although Landy had set the wheels of the relationship in motion, and encouraged it at first, he insisted that Wilson's life be run on his terms. If Landy found out that Wilson had called Melinda, there would be trouble. So Brian would tip her off as to his running route along a certain highway, and they would meet secretly. Melinda says, 'It was crazy. We were like teenagers sneaking around trying to meet up.' At the time, she was 38 and Wilson was in his forties. He did finally break free of Landy, and they were estranged for many years before Landy's death in 2006. When asked how he felt about the passing of the man who was his world for 12 years, Wilson says, 'I was devastated.'
The contrast between those painful times and now is striking. Anyone who still thinks of Wilson as a 'shut-in', someone in his room working out impossible musical schemes and shunning the world has not met him recently. His legendary manias, the voices that speak to him, the depressions, they come and go, but he goes on. He is social and likes to travel with his band. He enjoys being on stage. The delight he brings his fans returns to him a hundred-fold. In his humility there is a sense that he feels intensely lucky, especially to be able still to play and listen to his own work.
'That Lucky Old Sun' could be misheard as 'That Lucky Old Son'. Brian is the oldest and only surviving Wilson brother, the one on whom a catastrophic amount of trouble was heaped. 'People don't understand about Brian,' says Melinda. 'The inner strength that it takes for him to get up every day to deal with the voices in his head… he's not this meek, weak person people think he is.' When I try to give Melinda credit for saving his life she demurs: 'Brian is strong. He chose to live.'
Music is where Wilson saves himself. To centre himself, he plays the piano and it is in the chords that he finds the balm. When the songs don't come, he feels it keenly. At the moment he, like California, is in drought: 'I've been feeling depressed for the past couple of weeks because I can't write songs,' he says. 'When I can't write it depresses me. I wrote 20 songs last summer but I haven't been writing very much lately, because I haven't been inspired. I'm waiting to see if I can.' Nothing can be done to shorten the wait. He just has to ride it out, all the way to shore.
In conversation, these clouds drift in, but they burn off just as quickly as they arrive. Even after answering difficult questions, the kind he has been asked thousands of times, Wilson's playful side bursts from him. At one point he reaches out and grabs my big toe, bare, and - thanks to a nervous habit of mine - probably bouncing. Worried, I ask him whether my foot was bothering him. 'No,' says Wilson, 'I just wanted to squeeze your toe.' This fits sweetly with an observation Melinda made with pride about her husband: 'He likes pretty things. He is a man.'
After two hours in a holding pattern it is time for Wilson to shift gears into the next part of his day. He is desperate to complete the mix on the new record. And yet his hopes for it are characteristically modest. 'I hope it sells,' he says. 'I'm worried people won't like it.' Adding to his urgency is the knowledge that if he gets to the studio soon, he can finish in plenty of time for Dad's Night. What would he say to the kids at the school who wanted to follow in his footsteps? He laughs and adopts the posture of a newsreader. 'I'll say, so, you want to be a rock star, do you?' And if the answer is yes? 'I'd say practise. Practise all your life. Get better and better all the time.'
Related articles by Zemanta
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]