Brian Wilson, who died June 11, nine days before his 83rd birthday, has been widely celebrated as America’s greatest modern songwriter — but the music icon’s personal life was anything but harmonious.
The driving creative force behind the Beach Boys’ massive success was battered by his relentlessly demanding and abusive father, Murry, who reportedly slapped him so hard when he was a kid that he lost his hearing in his left ear.
While a protective Brian later denied it was his dad who caused the hearing loss, Murry continued to terrorize Brian and his late Beach Boy brothers, Carl and Dennis — who together formed the famed group along with cousin Mike Love and high school pal Al Jardine — well into their adult years.
“My dad was violent. He was cruel,” the “In My Room” composer wrote in his 2016 memoir, I Am Brian Wilson.
“When he didn’t put his hands on us, he tried to scare us in other ways. He would take out his glass eye and make us look into the space where the eye used to be.”
Brian eventually found the strength to fire his father, who was the band’s manager and died in 1973. This allowed the boy genius to follow his own vision and see the band rival the Beatles, with such leading names as Paul McCartney and Bob Dylan singing his praises.
Still, Murry’s relentless abuse haunted the Beach Boy, who dominated the ’60s pop charts with such groundbreaking songs as “Surfin’ U.S.A.”, “California Girls”, “Little Deuce Coupe”, “Good Vibrations”, “God Only Knows” and “Wouldn’t It Be Nice”.
With fears and doubts consuming him, he turned to drugs, including LSD — eventually leading to a full-blown panic attack on an airplane in 1964 and causing him to become a recluse in his Malibu home.
People reported that he “put his piano inside a huge indoor sandbox and for one two-year period never ventured out of the house.”
His demons cost him his marriage to first wife Marilyn Rovell, who divorced him in 1979, and led to his life being co-opted by notorious psychologist Dr. Eugene Landy — “a tyrant who controlled one person, and that person was me,” Brian wrote.
Second wife Melinda Ledbetter is largely credited with freeing Brian from the puppeteer’s clutches — and friends say he spiraled into dementia after losing her to cancer in early 2024.
“She gave me the emotional security I needed to have a career,” he posted on Instagram after her death. “She was my anchor.”
