| Excerpt | | | | sings had been a Wilson family tradition |
| | | | dating back to Kansas and beyond, as an |
| The following is an excerpt from the book | | | | eighty-seven-year-old Charles Wilson (an |
| Catch a Waveby Peter Ames Carlin | | | | uncle to Brian, Dennis, and Carl) would tell |
| | | | Timothy White, describing nights on the |
| Published by Rodale; July 2006;$25.95US | | | | Kansas plains when "we'd have shows on |
| $34.95CAN; 1-59486-320-2 | | | | Saturday nights, with three of the oldest |
| | | | brothers on guitars and mandolins. This was |
| Copyright © 2006 Peter Ames Carlin | | | | at home, with the windows open to the street, |
| | | | and people would stop and listen." |
| Chapter 1 | | | | |
| | | | Even Buddy, a man with no discernible |
| Brian Wilson, the Beach Boys' original | | | | instincts toward paternal tenderness, loved |
| songwriter, producer, and visionary, is in | | | | to sing with his kids. He'd long since come |
| his sixties now, a man of age and wealth and | | | | to admire the sound of his own tenor voice |
| almost no discernible interest in the world | | | | anchoring the family blend. But even more |
| as it existed before him, particularly with | | | | important, weaving his voice together with |
| regard to his family and their own journey | | | | those of his wife and kids was as close as |
| across the continent to the golden coast | | | | Buddy could get to actual emotional intimacy |
| where he was born. "We never talked about | | | | with his family. And perhaps this was why |
| that stuff," Brian says. It is the spring of | | | | Murry, the son who had come to be the |
| 2004, and he's in one of his favorite | | | | family's last line of defense against their |
| restaurants, a bustling hillside deli in a | | | | drunk, vicious father, came to love music so |
| mall down the street from his home on the | | | | very much. He taught himself to play guitar, |
| crest of Beverly Hills. "That's the one thing | | | | too, and he picked up piano from his big |
| they never did, never talked about our | | | | sister. And when the living room radio picked |
| ancestors at all." Now, it's hard to know if | | | | up broadcasts from the elegant nightclubs of |
| Brian is saying this because it's true or | | | | Hollywood or downtown Los Angeles, Murry sat |
| because he just doesn't remember any such | | | | in front of the speaker and soaked it in, his |
| conversations. Or, more likely, he just | | | | face glowing happily. What he was hearing was |
| doesn't want to address the issue. He's an | | | | an entirely new vision of the world. Here, |
| intimidating man, both for all he's achieved | | | | life was filled with luxury and ease; a place |
| in his life and for all he's suffered along | | | | where careers could be made and fortunes |
| the way. And given the remove of his | | | | earned, all by the grace of a clever new |
| celebrity and his psychic torment, it's hard | | | | song. Sitting in front of the radio, aloft on |
| to separate the humor from the horror in his | | | | the arc of a pretty melody, Murry Wilson had |
| eyes when he does recall something his father | | | | come to realize something: More than anything |
| did like to say. | | | | else in the world, he wanted to be a |
| | | | songwriter. |
| "Kick some ass!" Brian is smiling now, in his | | | | |
| silly, sad way. "Exactly, that's what my dad | | | | But if Murry could be just as dreamy as the |
| said. Kick ass! Kick ass!" | | | | next aspiring pop star, he was also a realist |
| | | | who had grown up knowing exactly how |
| Murry Wilson was a big guy with a big | | | | important-and difficult-it could be to buy |
| personality and even bigger dreams of glory. | | | | the bare essentials of day-to-day life. He |
| That he would attain them through the work of | | | | was a mediocre student at George Washington |
| his sons was a source of great pride and | | | | High School, but the rock-jawed youngster |
| outrage from the old man. "My relationship | | | | left school in 1935 armed with a steely |
| with my dad was very unique," Brian says. "In | | | | resolve to find work. And though the rest of |
| some ways I was very afraid of him. In other | | | | the nation was still mired in the teeth of |
| ways I loved him because he knew where it was | | | | the Depression, Murry landed a job as a clerk |
| at. He had that competitive spirit which | | | | with the Southern California Gas Company. He |
| really blew my mind." | | | | was still employed there when he met and, in |
| | | | 1938, married Audree Korthof, the |
| "Don't be afraid to try the greatest sport | | | | sweet-natured daughter of a stern, |
| around." That's the story of Brian's life. | | | | hard-working baker who had moved his family |
| But also the story of his brothers, his | | | | west from Minnesota when Audree was a |
| cousin and friends, and all of the ancestors | | | | schoolgirl. Murry and his new wife settled in |
| whose ambitions, fears, hopes, and | | | | southern Los Angeles, reveling for a time in |
| determination delivered them to this land | | | | Murry's ascendance from the gas company |
| beneath the unyielding sun. California, here | | | | office trenches to a junior administrative |
| we come. Right back where they started from. | | | | post. When Audree became pregnant in the fall |
| "Catch a wave and you're sitting on top of | | | | of 1941, Murry's determination to succeed and |
| the world." | | | | to outdo the sad, bitter legacy of his father |
| | | | only grew more intense. The couple's first |
| As described by Timothy White in his | | | | son, Brian Douglas Wilson, was born on June |
| intricately researched The Nearest Faraway | | | | 20, 1942, bearing the same blue eyes, dark |
| Place, the story of the Wilsons in America | | | | hair, and prominent brow that had followed |
| begins in the late eighteenth century, when | | | | the family across the generations. |
| the first Wilson to venture to the New World | | | | |
| settled in New York. The first American-born | | | | Murry and Audree welcomed two more boys into |
| family member, named Henry Wilson, was born | | | | their family in the next four years-the |
| in 1804 and eventually moved west to Meigs | | | | fair-haired Dennis Carl Wilson coming in late |
| County, Ohio, where he worked as a | | | | 1944 and Carl Dean Wilson, another |
| stonemason. His son, named George Washington | | | | dark-featured boy, at the end of 1946. Moving |
| Wilson in the spirit of the times, was born | | | | his family to a modern, if cozy, two-bedroom |
| in 1820, and he and his family farmed a plot | | | | ranch house on West 119th Street in the |
| of rich, river-fed land in Meigs County for | | | | blue-collar suburb of Hawthorne, Murry rolled |
| more than six decades until his own son, | | | | his sleeves up over his bulky forearms and |
| William Henry Wilson, decided to pursue | | | | set to scratching out his own slice of the |
| fortune west to the wide-open plains of | | | | postwar economic boom. He'd already made some |
| Hutchinson, Kansas. So west they went, with | | | | progress, jumping to a junior administration |
| patriarch George in tow, settling onto a | | | | job at the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company |
| large, if relatively arid, farm that William | | | | just after Brian's birth and then, just as |
| Henry soon abandoned in order to go into the | | | | the war ended, to a foreman's position in the |
| industrial plumbing business. Contracts to | | | | manufacturing plant of AiResearch, an |
| work on the state's new reformatory system, | | | | aeronautics company that made parts for |
| along with the many opportunities afforded by | | | | Seattle-based Boeing Aircraft's growing line |
| the modernizing world around them, provided a | | | | of civilian and military airplanes. |
| decent working-class living and a solidly | | | | |
| built clapboard bungalow on one of | | | | By the end of World War II, the South Bay |
| Hutchinson's nice residential streets. As the | | | | revolved around the thriving aerospace |
| nineteenth century gave way to the twentieth, | | | | industry. Borne up by the dual demands of a |
| William Henry began to think again of chasing | | | | rapidly expanding civilian airline market and |
| fortune into the western horizon. | | | | the just-as-rapidly-growing tension with the |
| | | | Soviet Union, aeronautics presented |
| California! At the dawn of the new century, | | | | opportunities for hardworking men that were |
| this was the setting of every ambitious man's | | | | seemingly as limitless as their own |
| dreams. The real estate flyers papering the | | | | aspirations. But while Murry's timing was |
| town painted in the details, describing the | | | | spot-on, and he was a tireless worker with a |
| valley soil as every bit as rich and fertile | | | | penchant for big ideas, nothing came easily |
| as the sun was warm and the breezes gentle. | | | | for him. A gruesome accident at Goodyear cost |
| Thus inspired, William Henry scraped together | | | | him his left eye, and that twist of fate only |
| the cash to buy, sight unseen, ten acres of | | | | emphasized an aggressive-to-bellicose |
| prime farmland in the southern California | | | | personality that tended to alienate him from |
| village of Escondido. William Henry loaded up | | | | co-workers and superiors alike. Stalled on |
| his wife, kids, and even his | | | | the lower rungs of management and |
| eighty-five-year-old father into the family | | | | increasingly frustrated with his flat career |
| jalopy; they arrived in 1904 and spent the | | | | arc, Murry descended into dark moods all too |
| year laboring on their new vineyard. And | | | | reminiscent of his own father's. Still, |
| though the sun did indeed shine, and the | | | | unwilling to resign himself entirely to the |
| water flowed as promised, and the vines did | | | | old man's fate, he scraped together as much |
| erupt with fat, juicy fruit, the farming was | | | | cash as he could and opened his own business, |
| every bit as hard as it had been back in | | | | an industrial equipment rental outfit he |
| Kansas, and the money not nearly as vast as | | | | called A.B.L.E. (Always Better Lasting |
| previously anticipated. By 1905, William and | | | | Equipment) Machinery. From that point on, |
| family were back in the plumbing business in | | | | Murry Wilson would be his own boss. The |
| Kansas. Still, memories of the California sun | | | | arrangement suited him just fine. |
| and the dreams of ease and fortune that had | | | | |
| once stirred William Henry's soul came to | | | | So in the mornings Murry would dress in his |
| rest in the imagination of his teenaged son, | | | | pressed white shirts and skinny tie knotted |
| William Coral "Buddy" Wilson. As the boy | | | | just so, his horn-rimmed glasses perched on |
| grew, so too did his visions of the golden | | | | his thick, bulldog's face, his suit jacket |
| future that awaited him in the Golden State. | | | | straining against the prominent belly and |
| | | | muscular shoulders that testified both to his |
| Dark-eyed, heavy-browed, and thick-featured, | | | | appetite for work and for the rewards |
| Buddy Wilson took off for California in 1914. | | | | awaiting a man at the end of his day. |
| Then in his early twenties, the young | | | | Steering his Ford down the quiet, sun-washed |
| man-already married to Edith Shtole and the | | | | streets of mid-1950s Hawthorne, he'd see a |
| father of a child or two-fairly seethed with | | | | hundred houses just like the one he shared |
| ambition. Surely, he imagined, a man with his | | | | with Audree and his three boys: small but |
| drive and appetite could find an untapped | | | | neat, with a lush lawn and a wide driveway |
| stream of gold somewhere in that rich, open | | | | for the late-model Ford, Buick, or Chevy, its |
| economic frontier. Leaving his family back in | | | | tail fins gleaming in the cool morning light. |
| Hutchinson, Buddy would spend months at a | | | | |
| time searching for his place in the sun, | | | | These were the cars of men who were |
| looking increasingly in the oil fields of the | | | | determined to get somewhere in their lives. |
| southern coast. Guys could make a fortune if | | | | Like Murry, many of Hawthorne's men were |
| they latched onto the right rig, and so Buddy | | | | either born in the Midwest or were the |
| used his plumbing skills as his entr?e, | | | | children of men and women who had made the |
| working as a steamfitter on the pipes that | | | | westward trek sometime in the first few |
| channeled the gushers out of the ground and | | | | decades of the twentieth century. "It was |
| into the pockets of the rich men whose | | | | like a little Midwestern town that just got |
| example he was desperate to follow. | | | | moved right there to eighty acres of land," |
| | | | recalls Robin Hood, who grew up a few blocks |
| But Buddy would never join them in the gilded | | | | from the Wilsons. "There were a lot of |
| halls of the powerful. Moody and scattered, | | | | farmers from Kansas and Missouri, a lot of |
| plagued by searing headaches and a | | | | Dust Bowl-era folks who settled in with their |
| self-destructive thirst for whiskey, Buddy | | | | big, extended families. Nobody was rich, but |
| wandered from job to job to long stretches of | | | | we didn't know it." |
| unemployment, which he passed grumbling into | | | | |
| a glass in a dim barroom. When Edith and the | | | | But their parents certainly did. And if one |
| kids finally joined him in 1921, taking the | | | | belief held the community together, it was |
| train to the elegant-sounding village of | | | | the one about the transformative potential of |
| Cardiff-by-the-Sea, he couldn't afford to | | | | hard work. No matter where you came from, no |
| lease an apartment in town. Instead, the | | | | matter what your people used to be or what |
| family spent their first two months living in | | | | anyone expected you to become, in a |
| a snug eight-by-eight-foot tent with all the | | | | working-class West Coast town like |
| other squatters on the beach. | | | | Hawthorne-which had been a stretch of empty |
| | | | coastal flats and swamp a generation ago-you |
| Edith took a job pressing clothes for a | | | | could work your way into being anything or |
| garment manufacturer, and eventually the | | | | anyone you felt like being. This belief is |
| family moved to a small home on an unpaved | | | | liberating, of course, but it's also evidence |
| road in Inglewood where the eight Wilson kids | | | | of internal currents that can give the |
| attended school, worked weekend jobs, and | | | | pursuit an undertone of desperation. As Joan |
| marched the thin line dictated by their sour | | | | Didion would write, the California of this |
| father and stern, demanding mother. Escape, | | | | era was a place "in which a boom mentality |
| such as it was, came in the occasional | | | | and a sense of Chekhovian loss meet in uneasy |
| afternoon bike rides to the open, breezy | | | | suspension; in which the mind is troubled by |
| expanse of Hermosa Beach. | | | | some buried but ineradicable suspicion that |
| | | | things had better work here, because here, |
| Escape was a necessity for Buddy Wilson's | | | | beneath that immense bleached sky, is where |
| kids. Buddy, now in middle age and resigned | | | | we run out of continent." |
| to his life of small prospects and severely | | | | |
| limited horizons, had long felt his ambition | | | | Eventually the Baby Boom generation would |
| curdle into resentment. Often awash in | | | | turn the very edge of the continent into its |
| alcohol and self-pity, Buddy's bile regularly | | | | own proving ground. But the impulse that |
| boiled over into violence, directed most | | | | propelled them there, that restless need for |
| often at Edith. But he could also turn his | | | | deliverance and the intuitive belief that it |
| fists on his children, once beating the | | | | could be divined by your own hands somewhere |
| school-aged Charles so savagely (for | | | | out past the wild fringe of the western |
| mistakenly shattering his glasses) that | | | | horizon, was the same one that had dragged |
| Murry, then a teenager, had to come to his | | | | their families across the American frontier |
| brother's rescue, shoving the old man out of | | | | and into the dreamy, bustling, sun-glazed |
| the house until he sobered up. And this | | | | cities they had built for themselves. And |
| wasn't the only time Murry had come to blows | | | | this was where Murry's sons, Brian, Dennis, |
| with his father. Increasingly, the family's | | | | and Carl, came to understand their father's |
| second-oldest boy found himself thrust into | | | | need for them to kick the world in the ass. |
| the role of his mother's protector, raising | | | | He wanted so much for them. He wanted so much |
| his own fists against the father he loved but | | | | for himself. In the worst possible way, you |
| who seemed unable to love him or anyone else | | | | might say. |
| in the family. | | | | |
| | | | Reprinted from: Catch a Wave: The Rise, Fall, |
| As in most abusive families, the physical and | | | | and Redemption of the Beach Boys' Brian |
| psychic violence that ruled their home became | | | | Wilson by Peter Ames Carlin © 2006 Rodale |
| an unacknowledged presence, a force that both | | | | Inc. Permission granted by Rodale, Inc., |
| dominated their lives and forced them into | | | | Emmaus, PA 18098. Available wherever books |
| silence. But if they couldn't talk about | | | | are sold or directly from the publisher by |
| their problems, the Wilsons could always sing | | | | calling (800) 848-4735. |
| their way to a kind of amity. Indeed, group | | | | |