Catch a Wave

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

Jensen Pipe

Catch a Wave