Author's Introduction:
Through the years, especially following the publication of Peter Carlin's excellent book on Brian Wilson and The Beach Boys, I have been asked about my part in the effort to end the destructive relationship between Brian Wilson and psychologist Eugene Landy. While Dr. Landy deserves credit for rehabilitating Brian in 1983-1985, by the late Eighties, it was apparent that Dr. Landy's work with Brian had gone from therapist/patient to co-writer "would be", prescribing svengali, Brian Wilson "protector" from the Wilson family, and business partner to Brian Wilson. This accounting of mine will go a long way toward discussion of some of the work that the loosely connected members of the Free Brian Wilson effort did. I do not always identify who did what because several of Brian's advocates strongly desire anonymity.
When I first learned that there was going to be a motion picture about Brian Wilson's history of mental health problems, as a former therapist I was concerned about the depiction of the complexity of Brian's struggle to find a balance between public musician and private citizen. The roles of mental health patient and rock star were historically incompatible.
The progression of Brian's antipathy towards his role as the chief creative force behind The Beach Boys grew steadily after his nervous collapse in 1967, with part of it coming from the weariness of maintaining the pace of work demanded by The Beach Boys' Capitol Records contract, and partly due to a competition that Brian imposed upon himself with The Beatles from their 1964 American debut onward.
The thing most fans of both groups did not grasp in their rush to elevate their musical heroes to an impossibly high expectation of performance was that these "heroes" were people first. That many pop musicians sought that level of recognition was often due to the lionization and blind adoration these groups received.
At some point, pop musicians replaced sports heroes as the primary target of adoration, at least in the USA. In my own progression of identifying heroes I wanted to emulate as a boy, pop musicians were not on my short list. I identified with President Kennedy, baseball, basketball, and football players, and macho men like James Bond.
After the character flaws of President Kennedy were exposed, like many boys, I stopped worshipping political personalities, and sports heroes seemed more for little kids. In thrashing about looking for new heroes that understood the mistakes the USA was making with respect to values and foreign relations, the miasma that was Vietnam colored the attitudes of educated Americans of all ages and a majority of the nations of the world, myself included.
While attending college at Colorado College, I saw firsthand that war was having on our nation. It became apparent that living in American reality in the early Seventies was painful. Millions of Americans believed that their younger years as children and teenagers were far more fun than the network news.
In the middle of this cultural yearning for simpler times came American Graffiti, a look backwards that featured a soundtrack of oldies music from the late Fifties and early Sixties. I loved it. Millions of Americans heard the Beach Boys/Brian Wilson music in it and fell hard for it in the middle of Watergate, Nixon's Vietnamization jive, and growing distrust of big government. It was like Brian Wilson's music healed the spiritual pain the USA felt. Social justice became important, and my own quest to remain optimistic was fueled by rock music generally and Brian Wilson music specifically.
My then in-laws lived in San Diego, California and our holiday vacations to visit them fueled my growing conviction that the Beach Boys were the key to understanding the wave of nostalgia that the country was experiencing. I joined the Beach Boys fan club, which was not yet the official fan club. I became the Colorado Beach Boys fan club representative. A few months later, I became the Beach Boys Record Collecting columnist for David Leaf's Pet Sounds Magazine. As my Collection grew I was invited often to consult on Beach Boys/ Brian Wilson related projects.
My first Brian encounter in person came with backstage passes to Beach Boys holiday concerts in 1976 and 1977. I became acutely aware of the turmoil that Brian was experiencing, and the strong will that he had to protect himself from prying relatives, press, record company expectations, and family demands. Eugene Landy's first rodeo with Brian was over by the time my backstage proximity to Brian happened.
My interest in music expanded rapidly as I managed a chain of record stores in the last half of the Seventies. My musical interests moved wider as I heard and read more about all types of records and recording artists. The Beach Boys were always my primary collecting interest. I was asked to help with the authorized book about The Beach Boys and David Leaf's book on the group and especially Brian. Over twenty-five projects later, I again met Brian, this time under Dr. Landy's treatment as of 1983. The last encounter I had with Brian before Landy's second treatment began was in late 1982. With the help of some British friends, I had found a specific recording of the Rhapsody in Blue which Brian had asked a friend I knew to find. That friend, in turn asked me to get a tape of the Gershwin recording. I had written friends in several countries to help find that version of Gershwin's masterpiece. Several friends I knew in the UK obtained the recording, and sent it to me.
I sent the tape to a friend who gave Brian the tape. I kept a spare in case the first tape got misplaced. When I made that trip to California in December of 1982, I was fortunate to have a chance to see Brian, who thanked me for the tape, saying "Thanks for finding this tape, playing it has saved my life..." My friends told me that Brian wasn't well and many people did not expect him to live another year. Of course, Dr. Landy was retained a second time, this time by The Beach Boys themselves.
While working on the 25th Anniversary TV special, I again got to see Brian briefly, and was struck by two impressions. I had attended graduate school after leaving the record biz, and obtained an M.A. in Disability Counseling and an Ed.S. in Client Assessment. I specialized in working with people with developmental disabilities. I also was trained in assessing people with possibly severe mental illness. What struck me in this 1986 encounter was the changes in Brian's physical health. I encountered Landy for the first and only time. At this point, Brian's physical health seemed satisfactory and I did not have enough time or access to evaluate his mental health.
In 1988, I returned to consult in LA on another Beach Boys book. Several friends told me that Brian's movements were constantly monitored and that he was going to record a solo album. This was later confirmed. As work on the solo album commenced, my old friends in the media and record business were kind enough to send whatever news they had heard my way. The picture that emerged was a Brian Wilson whose eyes were rolling back in his head involuntarily and who seemed to not be able to track well in casual conversation.
Rumors of over-medication came to me from many different sources, and that Dr. Landy was actually writing lyrics for Brian's first solo album. People such as Gary Usher, Andy Paley, and people working at Brian's record company all shared stories about Landy's svengali approach to treatment. Tapes of some of the sessions made their way to me, and the creative collateral damage Landy caused was seriously impeding the quality of the album.
Unbeknownst to me, the events depicted in the Love and Mercy film were unfolding. Through a friend, I was given a blow by blow report on Brian's mental health periodically for about eighteen months. Some of the Surf Nazis employed by Dr. Landy were also worried about Brian's condition, citing over medicating, which was seriously affecting Brian's ability to function lucidly. Rumors of Landy's insinuation of himself and his wife/companion into Brian's finances, will, and interference with an inability to see his daughters came fast and furious. It was malpractice as defined by the American Psychological Association. This led to Brian acceding to Landy all control of his life,including medications, finances, and scheduled activities.
In late 1988 and early 1989, the late Lauri Klobas made trips to my home in Colorado to show me copies of videotapes taken from Landy by a concerned "surf nazi" and passed to members of an informal circle of support that had formed to help Brian to survive this potentially fatal concoction of psychotropic medications that Landy was pouring into Brian.
After viewing the videotapes, I was able to see that there were at least two or three problematic issues that I could identify. The first was that it appeared that although there was a psychiatrist working with Landy, it seemed that the final decisions and selection as to what medications Brian was prescribed was done by Landy. With Dr. Landy being a psychologist, not a psychiatrist, Dr. Landy on the videotape was prescribing Brian's medications, with the very old psychiatrist writing them as commanded by Dr. Landy, essentially functioning as a rubber stamp.
The second problem I noticed was that the videotapes that I viewed showed a Brian who was having trouble following everyday directions and conversations. This was because he would nod off periodically or his eyes would roll back in his head without him realizing it happened. The tapes also showed Brian with involuntary tremors he couldn't control and twitching in his face. There also appeared to be some possible facial paralysis.
I talked with Lauri about what was problematic in the tapes that I saw. The loosely connected group of people that wanted to save Brian from a life of isolation and degenerative decline all worked from our own backgrounds and training to extract Brian from this hell on earth. I told Lauri that I was planning to attend a fan convention at which Brian would appear in 1990. I explained that first hand evaluation would help me find the cause of Brian's facial tics and apparent paralysis.
Prior to going to the Beach Boys/Brian fan convention, I was able to go to a conference concerning deleterious side effects of early and middle generation psychotropic medications. During the conference, I attended a presentation on negative effects of certain psychotropic medications. To my surprise, a condition called tardive dyskenisia matched nearly all the symptoms I had seen on Lauri's videotapes. I called Lauri and told her about what I had heard about tardive dyskenisia.
The chance to go to a Beach Boys fan convention in San Diego gave me the chance to observe Brian's behavior in person without raising red flags that would have helped Landy strengthen his control over Brian. The facial tics, facial paralysis, and other behavior I saw confirmed for me the growing deleterious effect that misdiagnosed psychotropic medications were having on him. I called my guy who had the role of communication coordinator in this Free Brian Wilson effort and literally begged him to get Brian away from Landy as quickly as possible. This was because there was evidence that the tardive dyskinesia he was experiencing was potentially harmful in the near future because it had gotten worse in the time since I saw him at the Beach charges Fan Convention. He in turn was able to explain tardive dyskinesia to Carl Wilson, and to get Carl to move forward with the filing of malpractice charges with the California Review Board for Ethics in Psychology.
Shortly afterward, my heart jumped when I heard that Landy's license was revoked for the entire state of California. Brian had the chance to see his daughters, mother, and his brother Carl. Later in the Nineties, I had the chance to work on the I Just Wasn't Made for These Times documentary that was directed by Don Was. The Brian in that film was his funny self, performing his own songs beautifully, with his wedding to Melinda Ledbetter bringing to him the very woman who was his finest advocate. Brian Wilson was free.
Through the years, especially following the publication of Peter Carlin's excellent book on Brian Wilson and The Beach Boys, I have been asked about my part in the effort to end the destructive relationship between Brian Wilson and psychologist Eugene Landy. While Dr. Landy deserves credit for rehabilitating Brian in 1983-1985, by the late Eighties, it was apparent that Dr. Landy's work with Brian had gone from therapist/patient to co-writer "would be", prescribing svengali, Brian Wilson "protector" from the Wilson family, and business partner to Brian Wilson. This accounting of mine will go a long way toward discussion of some of the work that the loosely connected members of the Free Brian Wilson effort did. I do not always identify who did what because several of Brian's advocates strongly desire anonymity.
When I first learned that there was going to be a motion picture about Brian Wilson's history of mental health problems, as a former therapist I was concerned about the depiction of the complexity of Brian's struggle to find a balance between public musician and private citizen. The roles of mental health patient and rock star were historically incompatible.
The progression of Brian's antipathy towards his role as the chief creative force behind The Beach Boys grew steadily after his nervous collapse in 1967, with part of it coming from the weariness of maintaining the pace of work demanded by The Beach Boys' Capitol Records contract, and partly due to a competition that Brian imposed upon himself with The Beatles from their 1964 American debut onward.
The thing most fans of both groups did not grasp in their rush to elevate their musical heroes to an impossibly high expectation of performance was that these "heroes" were people first. That many pop musicians sought that level of recognition was often due to the lionization and blind adoration these groups received.
At some point, pop musicians replaced sports heroes as the primary target of adoration, at least in the USA. In my own progression of identifying heroes I wanted to emulate as a boy, pop musicians were not on my short list. I identified with President Kennedy, baseball, basketball, and football players, and macho men like James Bond.
After the character flaws of President Kennedy were exposed, like many boys, I stopped worshipping political personalities, and sports heroes seemed more for little kids. In thrashing about looking for new heroes that understood the mistakes the USA was making with respect to values and foreign relations, the miasma that was Vietnam colored the attitudes of educated Americans of all ages and a majority of the nations of the world, myself included.
While attending college at Colorado College, I saw firsthand that war was having on our nation. It became apparent that living in American reality in the early Seventies was painful. Millions of Americans believed that their younger years as children and teenagers were far more fun than the network news.
In the middle of this cultural yearning for simpler times came American Graffiti, a look backwards that featured a soundtrack of oldies music from the late Fifties and early Sixties. I loved it. Millions of Americans heard the Beach Boys/Brian Wilson music in it and fell hard for it in the middle of Watergate, Nixon's Vietnamization jive, and growing distrust of big government. It was like Brian Wilson's music healed the spiritual pain the USA felt. Social justice became important, and my own quest to remain optimistic was fueled by rock music generally and Brian Wilson music specifically.
My then in-laws lived in San Diego, California and our holiday vacations to visit them fueled my growing conviction that the Beach Boys were the key to understanding the wave of nostalgia that the country was experiencing. I joined the Beach Boys fan club, which was not yet the official fan club. I became the Colorado Beach Boys fan club representative. A few months later, I became the Beach Boys Record Collecting columnist for David Leaf's Pet Sounds Magazine. As my Collection grew I was invited often to consult on Beach Boys/ Brian Wilson related projects.
My first Brian encounter in person came with backstage passes to Beach Boys holiday concerts in 1976 and 1977. I became acutely aware of the turmoil that Brian was experiencing, and the strong will that he had to protect himself from prying relatives, press, record company expectations, and family demands. Eugene Landy's first rodeo with Brian was over by the time my backstage proximity to Brian happened.
My interest in music expanded rapidly as I managed a chain of record stores in the last half of the Seventies. My musical interests moved wider as I heard and read more about all types of records and recording artists. The Beach Boys were always my primary collecting interest. I was asked to help with the authorized book about The Beach Boys and David Leaf's book on the group and especially Brian. Over twenty-five projects later, I again met Brian, this time under Dr. Landy's treatment as of 1983. The last encounter I had with Brian before Landy's second treatment began was in late 1982. With the help of some British friends, I had found a specific recording of the Rhapsody in Blue which Brian had asked a friend I knew to find. That friend, in turn asked me to get a tape of the Gershwin recording. I had written friends in several countries to help find that version of Gershwin's masterpiece. Several friends I knew in the UK obtained the recording, and sent it to me.
I sent the tape to a friend who gave Brian the tape. I kept a spare in case the first tape got misplaced. When I made that trip to California in December of 1982, I was fortunate to have a chance to see Brian, who thanked me for the tape, saying "Thanks for finding this tape, playing it has saved my life..." My friends told me that Brian wasn't well and many people did not expect him to live another year. Of course, Dr. Landy was retained a second time, this time by The Beach Boys themselves.
While working on the 25th Anniversary TV special, I again got to see Brian briefly, and was struck by two impressions. I had attended graduate school after leaving the record biz, and obtained an M.A. in Disability Counseling and an Ed.S. in Client Assessment. I specialized in working with people with developmental disabilities. I also was trained in assessing people with possibly severe mental illness. What struck me in this 1986 encounter was the changes in Brian's physical health. I encountered Landy for the first and only time. At this point, Brian's physical health seemed satisfactory and I did not have enough time or access to evaluate his mental health.
In 1988, I returned to consult in LA on another Beach Boys book. Several friends told me that Brian's movements were constantly monitored and that he was going to record a solo album. This was later confirmed. As work on the solo album commenced, my old friends in the media and record business were kind enough to send whatever news they had heard my way. The picture that emerged was a Brian Wilson whose eyes were rolling back in his head involuntarily and who seemed to not be able to track well in casual conversation.
Rumors of over-medication came to me from many different sources, and that Dr. Landy was actually writing lyrics for Brian's first solo album. People such as Gary Usher, Andy Paley, and people working at Brian's record company all shared stories about Landy's svengali approach to treatment. Tapes of some of the sessions made their way to me, and the creative collateral damage Landy caused was seriously impeding the quality of the album.
Unbeknownst to me, the events depicted in the Love and Mercy film were unfolding. Through a friend, I was given a blow by blow report on Brian's mental health periodically for about eighteen months. Some of the Surf Nazis employed by Dr. Landy were also worried about Brian's condition, citing over medicating, which was seriously affecting Brian's ability to function lucidly. Rumors of Landy's insinuation of himself and his wife/companion into Brian's finances, will, and interference with an inability to see his daughters came fast and furious. It was malpractice as defined by the American Psychological Association. This led to Brian acceding to Landy all control of his life,including medications, finances, and scheduled activities.
In late 1988 and early 1989, the late Lauri Klobas made trips to my home in Colorado to show me copies of videotapes taken from Landy by a concerned "surf nazi" and passed to members of an informal circle of support that had formed to help Brian to survive this potentially fatal concoction of psychotropic medications that Landy was pouring into Brian.
After viewing the videotapes, I was able to see that there were at least two or three problematic issues that I could identify. The first was that it appeared that although there was a psychiatrist working with Landy, it seemed that the final decisions and selection as to what medications Brian was prescribed was done by Landy. With Dr. Landy being a psychologist, not a psychiatrist, Dr. Landy on the videotape was prescribing Brian's medications, with the very old psychiatrist writing them as commanded by Dr. Landy, essentially functioning as a rubber stamp.
The second problem I noticed was that the videotapes that I viewed showed a Brian who was having trouble following everyday directions and conversations. This was because he would nod off periodically or his eyes would roll back in his head without him realizing it happened. The tapes also showed Brian with involuntary tremors he couldn't control and twitching in his face. There also appeared to be some possible facial paralysis.
I talked with Lauri about what was problematic in the tapes that I saw. The loosely connected group of people that wanted to save Brian from a life of isolation and degenerative decline all worked from our own backgrounds and training to extract Brian from this hell on earth. I told Lauri that I was planning to attend a fan convention at which Brian would appear in 1990. I explained that first hand evaluation would help me find the cause of Brian's facial tics and apparent paralysis.
Prior to going to the Beach Boys/Brian fan convention, I was able to go to a conference concerning deleterious side effects of early and middle generation psychotropic medications. During the conference, I attended a presentation on negative effects of certain psychotropic medications. To my surprise, a condition called tardive dyskenisia matched nearly all the symptoms I had seen on Lauri's videotapes. I called Lauri and told her about what I had heard about tardive dyskenisia.
The chance to go to a Beach Boys fan convention in San Diego gave me the chance to observe Brian's behavior in person without raising red flags that would have helped Landy strengthen his control over Brian. The facial tics, facial paralysis, and other behavior I saw confirmed for me the growing deleterious effect that misdiagnosed psychotropic medications were having on him. I called my guy who had the role of communication coordinator in this Free Brian Wilson effort and literally begged him to get Brian away from Landy as quickly as possible. This was because there was evidence that the tardive dyskinesia he was experiencing was potentially harmful in the near future because it had gotten worse in the time since I saw him at the Beach charges Fan Convention. He in turn was able to explain tardive dyskinesia to Carl Wilson, and to get Carl to move forward with the filing of malpractice charges with the California Review Board for Ethics in Psychology.
Shortly afterward, my heart jumped when I heard that Landy's license was revoked for the entire state of California. Brian had the chance to see his daughters, mother, and his brother Carl. Later in the Nineties, I had the chance to work on the I Just Wasn't Made for These Times documentary that was directed by Don Was. The Brian in that film was his funny self, performing his own songs beautifully, with his wedding to Melinda Ledbetter bringing to him the very woman who was his finest advocate. Brian Wilson was free.
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