
Murry Wilson was the father of Beach Boys Brian, Dennis, and Carl, and he was a horrible person. Brian (pictured) talked about the abuse they suffered in I Am Brian Wilson: A Memoir (via Vanity Fair). "My dad was violent," Brian writes. "He was cruel."
How cruel? The Beach Boys' songwriter and composer was deaf in one ear thanks to a blow from a lead pipe delivered to his 3-year-old head. As children, he says they were all on the receiving end of abuse — Brian was once handed a beating with a 2-by-4 (via the Chicago Tribune), but it was only Dennis who ever fought back, once standing his ground over some kittens.
The psychological abuse was there, too. When they were children, Murry would pull out his glass eye and make the boys stare into the empty, gaping hole. Murry followed them as their original manager and constantly berated them: They were losers, they were worthless, they were failures. In 2010, The Guardian reported on the discovery of a letter, handwritten by Murry and addressed to Brian. Dated May 8, 1965, (when the Beach Boys were enjoying the chart-topping success of "Help Me, Rhonda") it read, in part, "It has become very apparent to me that the family cannot exist under the worrisome and trying conditions. ... No matter how many hit songs you write or how many hundreds of thousands of dollars you may earn ... you are going to suffer remorse."
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