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Wouldn't It Be Nice: My Own Story (Brian
Wilson with Todd Gold)
It's hard to know where Brian Wilson ends and Eugene Landy begins
in this book. An express train to hell and back with the leader
of the Beach Boys. Wilson begins with his darkest days, in November
1982. Then, weighing over 340 pounds, smoking six packs of cigarettes
and snorting five grams of coke a day, failing to bathe for
weeks at a time, ``I stank. I was dirty...I was insane.'' How
did the founder of ``America's band'' reach this bottom? According
to the equally frank life-review that follows, father Murry
Wilson, a would-be but talentless composer, had a lot to do
with it, taking out his frustrations on his sensitive son (born
in 1942) through mind- twisting beatings and ridicule. And then
there were the drugs and the relentless pressure to produce
hit tunes; by the late 60's, Wilson, wealthy and renowned for
such songs as ``Good Vibrations'' and ``I Get Around,'' was
drifting into a paranoid schizophrenia that would envelop him
for 15 years. Salvation finally came in the person of Eugene
Landy, an unorthodox psychologist who took Wilson by the hand
in 1983 and turned his life around through a rigorous program
of diet, exercise, and therapy. Wilson devotes nearly half of
his text to his resurrection, and it's an inspiring story (although
recent moves by the other Beach Boys to sever him from Landy--for
reasons Wilson ascribes to greed and jealousy--find the self-admittedly
``brain-damaged'' author unsure about his mental future). Most
readers, though, will find of even greater interest Wilson's
detailing of his early encounters with the Beatles, Elvis, and
other rock luminaries; of his stormy relationship with the other
Beach Boys; of his now-dead brother Dennis's ties to Charlie
Manson; and, in a recurrent motif that illuminates his troubled
tale, of how he goes about composing his exquisite music. A
bold and genuinely affecting account by a founding father of
rock 'n' roll: a must for popular-music fans.
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