Rock Bottom: Dark Moments In Music Babylon (48 page)
Read Rock Bottom: Dark Moments In Music Babylon Online
Authors: Pamela Des Barres
Nobody really knows if Sid OD’d on purpose, but I’m sure his Nancy was waiting for him.
Three weeks later Sid’s spitfire version of Eddie Cochran’s “Something Else” was released and sold 328,000 copies—nearly double the sales of “God Save the Queen.”
On February 2, 1980, in honor of the first anniversary of Sid’s death, one thousand punks marched from London’s Sloane Square in Chelsea to Hyde Park. Ma Vicious, Anne Beverley, was supposed to have taken part in the proceedings—instead she was taken to a hospital due to a drug overdose.
DENNIS WILSON
T
he Wilson family of Hawthorne, California, by all appearances epitomized the American Dream. To neighbors, the three Wilson brothers seemed to be well-behaved, obedient boys who doted on their overbearing father, Murry, and loving mother, Audree. But what may have been regarded as strict discipline back in 1960 is now considered child abuse. Murry punched, beat, and kicked his sons, tied them to trees, and whacked them with two-by-fours when they got out of line, once burning Dennis’s hands after he found him playing with matches. Several years earlier Murry had lost his eye in a freak industrial accident and, to scare the boys, would take his prosthetic eye out at the dinner table and wink at them with his scarred, contorted socket. While this horrified Brian and Carl, it amused Murry’s mischievous middle son, Dennis, who took the eye out of its container one early morning to share at school for Show and Tell.
he Wilson family of Hawthorne, California, by all appearances epitomized the American Dream. To neighbors, the three Wilson brothers seemed to be well-behaved, obedient boys who doted on their overbearing father, Murry, and loving mother, Audree. But what may have been regarded as strict discipline back in 1960 is now considered child abuse. Murry punched, beat, and kicked his sons, tied them to trees, and whacked them with two-by-fours when they got out of line, once burning Dennis’s hands after he found him playing with matches. Several years earlier Murry had lost his eye in a freak industrial accident and, to scare the boys, would take his prosthetic eye out at the dinner table and wink at them with his scarred, contorted socket. While this horrified Brian and Carl, it amused Murry’s mischievous middle son, Dennis, who took the eye out of its container one early morning to share at school for Show and Tell.
Egotistical, fearless, and athletic, Dennis paced the suburban house with nervous energy, pulling pranks even though he knew his father would punish
him unmercifully. “That asshole beat the shit out of us,” Dennis said. “Instead of saying, ‘Son, you shouldn’t shoot a BB gun at the streetlight,’ he’d go ‘BOOOOOM!’ I got the blunt end of a broom. CRACK! One minute late, just one minute late! BOOM! He treated us like shit and his punishments were sick, but you played a tune for him and he was a marshmallow. This mean motherfucker would cry with bliss like the lion in
The Wizard of Oz
when he heard the music.”
him unmercifully. “That asshole beat the shit out of us,” Dennis said. “Instead of saying, ‘Son, you shouldn’t shoot a BB gun at the streetlight,’ he’d go ‘BOOOOOM!’ I got the blunt end of a broom. CRACK! One minute late, just one minute late! BOOM! He treated us like shit and his punishments were sick, but you played a tune for him and he was a marshmallow. This mean motherfucker would cry with bliss like the lion in
The Wizard of Oz
when he heard the music.”
It’s no wonder the Wilson boys learned to make music at an early age, forming a group with cousin Mike Love and pal Al Jardine before they were even out of high school. Dennis, as the only surfer in the brand-new band, had the blazing idea to write a song about the California surfing craze, which resulted in the Beach Boys’ first release, “Surfin’,” reaching number seventy-five on the charts. Despite its success, frustrated songwriter Murry complained that the song was amateurish and took over as producer. He also formed his own publishing company, writing the contracts giving him controlling interest in Sea of Tunes, which allowed him tremendous control over the Beach Boys’ career while his oldest boy, Brian, churned out song after song after song, hit after staggering hit.
Fun-loving, upbeat, and full of sunshine, fast cars, and surfboards, the Beach Boys’ songs came to embody wholesome teenage California living. I used to spread cocoa butter all over my budding body and bake at the beach while my transistor blasted “Let’s go surfin’ now / Everybody’s learnin’ how …” It felt so good to be a teenager on the brink of life’s sparkling possibilities.
Even though the boys had hot new cars and a lot of female attention, especially eighteen-year-old Dennis, who was balancing several girlfriends at once, Murry continued to exert his domineering pressure on the band, once slapping Dennis across the face for cursing in front of a group of fans. The final affront came in April 1964 as Brian was working on the catchy anthem “I Get Around” in the studio. Murry told Brian that he was a loser, that the music was second rate, that
he,
Murry, had the real talent in the family. Brian picked his father up out of the chair, threw him up against a wall, and fired him. But Murry would get his revenge.
he,
Murry, had the real talent in the family. Brian picked his father up out of the chair, threw him up against a wall, and fired him. But Murry would get his revenge.
Dennis Wilson—before. (MICHAEL OCHS ARCHIVES/VENICE, CALIF.)
While Brian overworked himself to the point of exhaustion, coming up with new songs for his ever-demanding record company, his handsome younger brother Dennis was enjoying the rock-god high life. Calling himself “The Wood,” because he was always “hard and ready,” Dennis had thick, sandy hair and a chiseled surfer body. By the time the fifth single, “Little Deuce Coupe,” hit the charts, Dennis rarely played drums on the sessions, too busy spending money and hanging out with an ever-changing assortment of motley humanity only too happy to indulge in his rebellious generosity of spirit. He married his sweetheart, Carol Freedman, adopting her toddler, Scott, but cheated on her consistently without apology or remorse.
Desperately wanting to be part of the burgeoning hip Hollywood scene, despite his wife, Marilyn’s, protests, Brian took his first tab of LSD in early 1965, made by a San Francisco chemist named Owsley Stanley—acid that was so strong, the dosage would later be cut to one-tenth the amount. Already smoking grass, and precariously overtaxed and on the outer edge of reality, Brian decided to stop touring with the Beach Boys. Eventually he had a gigantic tented sandbox built in his bedroom, where he placed his baby grand piano so he could wiggle his toes in the sand while he composed.
Dennis Wilson—after. (COPYRIGHT ©1994 MICHAEL JACOBS/MJP)
In late 1966 Brian’s psychedelic masterpiece, “Good Vibrations,” was high on the charts, and even without him on the road, the Beach Boys’ tours were earning two million dollars a year, and Dennis was having one wild-ass time. He loved the spotlight, the limousines, the ever-ready females, the crazed adulation from the crowds, and despite his underlying desire to please his father by staying sober, Dennis also began to indulge heavily in drugs and alcohol. Even after Mike Love took him to meet the Beatles’ Indian savior, the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Dennis continued to spin further out of control.
Dennis picked up two hippie girls in Malibu one spring afternoon in 1968, took them home to show off his gold records, and had sex with both of them.
(He would soon discover he had gotten gonorrhea for the pleasure.) At three A.M. that same night he came home from a recording session to find his house on Sunset Boulevard overrun with a dozen half-naked girls, including that afternoon’s double duo, who introduced Dennis to their prophet—a slight, untidy, hunchbacked fellow with malevolent eyes. “This is the guy we were telling you about. This is Charles Manson.”
(He would soon discover he had gotten gonorrhea for the pleasure.) At three A.M. that same night he came home from a recording session to find his house on Sunset Boulevard overrun with a dozen half-naked girls, including that afternoon’s double duo, who introduced Dennis to their prophet—a slight, untidy, hunchbacked fellow with malevolent eyes. “This is the guy we were telling you about. This is Charles Manson.”
Dennis was easy prey for Manson, an illiterate, long-haired ex-con who took full advantage of the sixties peace-and-love philosophy by offering his passel of women in exchange for whatever he could get. Charlie and the oddly subservient girls moved in with Dennis and stayed the entire summer, helping themselves to his cars, clothes, food, and money, having nightly orgies, weirdly choreographed by the ever-watchful Manson.
Charlie wanted to be a rock star and thought Dennis was his surefire ticket into the recording studio. But after extolling the musical virtues of “the Wizard,” Dennis couldn’t convince anyone at his record company to give Charlie a break. Dennis introduced Manson to his friend Gregg Jakobson, who was impressed enough to bring producer Terry Melcher to the Sunset Boulevard house to hear him sing. On one occasion Dennis drove Melcher home to Melcher’s house at 10050 Cielo Drive while Charlie strummed his guitar in the backseat. Finally Dennis took Charlie and several of his girls to the new studio Brian had built in his house and a few songs got recorded. Brian’s wife, Marilyn, was so freaked out by Manson that she disinfected her sinks and toilets whenever “the Family” left. Brian stayed in his sandbox.
After the sessions Charlie expected that Terry Melcher would help him get a contract with a major label, but it never happened. Melcher also promised Charlie that he would listen to his new songs, but on the appointed day he didn’t show up.
By the end of the summer, Dennis wanted the Manson Family out of his house. They had relieved him of over a hundred thousand dollars—money spent on food, clothes, a wrecked Mercedes, and constant doctor’s bills for the recurring bouts of the clap. And Charlie’s true nature had started to reveal itself. He pulled a knife on Dennis, and a couple of weeks later, while the Beach Boys were on the road, Dennis let his lease expire and the Family were thrown out.
In March 1969 Manson went back to Cielo Drive looking for Terry Melcher, only to find that he had rented the place to director Roman Polanski and his wife, Sharon Tate. On August 9, while Roman was working in Europe, five people were brutally massacred on Cielo Drive, including Sharon Tate, who was eight months pregnant.
Not long afterward Manson showed up at Gregg Jakobson’s house, looking for Dennis. Told he was out of town, Manson raged, “Oh yeah? Well, when you see Dennis, tell him this is for him,” and pulling a .45 from his waistband, threw a bullet onto the floor. “And I’ve got one for Scott [his stepson], too.”
On November 19 Manson and the Family were arrested for the gruesome murders on Cielo Drive. Though reporters often queried Dennis about this period in his life, he usually refused to discuss it. But during an interview in 1976, he said, “I don’t talk about Manson, I think he’s a sick fuck. I think of Roman and those wonderful people who had a beautiful family and they fucking had their tits cut off. I want to benefit from
that
?”
On November 19 Manson and the Family were arrested for the gruesome murders on Cielo Drive. Though reporters often queried Dennis about this period in his life, he usually refused to discuss it. But during an interview in 1976, he said, “I don’t talk about Manson, I think he’s a sick fuck. I think of Roman and those wonderful people who had a beautiful family and they fucking had their tits cut off. I want to benefit from
that
?”
Later that same year Murry got his revenge, selling Sea of Tunes—
a
// of Brian’s songs, up to
Pet Sounds
—for one lump sum, which he kept. “It killed him,” Brian’s wife, Marilyn, said. “It
killed
him, he was tortured. He couldn’t believe his father had done that to his songs.” The total worth of that catalog is inestimable. (Murry died in 1973, and Brian recently went to court and reclaimed his catalog along with ten million dollars. Mike Love then sued Brian, saying he contributed to the songs, and Brian agreed that Mike would receive five million and split future royalties on 3 songs.)
a
// of Brian’s songs, up to
Pet Sounds
—for one lump sum, which he kept. “It killed him,” Brian’s wife, Marilyn, said. “It
killed
him, he was tortured. He couldn’t believe his father had done that to his songs.” The total worth of that catalog is inestimable. (Murry died in 1973, and Brian recently went to court and reclaimed his catalog along with ten million dollars. Mike Love then sued Brian, saying he contributed to the songs, and Brian agreed that Mike would receive five million and split future royalties on 3 songs.)
Dennis remarried in 1970, and his relationship with waitress Barbara Charren started out full of promise. They had two sons, Michael and Carl, but by 1972 had moved fourteen chaotic times. His temper started creeping out of control and during one argument with Barbara, Dennis put his fist through a plate-glass window, cutting his hand so severely that he had to be replaced on tour for over a year. He went into therapy, suffering from guilt over his “undeserved” fame and money and the fear that he would always live in the shadow of his brothers. Dennis later laughingly admitted that the only reason he went to therapy week after week was to see if he could talk the female doctor into sleeping with him.
Dennis deeply desired to communicate with his father, but when Murry died of a heart attack, the only son to attend the funeral was Carl. To make sure his father was really dead, Dennis took Barbara with him to the morgue, but the day of the funeral he flew to Europe with one of Barbara’s best friends. Dennis’s second marriage was over.
A Beach Boy on the beach in his birthday suit. (BOOM! ARCHIVES)
Wife number three (and four) was actress Karen Lamm. A volatile blond beauty, she seemed to be a flawless match for the impulsive, self-destructive drummer. “Dennis taught me that you treat a person in the gutter the same way you treat people in the White House. He was the same with everybody,” Karen recalled. “But Dennis was in a lot of pain because of his hellish relationship with his father. Murry was the all-time tyrant son of a bitch, and Dennis never received the kind of love, admiration, and respect that Brian got, so he vied for attention by pulling antics and being a practical joker.” Then she added sadly, “He was a bit lost.”
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