June 14, 2025 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
05:46
Brian Wilson on His Traumatized Childhood
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Lots of the grabbing and shoving started because something made me nervous and I didn't know what to do.
He couldn't stand to see me that way, and he did everything wrong to get me feeling differently.
He said, once when I was a teenager, my dad and I were sitting in the kitchen.
My next door neighbor, Michael, came by.
Hey, Brian, he said.
I put up a hand.
Michael!
Say that again.
My dad said, I did.
And he slapped me so hard across the face and said, don't ever yell at anybody.
I was crying, not just because it hurt so much, but because it was so surprising.
It happened again and again and again.
At some point it wasn't surprising.
When he did put his hands on us, he tried to scare us.
He would take out his glass eye and make us look into the space where the eye used to be.
Oh, God!
Oh, my gosh!
He would take out his glass eye and make us look into the space where the eye used to be.
The identity, the personality, the eye as in just the letter I. The hollow in the head where the eye was torn out.
He also said, Brian Wilson said, sometimes I provoked my dad once I took a shit on a plate and brought it to my dad.
Here's your lunch, I said.
He was sitting down with his pipe in his mouth.
He didn't even stand up.
Get in the bathroom, he said.
Then he came in there and whipped the hell out of me.
That one I may have deserved, but I was bringing the plate to him because of the times I didn't deserve it.
Anyway, reading about his childhood, I mean, it's like Joe Jackson vibes, right?
Joe Jackson vibes.
The anxiety, the depression, the susceptibility to exploitation.
I mean, his doctor, he finally had to get a restraining order against Dr. Landy because Dr. Landy had changed Brian Wilson's will to the point where Dr. Landy was going to go to all of his money when he died.
So, yeah, it was just wild stuff.
And Dr. Landy ended up losing his license for a variety of reasons, which I think took far too long, but what the hell do I know?
And the funny thing, of course, is that Brian Wilson grew up Very close to the beach.
Never went to the beach.
He hated the beach because he was very pale.
He'd go there in jeans so the sun wouldn't get him and he barely went there.
He never surfed and he had all of this surfing music and peppy music, right?
I'm making up good vibrations.
Or, you know, the absolute classic with the Hammond organ intro.
I wish they all could.
California Girls.
In My Room.
In My Room, I think, was Paul McCartney's favorite song.
Favorite song, not just of the...
And yeah, it was just wild.
I mean, quite a storied life, a lot of anxiety, get kicked out of the band on a regular basis because he was just unable to perform.
And it's a rough life, man.
It's a rough life.
And he said, Brian Wilson said, when he took drugs, that's when the voices started.
And this is why, I mean, this is the really horrible thing.
Drugs are probably less dangerous to people without traumatic childhoods, but if you didn't have a traumatic childhood, you're much less likely to try drugs because you don't need to self-medicate based upon those kinds of problems.
So he said, like, if there's one thing that I could go back and do differently, I wouldn't have done drugs, which I guess is the Sid Barrett thing, or Sid Barrett completely blew his mind out with drugs.
To the point where he got bald and obese and didn't know where he was really and ended up living with his mother, I think, for the rest of his life.
And so, yeah, stay off drugs, man.
But if you've had a traumatic childhood, you don't open up that portal.
Don't open that, but you don't know what's going to come through.
So according to Brian Wilson, what happened was he...
He found success very stressful.
I mean, in one year, they recorded, like, material for three albums and did 100 shows.
Like, that's mental.
It was absolutely mental.
I mean, and of course, all of the lovely and humane record executives were like, watch, watch, watch, right?
More, more, more, money, money, money.
They just work and whip them like horses.
I mean, there's a reason why Prince changed, like, it had the symbol for slave tattooed on his, Forehead and George Michael stopped working, I think it was, with Sony after some lawsuits.
I mean, it's brutal in the entertainment industry and incredibly predatory.
Just go watch that documentary with Alanis Morissette.
What was it, 30 years ago that Jacket Little Pill came out?
What an album.
Holy crap.
But, yeah, she was preyed on as a teenager in the most appalling, monstrous ways.
Just like Jennifer Lopez, right?
Warning everyone about how dangerous Trump is, never quite got around telling people about any danger that might be emanating from one P. Diddy and his infinite squishy waterfall of druggie oils.
So, he didn't have the voices in his head, although he certainly had people screaming at him, his father in particular screaming at him, in his mind, and then he took the drugs and the portal.
Look, it opened up, the back rooms, the trauma, it opened up, and he lost the filter.