Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast
The Beach Boys Scam - The Brian Wilson story
Sun, 02 Feb 2025
This is the story of the Beach Boys Brian Wilson and his psychologist Dr. Eugene Landy.
Chapter 1: Who is Dr. Eugene Landy and what is his connection to celebrities?
So this guy, he really wants to be a celebrity. He likes the idea of fame and he just really wants to be around celebrities. Now his name is Dr. Landy and Dr. Landy is not a celebrity. He's a psychologist. And one day he gets an idea for a crazy and controversial new type of therapy treatment. But we'll get to that. First, we got to talk about the Beach Boys.
Chapter 2: What challenges did Brian Wilson face during his career with the Beach Boys?
The band who's touring the world and topping the charts. Specifically, we gotta talk about the lead singer. This guy, Brian. Brian, he's kind of a musical genius. But unfortunately, he's got a lot of undiagnosed mental health issues. And at this time, he's touring around, he's soaking in the fame, and he's dealing with that rock and roll lifestyle. And it's a lot for the guy to handle.
So he does what a lot of rock stars do. He starts using drugs, heavily. And he gains a bunch of weight, and sometimes he has nervous breakdowns, and he's been hearing voices. And because of all this, he stops touring, and he stops recording with his band. Bro is just a mess. So one day, Brian's wife, who we'll just call wife, she gets worried about him, and she seeks out a psychologist to help.
The psychologist ends up being Dr. Landy. And Dr. Landy, the guy who wants nothing more than to be around celebrities, he agrees to help. So he starts to work with Brian and immediately he diagnoses him as a paranoid schizophrenic. And this diagnosis is important because it's the wrong diagnosis. But we'll get to that.
Chapter 3: How did Dr. Landy's controversial therapy affect Brian Wilson?
Regardless, Landy starts helping Brian and he puts him on this controversial new type of therapy treatment he came up with. It's an intensive 24-hour therapy program. where he hires assistants to watch over Brian constantly, and he has him start a fitness routine, and he gets him to start eating better, and he gets him on medication.
And for this experimental therapy program, he charges $10,000 monthly. which in today's dollars is about $58,000 a month. But after doing this treatment, Brian does slowly start to show signs of improvement. He gets more productive, his mood gets better, he starts socializing again.
But then, after about a year in this program, Dr. Landy decides to raise his rates from $10,000 monthly to $20,000 monthly. which in today's dollars is nearly $110,000 a month for therapy. And so the Beach Boys manager, he sees this and he's like, oh, well, this is bullshit. And he fires Dr. Landy, like done. And everyone just moves on. A few years later, Brian, he isn't doing so well again.
He's back to abusing drugs and alcohol. His weight gets up to over 300 pounds. His mental health just spirals out of control. And he and his wife, they end up getting divorced. And at one point he attacks a therapist and he gets committed to a mental health facility for a few months. Like it's going really bad for him.
And eventually Brian overdoses and his family and his management team, they don't know what to do. So they agreed to do the only thing that kind of worked for him in the past. They allow him to see Dr. Landy again. So they hit up Landy and they ask him to help. And Landy agrees to take Brian as a patient again in his 24-hour treatment program. But this time he wants two things.
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Chapter 4: What led to the increased control of Brian Wilson's life by Dr. Landy?
One, he wants total control of Brian's affairs without interference from anyone. And two, he wants to charge a new even higher fee, $35,000 monthly. which in today's dollars is about $114,000 a month. Damn. So the family reluctantly agrees and Landy takes over and he controls everything in Brian's life. All decisions Brian makes have to go through him. He's his legal guardian now.
And he puts Brian on a strict exercise plan. He throws cold water on Brian in the mornings to wake him up. He padlocks the fridge so Brian can't get into it unless he lets him. But most importantly, he controls who Brian interacts with. and he isn't allowed to contact his friends or his ex-wife or even his kids. And not only that, he keeps Brian pretty drugged up too on anti-psychotic meds.
So Brian's kind of a zombie at this point. And again, Dr. Landy has a team of assistants watching over him 24 seven to make sure he's complying with all these new rules. But to be kind of fair, the treatment does seem to be working, I guess. I mean, Brian is technically sober now and he's losing weight and he's way overmedicated. So I guess he's not hearing voices as much as he was before.
But here's where things get really messed up. Dr. Landy now controls all aspects of Brian's life. So not only is he charging Brian a million dollars a year in monthly fees, but he is able to anoint himself as Brian's creative and financial partner. And he's able to negotiate himself a quarter of Brian's publishing royalties on some of the Beach Boys songs.
So songs that Brian writes on, Landy is now earning royalties off of them. And he's able to name himself co-writer on a bunch of the songs that Brian writes. I mean, at one point, Landy even says, and I quote, I influence all of Brian's thinking. I'm practically a member of the band. And then when Brian starts working on solo material, Landy names himself executive producer on the solo albums.
And he gets himself credited as a co-songwriter on a bunch of the songs. This dude is shady as f**k. But around this time, Brian is at a car dealership buying a car one day and he meets this woman, Melinda. And they hit it off and they start dating and Melinda really likes Brian.
However, once she gets close to him, she starts to see this crazy control that Landy has over his entire life and she doesn't like it. She thinks it's unethical, which it is. So she starts raising hell, bringing it to everyone's attention. She even reports Landy to the state attorney general. And of course, Landy doesn't like her back.
I mean, he doesn't like anyone getting in between him and Brian. So eventually, after she and Brian had been dating for about three years, Landy gets so mad at her that he forbids Brian from seeing her. I guess he's just like, you're not allowed to see her anymore. And he's Brian's legal guardian. So Brian just stops seeing Melinda.
And eventually, after all this hell has been raised, Brian's family gets involved in all this. And they don't like what's going on. And at some point, they get a hold of a copy of a will that Brian had allegedly made out. And in this will, he states that if he dies, he's going to give Dr. Landy 70% of all his assets. 70%. And this is the last straw for everyone.
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