Murry Wilson passed on his love of music to his sons, Brian, Dennis, and Carl. But he was also a terrifying and domineering presence in their life. In The Nearest Faraway Place: Brian Wilson, the Beach Boys, and the Southern California Experience (1996) Timothy White writes that Murry’s pushing his sons toward music could border on obsession. What’s more, Murry could be violent. Many reports claim that Murry caused Brian to lose his hearing in one ear when he hit him as a little boy, and Murry was physically and emotionally abusive toward all his sons. He would berate them, yelling things “I’m the boss, and beat them with his fists or a leather belt. Some biographers have claimed that Murry once punished Dennis, who hated tomatoes, to eat tomatoes until he threw up. “He was awful. I’m so glad he wasn’t my father. He definitely did some damage,” Mike Love, Brian, Dennis, and Carl’s cousin, and fellow bandmate, recalled in an interview. “[He was] very abusive and gruff and terrifying and intimidating and negative… Very unsupportive.” But, as Love acknowledged, Murry did know the music industry. After Brian, Carl, and Dennis Wilson formed a band with Love and their friend, Al Jardine (called “The Pendletones”), Murry introduced them to music publisher Hite Morgan, who helped the band record their first hit: “Surfin'” The song was a hit, and Murry Wilson helped the band — renamed “The Beach Boys” — to get a lucrative deal with Capitol Records. Though he became the band’s first manager, things would soon sour. Indeed, Murry was just as domineering as a manager as he had been as a parent — and was fired as The Beach Boy’s manager in 1964. Despite this, he remained stubbornly involved in the band. Recorded audio from studio sessions of “Help Me Rhonda,” played recently during Disney+ The Beach Boys documentary, captured Murry belittling Brian. “Brian, I’m a genius too. Let’s go, OK?” Murry says. Another another point, he declares: “When you guys get so big, you stop singing everything from your hearts, you’re going downhill… Downhill, son! I’ve protected you for 22 years, but I can’t go on if you’re not going to listen to an intelligent man.” But the rift between Murry Wilson and his sons only grew. Depressed and angry over his termination, Murry Wilson went on to manage a Beach Boys lookalike band called the Sunrays. In 1972, the dejected patriarch was diagnosed with diverticulitis, which only worsened his pre-existing heart disease. He was hospitalized the following year after a heart attack, and within a few weeks, on June 4, 1973, Murry Wilson died at his home in Whittier, California. The cause of death was an acute myocardial infarction, a heart attack. He was 55 years old. In the end, his sons had mixed feelings about their father. Dennis, who died just a few years later at the age of 39, once remarked that he and his brothers had a “shitty childhood” and that their father “used to whale on us.” But for Brian, things with Murry were more complicated. “Lots of things have been written about my dad and the way he treated me and my brothers,” Brian Wilson wrote in his 2017 biography, I Am Brian Wilson. “Lots of them are true. Some of them are dirty lies. But even the things that are true aren’t always what they seem.”