Six degrees
The Beach Boys will be gracing Hong Kong on their 50th anniversary world tour, we discovered last week. If anyone is in any doubt as to the brains behind the band (below) responsible for classics such as Good Vibrations and God Only Knows, the late Dennis Wilson (the only band member who could surf) put it in a nutshell: 'Brian Wilson is the Beach Boys. He is the band. We're his f***ing messengers. He is all of it. Period. We're nothing.' The eldest of the three Wilson brothers, Brian has overcome many battles to outlive both his sibling bandmates. He was helped out of a years-long drug and junk food binge by controversial therapist Eugene Landy ...
Aided by henchmen dubbed the 'surf nazis', Landy took 24-hour control of his patient's life; locking the refrigerator and applying cold-water wake-up calls. Earlier in his career, Landy wrote The Underground Dictionary, which defined terms used by the hippie generation (including seven uses of the word 'freaky'). The entrepreneur was forced to hand in his psychology licence after being found guilty of gross negligence for meddling in Wilson's musical career. The Svengali to the stars also treated actor Gig Young (who committed suicide) and Irish luvvie Richard Harris ...
While rehearsing a theatrical production of Macbeth, the actor took a dislike to the man playing the lead role. On opening night, Harris' Seyton was due to deliver the line, 'The queen, my lord, is dead' - the cue for one of Macbeth's key soliloquies. Instead, Harris said, 'Oh, don't worry. She's fine. She'll be up and about in 10 minutes.' The performance was ruined and Harris sacked. The actor was always more comfortable on stage than in front of a camera. He hated making one movie so much that he flatly refused to watch it: the 1967 flick Caprice, in which he starred with Doris Day ...
The actress - a 2 1/2-pack-a-day smoker with a penchant for violent and abusive men - admitted to being baffled by the 'America's virgin sweetheart' image bestowed upon her. While dating a young Ronald Reagan, Day informed him that he was so good at talking, he should tour the country making speeches. At the time, the future Republican president was a proud Democrat. The 88-year-old Clara Kappelhoff, as Day prefers to be known these days, has been married four times, the first at the age of 17 to a trombonist with whom she bore her only child, Terry Melcher ...
After learning of Terry's existence, his biological father demanded Day have an abortion. The boy didn't fare much better with stepfathers and Terry was humiliated and beaten by Day's husband No 3, Marty Melcher, who would call him a 'sissy' in public and thought the boy was gay. Terry went on to have a successful career in music. In the late 1960s, his former home, which had just been rented to a Polish film director and his pregnant wife, would be visited by the 'family' of one Charles Manson ...
Manson, who was last month denied parole, had previously been a guest at the house where 8 1/2-month-pregnant Sharon Tate and friends were slaughtered, when it was Terry Melcher's residence. Manson had convinced himself the producer would sign him to make an album that would herald a racial apocalypse from which he and his followers would emerge triumphant. Manson's musical career was not without its successes, however, and his song Cease to Exist (later renamed Never Learn Not to Love), appeared on the 20/20 album by The Beach Boys.
