Murry Wilson, The Many Moods of Murry Wilson (1967)
Any Beach Boys book or doco will tell you there was really only one mood for Murry Wilson – angry. Well, there were shades I guess: bitterness, jealousy, envy…he was a nasty piece of knitting. He claimed to be some sort of musician and therefore the reason his sons and nephew and neighbourhood pals were so great, he tried to be their manager and record producer and arranger and, well, anything he could. He was a weekend warrior at best and an all-day worrier, bothering the boys about anything and everything. At the height of their fame he released this – his one and only solo record, a lazy, hammy, misty-eyed reminder of those soft-jazz/pop/pap records from the 1950s. It’s kinda sweet actually – naïve but it has a charm. Murry’s own compositions aren’t great but he includes a couple of Beach Boys songs, which had more than one wag barking about how this record was due to The Warmth of the Son/s – and perhaps the Many Pay-checks of Brian Wilson…Ah Murry, your weird wee name, as if you took that little ‘a’ and made it a capital ‘A’ for arsehole (asshole – as it would have been for you). I had to have this when I saw it, having read about it over the years. Plus I love a good rock’n’roll villain. And Murry’s Many Moods is a quaint wee soundtrack for pondering what an ogre he was. Like a missing/alternative soundtrack to scenes from A Clockwork Orange or American Psycho too…

Sample Track: The Warmth of the Sun

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