Eugene Landy, 71; helped Beach Boys' Wilson battle drugs
LOS ANGELES -- Eugene Landy, the psychologist who was denounced as a Svengali for his controversial relationship with Beach Boys legend Brian Wilson, has died. He was 71.
Mr. Landy died March 22 in Honolulu of respiratory complications of lung cancer, said William Flaxman, a longtime colleague.
A pioneer of what he called ''24-hour therapy," Mr. Landy was known for a show-business clientele that at one time included rocker Alice Cooper and actors Richard Harris and Rod Steiger.
He earned notoriety in the late 1970s after he began treating Wilson, the songwriting genius behind the iconic California band, whose career had disintegrated in a haze of drugs and phobias after a decade at the top of the musical charts.
Hired in 1975 by Wilson's wife, Mr. Landy took control of the rock star's life, monitoring him 24 hours a day with a team of assistants to keep him off drugs and junk food; Wilson's weight by then had ballooned to more than 300 pounds.
Mr. Landy grew so close to Wilson that he participated in Wilson's comeback as his manager and artistic collaborator -- an ethical breach that eventually caused the psychologist to give up his license to practice in California.
Born in Pittsburgh, Mr. Landy was the only child of Jules, a physician, and Frieda, a psychology professor. He said he dropped out of school after the sixth grade because of severe dyslexia and worked odd jobs, eventually winding up in radio as producer of a program aimed at teenagers. He later became a record promoter.
He moved to Los Angeles in the early 1960s and shifted career goals. He studied chemistry at Los Angeles City College before earning a bachelor's in psychology at California State, Los Angeles, in 1964. By 1968, he had a master's degree and a doctorate in psychology from the University of Oklahoma.
He did postdoctoral work in marathon group therapy in Rancho Santa Fe, Calif., with its founder, psychologist Frederick Stoller. Stoller's brand of group psychotherapy lasting a day or more inspired Mr. Landy's ''24-hour therapy," developed at Gateways Hospital in Los Angeles, where he ran a program for teenage drug abusers.
By the time he met Wilson, he had a Beverly Hills clinic and a celebrity clientele. Dr. Solon D. Samuels, a former director of Gateways, told the Los Angeles Times in 1988 that Mr. Landy was a maverick who has ''done things that no other psychologist has done in treating the psychotic and the drug addict."
Wilson seemed to fit the clinical profile to a distressing degree. He rarely got out of bed or talked to anyone. He went weeks without brushing his teeth or taking a shower, believing that ''blood would gush out of the sink faucet and snakes would spring out of the shower head," he wrote in his 1991 memoir ''Wouldn't It Be Nice."
His mind was so wasted on drugs, including cocaine, LSD, and heroin, that he tried to give drugs to his two young daughters.
His first session with Mr. Landy took place in Wilson's bedroom closet, the only place Wilson said he felt safe. Mr. Landy gained Wilson's trust and helped him regain enough physical and mental health that the pop idol performed at the Beach Boys' 15th anniversary concert on Dec. 31, 1976. Mr. Landy, however, had been fired earlier that month by Beach Boys manager Steve Love, largely because of a dispute over fees.
He was rehired six years later, after Wilson had regressed again into drugs and obesity. The 24-hour therapy was resumed from 1983 to 1986, during which time Mr. Landy said he was paid $35,000 a month. In 1987, he entered a business and creative partnership with Wilson called Brains and Genius to share profits from such ventures as recordings, films, soundtracks, and books.
In 1988, Wilson released his first solo album, ''Brian Wilson." Its success was tinged by controversy over Mr. Landy, however, who that year became the subject of an investigation by the California Board of Medical Quality Assurance.
