KING: Now what did he do that so changed Brian? He was called in to help and it turned out worse, right?

M. WILSON: He was called into help and I think originally he did help. He helped Brian lose weight and he helped Brian care about himself physically again, but then, as time went on, he became very captive of Brian — or Brian was primarily a prisoner...

B. WILSON: I wasn't allowed to call my family or my friends at all for nine years.

KING: He had that much control?

B. WILSON: Yes, he had that much control of my life, yes. He doped me up with medication. He kept me doped so I couldn't resist what he told me to do.

KING: For what purpose, Brian?

B. WILSON: He was a control freak. He gets off on controlling. Landy=bad.

KING: Did you suffer from depression, Brian?

B. WILSON: Did I suffer from depression? Yes, a little, from time to time. Yes.

KING: Did it occur while the Beach Boys were No. 1?

B. WILSON: Yes. It occurred then. Yes, it did. Then it occurred later in the '90s, a little bit in the '90s. 2000s, I'm not as depressed as I was. I get depressed now and then but not very much anymore.

M. WILSON: Actually, depression is something that if you have it it never really goes away.

KING: It's treatable.

M. WILSON: It's treatable.

B. WILSON: It's been minimized — my medicine has minimized it. Right, been minimized?

M. WILSON: It's absolutely been minimized.

KING: At the height of it, though...

M. WILSON: At the height of it it was just God-awful. It was really bad.

KING: Contemplating ending your own life?

B. WILSON: No — well, a couple times I had those thoughts, but I never got serious about it — I never got serious.

KING: What attracted — you were stepping in — did you ever feel, Melinda, you were stepping into a minefield? I mean, you meet a guy with enormous talent and enormous problems.

M. WILSON: Actually, Dr. Landy is the one that introduced us.

KING: Really?

M. WILSON: Yes, we just — he could probably kill himself now for it but he brought Brian into an automobile dealership that I was working at at the time for Brian to buy a car.

KING: You sold him a car?

M. WILSON: I sold Brian a car. And it was like surreal. It was like I knew of the Beach Boys but I really didn't know that, like Brian was the genius behind the Beach Boys. Growing up in California...

It would appear Brian needs help, and now that person is Melinda. There's much more to the interview, including the history of the Beach Boys.

Towards that end, there is an exceptional piece by Peter Ames Carlin, somewhat surprisingly, in American Heritage:

In 1904 William Wilson bought 10 acres of vineyard in Escondido, a rural village southeast of Los Angeles. This particular dream lasted a little over a year. The work was harder than he expected, and he missed his friends back home. But his son, William Coral ("Buddy") Wilson moved back to the Golden State in the early 1920s. However, he was forced to scratch out a living as an oil-field steamfitter. This disappointment, coupled with the pressure of supporting a wife and eight children on blue-collar earnings, would come to darken Buddy's eyes and harden his heart. And the pain would ripple out to his children.
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