Since I got some positive feedback, I'll continue with my writings on the Love vs. Wilson trial. I got a couple of questions so I'll answer them first. The exact dates I'm not sure of. It started sometime at the beginning of October. They were still going at Thanksgiving because the judge was so furious with the lawyers of both sides that he kept threatening to make them come in on that Friday after Thanksgiving. I don't know if he ever did as I didn't go that day. The case went to the jury in December I believe. I read about the verdict in the paper because you never know when the deliberations would end.
They named all of the songs in question and they were all early things like Chug a Lug and stuff like that. The big song in question was California Girls. THe reason for this is that the David Lee Roth version brought in $500K in songwriter royalties. They went into this song over and over.
Each side had 40 hrs to present it's case which may not seem like a long time, but I believe that's the time they're in front of the jury. That's why it lasted 3 months. A series of lawyers came through all talking about how the Beach Boys were screwed by Murry and what a total jerk he was.
The first musician that I saw take the stand was David Marks, the guy before Al Jardine. He said that they would always drive around and Mike would make up lyrics as they just cruised. The one he kept mentioning and sang in court was Chug-A-Lug. This caused the jury great amusement.
And while I'm here, let me say that the jury was in place before I started going, but I don't think these people had a clue as to who the Beach Boys were. I guess this is what they wanted. What was really eerie is that they would have these big pictures of Murry, Brian, and a group shot hanging up. All of the evidence such as song lyrics and contracts and stuff like that were mounted on cardboard placards and blown up so that the jury could see them.
Marks pretty much said that Mike wrote some lyrics that he never got credit for. He said that Mike was always trying to be hip and use Beatnik type lingo. He said that Brian really wasn't capable of it.
Whenever there wasn't a witness ready they would read a deposition from Carl that he gave at an earlier time. They wanted to subpoena Carl but he was in Spain or Denver, so he was out of the legal range. What's weird about this is that my sister-in-law saw the Beach Boys playing at a trade show party she attended during this period and said that Carl was definitely there. The show was in San Diego, only a hundred miles south of LA. Maybe she was wrong, I don't know, but it was the defense(Brian) that wanted him there.
In Carl's deposition I heard something that I still can't believe. He said that he never saw Murry hit anyone. He thought it might have happened once! Maybe I heard it wrong, I'm not sure. But then after watching IJWMFTT, maybe he did say it. I thought he came off as sort of a weasel in IJWMFTT when he talked about the Pet Sounds stuff.
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