![]() ![]() They tell the story of a year of big change and fresh ambition, a pivot from football to his greatest passion, music. Others with random lists and goals and plans. Some of the journals are filled with song lyrics, dozens of stanzas of song lyrics. “So just to see that part of him, that was really special.” “Chris didn’t really share his feelings with us,” Caruso said. ![]() Leafing through the pages feels like a window into Chris they’d never seen before. His friends find the journals a few days after the party. ![]() The tears come anyway.Īnd I pray that when I go to sleep at night/Īnd meet you at the bar where we first met But as Bob reaches the exit, he leans both hands against a wall to steady himself, trying his best not to break down. He’s doing his best to put on a brave face. “My son would be honored to be here with all of you,” he says. He grabs the microphone, takes a deep breath, and spits out a welcome speech. He is needed back on the ranch, where a live band is playing country music, steaks are on the grill and a horse competition is underway, all part of an event organized to celebrate his son’s life.Ī short ride later, Bob ascends the stairs of the ranch’s horse arena to welcome the cowboys competing in his son’s honor. An autopsy later revealed his death to be an accidental drowning, caused by acute alcohol intoxication.īob Brown, months after the tragedy, remembers his son as "a father's dream." Eight hours later, he died in the hospital. On April 17, eight days short of his 25th birthday, Chris Brown was found unconscious in a friend’s swimming pool during a party in Malibu. The use of the past tense leaves those close to Chris with lumps in their throats. “He was finally content where he was at,” said Justin Caruso, his close friend and roommate. He poured his extra time into music, jotting down lyrics in journals and divining chords with Kaylin. ![]() After starring as an offensive lineman at USC, playing briefly with the Chargers, then detouring to Washington, D.C., to play in the short-lived XFL, Chris was ready to put football behind him. Over the last year, friends and family say, Chris seemed to settle on his path. So when Chris was home, for days or weeks at a time, he would clean the stalls, feed the horses and cattle and work the land. “If you’re gonna be country, then you gotta live country,” Bob would tell his son. He dreamed one day he would grace the stage at Stagecoach, a country music festival in Indio he attended every year. He toted his acoustic guitar around like an extra appendage. He loved cowboy hats and cut-off tank tops, line dancing and country western bars. But no one in the Brown family - not his older brother, Nick, not his younger sister, Kaylin - took to the ranch quite like Chris. into a family sanctuary and cowboy’s paradise, complete with a saloon, horse arenas, equestrian training grounds, a party barn, a wedding venue. He planned to turn the California Ranch Co. Bob bought these 53 acres of desert wine country in Temecula in December 2019, fulfilling a promise he’d made to his wife, Erin, on their first date decades earlier. The ranch was at the center of that future. Since last spring, when the pandemic brought Chris back home, this was where father and son would talk - about the ranch, about music, about everything in between - dreaming up plans until the beer was gone and the sun was setting over the nearby hills. It still feels like yesterday he and Chris were parked on the edge of this pasture, drinking Coors Lights and watching the horses roam. But the solace is always only temporary, giving way to waves of sorrow that most days seem as inevitable as the tides. It’s a rare moment of peace for Bob, who for the past two months has done everything in his power to stay busy and to fill the silence. The distant din of live country music blaring joyously from the barn barely registers over the dry, desert breeze. (Rick Scuteri / AP)īob Brown sits in the driver’s seat of his red Polaris ATV, staring out over a paddock of horses. Ex-Trojan lineman Chris Brown in the first half of an NCAA football game against Arizona, in Tucson. ![]()
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