THE MUSIC OF CHARLES MANSON

Article BY Joseph Rubas - Art by Jack Malebranche

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The name Charles Manson is synonymous with evil. Whether you know the full story or not, you know, at least, the face: The wide, mad smile and the crazy eyes. What you might not know, however, is that Manson wasn’t only a brutal cult leader and serial murderer, but also an accomplished musician.

Born November 4, 1934 to a single mother, Manson was raised in the foothills of West Virginia. His mother, a teenaged prostitute named Kathleen Maddox, was rarely present, and left family members to care for her son. In 1947, Maddox turned young Charlie over to the state; she was tired of caring for him.

Placed in the Gilbault School for Boys in Terre Haute, Indiana, Manson soon escaped and returned home, but his mother rejected him.

Manson was picked back up after a string of petty robberies committed to support himself, and went through a number of homes, institutions, and jails over the ensuing years, escaping frequently. While at Boys’ Town, Manson claimed his was sexually assaulted by another boy.

In a low level facility in 1952, the previously non-violent Manson raped another boy.

Despite this, he was eventually released in 1954.

In 1961, back in prison at McNeil Island in Washington State, Manson befriended Alvin “Creepy” Karpis, a Depression era outlaw and former member of the Ma Baker Gang. Karpis, who played the guitar, was known to give other inmates lessons. Manson was one of his pupils. Karpis considered Manson “lazy” and didn’t believe he had the dedication or the discipline to apply himself to his lessons. It was to Karpis’s great surprise, then, when Manson excelled at the instrument.

Another inmate at McNeil was record producer Phil Kaufman, who, in 1968, would briefly stay with Manson and his family and convince Manson to record some of his music.

At the age of thirty-two, in March 1967, Manson was released from prison for the final time.

By 1968, Manson had established himself as something of a countercultural guru and had amassed a young group of dedicated followers.

In the spring of 1968, Brian Wilson, of The Beach Boys, picked up two of Manson’s female followers hitchhiking down the road and brought them home. Later, returning from a recording session, he was met with a dozen people in his home. One of them was Charles Manson.

Wilson became enamored with Manson and his nomadic, hippie lifestyle, and paid for Manson to record some of his songs in a professional studio. To the man whose life had been full of pain, rejection, and heartache, things were finally looking up.

Wilson eventually introduced Manson to famed record producer Terry Melcher, who had worked with bands such as The Byrds, Pat Boone, Glen Campbell, and The Mamas and the Papas. Melcher, while interested in filming a documentary about Manson, declined to handle any of his music. Wilson, however, obtained Charlie’s permission to cover one of his songs, a haunting, folksy ballad called “Cease to Exist” on The Beach Boys’ upcoming album, 20/20.

20/20 was released in February 1969.

Manson didn’t like it.

In an attempt to make the song more commercially appealing, Wilson took it upon himself to change the arrangement and some of the lyrics, retitling it “Never Learn Not to Love.” The worst part: Manson wasn’t even given a writing credit.

Manson, by this time living with his followers on a disused movie ranch in the Los Angeles Hills, seethed. On the afternoon of March 23, 1969, Manson visited Melcher’s home at 10050 Cielo Drive. Entering uninvited, Manson was confronted by photographer Shahrokh Hatami. Mason is reported to have asked after someone Hatami never heard of. He informed Manson that the house was now occupied by Roman Polanski and Sharon Tate, the former a film director (most notable then for his terrifying adaptation of the Ira Levin novel Rosemary’s Baby) and his wife, Sharon Tate, an actress who was currently pregnant with Polanski’s child. Manson left, but returned later in the evening, managing to speak with Rudi Altobelli, the owner of the property, who lived in a small guest house behind the main residence. Altobelli, having met Manson in the past and knowing that he was unstable, lied about not knowing Melcher’s new address. Altobelli, it so happened, was scheduled to leave for Rome the next day with Tate and Polanski, and Manson told him he would be back to talk with him when he returned.

On May 18, 1969, Melcher reluctantly visited the ranch to hear Manson and his followers sing. He returned later in the month with a friend who owned a mobile recording studio, but wound up not putting anything down.

Around this time, Manson bean preaching to his followers that an apocalyptic race war was imminent. The far-fetched scenario was discussed primarily around campfires in the night, while Manson’s adherents were high on LSD (Manson is reported to have taken half the dose the others ingested, in order to keep control). Manson’s dire vision for the future was dubbed “Helter Skelter” after a track on the recent Beatles release The White Album. The Beatles, Manson claimed, were in actuality the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (Manson used biblical scripture to back up his claims. A favorite was Revelation 9:9, which reads: And they had breastplates, as it were breastplates of iron; and the sound of their wings was as the sound of chariots of many horses running to battle. Manson reasoned that the “breastplates” were in actuality their guitars). The Beatles’ sole purpose, or so Manson said, was to alert him and his family that the time had come for the war. Manson believed that their warnings came in the form of their music. Coincidentally, Manson had begun to call follower Susan Atkins “Sadie” long before the White Album was released...containing a song called “Sexy Sadie.” This no doubt led credence to Manson’s wild theory in the eyes of his drug-addled faithful.

The details of the actual war were supplied over time by Manson. Blacks, sick of being oppressed by whites, would rise up, and the bloody racial strife would segue into World War III. Manson and his people, having forewarning, would flee just ahead of the violence, and take refuge in a “bottomless cavern” in the desert. When the dust settled, Manson and his followers would emerge, and the victorious blacks, having no real experience at governing, would hand the reins of power to them.

By mid-June, Manson, eager to star the festivities, began hinting to the Family that they would have to jumpstart Helter Skelter by showing blacks the way.

The first acknowledged Manson Family crime occurred on July 1, 1969. Manson had ordered Charles “Tex” Watson to gather up money to fund the group’s preparations for doomsday. Watson obtained some money by ripping off a black drug dealer named Bernard Crowe. Crowe, incensed, threatened to kill everyone at the ranch. Manson countered by personally visiting Crowe at his Hollywood apartment and shooting him. Believing Crowe was dead (encouraged in his supposition by a newspaper article that the body of a black man had been founded dumped in L.A.), Manson was stunned when, after being arrested for his crimes, he met Crowe in jail.

Crowe, unbeknownst to Manson, was not a member of the Black Panthers; Manson, however, expected retaliation, and posted armed guards.

Still needing money by July 25, Manson ordered several of his followers (Atkins, Bobby Beausoleil , and Mary Brunner) to visit the home of Gary Hinmen, a music teacher loosely acquainted with Manson. Hinmen, or so Manson thought, had recently inherited a large sum of cash (21,000 dollars), and Manson wanted it. Hinmen was uncooperative, and the trio held him hostage for two days before Beausoleil stabbed him to death. At some point during those two days, Manson showed up and hacked Hinmen’s ear off with a sword. The words “Political piggy” and a Black Power symbol were written on the wall in Hinmen’s blood, though no one is quite sure who drew them.

By early August, Manson’s followers were convinced that Helter Skelter was coming soon. In an attempt to jumpstart it (or so the official story goes), Manson dispatched Watson, Atkins, Linda Kasabian, and Patricia Krenwinkel to the house at 10050 Cielo Drive and murder the inhabitants “As gruesome as you can.” The location was certainly not chosen at random; Manson wanted to send Melcher a “message.”

On the night of August 8, Watson, Atkins, Kasabian, and Krenwinkel drove into the Hollywood Hills. By the end of the night, Sharon Tate and four others lay dead. Polanski was in London at the time, so escaped the massacre.

Before leaving, Atkins wrote the word “Pig” on the front door in blood.

The murder sent shockwaves through the city. Manson was pleased, but, to him, it wasn’t enough.

The very next night, August 9, Manson accompanied Watson, Atkins, Kasabian, Krenwinkel, Leslie Van Houten, and Steve "Clem" Grogan on a mad nocturnal voyage through the city, looking for more victims. The house Manson eventually chose (going so far as to provide directions there) was located at 3301 Waverly Drive in the Los Feliz neighborhood. Manson and several his disciples had attended a party (along with Phil Kaufman) at the house next door in 1968. The choice of location lends further weight to the theory that Manson was using “Helter Skelter” as a cover for striking back at the industry that shunned him.

Inside, Leno and Rosemary LiBianca were brutally murdered, with words such as “Rise” and “Healter Skelter” being written on the walls in blood.

On August 16, police raided the Manson Family’s ranch on an unrelated auto theft charge, and the group was arrested wholesale. Due to the search warrant being misdated, they were released from jail several days later. Spooked, Manson packed up the Family and headed south, into Death Valley, ostensibly in search of the “bottomless cavern.” Shortly thereafter, the Family began to disintegrate, with Watson and others fleeing east. In December, Mason and the remaining members of the Family were arrested and formally charged in the Tate-LiBianca murders.

While awaiting trial, Manson contacted Kaufman and implored him to compile an album of his, Manson’s, music. The resulting record, LIE; The Love and Terror Cult was released on March 6, 1970, its covering being a black-and-white headshot of Manson taken from a December 1969 issue of Life magazine. Lie included fourteen songs:

1: Look At Your Game, Girl (which was covered by popular hard rock act Guns and Roses in 1993)

2: Ego

3: Mechanical Man

4: People Say I’m No Good

5: Home is Where You’re Happy

6: Arkansas

7: I’ll Never Say Never to Always

8: Garbage Dump

9: Don’t Do Anything Illegal

10: Sick City

11: Cease to Exist (covered by The Beach Boys in 1969)

12: Big Iron Door

13: I Once Knew a Man

14: Eyes of a Dreamer

In addition, members of Manson’s Family who weren’t charged in the Tate-LiBianca killings recording an album called The Family Jams in 1970, though it wasn’t released until 1997.

Manson and his followers were convicted on multiple counts in January 1971. Several of them have been released over the years, but Manson, for his part, remains in prison, where he continues recording to this day.

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Charles Manson is not insane. He may appear that way, but only because he wants to. In truth, Manson is an extremely gifted conman with an above average I.Q. and a charismatic ability to charm, seduce, and manipulate others. The many murders committed on Charlie’s orders were never really about “Helter Skelter.” They were about revenge. He had been rejected his entire life, by even his own mother, and Melcher and Wilson turning him away and, in his eyes, mistreating him and his music, was the final straw.

When you come right down to it, music runs through Manson’s life and crimes like a bright red strand of yarn. Music is inseparable from Manson, and Manson is inseparable from music. Music was his life, his passion, his justification, and his motivation. Without music, Charlie Manson would probably have remained a small time punk and stick-up man.

Instead, he is legend.