Latest / Booked On Rock with Eric Senich / Manson Unmasked: Motive, Myth, and Rock ’n’ Roll [Episode 356]

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Manson Unmasked: Motive, Myth, and Rock ’n’ Roll [Episode 356] · Booked On Rock with Eric Senich

0:00
Speaker 1: There are a few figures in history as disturbing as
0:03
Speaker 1: Charles Manson, a failed musician turned cult leader who believed
0:06
Speaker 1: songs held hidden messages and convinced his followers to kill
0:10
Speaker 1: in the name of an apocalyptic prophecy. What drove them
0:13
Speaker 1: to these crimes, what are the conspiracy theories and how
0:17
Speaker 1: much did rock music play a role? All of this
0:20
Speaker 1: discussed next with author Nicholas Tochkatal.
0:24
Speaker 2: Rock and Roll I mean I leave you you're reading.
0:28
Speaker 1: Little Hands says it's time to rock and roll roll.
0:33
Speaker 1: I totally booked. Welcome back to Book on Rock, the
0:40
Speaker 1: podcast for those about to read and rock on Eric Sanitch.
0:43
Speaker 1: My guest is Nicholas Tochka, author of the musical lives
0:46
Speaker 1: of Charles Manson, The Beatles, the Beach Boys, and the
0:49
Speaker 1: Invention of the Sixties or No Sense Makes Sense. Welcome
0:52
Speaker 1: to the podcast, Nicholas, Thanks very much.
0:55
Speaker 2: Eric.
0:55
Speaker 1: The book provides an absolutely fascinating analysis of Charles Manson
1:01
Speaker 1: his music. It explores his role as a failed singer
1:04
Speaker 1: songwriter and how his musical aspirations influenced the Family and
1:08
Speaker 1: the nineteen sixty nine Taate LaBianca murders on August ninth
1:12
Speaker 1: and tenth, nineteen sixty nine. I'm sure everybody knows about it,
1:15
Speaker 1: but it's a series of brutal killings that were committed
1:17
Speaker 1: by members of the Manson family called Los Angeles. Manson's
1:20
Speaker 1: followers murdered actress Sharon Tate and four others on August ninth,
1:24
Speaker 1: followed by Leno and Rosemary LaBianca on August tenth. It
1:28
Speaker 1: shocked the nation. You make it clear up front that
1:31
Speaker 1: this book is not objective, So talk about how you
1:33
Speaker 1: approach this book in Charles Manson.
1:36
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you've given us a really good synopsis of
1:38
Speaker 2: what the quote unquote Manson murders look like. And that
1:42
Speaker 2: story that the failed singer songwriter, this devious mastermind who
1:47
Speaker 2: was a cut leader who brainwashed his followers, who was
1:50
Speaker 2: instructed with secret messages found in Beatles songs that led
1:55
Speaker 2: them to kill. This is the story that's found in
1:58
Speaker 2: Vincent Bugliosi's really the first major mass market success true
2:04
Speaker 2: crime story. Helter Skelter and I begin by saying that
2:10
Speaker 2: this book isn't objective, because what I want to do
2:12
Speaker 2: in this book is look at that narrative and then
2:15
Speaker 2: look at all of the other narratives, all of the
2:17
Speaker 2: other stories that people have used to tell the story
2:21
Speaker 2: of the Manson family, Charles Manson and his followers, and
2:25
Speaker 2: the Tate La Bianca killings, in order to understand something
2:28
Speaker 2: about how we narrate history and the ways in which
2:31
Speaker 2: different kinds of genres, from rock criticism to true crime
2:35
Speaker 2: to gonzo journalism, conspiracy theorizing, have kind of given rise
2:39
Speaker 2: to the world that we live in today, a world
2:42
Speaker 2: of disinformation, a post truth world, a world in which
2:47
Speaker 2: we have come to understand reality as itself being produced
2:51
Speaker 2: or constructed as kind of subject to debate.
2:55
Speaker 1: Yeah, we know that the story of Manson has been
2:58
Speaker 1: well documented in books, as you say, documentaries and film.
3:02
Speaker 1: The moment we focus most on is when he gets
3:06
Speaker 1: out of prison. It was seven years he was at
3:09
Speaker 1: Terminal Island right in San Pedro, California, that's right, and
3:13
Speaker 1: he was released March twenty first of nineteen sixty seven,
3:16
Speaker 1: and that really is where many of these stories start.
3:18
Speaker 1: Of course, you know, his childhood has also been investigated
3:22
Speaker 1: and looked into to try to explain these things. But
3:25
Speaker 1: I've heard many things about that period though while he
3:28
Speaker 1: was in prison that affected Manson. The Beatles coming along,
3:32
Speaker 1: He studied scientology, he became really serious about music. How
3:37
Speaker 1: did those years while in prison influence what he would
3:39
Speaker 1: do when he got out, in your opinion and from
3:42
Speaker 1: what you learn doing research for the book.
3:44
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. So there are kind of two clusters
3:47
Speaker 2: of stories that people have told about Manson's time in prison.
3:51
Speaker 2: One of course, has to do with music making. He
3:56
Speaker 2: learned to play guitar by a kind of notable nineteen
3:59
Speaker 2: thirties nineteen forties gangster named Creepy Karpis. He also played
4:04
Speaker 2: drum set seemed as if the prison had a couple
4:07
Speaker 2: of sort of musical instruments for musicians to perform together.
4:13
Speaker 2: Toward the end of his time in prison, we have
4:15
Speaker 2: from psychological reports in parole reports getting ready for his release,
4:22
Speaker 2: this idea that he had become obsessed with the Beatles
4:24
Speaker 2: and that he was writing songs, and that his release
4:27
Speaker 2: from prison he would try to make it as a songwriter.
4:31
Speaker 2: These have been recounted in all of the books that
4:34
Speaker 2: have been written about Manson from the seventies onward, and
4:37
Speaker 2: they kind of suggest this story of someone who had
4:39
Speaker 2: been sort of captured by the sound of the Beatles
4:43
Speaker 2: and captured by this kind of youth movement. So that's
4:47
Speaker 2: one set of stories about what he learned in prison
4:50
Speaker 2: in terms of thinking about becoming a musician. And then
4:52
Speaker 2: of course there are all these debates about was this legitimate,
4:56
Speaker 2: was this perhaps a way that Manson was going to
5:00
Speaker 2: try to dek out his parole officer and have the
5:03
Speaker 2: ability to move around because he needed to go get
5:06
Speaker 2: gigs and so on. Of course, the second set of
5:08
Speaker 2: things that you learned in prison had to do with
5:11
Speaker 2: all of you know, being incarcerated with people who were pimps,
5:17
Speaker 2: people who were bank robbers, people who were hardened criminals.
5:22
Speaker 2: Also seems that at this time there were a lot
5:24
Speaker 2: of different kinds of philosophical systems that were floating around.
5:28
Speaker 2: You mentioned scientology, but there's also Dale Carnegie's sort of
5:34
Speaker 2: these kind of correspondence courses about how to succeed at
5:37
Speaker 2: business and at life, And of course you mentioned March
5:40
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty seven, he gets deposited in California, just on
5:44
Speaker 2: the eve of the Summer of Love, someone who has
5:47
Speaker 2: kind of missed the nineteen sixties up until this point
5:50
Speaker 2: and then is deposited in a place where the sixties
5:54
Speaker 2: are about to explode.
5:55
Speaker 1: One of the songs manson Row while he was in
5:57
Speaker 1: prison was home is where You're happy? Can you write quote,
6:00
Speaker 1: attempt a little. We're reading, and sometimes you can quickly
6:03
Speaker 1: get into trouble. I will ask you the question, though,
6:05
Speaker 1: and you asked this in the book. Should we even
6:07
Speaker 1: try to take as lyrics literally?
6:09
Speaker 2: Yeah? And I mean one of the goals with this
6:12
Speaker 2: book is to kind of problematize, to kind of point
6:16
Speaker 2: out this practice of reading lyrics that emerged in the
6:19
Speaker 2: nineteen sixties, and say, okay, from the nineteen sixties onward,
6:25
Speaker 2: all of a sudden, we have rock critics. We have
6:28
Speaker 2: magazines like Rolling Stone or Crawdaddy, where journalists are taking
6:32
Speaker 2: rock lyrics, they're parsing them, They're trying to interpret them
6:35
Speaker 2: and dig underneath the surface to understand what they really mean,
6:39
Speaker 2: what they really tell us about the artists and about
6:41
Speaker 2: social reality. And so when I'm saying, you know, you
6:44
Speaker 2: start to get in trouble, what I'm trying to do
6:47
Speaker 2: for the reader is to signal, Okay, let's pause for
6:50
Speaker 2: a second. We all, in the year twenty twenty five
6:53
Speaker 2: have had a half century or more of thinking about
6:56
Speaker 2: rock lyrics in this way as things to be parsed into,
6:59
Speaker 2: be interpreted in to say how did this come about?
7:03
Speaker 2: Why did rock lyrics become so significant or so important?
7:08
Speaker 1: Now?
7:08
Speaker 2: A lot of the narrations and stories about the Manson
7:10
Speaker 2: family really depend on us reading and interpreting the lyrics
7:14
Speaker 2: in a particular way and thinking about them as evidence
7:19
Speaker 2: for who he is, who his group is, what their
7:21
Speaker 2: motivations are. And my point there in that section is
7:25
Speaker 2: to say, let's pause for a second and think about
7:28
Speaker 2: this not as a historical fact, but as an actual
7:33
Speaker 2: historical event where rock lyrics become something that we are
7:37
Speaker 2: obligated to understand. When we think about the music of
7:41
Speaker 2: Bob Dylan, when we think about the music of the Beatles, Donovan,
7:46
Speaker 2: other artists, all of a sudden, we're being asked in
7:49
Speaker 2: the late sixties to really take it seriously.
7:52
Speaker 1: Hindsight is twenty twenty. Then people start thinking that maybe
7:57
Speaker 1: there was something in those lyrics. But then I think
7:59
Speaker 1: maybe we're give him way too much credit. He wasn't
8:02
Speaker 1: that smart of a guy. It was just these were
8:05
Speaker 1: just songs that he wrote. However, you do quote Phil
8:08
Speaker 1: Kaufin in the book Phil Coffin's Been in a lot
8:10
Speaker 1: of documentaries. I've seen him off and he was with
8:14
Speaker 1: Charlie while in prison. He put Charlie in touch with
8:17
Speaker 1: Gary Stromberg at Universal. He said that Charlie's lyrics intended
8:22
Speaker 1: to lure in the girls. And here's a quote that's
8:25
Speaker 1: from the book, quote when I first met him when
8:28
Speaker 1: I got out. That wasn't the guy I knew in
8:30
Speaker 1: the prison yard singing in the Shadow of your Smile.
8:33
Speaker 1: Charlie went from Frankie Laine to kind of an acid music.
8:37
Speaker 1: He was using it. The music was a tool. These
8:41
Speaker 1: girls were lost, these children were lost, and peace and
8:44
Speaker 1: love that was his bait. So Phil Coffin knew him
8:49
Speaker 1: better than he knew him personally, so much better than
8:51
Speaker 1: we did. So he's saying that there was something in
8:53
Speaker 1: those lyrics, in the songs that he was writing that
8:56
Speaker 1: was part of the combination of things. Acid was another thing, religion,
9:01
Speaker 1: all those things seem to come together. But again the
9:04
Speaker 1: question is was he a mastermind planning all this while
9:07
Speaker 1: in prison or did this just all kind of happen.
9:09
Speaker 1: He steps off that bus in San Francisco and realizes
9:13
Speaker 1: this is a whole new world and there's something I
9:15
Speaker 1: can do here.
9:16
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, And I mean he steps off that bus
9:19
Speaker 2: and grows a beard, grows his hair out, plays a
9:23
Speaker 2: bit of guitar, and he slips into a role that
9:27
Speaker 2: is available to him. It wouldn't have been available a
9:30
Speaker 2: couple of years ago, like it wouldn't have been available
9:33
Speaker 2: in sixty four, sixty five, sixty six. It only becomes
9:36
Speaker 2: available in sixty seven. And that's this role of guru,
9:40
Speaker 2: this role of kind of pipe piper, singer, songwriter. I
9:45
Speaker 2: call him at one point a singing hippie mystic who
9:48
Speaker 2: can sort of pull together this pattern, mix it with
9:52
Speaker 2: this emerging drug culture, which also draws on all sorts
9:56
Speaker 2: of for example, examples of high weirdness thing related to
10:02
Speaker 2: you know, not only folk music, but sort of science fiction,
10:07
Speaker 2: and all of these emerging spiritualist religions, scientology. The Processed Church,
10:14
Speaker 2: which is a scientology splinter group, can sort of meld
10:17
Speaker 2: all of this together. And of course rock lyrics do
10:20
Speaker 2: provide a really fascinating vehicle for packaging all of this,
10:25
Speaker 2: and as you mentioned, in a way that is incredibly
10:28
Speaker 2: meaningful to young people, and of course young people made
10:33
Speaker 2: up the members of the commune that he came to lead.
10:37
Speaker 1: To that point he could see the influence Beatles had
10:41
Speaker 1: over teens, So how much of that ran through his mind?
10:43
Speaker 1: I mean, the power of somebody like John Lennon and
10:45
Speaker 1: Paul McCartney had, what you could do with that power.
10:48
Speaker 2: And I mean, you know, this question of intentionality. Whether
10:52
Speaker 2: or not someone like Manson would have been actively thinking
10:56
Speaker 2: about that, I'm not sure. I'm not sure he would have,
11:02
Speaker 2: but I think it is significant. One of the things
11:04
Speaker 2: I try to get at in the book was that
11:06
Speaker 2: other thinkers, people on the more conservative side of the spectrum,
11:11
Speaker 2: were beginning to think about the Beatles and other popular
11:14
Speaker 2: music artists as possibly hypnotizing or brainwashing young listeners. This
11:20
Speaker 2: was a critique that came from, for example, the evangelical
11:23
Speaker 2: preacher David Nobel, who I write about quite a bit.
11:26
Speaker 2: It's kind of a rehashed right wing Cold War version
11:30
Speaker 2: of this Adorno kind of idea that mass culture brainwashes
11:34
Speaker 2: the masses. But on the other hand, on the progressive
11:38
Speaker 2: and activist and countercultural side of things, increasingly people who
11:43
Speaker 2: were writing and Rolling Stone and other countercultural newspapers were
11:48
Speaker 2: suggesting that rock and roll might also be a revolutionary force.
11:54
Speaker 2: So all of these ideas are in the air, no
11:57
Speaker 2: matter what side of the political spectrum you're on.
12:01
Speaker 1: Hey, guys, we'll get back to the show, but first
12:03
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Speaker 1: com and click on my deals. He gets to La.
12:36
Speaker 1: Chapter two you cover this period when he arrives in La,
12:40
Speaker 1: he records some of his music, and this chapter covers
12:43
Speaker 1: the period from November of sixty seven in March of
12:45
Speaker 1: sixty eight. Now I've heard these tapes and it's fascinating.
12:49
Speaker 1: They're on YouTube. What is amazing to hear is somebody
12:53
Speaker 1: who is seen as a monster, a monster manipulator, talking
12:57
Speaker 1: like a scared little boy in these tapes. I mean,
13:01
Speaker 1: he's Gary Stromberg was a producer, and he's trying to
13:05
Speaker 1: get Manson to calm down. He's like, you know, it's
13:09
Speaker 1: all good man, chill out, it's gonna be all you know,
13:11
Speaker 1: just relax and have fun. And Manson's just so nervous.
13:15
Speaker 1: And I think he says, I could I could make
13:18
Speaker 1: myself What do you say, I can make myself nervous?
13:21
Speaker 1: You think I could make myself unnervous? And he had
13:24
Speaker 1: that real creepy laugh. And his songs he records them.
13:30
Speaker 1: Ultimately they don't lead to him getting signed. I feel
13:35
Speaker 1: like a few of them there's something there, and others
13:38
Speaker 1: have said it there is something there. I mean, he
13:39
Speaker 1: needed more polished. Maybe if he had a better attitude
13:42
Speaker 1: about things, you know, maybe if he followed directions and wasn't,
13:46
Speaker 1: you know, completely insane, he probably could have had a
13:49
Speaker 1: possible career. But this has come to represent the start
13:53
Speaker 1: of his motives for the Manson family murders. How much
13:56
Speaker 1: truth is there to this? Do you think the.
14:00
Speaker 2: Stories about why the murders occurred in August nineteen sixty
14:04
Speaker 2: nine is that it's at this moment this quote unquote
14:07
Speaker 2: failed audition with Gary Stromberg at Universal in Los Angeles,
14:12
Speaker 2: probably in November nineteen sixty seven. That begins what I
14:17
Speaker 2: call the frustrated artist hypothesis that this rejection by society,
14:23
Speaker 2: this initial rejection leads to further rejections. I think probably
14:27
Speaker 2: in terms of documentary evidence, you know, the book sort
14:30
Speaker 2: of plays with different narratives and is coy about what's
14:33
Speaker 2: true and what's not true. But this probably isn't true.
14:36
Speaker 2: It actually seems like the failed audition wasn't that biggest
14:41
Speaker 2: step setback. This failed audition at Universal seems like Mansing
14:46
Speaker 2: got advice from Stromberg to put together a band to
14:49
Speaker 2: work on his music, and that's what he does. He
14:52
Speaker 2: puts together group in late nineteen sixty seven called Milky Way.
14:58
Speaker 2: This is kind of a scratch band includes Bobby Bouselet,
15:02
Speaker 2: a protege of Kenneth Anger, the director Kenneth Anger, who
15:07
Speaker 2: also later is still in prison for killings associated with
15:11
Speaker 2: the Manson commune. Also includes a number of different college students.
15:16
Speaker 2: They did a gig band kind of fell apart, and
15:20
Speaker 2: it seems as if over the next year or so
15:23
Speaker 2: music increasingly becomes central to the commune, and the commune
15:28
Speaker 2: begins these group compositions that kind of culminate by the
15:32
Speaker 2: end of nineteen sixty eight in a pretty significant body
15:36
Speaker 2: of work. I'm sure we'll get to this, but your
15:39
Speaker 2: question about whether or not this in retrospect, we can
15:43
Speaker 2: say maybe this, if we follow that narrative thread, is
15:46
Speaker 2: the beginning of this rejection, But it actually seems to
15:50
Speaker 2: have kind of jump started this putting together a band
15:55
Speaker 2: and starting to think seriously about writing these songs.
15:58
Speaker 1: I think you're right, though, I think it'd actually inspire
16:01
Speaker 1: him to at least it gave him something of a
16:03
Speaker 1: hope and he thought, Okay, I got something going here.
16:06
Speaker 1: I didn't get signed.
16:07
Speaker 2: But you know, the documentary evidence that we do have
16:11
Speaker 2: is really patchy from this for this period. A lot
16:15
Speaker 2: of it comes from memoirs that were written retrospectively by
16:18
Speaker 2: members of the commune that were in jail. A lot
16:21
Speaker 2: of these are self serving memoirs so published in the
16:24
Speaker 2: late seventies eighties after Vincent Bugliosi's Helter Skelter that reproduce
16:30
Speaker 2: the narrative of Helter Skelter. But I do think that
16:36
Speaker 2: what we can see is that the group was kind
16:39
Speaker 2: of growing. People were hanging out. It was pretty loose
16:43
Speaker 2: and so this idea of kind of some you know,
16:46
Speaker 2: the commune being really goal directed toward getting a record album.
16:50
Speaker 2: Probably that's not what was going on at this time.
16:53
Speaker 1: Acid read people say that Charlie would give the group
16:58
Speaker 1: the family much more than he would take because that
17:03
Speaker 1: allowed him to be in control, and they were also
17:07
Speaker 1: more susceptible now to mind control to the things that
17:11
Speaker 1: he would say. It kept him enough at control while
17:15
Speaker 1: he could infiltrate the minds of the group. What role
17:18
Speaker 1: did LSD play in Charlie's control over the family, It.
17:21
Speaker 2: Certainly played a role. This is one story that gets
17:25
Speaker 2: repeated quite a bit. It's found in Paul Watkins's memoir,
17:30
Speaker 2: which came out in nineteen eighty, probably most prominently. It
17:34
Speaker 2: also figures in Vincent Bugliosi's true crime book. The idea
17:38
Speaker 2: that Manson would kind of ply members of the commune
17:42
Speaker 2: with acid, and he himself would take at a little
17:45
Speaker 2: bit less whether or not that's true or not. To me,
17:50
Speaker 2: the really interesting thing is how this particular context of
17:56
Speaker 2: sort of creating these secular rituals using acid, using music
18:02
Speaker 2: within the commune and of course within other communes and
18:05
Speaker 2: social groups during this period, how it becomes so widespread.
18:10
Speaker 2: You mentioned earlier than a lot of the members of
18:12
Speaker 2: the commune were younger, which they were, and a lot
18:16
Speaker 2: of them were lost, And I think that's true. A
18:20
Speaker 2: lot of the people who gravitated toward this group were
18:23
Speaker 2: seekers and were looking for something. One of the ways
18:26
Speaker 2: that you can look for something is through music. One
18:28
Speaker 2: of the ways you can look is through religion, including
18:31
Speaker 2: these alternative forms of religion that are emerging. And of course,
18:34
Speaker 2: another way that you can look for things and look
18:36
Speaker 2: inside yourself, as it were, is through drugs, through hallucinogennes,
18:42
Speaker 2: and by mixing all of those together into these kinds
18:46
Speaker 2: of happenings or these semi ritualized secularized rituals. This isn't
18:55
Speaker 2: just going on within the commune. Of course, we see
18:57
Speaker 2: it in places like the Hate Ashpe. We see it
19:00
Speaker 2: at electric light shows, the Grateful Dead, and other kinds
19:04
Speaker 2: of groups, the electric kool Aid tests. I think that sure,
19:09
Speaker 2: acid definitely played a role and is part of just
19:12
Speaker 2: the common sense moment where okay, we can open up
19:17
Speaker 2: our minds, we can explore through music, sounds, drugs, sex, dancing,
19:23
Speaker 2: who we are and what the world is. We can
19:26
Speaker 2: sort of Pierce beneath the veil of what reality looks
19:30
Speaker 2: like to dig down and figure out what is really
19:33
Speaker 2: going on.
19:34
Speaker 1: There's no evidence of family faith, church life, or religious
19:37
Speaker 1: community that shaped Manson in any healthier sustained way. Where
19:42
Speaker 1: did this idea of enforcing authority through religion come from?
19:45
Speaker 1: He can spend half of his life in prison by
19:47
Speaker 1: that point.
19:48
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. And I mean these sort of rituals
19:53
Speaker 2: as I just mentioned, I think in part emerged because
19:56
Speaker 2: they were part of commune life in general, this sort
19:59
Speaker 2: of looking for the ritualization of everyday life through these
20:05
Speaker 2: special kinds of events. But the kind of more formal
20:08
Speaker 2: aspects of the kind of authoritarian aspects of using religion
20:14
Speaker 2: or using religious pattern to for example, control people. I mean,
20:18
Speaker 2: I think there were a lot of different models. The
20:22
Speaker 2: guru and the figure of the guru became incredibly significant
20:27
Speaker 2: during this period. Members of the Beach Boys as well
20:31
Speaker 2: as the Beatles of course, had their Guru, the Maharishi
20:34
Speaker 2: mahash Yogi. This was something that was in the news.
20:38
Speaker 2: There were a number of other people who were gurus
20:43
Speaker 2: or guru like figures in within and around the comfor culture.
20:48
Speaker 2: In addition to that, most directly the Commune. By the
20:51
Speaker 2: time they settled at Spahn Ranch, just outside Los Angeles,
20:56
Speaker 2: they also became involved with another cult that was just
21:00
Speaker 2: a few miles away, with a couple of the members
21:02
Speaker 2: of the Commune even participating with this cult. Ed Sanders,
21:09
Speaker 2: the poet, the journalist, the founding member of the New
21:14
Speaker 2: York folk rock band The Thugs, wrote a really fascinating
21:18
Speaker 2: book that I draw on and talk about a lot
21:21
Speaker 2: in my work, and his thesis is that the Commune
21:26
Speaker 2: got a lot of ideas from this other cult that
21:29
Speaker 2: was nearby. He also put forward the idea that the
21:33
Speaker 2: cult borrowed a lot of excuse me, that Manson's calling
21:36
Speaker 2: borrowed a lot of ideas from the Process Church, a
21:39
Speaker 2: scientology splinter group. Of course, his first publisher had to
21:45
Speaker 2: pulp the first run of his book because he went
21:47
Speaker 2: a little bit too far with that theory and got
21:50
Speaker 2: sued by the Process Church, which was a very prominent
21:54
Speaker 2: group during this period in the late sixties and from
21:57
Speaker 2: the early seventies.
21:58
Speaker 1: Nicholas Toschka is the of the musical lives of Charles Manson,
22:02
Speaker 1: the Beatles, the Beach Boys, in the invention of the sixties,
22:04
Speaker 1: or no sense makes sense. Accounts various to how Dennis
22:08
Speaker 1: Wilson of the Beach Boys enters Charlie's world. You're right
22:11
Speaker 1: about what the bear facts are and whether or not
22:14
Speaker 1: we can define a larger story behind those facts, or
22:17
Speaker 1: what's the most known version of what happened.
22:20
Speaker 2: So the story that gets repeated in Bugliosi's Helter Skelter
22:24
Speaker 2: informs the basis of most subsequent accounts is that Dennis
22:30
Speaker 2: was driving along the highway. He stopped to pick up
22:33
Speaker 2: a couple of young women who were hitch hiking. They
22:36
Speaker 2: were members of the commune. He took them back to
22:39
Speaker 2: his estate on Sunset Boulevard. They hung out, they chatted,
22:45
Speaker 2: he went to a recording studio, and then when he
22:48
Speaker 2: returned later that night, Charlie was there in the driveway
22:53
Speaker 2: to greet him. And this initiated a three to five
22:57
Speaker 2: month association where, within certain accounts, Wilson was hoodwinked, he
23:04
Speaker 2: was taken for a ride, the group stole a bunch
23:07
Speaker 2: of equipment from him. They ran up huge doctor's bills.
23:14
Speaker 2: Ed Sanders mentions the figure of one hundred thousand dollars,
23:17
Speaker 2: which gets bandied about or Wilson became a de facto
23:22
Speaker 2: member of the commune. Him and a couple of his associates,
23:26
Speaker 2: as well as the producer Terry Melcher, begin a year's
23:30
Speaker 2: long association that only ends some time around the killings.
23:34
Speaker 2: In August nineteen sixty nine.
23:37
Speaker 1: Milk and cookies, right, that's the story, Dennis said, come
23:41
Speaker 1: by my place for some milk and cookies.
23:44
Speaker 2: That's right.
23:44
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, Dennis told Vincent Bugliosi, the LA deputy district
23:48
Speaker 1: attorney who prosecuted Charlie and later wrote the book Helter Skelter.
23:52
Speaker 1: As you mentioned that quote, Charlie never had a musical
23:55
Speaker 1: bone in his body. But there was a song that
23:58
Speaker 1: Charlie wrote Dennis later turned into a Beach Boys song.
24:02
Speaker 1: That was a song initially called Cease to Exist, turned
24:05
Speaker 1: into Never Learn Not to Love by the Beach Boys.
24:08
Speaker 1: Charlie was angered at not getting credit. So was Charlie
24:11
Speaker 1: a good musician?
24:13
Speaker 2: Yeah, And this quote that Charlie never had a musical
24:17
Speaker 2: bone in his body is another one that gets bandied
24:20
Speaker 2: about a lot. It supports this thesis or this story
24:23
Speaker 2: that he as a frustrated musician, as someone who had
24:29
Speaker 2: these kind of delusions of being someone on the level
24:33
Speaker 2: of the Beatles, he never really should have had these
24:36
Speaker 2: that this is sort of symptomatic of some kind of
24:38
Speaker 2: mental illness or some sort of narcissism. We do know
24:43
Speaker 2: from for example, memoir by Neil Young, who also thought
24:48
Speaker 2: about introducing Manson to producer at Warner Records. I mean,
24:55
Speaker 2: we do know there was a lengthy musical association. A
24:58
Speaker 2: lot of the memoirs by members of the commune suggest
25:02
Speaker 2: that Charlie was playing guitar with Dennis Wilson, maybe even
25:05
Speaker 2: teaching him a few licks. There are rumors that the
25:09
Speaker 2: Beach Boys may have bought two songs, although the second song,
25:14
Speaker 2: whichever one that is, has never really come to light.
25:17
Speaker 2: There is a story that Manstein got paid fifty bucks
25:20
Speaker 2: for Ceased to Exist and then became so angry when
25:23
Speaker 2: they changed his lyrics that he decided to you know
25:27
Speaker 2: that this sort of sped up or initiated this murderous feeling.
25:33
Speaker 2: There's another story that maybe a motorcycle had been traded
25:36
Speaker 2: for the song. And so this is kind of a
25:40
Speaker 2: moment and sort of a point that really is I
25:47
Speaker 2: think a little bit up for debate in the literature.
25:50
Speaker 2: But when you start to look at the actual sort
25:53
Speaker 2: of claims that people have made when you start to
25:55
Speaker 2: listen to the recordings, I mean, for sure, the kind
25:58
Speaker 2: of music that the Commune making was not that far
26:01
Speaker 2: off from what you had been hearing on the radio
26:03
Speaker 2: by a number of different artists at this time.
26:06
Speaker 1: Was it Stephen Stills a fan too?
26:08
Speaker 2: Well, all of these guys who were sort of people
26:13
Speaker 2: sort of associated with this counterculture. This is where a
26:16
Speaker 2: lot of the rumors come in as to whether or
26:18
Speaker 2: not how much contact there was between these sort of
26:20
Speaker 2: celebrity culture and the Manson Commune, members of Crosby still Snashing,
26:27
Speaker 2: young members of the Mammas and the Papas, even a
26:30
Speaker 2: couple of sort of new Hollywood actors, Whether and how
26:35
Speaker 2: much interaction these groups had. I will say the one
26:40
Speaker 2: person who is sort of most prominently on the record,
26:43
Speaker 2: as I mentioned, is Neil Young saying that, you know,
26:48
Speaker 2: he was a good musician. We liked these kind of
26:51
Speaker 2: weird improvisatory sing song things he did.
26:55
Speaker 1: You're right quote. With so many events piling up between
26:57
Speaker 1: April and June of nineteen sixty eight, our narrative thread
27:01
Speaker 1: has begun fraying. Well we know is that the Manson
27:04
Speaker 1: family is now living at Spawn Ranch, and the Beatles
27:07
Speaker 1: start working on what allegedly became Charlie's Bible, the White Album.
27:11
Speaker 1: Were the sessions at Spawn Ranch more extreme than elsewhere?
27:16
Speaker 1: What was he doing at that time, because I've heard
27:19
Speaker 1: story was the story that he would have the girls
27:22
Speaker 1: eventually when the White Album comes out, have them listen
27:25
Speaker 1: to it over and over again. And then one of
27:28
Speaker 1: the girls wanted to get up and use the bathroom,
27:29
Speaker 1: but he's like, no, not until this, not until the
27:32
Speaker 1: album's complete.
27:33
Speaker 2: Yeah. So we have this period at Spawn Ranch which
27:37
Speaker 2: happens across nineteen sixty eight. Beatles White Album, by the way,
27:40
Speaker 2: comes out of November nineteen sixty eight. At the end
27:44
Speaker 2: of this period, around October, maybe early November nineteen sixty eight,
27:48
Speaker 2: the group moves from Spawn Ranch to the desert. While
27:54
Speaker 2: they're at Spawn Ranch during this initial period, it does
27:57
Speaker 2: seem like communal music making is taking on a much
28:00
Speaker 2: larger role within the group. It also seems as if
28:03
Speaker 2: the group has kind of cohered into something that began
28:07
Speaker 2: to be called or conceived of as a family. But
28:11
Speaker 2: music making at this point isn't necessarily the primary focal point.
28:15
Speaker 2: When they moved to the desert. At the end of
28:17
Speaker 2: this period, that's where music becomes the real sort of
28:22
Speaker 2: focal point for the group, among a couple of other things.
28:26
Speaker 2: They create in the desert what they call the Desert Songs.
28:30
Speaker 2: They rehearse them. There's a recording of these desert songs
28:35
Speaker 2: that's been released only in the late nineteen eighties that
28:38
Speaker 2: was recorded after Manson was in prison, with a member
28:42
Speaker 2: of the Commune named Clem or Steve Grogan playing guitar
28:46
Speaker 2: and singing lead vocals. The arrangements on these sound like
28:51
Speaker 2: late nineteen sixties fair The whole group sings, the young
28:55
Speaker 2: women in the commune sing backing vocals in multiple arts.
29:01
Speaker 2: There are it seems more sort of complex arrangements, and
29:07
Speaker 2: there's also this growing mythos that you can discern in
29:11
Speaker 2: the lyrics where the lyrics themselves talk about the group
29:14
Speaker 2: and it's goings on. It's sort of internal mythology that's
29:20
Speaker 2: beginning to emerge. So ask to you a question about
29:23
Speaker 2: whether or not it's more extreme. They do become a
29:27
Speaker 2: kind of singing family, and it seems as if during
29:32
Speaker 2: this initial period in Los Angeles in the summer of
29:35
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty eight, they're largely seen as a novelty act
29:38
Speaker 2: by Hollywood celebrities, but they at least by the end
29:43
Speaker 2: of nineteen sixty eight into early nineteen sixty nine certainly
29:46
Speaker 2: begin to take their own music making more seriously and
29:49
Speaker 2: then of course get into listening to the White album.
29:57
Speaker 1: Hey guys, thanks so much for checking out the book
29:59
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30:30
Speaker 1: at Booked on Rock. Thanks again for listening. Now back
30:34
Speaker 1: to the show. Now, this is the part I think
30:37
Speaker 1: that's most interesting for me is it's the most thought provoking.
30:40
Speaker 1: It makes me wonder. It was Boogliosi who finalized that
30:43
Speaker 1: helter skelter theory Charlie used the term a lot. He
30:48
Speaker 1: seemed to be obsessed with it. He tied it to
30:50
Speaker 1: Beatles lyrics, revelation, and an apocalyptic race war that he
30:55
Speaker 1: believed was imminent. He write the book Callote. Over the
30:58
Speaker 1: past three decades, a group of re visionists has demanded
31:02
Speaker 1: we reject the so called Helter Skelter story. Was this
31:07
Speaker 1: a case of Bugliosi using that theory to prove his case.
31:12
Speaker 1: I work in the law field, and I think about
31:15
Speaker 1: this now more than ever before, maybe simplifying things. Oddly enough,
31:19
Speaker 1: I work for jury administration. Okay, so I'm dealing with
31:24
Speaker 1: jurors in the state of Connecticut, right, So is he
31:29
Speaker 1: simplifying things for a jury to better grasp what he's
31:34
Speaker 1: trying to get across to win the case and put
31:38
Speaker 1: away Charles Manson? Does that make sense? I mean, is
31:41
Speaker 1: there anything to that you think?
31:43
Speaker 2: I think we can approach that question in a couple
31:45
Speaker 2: of ways. So one way is to think about, well,
31:48
Speaker 2: what actual evidence do we have? What is the evidence
31:53
Speaker 2: and where does it come from? For the fact that
31:55
Speaker 2: the White Album was a kind of bible. You mentioned
31:59
Speaker 2: your previous question that at some point during this time
32:03
Speaker 2: Charlie began these almost sermons, what he called talk tos,
32:07
Speaker 2: where he would sit members of the group down, they
32:10
Speaker 2: would listen to the White album, he would interpret it.
32:14
Speaker 2: He by all accounts, had a memory where he could
32:16
Speaker 2: recite long passages of the Bible, He could rely, he could,
32:21
Speaker 2: like many music fans then and now, recite long passages
32:26
Speaker 2: of lyrics. And it does seem as if these discussions
32:30
Speaker 2: were more and more significant now. A couple of different
32:36
Speaker 2: memoirs have framed these talk tos or sermons differently. Some
32:41
Speaker 2: of them frame them as a kind of play as
32:44
Speaker 2: something that the group was doing that was intended to
32:47
Speaker 2: be play acting, as sort of pretending that the group
32:52
Speaker 2: had been doing for a number of months at this point.
32:57
Speaker 2: Another a couple of accounts, especially Diane Lake her very
33:01
Speaker 2: recent memoir, paints it as much more serious as apocalyptic.
33:08
Speaker 2: So the evidence here is contrasting as to how seriously
33:13
Speaker 2: different people took it. I tend to fall on the
33:16
Speaker 2: side of Squeaky Frome or Lynette from I tend to
33:20
Speaker 2: find her account most compelling that she suggests that in
33:24
Speaker 2: early by early nineteen sixty nine, the group was being
33:29
Speaker 2: to get larger. It was being to diversify. There were
33:32
Speaker 2: some young men who were into hanging out, riding motorcycles,
33:37
Speaker 2: maybe dealing drugs. There were a lot of young women
33:40
Speaker 2: who were ecologically conscious and radicalized who were into a
33:46
Speaker 2: kind of revolutionary environmental movement, a real anti mainstream countercultural moment.
33:53
Speaker 2: And then there was a smaller group of people who
33:55
Speaker 2: were kind of young hippies who were really turned on
34:00
Speaker 2: by the idea about rock music being so important, and
34:03
Speaker 2: that Charlie tailored his message to these different groups in
34:07
Speaker 2: different ways. And ask to your question about Yeah, as
34:10
Speaker 2: a prosecutor, Bugliosi is looking to create a narrative that
34:15
Speaker 2: makes sense, that's legible to the jurors that he's going
34:19
Speaker 2: to be working with. And I think that it's a
34:21
Speaker 2: little bit of a chicken in or an egg question
34:23
Speaker 2: here as to whether or not he finds in this
34:27
Speaker 2: rock narrative something that is going to resonate with jurors
34:35
Speaker 2: kind of already made package that will feed into ideas
34:39
Speaker 2: they already have about the counterculture and how wild and
34:42
Speaker 2: how anti establishment it is, and also how kind of
34:47
Speaker 2: silly it is in a way, or whether or not
34:52
Speaker 2: this ultimately this glomming onto this particular narrative actually further
34:59
Speaker 2: generates an idea of the counterculture as being irrational. But
35:04
Speaker 2: for sure it makes sense as a package for jurors.
35:08
Speaker 1: So Charlie still had hopes of a career in music
35:10
Speaker 1: at this point. Now you mentioned Terry Melcher, So let's
35:12
Speaker 1: talk about Terry Melcher. Now, Doris Day's son, music producer
35:17
Speaker 1: connected with the Birds, really well known at the time.
35:21
Speaker 1: He meets him through Dennis Wilson, right, that's right.
35:24
Speaker 2: So this is another kind of point within the story
35:28
Speaker 2: where again narratives are really they conflict with each other.
35:33
Speaker 2: Terry Melcher was the tenant at the Colo Drive house
35:37
Speaker 2: where the Tate killings happened, where Sharon Tate, wife of
35:43
Speaker 2: Roman Polanski and actress, was living for the first night
35:47
Speaker 2: of the murders. There's some evidence and here we haven't
35:52
Speaker 2: yet mentioned his name, but I should bring up. Probably
35:54
Speaker 2: the most recent big book about the Manson killings is
36:00
Speaker 2: Tom O'Neill in it's titled Chaos, and it really delves
36:05
Speaker 2: into all of the conspiracy theories that were swirling around
36:08
Speaker 2: then up until now. It's based on a lot of
36:12
Speaker 2: reporting and interviews that he did that this is where
36:16
Speaker 2: these ideas of Terry Melcher being much more involved in
36:20
Speaker 2: a more long standing way with the commune most recently
36:25
Speaker 2: have come from so the idea that Manson and the
36:30
Speaker 2: group had maybe even been to Cilo Drive, had been
36:34
Speaker 2: somehow associated with Melcher and others prior to the killings.
36:41
Speaker 2: A lot of this evidence comes from his book, which
36:44
Speaker 2: kind of pinched this really sort of conspiratorial image of
36:48
Speaker 2: possible government involvement, of possible conspiracy theories behind the scenes.
36:54
Speaker 1: Which CIA mind control.
36:56
Speaker 2: Exactly that this is his thesis is that there was this, well,
37:01
Speaker 2: there was a project mk Ultra that was a CIA
37:07
Speaker 2: funded mind control program that, according to O'Neill, had offshoots
37:14
Speaker 2: in California that brought Manson in the commune, possibly directly
37:18
Speaker 2: into He suggests that at times, maybe the Manson family
37:24
Speaker 2: was itself a government experiment gone wrong, that Charles Manson's
37:29
Speaker 2: parole officer was someone who was heading a kind of
37:35
Speaker 2: a government trial to see how speed could influence and
37:39
Speaker 2: even foment violence within the Code to culture. Going off
37:43
Speaker 2: in a little bit of a tangent, but that's because
37:47
Speaker 2: you know, the story about Melchers is really really complicated
37:52
Speaker 2: and within sort of my book One of the things
37:55
Speaker 2: I try to do is to historicize this conspiracy theorizing,
38:00
Speaker 2: because O'Neill wasn't the first one to be suggesting this.
38:03
Speaker 2: In fact, countercultural newspapers at the time were beginning to
38:07
Speaker 2: suggest that maybe there was maybe the government had put
38:10
Speaker 2: the Manson family up to this to discredit the counterculture.
38:14
Speaker 1: As far back as the late sixties early seventies, huh.
38:17
Speaker 2: As early as late nineteen sixty nine. Countercultural newspapers were
38:23
Speaker 2: mentioning this as early as nineteen seventy. Nineteen seventy one,
38:27
Speaker 2: May Brussels, the sort of conspiracy theorist par excellence was
38:32
Speaker 2: positing that the Manson Commune was somehow related to government programs.
38:40
Speaker 1: And the idea that it went too far and after
38:44
Speaker 1: what happens with the murders, that now they want to suppress,
38:48
Speaker 1: they don't want anybody to know about it.
38:50
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, that's right.
38:52
Speaker 1: It went too far by the experimentation that went drastically
38:56
Speaker 1: too far.
38:57
Speaker 2: Either the commune were sort of unwilling, unknowing dupes who
39:01
Speaker 2: were being drugged or fed drugs or sort of put
39:07
Speaker 2: into this sort of pressure cooker situation to see what
39:11
Speaker 2: would happen, or that Manson himself was somehow directly connected
39:15
Speaker 2: to government agents. I mean, these are the conspiracy theories.
39:20
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're right. Quote. The passage of time inevitably smooths
39:24
Speaker 1: the rough and ragged edges of a phenomena in the round,
39:27
Speaker 1: leaving only two dimensional representations. With regards to the Tate
39:32
Speaker 1: LaBianca killings, three primary narratives and many more variants remain now.
39:37
Speaker 1: The most common story I've heard is that although Melcher
39:40
Speaker 1: found some of Charlie's songs interesting, pretty good, but ultimately
39:47
Speaker 1: not enough to really move forward with, doesn't sign Manson.
39:52
Speaker 1: Contact fades, that rejection becomes hugely significant in Manson's mind.
39:57
Speaker 1: Even though Melcher had already moved of Cielo Drive by
40:01
Speaker 1: sixty nine, Manson remained fixated on that address, leading to
40:05
Speaker 1: the murders that later occurred. There is that that's one
40:09
Speaker 1: of the three primary narratives.
40:11
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I'd say that's yeah, the frustrated artist. We've
40:15
Speaker 2: been rejected by society and we're going to scare them,
40:20
Speaker 2: We're going to commit violence.
40:23
Speaker 1: The other two one of them is drug related, right,
40:26
Speaker 1: lots of Papa this guy.
40:28
Speaker 2: That's right. So one of them is this larger sort
40:31
Speaker 2: of set of theories about crime. But maybe the group
40:36
Speaker 2: was involved in drug trafficking, that they had connections to
40:41
Speaker 2: this African American man named Bernard Crowe, also known as
40:44
Speaker 2: Lots of Papa, who was dealing drugs. That maybe people
40:48
Speaker 2: who were at the Tate House also had links to drugs,
40:54
Speaker 2: even the La Bianca family. A lot of this is
40:57
Speaker 2: extremely distasteful because we have to remember, of course, that
40:59
Speaker 2: we're talking about real people who really lost their lives.
41:04
Speaker 2: The conspiracy theorizing comes in where there are these dot
41:10
Speaker 2: points that are pulled together by authors to suggest that
41:14
Speaker 2: there is some sort of larger cover up related to
41:17
Speaker 2: drugs in Hollywood, in Los Angeles, jarring In, for example.
41:22
Speaker 2: Some of them are more fanciful, like they are these
41:25
Speaker 2: theories about Mama Cass of the Papas and the mammas
41:29
Speaker 2: and the Papas having Cia connections and drug running connections.
41:38
Speaker 2: Some of them are just a little bit more tawdry
41:40
Speaker 2: that the Manson Commune and especially a couple of the
41:44
Speaker 2: men involved with them, were just basically drug dealers by
41:48
Speaker 2: this point.
41:49
Speaker 1: Yep.
41:49
Speaker 2: So that's the second sort of cluster of theories.
41:53
Speaker 1: He's the only person to serve a life in prison
41:55
Speaker 1: for murder without actually physically committing the crime.
41:58
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, and you asked the question earlier about about
42:02
Speaker 2: the about Boothliosi and why the Helter Skelter thesis. I mean,
42:06
Speaker 2: this is another potential way we can think about why
42:09
Speaker 2: Bouleiosi would have pushed forward the Helter Skelter thesis. Because
42:13
Speaker 2: Manson wasn't actually actively involved in the killings on either
42:19
Speaker 2: of those two nights. The actual trials hinged in part
42:25
Speaker 2: on whether or not he had criminal culpability in having
42:30
Speaker 2: brainwashed or somehow forced the members of the commune to
42:37
Speaker 2: do these killings.
42:39
Speaker 1: Was Manson really all that, you know is he just
42:41
Speaker 1: made out to be that way. The media really portrayed
42:43
Speaker 1: him that way, and he loved it and he played
42:45
Speaker 1: on that. And meanwhile he was just because he was
42:49
Speaker 1: a petty criminal before all of this, and they and
42:52
Speaker 1: they said, a really bad criminal. I mean, he would
42:54
Speaker 1: just he would steal cars.
42:56
Speaker 2: And yeah, stupid stuff.
42:58
Speaker 1: Stupid stuff, and he would get caught all the time.
43:01
Speaker 2: Yeah, cashing, you know, you know, stealing checks, stuff like that.
43:07
Speaker 2: I mean, all the accounts that we do have from
43:10
Speaker 2: that period of people who were somehow connected with the
43:13
Speaker 2: commune throughout nineteen sixty seven, they do see a kind
43:19
Speaker 2: of increased paranoia, increased violence, increased connections to local biker
43:26
Speaker 2: gangs that begin to occur as the sort of high
43:30
Speaker 2: point of music making within the commune, which was early
43:34
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty nine late nineteen sixty eight, that begins to
43:37
Speaker 2: give way to much more kind of base, tawdry criminal
43:42
Speaker 2: activity for sure.
43:45
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43:48
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43:51
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44:18
Speaker 1: While Helter Skelter suggests that Manson had little contact with
44:21
Speaker 1: Wilson and Melcher from this point, more recent research has
44:25
Speaker 1: revealed that investigators turned up evidence to the contrary. Melcher
44:30
Speaker 1: was seen tripping out on his knees begging Manson to
44:34
Speaker 1: forgive him. Is that true? And is there some kind
44:38
Speaker 1: of cover up too? The other thing?
44:40
Speaker 2: Yeah, And so this is the claim that comes from
44:42
Speaker 2: Tom O'Neill's Chaos that we were just talking about a
44:45
Speaker 2: minute ago. And I guess, for the purposes of what
44:49
Speaker 2: I was trying to do in my book, one of
44:53
Speaker 2: the things I was trying to demonstrate and to comment
44:57
Speaker 2: on was not whether or not there was a cover up,
45:02
Speaker 2: or whether or not there was a conspiracy, but rather
45:05
Speaker 2: how the actual kind of genre of the conspiracy theory
45:10
Speaker 2: became so significant to narrations of this case in particular,
45:17
Speaker 2: but also how we conceptualize and think about American history
45:23
Speaker 2: more broadly. I mean, some people suggested that we're kind
45:25
Speaker 2: of living through a new period of conspiracy theorizing, which
45:30
Speaker 2: we probably are, with QAnon and the Epstein files and
45:35
Speaker 2: all of these kind of contemporary sort of claims about
45:41
Speaker 2: sort of the deep state and so on. I think
45:44
Speaker 2: one thing that I was trying to demonstrate in the
45:46
Speaker 2: book is that there's kind of a line connecting this
45:48
Speaker 2: moment back to conspiracy theorizing in the sixties, where everything
45:53
Speaker 2: looked like a cover up from JFK's assassination to much
45:58
Speaker 2: more fanciful kinds of that we've kind of forgotten about today, like,
46:02
Speaker 2: for example, the countercultural conspiracy that the government might put
46:06
Speaker 2: hippies in concentration camps. This was something that was widely
46:11
Speaker 2: commented on discussed in the late sixties early seventies, the
46:15
Speaker 2: conspiracy that either the US government or hippies or some
46:20
Speaker 2: other unknown entity might put LSD into a water supply
46:24
Speaker 2: in Dose, an entire town. There were pulp fiction written
46:29
Speaker 2: about this, there was a film made about this, but
46:33
Speaker 2: there were also news stories suggesting that this might really
46:36
Speaker 2: happen and suggesting how it could happen.
46:40
Speaker 1: Last question I have for you, Nicholas, is is rock
46:43
Speaker 1: music an easy scapegoat because it's forever intertwined with these murders,
46:48
Speaker 1: Manson's music, with the Beatles, with Dennis Wilson, Terry Melcher.
46:54
Speaker 1: Has it been fairly or unfairly characterized in terms of
46:58
Speaker 1: it being a motivation for what Manson and its followers did.
47:01
Speaker 2: Within this Helter Skelton narrative. Rock music is just incredibly powerful.
47:08
Speaker 2: So I guess what I would say is that, yeah,
47:12
Speaker 2: maybe it's a scapegoat, but really What these stories communicate
47:15
Speaker 2: to us is that rock music is incredibly powerful. It's
47:18
Speaker 2: a tool that can brainwash people. It's something that can
47:21
Speaker 2: even be contributed to getting relatively normal people to be
47:27
Speaker 2: turned into monsters to murder. I don't necessarily think that
47:33
Speaker 2: that's true, but what I do think is that it
47:37
Speaker 2: tells us something about this moment in the late nineteen sixties.
47:41
Speaker 2: It tells us something about how people thought about personhood,
47:45
Speaker 2: about human minds, about the sort of integrity of the personality,
47:49
Speaker 2: all of these Cold War categories. It also tells us
47:53
Speaker 2: something about the significance of popular culture within the American imagination,
47:58
Speaker 2: about the power of rock MutS is rock musicians, and
48:02
Speaker 2: the power of artists like the Beatles, the Beach Boys,
48:05
Speaker 2: and others.
48:06
Speaker 1: This book really you read the book and you leave
48:09
Speaker 1: it for the reader to really decide what they think.
48:14
Speaker 1: You know, I look back after reading this book and
48:17
Speaker 1: I just I wonder, now how much of this was
48:19
Speaker 1: really planned by Charles Manson, and how much of it
48:22
Speaker 1: just kind of just he just went with it and
48:25
Speaker 1: things just kind of snowballed, and then he just reveled
48:27
Speaker 1: in the in the attention that he got from it,
48:31
Speaker 1: and did write up until the end. The theory of
48:36
Speaker 1: the CIA, the mind control, that's a hard one for
48:39
Speaker 1: people to wrap their head around. However, there's evidence there
48:43
Speaker 1: to suggest that it is certainly possible. So people need
48:46
Speaker 1: to read the book The Musical Lives of Charles Manson
48:51
Speaker 1: to decide for themselves. And it's out now. You can
48:54
Speaker 1: find it whoever books are sold. It's available online at
48:57
Speaker 1: your nearest bookstore. If you have an independent bookstore nearby,
49:00
Speaker 1: look for it there. You can go to books on
49:02
Speaker 1: rock dot com to find your nearest independent bookstore. And Nicholas,
49:06
Speaker 1: where can people find you online?
49:08
Speaker 2: You can Google my name, find my website, find me
49:11
Speaker 2: on Blue Sky, and yeah, send me a note. I'm
49:15
Speaker 2: always happy to hear from readers, from people who are
49:18
Speaker 2: interested in my work.
49:19
Speaker 1: Nicholas Totska, thank you so much. This was so great.
49:22
Speaker 2: Thanks. Eric, really appreciate it.
49:31
Speaker 1: That's it. It's in the books.