Latest / History Dark / Charles Manson_s Music and Murder Fascination _ Manson_ Music from an Unsound Mind

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Charles Manson_s Music and Murder Fascination _ Manson_ Music from an Unsound Mind · History Dark

• 0:23
  Speaker 1: Let me explain something to you.
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: I wrote about a couple hundred songs, you know? You know,
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: I've got them all written down and all that, man.
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: I'll give you an example, man.
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: I'll try to stick to.
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: A song that'll make you some money.
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: Let's see.
• 0:39
  Speaker 3: The mythology of Charlie Manson has come to mean, above
• 0:46
  Speaker 3: all else, vicious murder. But those terrible acts were never
• 0:53
  Speaker 3: what he was aiming for. The real story of Charlie
• 0:58
  Speaker 3: Manson is music.
• 1:01
  Speaker 4: I don't think Charlie could have been Charlie without the music.
• 1:05
  Speaker 4: He was a poet and he really believed.
• 1:08
  Speaker 5: In his music.
• 1:09
  Speaker 6: Music was the vehicle. He really wanted to spread his philosophy.
• 1:16
  Speaker 6: To me, that seemed to be the most important and
• 1:19
  Speaker 6: overriding agenda.
• 1:23
  Speaker 7: In 1968, cult leader and singer-songwriter Charles Manson gained access
• 1:28
  Speaker 7: to the top tier of the Los Angeles music world.
• 1:32
  Speaker 7: Only a year later, he was accused of being the
• 1:34
  Speaker 7: most dangerous man alive.
• 1:37
  Speaker 8: It might not be as obvious to some people how
• 1:40
  Speaker 8: involved and ingrained in the music business Charles Manson seemed
• 1:44
  Speaker 8: to be. Terry Meltzer is producing The Birds. Beach Boys,
• 1:47
  Speaker 8: Brian Wilson. These are two huge selling record producers and
• 1:51
  Speaker 8: they're looking at you, Charles Manson.
• 1:54
  Speaker 9: It could never have happened before or after. It really
• 1:57
  Speaker 9: was a perfect storm that period of time. When somebody
• 2:01
  Speaker 9: like Charlie could walk into the scene, there was no cap,
• 2:04
  Speaker 9: there was no limit, there were no rules.
• 2:06
  Speaker 7: This film tells the story of Manson's musical dream and
• 2:10
  Speaker 7: how it all fell apart.
• 2:12
  Speaker 10: The story of Charles Manson is a story of rejection
• 2:15
  Speaker 10: and collapse. It was a disintegration of Manson's dreams and
• 2:19
  Speaker 10: it allowed the madness to rise.
• 2:22
  Speaker 11: Los Angeles, August 9th, 1969. At the tail end of
• 2:23
  Speaker 11: one of the most tumultuous decades in.
• 2:27
  Speaker 7: American history, the city's residents awakened to the news of
• 2:46
  Speaker 7: a brutal multiple homicide in the very heart of Tinseltown.
• 2:53
  Speaker 12: In a crime scene that police say resembled a ritualistic
• 2:56
  Speaker 12: mass murder, five persons, including the actress Sharon Tate, were
• 3:00
  Speaker 12: found slain at the home of Miss Tate and her husband,
• 3:03
  Speaker 12: screen director Roman Polanski. Miss Tate, who was eight months pregnant,
• 3:08
  Speaker 12: and the other victims were discovered dead this morning.
• 3:10
  Speaker 9: At the Hilltop Estate in Benedict Canyon. Most had suffered
• 3:14
  Speaker 9: multiple stab wounds.
• 3:16
  Speaker 12: While one had been shot at close range.
• 3:21
  Speaker 10: Murders in Los Angeles are a regrettable formality. They happen.
• 3:24
  Speaker 10: They happen in California. They happen in America, especially where
• 3:27
  Speaker 10: gun crime and knife crime is prevalent. But this was
• 3:30
  Speaker 10: out of that league. This was Premier League horror. We
• 3:34
  Speaker 10: are talking about the slaughter of an eight-and-a-half-month pregnant woman
• 3:38
  Speaker 10: and also the murders of those present with such violence.
• 3:42
  Speaker 10: violence inflicted on them, which appeared to have no bounds.
• 3:45
  Speaker 10: This was something else. This was absolutely shocking.
• 3:49
  Speaker 7: The fact that one of the victims was a Hollywood
• 3:51
  Speaker 7: star and the wife of a famous film director saw
• 3:54
  Speaker 7: the story hit the headlines worldwide. The following day, two
• 3:59
  Speaker 7: more murders were discovered less than 15 miles away, again
• 4:03
  Speaker 7: the targets of a savage home invasion. And this second
• 4:06
  Speaker 7: attack sent further shockwaves through the local community.
• 4:10
  Speaker 3: From the beginnings, Stories would allude to the savagery, the
• 4:16
  Speaker 3: brutality of what was done. And some facts got in
• 4:19
  Speaker 3: the newspaper. Within a few days, you could not buy
• 4:23
  Speaker 3: a gun in Los Angeles anymore. The stores, the shelves
• 4:28
  Speaker 3: were bare. Guard dogs that sold for $ 100 before the
• 4:33
  Speaker 3: murder were going for as much as $.
• 4:35
  Speaker 4: 2, 000.
• 4:35
  Speaker 7: It would take months for the police to apprehend the culprits.
• 4:40
  Speaker 7: And when the arrests were eventually reported, the world was stunned.
• 4:46
  Speaker 7: Charles Manson, the head of a hippie commune, and a
• 4:49
  Speaker 7: number of his wide-eyed, mostly female followers, were charged with
• 4:52
  Speaker 7: some of the most violent murders in American history. Only
• 4:57
  Speaker 7: two years beforehand, California had been the epicenter of the
• 5:00
  Speaker 7: Summer of Love, where the flourishing counterculture celebrated peace and understanding.
• 5:06
  Speaker 7: But this younger generation had always been viewed with skepticism
• 5:09
  Speaker 7: by conservative Americans. And over time, as the movement became
• 5:13
  Speaker 7: more radical, it also became more threatening. Through Manson and
• 5:18
  Speaker 7: his band of murderous flower children, that potential threat had
• 5:22
  Speaker 7: now become a reality.
• 5:25
  Speaker 13: The average American looking at the coverage of the Manson case,
• 5:29
  Speaker 13: they didn't feel any identification whatsoever with Sharon Tate or
• 5:34
  Speaker 13: these other families in Hollywood, what they felt was these
• 5:39
  Speaker 13: kids are totally out of control. They experienced it as
• 5:44
  Speaker 13: indistinguishable from campus rebellions and the riots in Chicago and protests.
• 5:51
  Speaker 13: And from the standpoint of the so-called silent majority, It
• 5:57
  Speaker 13: was a sense of, you know, these spoiled kids, all
• 5:59
  Speaker 13: they want to do is this rebel rousing and take
• 6:02
  Speaker 13: drugs and have sex, and then you bundle all that
• 6:06
  Speaker 13: up into the worst possible version of it, and there's
• 6:10
  Speaker 13: the Manson murders.
• 6:12
  Speaker 7: But the case was also baffling, and the motives for
• 6:14
  Speaker 7: the murders remained unclear. Although the press were quick to
• 6:18
  Speaker 7: run stories of drug-fueled orgies and satanic rituals, as the
• 6:22
  Speaker 7: district attorney and the police probed deeper into the testimonies
• 6:26
  Speaker 7: of those involved, a complex story emerged. Manson was not
• 6:31
  Speaker 7: simply the isolated cult leader, nor the cold-blooded career criminal
• 6:35
  Speaker 7: that his profile suggested. He was also a singer-songwriter, with
• 6:40
  Speaker 7: connections at the very top of the L.A. music scene.
• 6:44
  Speaker 3: About December, early December of 1969, the first stories started
• 6:49
  Speaker 3: to appear in the Los Angeles newspapers. that Manson may
• 6:53
  Speaker 3: have committed this crime as trying to either kill or
• 6:56
  Speaker 3: get even with Terry Melcher, who's the son of actress
• 7:00
  Speaker 3: Doris Day. To young America, Terry Melcher was a famous
• 7:04
  Speaker 3: name because of his work with the Byrds, with Paul
• 7:08
  Speaker 3: Revere and the Raiders. To middle America, he was the
• 7:12
  Speaker 3: son of America's sweetheart. But as the investigation would continue,
• 7:18
  Speaker 3: the story started appearing in the paper. A name at
• 7:22
  Speaker 3: a time. Terry Melcher, certainly. Greg Jacobson, who was part
• 7:26
  Speaker 3: of the music scene. But other names, too. Dennis Wilson.
• 7:31
  Speaker 3: Neil Young. John Phillips.
• 7:34
  Speaker 7: Buffy St.
• 7:35
  Speaker 9: Marie.
• 7:36
  Speaker 3: It became apparent early on that music was a big
• 7:39
  Speaker 3: part of whatever it was that made up Charlie Manson.
• 7:53
  Speaker 7: And Manson's musical journey began here, San Francisco, 1967, a
• 7:59
  Speaker 7: city at the heart of a cultural revolution. Since the
• 8:03
  Speaker 7: end of the Second World War, it had emerged as
• 8:05
  Speaker 7: a beacon for those looking to escape the conservatism of
• 8:08
  Speaker 7: middle America and explore alternative lifestyles and attitudes. And it
• 8:13
  Speaker 7: became the West Coast stomping ground for the writers of
• 8:16
  Speaker 7: the Beat Generation. But it was in the mid-1960s that
• 8:20
  Speaker 7: the city fully blossomed as a hub of creativity. Its
• 8:24
  Speaker 7: youth fueled by new music, new drugs, and new ideas.
• 8:28
  Speaker 7: And the nerve center for this cultural and artistic activity
• 8:31
  Speaker 7: was the Haight-Ashbury district.
• 8:34
  Speaker 14: Haight-Ashbury in 1967, in part, it's a little bit of
• 8:37
  Speaker 14: an accident.
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: The beat scene had been located in North Beach.
• 8:40
  Speaker 14: But there's a new availability of housing and cheap housing.
• 8:45
  Speaker 14: San Francisco State University students start moving in And then
• 8:49
  Speaker 14: the artists come and they create a very, it's small,
• 8:54
  Speaker 14: but it's very vital, collaborative, cooperative, do-it-yourself art scene. The
• 9:00
  Speaker 14: musicians are a big part of that. You know, Grateful
• 9:04
  Speaker 14: Dead are there at 710 Ashbury. Janis Joplin lives there.
• 9:09
  Speaker 14: Jefferson Airplane is the first big band to hit it there.
• 9:12
  Speaker 14: And when you put all of those creative people together,
• 9:16
  Speaker 14: they start feeding off of each other's energy. I think
• 9:19
  Speaker 14: the big picture is the fight for personal, artistic, and
• 9:24
  Speaker 14: sexual freedom. There was something going on here that was
• 9:27
  Speaker 14: pushing for expanded freedoms across many dimensions.
• 9:32
  Speaker 7: Although in the mid-1960s the city's crusade for expanded freedoms
• 9:36
  Speaker 7: was not unique, the driving force behind its particular vision
• 9:40
  Speaker 7: of freedom was.
• 9:43
  Speaker 7: While a vibrant youth culture had been thriving in cities
• 9:46
  Speaker 7: across Europe and America since the emergence of the Beatles
• 9:49
  Speaker 7: at the start of the decade, no other scene had
• 9:52
  Speaker 7: access to the Haight-Ashbury's drug of choice, LSD. This powerful
• 9:57
  Speaker 7: hallucinogen was at the very centre of the San Francisco experience,
• 10:02
  Speaker 7: informing the music, art and ideas that were emerging from
• 10:05
  Speaker 7: the city. Where other drugs affected mood, with LSD, a
• 10:10
  Speaker 7: user's perception of reality was significantly altered, and after only
• 10:14
  Speaker 7: one trip, many felt they had undergone a spiritual awakening.
• 10:19
  Speaker 10: It can't be overstated the power of LSD. It literally
• 10:22
  Speaker 10: elevated people from one place to somewhere completely different and
• 10:28
  Speaker 10: transformed people's lives overnight.
• 10:30
  Speaker 6: Everybody was seeking this enlightenment, but LSD was kind of
• 10:33
  Speaker 6: a shortcut. You know, it kind of opened up the
• 10:37
  Speaker 6: top of your head and let you see or at
• 10:40
  Speaker 6: least think you saw, you know, this other way of life.
• 10:45
  Speaker 6: but it also made us all very vulnerable to people
• 10:49
  Speaker 6: taking advantage.
• 10:51
  Speaker 7: And as the San Francisco counterculture began to attract both
• 10:54
  Speaker 7: national and international recognition at the start of 1967, it
• 10:59
  Speaker 7: was the psychologist Timothy Leary who emerged as the most
• 11:02
  Speaker 7: prominent advocate of LSD, publicly promoting both its therapeutic and
• 11:07
  Speaker 7: spiritual benefits.
• 11:09
  Speaker 14: There was a lot of talk about expanding consciousness, you know,
• 11:13
  Speaker 14: and sometimes that took on very strong spiritual dimensions in
• 11:17
  Speaker 14: the way people talked about LSD and its uses.
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: Leary was the new face of that story.
• 11:26
  Speaker 13: Tim Leary was a Harvard professor who essentially became the
• 11:30
  Speaker 13: apostle of LSD. His background gave a patina of a
• 11:36
  Speaker 13: kind of authority, I suppose, to his ideas about LSD
• 11:41
  Speaker 13: and the new world, the kind of.
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: Utopia that it was going to introduce.
• 11:47
  Speaker 14: The message is very simple.
• 11:49
  Speaker 11: You say.
• 11:51
  Speaker 9: Six words.
• 11:54
  Speaker 7: Turn on.
• 11:56
  Speaker 11: Tune in.
• 11:58
  Speaker 15: Rock on. Yeah!
• 12:02
  Speaker 13: His slogan became, you know, turn on, tune in, drop out,
• 12:07
  Speaker 13: get high, you know, marijuana, LSD, you know, tune in,
• 12:10
  Speaker 13: connect with, you know, the kind of images, ideas, visions
• 12:16
  Speaker 13: that those drugs bring to you, and then drop out
• 12:20
  Speaker 13: of the society. There was a sense that utopia is
• 12:23
  Speaker 13: just in the offing. That was the idea, that paradise
• 12:28
  Speaker 13: could be regained, and LSD was the path to it.
• 12:32
  Speaker 14: The dropout part of his message was the most controversial. Later,
• 12:37
  Speaker 14: he would walk that statement back a little bit. He
• 12:40
  Speaker 14: didn't mean dropout, dropout. He meant, you know, think harder
• 12:45
  Speaker 14: about where you put your energy. But, you know, the
• 12:49
  Speaker 14: pebble had been dropped in that water and it started
• 12:52
  Speaker 14: rippling out in ways that nobody could finally control, least
• 12:57
  Speaker 14: of all Timothy Leary.
• 12:59
  Speaker 7: And in the summer of 1967, the so-called Summer of Love,
• 13:03
  Speaker 7: young disenchanted people from across America began dropping out en
• 13:08
  Speaker 7: masse and flocked to San Francisco, searching for the utopia
• 13:12
  Speaker 7: that Timothy Leary's vision suggested was waiting for them.
• 13:16
  Speaker 3: One of the things we forget is that Haight-Ashbury was
• 13:19
  Speaker 3: such a concentrated place. It could perhaps have handled maybe
• 13:24
  Speaker 3: a thousand people living there, eating there, part of the communities.
• 13:29
  Speaker 3: But during the so-called summer of love from 67 through 69,
• 13:35
  Speaker 3: the estimate is to this day that about 300 kids
• 13:39
  Speaker 3: a day would show up. And these were the ones
• 13:43
  Speaker 3: who had no money. They had no place to go.
• 13:45
  Speaker 3: Just the belief if you get there, we'll be taken
• 13:48
  Speaker 3: care of. That is the atmosphere. It opened up the
• 13:52
  Speaker 3: possibility for predators. From around the country came hustlers, came
• 13:57
  Speaker 3: the dope dealers. came the pimps, and above all, attracted
• 14:03
  Speaker 3: by this wonderful hunting ground, came Charlie Manson.
• 14:10
  Speaker 7: First arriving in the Haight-Ashbury district in the spring of 1967,
• 14:15
  Speaker 7: Charles Manson was 32 years old and just as keen
• 14:18
  Speaker 7: to engage with the utopia on offer as the youth
• 14:21
  Speaker 7: surrounding him. Freshly released from a seven-year stretch in prison,
• 14:25
  Speaker 7: like many of those flocking to San Francisco, Manson too
• 14:29
  Speaker 7: was looking to escape a troubled past and to make
• 14:31
  Speaker 7: a fresh start in this brave new world. Born in Cincinnati, Ohio,
• 14:37
  Speaker 7: to an unmarried teenager, Kathleen Maddox, a wayward mother at
• 14:41
  Speaker 7: odds with her religious family, young Charlie Manson never knew
• 14:45
  Speaker 7: his father. And at the age of only four, he
• 14:49
  Speaker 7: watched his mother being led away by police for armed robbery,
• 14:52
  Speaker 7: for which she would receive a five-year jail sentence.
• 14:57
  Speaker 10: Manson was every part of the throwaway kid. He was
• 15:01
  Speaker 10: passed to friends, to family, to anyone who would take him.
• 15:06
  Speaker 10: He was then sent to his grandparents and then on
• 15:10
  Speaker 10: to his aunt and uncle. So basically he was passed
• 15:13
  Speaker 10: around and from an early age he knew he wasn't wanted.
• 15:17
  Speaker 3: He lived with his aunt, uncle and cousin and his
• 15:21
  Speaker 3: grandmother came to see him. There was no reason to
• 15:24
  Speaker 3: say that Charlie's early life as a child was ideal.
• 15:27
  Speaker 3: Having your mother in prison never is. But he always
• 15:31
  Speaker 3: had loving people who cared about him. The problem was,
• 15:34
  Speaker 3: of course, that Charlie was, from the beginning, a very disagreeable,
• 15:38
  Speaker 3: violent child.
• 15:41
  Speaker 7: But although aggressive and sullen, in his aunt and uncle's
• 15:44
  Speaker 7: household in West Virginia, the young Charles Manson also found
• 15:47
  Speaker 7: a less destructive outlet for his energies.
• 15:51
  Speaker 3: There was a piano in his uncle and aunt's house.
• 15:54
  Speaker 3: And even as a tiny child, and you need to remember,
• 15:57
  Speaker 3: we're talking about a boy who even at five years
• 16:01
  Speaker 3: old looked perhaps three. His hands were tiny, but he
• 16:05
  Speaker 3: would stay on the keyboard and by ear pick out songs.
• 16:10
  Speaker 3: The songs in his life at the time came from
• 16:13
  Speaker 3: one of two categories, church music or country music. He
• 16:17
  Speaker 3: was something of a musical prodigy. He hated going to
• 16:21
  Speaker 3: church except singing, and when he would sing, he would
• 16:24
  Speaker 3: join in so wholeheartedly that his grandmother would believe the
• 16:28
  Speaker 3: spirit of the Lord must be descending on this child.
• 16:32
  Speaker 7: This natural gift for music was not enough to curb
• 16:34
  Speaker 7: Manson's delinquent tendencies, however. In his teenage years, his criminal activities,
• 16:40
  Speaker 7: including theft and burglary, saw him arrested countless times and
• 16:44
  Speaker 7: detained in a number of reform schools and correctional institutions.
• 16:48
  Speaker 7: And as he gained a criminal education while incarcerated, by
• 16:52
  Speaker 7: his early 20s, his main aspiration was to become a pimp.
• 16:57
  Speaker 10: Manson was every bit the petty criminal. He couldn't really
• 16:59
  Speaker 10: organise too much, and as his rap sheet concludes, he
• 17:02
  Speaker 10: kept getting caught.
• 17:03
  Speaker 3: Charlie Manson was a failure as a criminal in every way.
• 17:09
  Speaker 3: He started out shoplifting and always got caught. He would
• 17:13
  Speaker 3: steal cars, they would track him down. Finally, when he
• 17:17
  Speaker 3: decided after learning the trade from pimps in his first
• 17:21
  Speaker 3: stint in prison that he would run a string of girls,
• 17:24
  Speaker 3: he could never keep them very long. The thing that
• 17:29
  Speaker 3: carried over from his early criminal career is a tremendous
• 17:33
  Speaker 3: eye for those he can manipulate. Manson would explain his
• 17:38
  Speaker 3: philosophy of attracting first his prostitutes and later his female followers.
• 17:44
  Speaker 3: as always find the ones who were bent or cracked
• 17:48
  Speaker 3: but not completely broken.
• 17:52
  Speaker 7: Despite a brief attempt to settle down in the mid-50s,
• 17:55
  Speaker 7: which saw him return to West Virginia and marry a
• 17:57
  Speaker 7: local waitress, criminal instincts were now ingrained in Manson. At
• 18:02
  Speaker 7: the end of the decade, an attempt to establish himself
• 18:05
  Speaker 7: as a pimp in New Mexico once again led to
• 18:08
  Speaker 7: his arrest. and this time he was incarcerated at the
• 18:11
  Speaker 7: isolated medium-security prison McNeill Island on a ten-year sentence. With
• 18:17
  Speaker 7: no chance of escape, he learned to play the guitar,
• 18:20
  Speaker 7: and his passion for music returned. It was at first
• 18:24
  Speaker 7: only a pastime, and then in 1964, through the radio,
• 18:29
  Speaker 7: he heard a sound that would change his outlook entirely.
• 18:47
  Speaker 7: The Beatles' music was extraordinary.
• 18:49
  Speaker 10: It was vibrant.
• 18:50
  Speaker 7: It was alert.
• 18:51
  Speaker 10: It just swept up the youth of the world. And
• 18:54
  Speaker 10: everyone who came across them was affected. Even if they
• 18:56
  Speaker 10: disliked them, they were still affected by it.
• 18:58
  Speaker 13: It's impossible to overestimate the Beatles' impact on aspiring musicians,
• 19:03
  Speaker 13: Charles Manson among them, but everybody, anybody from that generation
• 19:09
  Speaker 13: talks about the.
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: Beatles and the immediate kind of effect.
• 19:14
  Speaker 13: It was huge and it was instantaneous and it was lasting.
• 19:20
  Speaker 3: It was a transformative moment in his life hearing that music.
• 19:25
  Speaker 3: What the Beatles do for Charlie Manson is they not
• 19:28
  Speaker 3: only expand his musical horizons, but they expand his ambition. Previously,
• 19:34
  Speaker 3: all he wants to be is a successful pimp, where
• 19:38
  Speaker 3: women go out and do all the work for you
• 19:39
  Speaker 3: and you don't have to work very hard yourself. Now, suddenly,
• 19:44
  Speaker 3: he's got a guitar. He knows how to play it.
• 19:48
  Speaker 3: He's got the inspiration. and he starts writing songs in prison.
• 19:57
  Speaker 7: Terminal Island, Los Angeles. It was here in 1966 that
• 20:02
  Speaker 7: Manson was transferred to complete his time in prison. His
• 20:05
  Speaker 7: 10-year stretch reduced due to good behavior. At this low-security prison,
• 20:11
  Speaker 7: Manson met Phil Kaufman, an actor serving a short sentence
• 20:15
  Speaker 7: for drug possession.
• 20:16
  Speaker 4: We were walking in the yard every day between jobs
• 20:20
  Speaker 4: and after dinner and breakfast. You walk in the yard
• 20:22
  Speaker 4: back and forth, and this guy was playing a guitar,
• 20:26
  Speaker 4: and he was singing, The Shadow of Your Smile.
• 20:29
  Speaker 7: I said, wow, this guy's cool.
• 20:31
  Speaker 16: The shadow of your.
• 20:34
  Speaker 9: Smile So I walked up to say, let me introduce ourselves.
• 20:44
  Speaker 4: And he continued playing his guitar, and we're talking. And
• 20:47
  Speaker 4: a guard comes up to him. He says, Manson, you
• 20:51
  Speaker 4: can't play your guitar here. You've got to play your
• 20:54
  Speaker 4: guitar over there.
• 20:55
  Speaker 3: In the music area.
• 20:57
  Speaker 9: Charlie just kept playing his guitar, walked away.
• 21:00
  Speaker 4: And the guard yelled, Manson, you ain't never going to
• 21:03
  Speaker 4: get out of here.
• 21:05
  Speaker 8: Charlie said, out of where, man?
• 21:07
  Speaker 7: The shadow of your soul.
• 21:09
  Speaker 9: Just carried on.
• 21:11
  Speaker 7: Charlie was, he was cool.
• 21:14
  Speaker 4: He played the guitar and he sang music that I liked.
• 21:16
  Speaker 7: He was singing standards.
• 21:19
  Speaker 4: You know, like I said, the Chatter Your Smile and
• 21:21
  Speaker 4: other popular songs at the time. And he sang well.
• 21:27
  Speaker 4: He sounded a lot like Frankie Lane. He was a
• 21:29
  Speaker 4: big star back in the 40s. And Charlie and I
• 21:32
  Speaker 4: are both from that era. We're both older guys, so
• 21:35
  Speaker 4: that was our frame of reference. We had Frank Sinatra,
• 21:39
  Speaker 4: Perry Como, or Well, that was young, right?
• 21:43
  Speaker 7: In March 1967, Manson was up for release from Terminal Island,
• 21:48
  Speaker 7: and aware of his musical ambitions, Phil Kaufman gave him
• 21:51
  Speaker 7: the details of a valuable entertainment contact.
• 21:55
  Speaker 4: When Charlie was getting out, I suggested he meet a
• 21:57
  Speaker 4: friend of mine, Gary Stoneberg, who was in the music business,
• 22:01
  Speaker 4: because I thought he was good. See, once again, this
• 22:03
  Speaker 4: is Charlie in prison I'm talking about. And so I'm
• 22:07
  Speaker 4: taking that persona... and introducing them to respectable people in
• 22:11
  Speaker 4: the music business. And it turned out just the opposite.
• 22:17
  Speaker 4: Once he got out, he says, you know, game on.
• 22:25
  Speaker 7: Having been incarcerated since the end of the previous decade,
• 22:28
  Speaker 7: upon his release, Manson was cast into a totally foreign landscape.
• 22:33
  Speaker 7: The America he had known had been transformed by the
• 22:36
  Speaker 7: youth culture revolution that followed in the wake of the Beatles.
• 22:40
  Speaker 7: With the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the advent of
• 22:43
  Speaker 7: the Vietnam War, and the draft that was seeing thousands
• 22:46
  Speaker 7: of young men thrown into a conflict they didn't believe in,
• 22:50
  Speaker 7: the generation gap that had developed in the 1950s had
• 22:53
  Speaker 7: now become a chasm. The counterculture that was spreading across
• 22:57
  Speaker 7: the nation viewed their elders and the authorities with a
• 23:00
  Speaker 7: deep suspicion. and was looking to reshape the American way
• 23:04
  Speaker 7: of life.
• 23:05
  Speaker 17: People realized that we were kind of, as a nation,
• 23:08
  Speaker 17: we were kind of spiritually bankrupt. You know, we'd lost
• 23:11
  Speaker 17: our way. The moral principles of our Constitution and the
• 23:16
  Speaker 17: founding fathers seemed to be forgotten. This was a time
• 23:20
  Speaker 17: of deep alienation in the country because of the Vietnam War,
• 23:24
  Speaker 17: because of advances in sexual rights and a greater awareness
• 23:28
  Speaker 17: of racial discrimination and the civil rights movement. There was
• 23:32
  Speaker 17: a great division, but I saw it not so much
• 23:35
  Speaker 17: as a negative thing, but one is where we were
• 23:37
  Speaker 17: exploring new things. We were all going through this sort
• 23:40
  Speaker 17: of phases of exploration and innocence, really.
• 23:44
  Speaker 7: And the 32-year-old Charles Manson was very keen to exploit
• 23:47
  Speaker 7: that innocence. Heading first to Berkeley and then on to
• 23:51
  Speaker 7: San Francisco, the city enabled him to regain a youth
• 23:54
  Speaker 7: lost in confinement, and he embraced this new culture and
• 23:58
  Speaker 7: its liberating power. In Haight-Ashbury... Manson's first impulse was to
• 24:02
  Speaker 7: stand back and observe the leaders of this scene. Over
• 24:06
  Speaker 7: a number of weeks, he listened to the local bands,
• 24:09
  Speaker 7: watched the various preachers and social activists at Golden Gate Park,
• 24:13
  Speaker 7: and took LSD for the first time. Then he headed
• 24:17
  Speaker 7: down the street with his guitar in hand and began
• 24:19
  Speaker 7: looking for followers of his own.
• 24:23
  Speaker 10: San Francisco was awash with gurus, philosophers, preachers, cults, religions,
• 24:28
  Speaker 10: everything imaginable on every street corner. Manson had his own
• 24:32
  Speaker 10: brand of philosophy. He was known as the gardener. He
• 24:38
  Speaker 10: used to plant seeds in people's minds. So he brought
• 24:41
  Speaker 10: a package with him.
• 24:42
  Speaker 17: I think he was a very crafty and charismatic person.
• 24:47
  Speaker 17: I mean, he was a great performer and a great preacher.
• 24:50
  Speaker 17: He did have a good act, which was one of
• 24:53
  Speaker 17: cosmic intelligence, which frankly never made sense to me beyond
• 24:57
  Speaker 17: two or three sentences, but still he had it down.
• 25:00
  Speaker 7: Melding concepts from the Bible, Scientology and the acid gurus
• 25:04
  Speaker 7: surrounding him, Manson's philosophy, that morality was a lie, that
• 25:09
  Speaker 7: nothing was corrupt except for possessions, the ego and family,
• 25:13
  Speaker 7: began to draw to him a small group of young women.
• 25:17
  Speaker 7: Mary Brunner, Lynette Fromm, Patricia Krenwinkel and Susan Atkins, all
• 25:23
  Speaker 7: were seduced by Manson's charisma, his music and the closeness
• 25:26
  Speaker 7: he promised them. this small harem of followers would act
• 25:31
  Speaker 7: as Manson's entourage for the next step in his plan.
• 25:35
  Speaker 7: With the phone number of Phil Kaufman's music contact, Gary Stromberg,
• 25:39
  Speaker 7: still to hand, in November 1967, he acquired a large
• 25:44
  Speaker 7: yellow school bus and headed south to the City of Angels,
• 25:48
  Speaker 7: his musical dream still burning bright.
• 25:51
  Speaker 3: In California in particular, even the San Francisco bands that
• 25:55
  Speaker 3: were big and thought of themselves as sort of the
• 25:58
  Speaker 3: upper echelon, as Frank Zappa said, everybody had to go
• 26:03
  Speaker 3: down to Los Angeles and get their hands dirty. That's
• 26:06
  Speaker 3: where the record companies were, there's the labels, there's the
• 26:10
  Speaker 3: people who.
• 26:10
  Speaker 7: Could sign you.
• 26:12
  Speaker 3: Manson went to Los Angeles for no purpose other than
• 26:16
  Speaker 3: to become a rock and roll star.
• 26:24
  Speaker 7: Los Angeles, 1967. A sprawling city, powered by its immense
• 26:29
  Speaker 7: entertainment industry. And although it had been the heart of
• 26:33
  Speaker 7: the American film world for decades, its growth as a
• 26:36
  Speaker 7: thriving music capital was a relatively recent phenomenon. At the
• 26:40
  Speaker 7: dawn of the decade, the music industry was predominantly concentrated
• 26:44
  Speaker 7: in New York. Yet in 1961, a band emerged who
• 26:48
  Speaker 7: would help put Los Angeles on the musical map. Amid
• 26:53
  Speaker 7: a West Coast craze for surfing, which produced its own
• 26:56
  Speaker 7: local youth culture and instrumental rock sound, the Beach Boys
• 27:00
  Speaker 7: released a run of hits that brought this culture to
• 27:02
  Speaker 7: national attention. Led by the gifted composer and singer Brian Wilson,
• 27:08
  Speaker 7: with his brothers and cousin in support, the band's unique
• 27:11
  Speaker 7: sound propelled them to the top of the music world
• 27:14
  Speaker 7: and immediately gave California a cultural kudos.
• 27:18
  Speaker 8: The Beach Boys and the surf music phenomenon out of
• 27:22
  Speaker 8: the West Coast, the waves and the suntans and the
• 27:25
  Speaker 8: girls in the skippy bikinis and the dancing go-go girls
• 27:29
  Speaker 8: was something that kids in the Midwest especially were fascinated by. Oh,
• 27:35
  Speaker 8: I can go out to California and be living an
• 27:37
  Speaker 8: endless summer. And even people in the colder East Coast
• 27:39
  Speaker 8: cities saw that as an out, you know, a way out.
• 27:42
  Speaker 8: And people started to head to California in the.
• 27:46
  Speaker 7: Early part of the 60s.
• 27:47
  Speaker 8: The Beach Boys created that mystique nationally.
• 28:17
  Speaker 10: They had this sort of California sun surf theme which
• 28:22
  Speaker 10: for everyone, certainly across America and certainly across the world,
• 28:26
  Speaker 10: it was a fantastic package. And it was a brochure
• 28:29
  Speaker 10: to a lifestyle which many people aspired to. So it
• 28:32
  Speaker 10: was good time music.
• 28:51
  Speaker 18: Surf music had been around, but it was instrumental music.
• 28:54
  Speaker 18: They never had really good vocals on them or vocals
• 28:57
  Speaker 18: at all on them, all of a sudden Brian Wilson
• 29:00
  Speaker 18: matches that Chuck Berry surf rock energy with these amazing harmonies,
• 29:07
  Speaker 18: harmonies that have sort of a jazz element to them almost.
• 29:10
  Speaker 18: There hadn't been anything like that.
• 29:12
  Speaker 7: And the Beach Boys didn't just bring the allure of
• 29:15
  Speaker 7: California to America's teenagers. In 1964, record companies began opening
• 29:21
  Speaker 7: offices in Los Angeles, and following the impact of the
• 29:24
  Speaker 7: Beatles and the British invasions Music television shows were in
• 29:28
  Speaker 7: high demand and began filming at Hollywood studios. With the
• 29:32
  Speaker 7: industry booming, in L.A. itself, promoters and A & R
• 29:36
  Speaker 7: men were looking for local bands to thrust into the limelight.
• 29:40
  Speaker 7: Enter The Byrds.
• 29:42
  Speaker 8: Well, The Byrds changed the West Coast music scene overnight.
• 29:46
  Speaker 8: We had all this record company and record business moving
• 29:50
  Speaker 8: out to Los Angeles in 1964, but The Byrds pretty
• 29:53
  Speaker 8: much defined what the future of music was going to be.
• 29:55
  Speaker 8: They took the Beatles beat and the Beatles kind of
• 29:58
  Speaker 8: harmony sound and then mix it with Bob Dylan's lyrical profundity.
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: You had a progression in Los Angeles.
• 30:21
  Speaker 13: Obviously, the Beach Boys were hugely important in the early 60s,
• 30:25
  Speaker 13: and would continue to be so. But what The Beach
• 30:29
  Speaker 13: Boys represented, by the time the birds came along, seemed
• 30:33
  Speaker 13: old school. You know, this fun in the sun and
• 30:36
  Speaker 13: surfing and all this business. You know, this sense of
• 30:39
  Speaker 13: a countercultural vision of a new world, you know, that
• 30:42
  Speaker 13: was kind of inscribed in what the birds were doing.
• 30:45
  Speaker 11: A time of love, a time of hate. A time
• 30:51
  Speaker 11: of war, a time of peace. A time you made.
• 30:57
  Speaker 10: The birds morphed a pop sensibility with a much deeper theme,
• 31:02
  Speaker 10: which really up until the end of 1964, no one
• 31:05
  Speaker 10: else had done in pop. Dylan had done it, but
• 31:08
  Speaker 10: he was still a folk artist. He really hadn't penetrated
• 31:11
  Speaker 10: the higher echelons of pop. We talk about Teen Beat
• 31:14
  Speaker 10: or Sixteen Magazine. He wasn't featuring in that, but the
• 31:16
  Speaker 10: birds were.
• 31:17
  Speaker 18: The birds were definitely something that was more 60s, more modern.
• 31:22
  Speaker 18: They had more of a hippie look. It was pre-hippie.
• 31:26
  Speaker 18: but Crosby wore his cape and McGuinn wore his weird sunglasses.
• 31:31
  Speaker 18: And they looked a little edgy. They had a cool sound.
• 31:36
  Speaker 18: It was just so perfect and right for the time.
• 31:40
  Speaker 7: And the Byrds' success soon inspired a number of other
• 31:43
  Speaker 7: local bands, including The Doors, Love, and Frank Zappa and
• 31:47
  Speaker 7: his Mothers of Invention. With marijuana more readily available in
• 31:52
  Speaker 7: California than on the East Coast or in Britain, These
• 31:55
  Speaker 7: acts all shared an underground sensibility, a stoned mystique that
• 31:59
  Speaker 7: distinguished them from the pop world. And they developed as
• 32:03
  Speaker 7: part of a blooming scene, its centre of activity the
• 32:06
  Speaker 7: half-mile stretch of clubs and restaurants in West Hollywood, known
• 32:10
  Speaker 7: as the Sunset Strip. Here, at venues like the Whiskey
• 32:14
  Speaker 7: A Go-Go, the old Hollywood order was being dismantled and
• 32:17
  Speaker 7: the seeds of the coming hippie movement were being sown.
• 32:22
  Speaker 9: Oh, it was everything. The strip was this, you know,
• 32:25
  Speaker 9: there was the whiskey, of course, and the trip. And
• 32:27
  Speaker 9: then there was some lesser clubs up and down the strip.
• 32:30
  Speaker 9: But the strip was the, it was the heart. It
• 32:33
  Speaker 9: was the mecca where you went to. That's where you went.
• 32:36
  Speaker 9: You were either one of those people who was hip,
• 32:40
  Speaker 9: smoking grass and stuff. But for those people who weren't
• 32:43
  Speaker 9: into it, oh boy, they were like, they were from
• 32:45
  Speaker 9: another planet. You couldn't even talk to them.
• 32:48
  Speaker 8: On previous days, like the Sunset Strip, when the Trocadero
• 32:51
  Speaker 8: and the Macombo and the original Sierros, those were exclusive
• 32:56
  Speaker 8: nightclubs where the rich and the Hollywood movie stars went to.
• 33:00
  Speaker 8: And you have pictures of Charlie Chaplin and Marilyn Monroe
• 33:03
  Speaker 8: and all the big names there. But it wasn't really
• 33:06
  Speaker 8: accessible to normal Joe. You'd see these pictures in movie magazines,
• 33:11
  Speaker 8: and that's about it. Now, that group of people had
• 33:14
  Speaker 8: gotten older, they'd started performing in Vegas, and teenagers took
• 33:18
  Speaker 8: over the nightclubs.
• 33:19
  Speaker 6: There didn't seem to be this separation. The musicians were
• 33:24
  Speaker 6: doing their thing, and the audience was doing their thing,
• 33:29
  Speaker 6: but it was all the same thing. You know, we
• 33:31
  Speaker 6: were getting high, we were tuning into this, you know,
• 33:34
  Speaker 6: this expressway to enlightenment. People were just communing with each other,
• 33:41
  Speaker 6: you know, both mentally, physically. You know, we were in
• 33:45
  Speaker 6: it together.
• 33:45
  Speaker 7: And it was into this hip new world that Charles
• 33:51
  Speaker 7: Manson and his four female followers arrived in late 1967.
• 33:56
  Speaker 7: Immediately arranging a meeting with Phil Kaufman's contact, Gary Stromberg,
• 34:00
  Speaker 7: who was a talent scout for Uni Records, Manson prepared
• 34:04
  Speaker 7: his best work for the audition. And Stromberg was impressed
• 34:08
  Speaker 7: enough to book an hour-long recording session at the illustrious
• 34:11
  Speaker 7: Gold Star Studios, the venue from which producers Phil Spector
• 34:16
  Speaker 7: and The Beach Boys' Brian Wilson had recorded their most
• 34:19
  Speaker 7: famous work.
• 34:20
  Speaker 10: The first recording session that we know of with Charles
• 34:23
  Speaker 10: Manson is for Universal Records subsidiary Uni Records. The tape
• 34:29
  Speaker 10: remarkably exists. It's unedited, which is unusual. And it presents
• 34:38
  Speaker 10: a raw, untutored busker previewing 20-odd songs with no guidance, form,
• 34:54
  Speaker 10: or structure whatsoever.
• 34:56
  Speaker 5: Hi, Charlie, baby.
• 34:57
  Speaker 9: OK.
• 34:58
  Speaker 11: Let's see.
• 34:59
  Speaker 13: Do whatever you feel like, man.
• 35:03
  Speaker 19: Yeah.
• 35:05
  Speaker 4: Tell us when you're going to start and we'll turn
• 35:07
  Speaker 4: the machine on. Okay.
• 35:09
  Speaker 19: Well, you know, can't you just turn it on and
• 35:11
  Speaker 19: let it go?
• 35:11
  Speaker 3: Okay, we're going to let it go right now.
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: Take out what you want and the rest throw it away.
• 35:21
  Speaker 17: First of all, I was sort of startled by Manson's voice.
• 35:26
  Speaker 17: It seemed different than the voice that he had when
• 35:29
  Speaker 17: we talked to him, which must have been a year
• 35:31
  Speaker 17: or two later in prison.
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: He was more playful.
• 35:36
  Speaker 17: He giggled a lot. And he seemed nervous.
• 35:42
  Speaker 11: I'm nervous.
• 35:47
  Speaker 15: If I can make myself nervous, I should be able
• 35:49
  Speaker 15: to make myself unnervous.
• 35:53
  Speaker 13: And it makes sense that it works both ways.
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: He seems younger than he is at the time.
• 35:57
  Speaker 13: He's in his mid-30s, and he really seems like in
• 36:02
  Speaker 13: his early 20s, maybe, when you listen to him.
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: But he's also nervous as hell.
• 36:08
  Speaker 13: And, you know, the kind of command, you know, if you,
• 36:12
  Speaker 13: you know, someone were to say to you, well, this
• 36:15
  Speaker 13: guy is going to be like, you know, set aside
• 36:19
  Speaker 13: murderer and all the other stuff. But cult leader, you know,
• 36:23
  Speaker 13: just going to be commanding people and causing them to
• 36:26
  Speaker 13: do whatever he wants them to do. That just seems absurd.
• 36:29
  Speaker 13: He's got like ideas for songs. He's got little sketches
• 36:33
  Speaker 13: in his mind. And, you know, some of them, really
• 36:35
  Speaker 13: have potential. You know, they seem like they could become something.
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: Your home is where you can be what you are,
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: cos you were just born to be.
• 36:55
  Speaker 20: You can have a castle and diamonds for all to see,
• 37:02
  Speaker 20: but you'll never have that peace of mind until you've
• 37:08
  Speaker 20: learned to be free.
• 37:12
  Speaker 10: Your home is where you're happy. It's a fascinating piece
• 37:15
  Speaker 10: of work. That was very attractive to young people with
• 37:17
  Speaker 10: no visible home. or no visible background, or no visible structure,
• 37:23
  Speaker 10: or something they've been alienated from, because they knew their
• 37:26
  Speaker 10: home wasn't happy. They knew they weren't free at home.
• 37:30
  Speaker 10: So they could buy into Manson's utopian world through the song.
• 37:35
  Speaker 2: Would you mind if I approach you?
• 37:40
  Speaker 20: With this song may.
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: I tell you that I've watched you?
• 37:47
  Speaker 21: There's a Latin influence in his stuff.
• 38:02
  Speaker 18: There's a jazz influence in his stuff. I was very
• 38:05
  Speaker 18: surprised to hear actually the smoothness of some of the
• 38:10
  Speaker 18: arrangements or potentially these arrangements had a smoothness to them
• 38:16
  Speaker 18: that just I would never have guessed that would have
• 38:18
  Speaker 18: been coming out of Charlie.
• 38:21
  Speaker 7: The Sessions didn't convince Uni Records that Manson was ready
• 38:24
  Speaker 7: for a recording contract. Taking the rejection in his stride,
• 38:28
  Speaker 7: he and his family looked for accommodation and found temporary
• 38:31
  Speaker 7: lodging at a communal house a short walk from Topanga Beach,
• 38:35
  Speaker 7: known as the Spiral Staircase. Sharing the property with various drifters,
• 38:40
  Speaker 7: drug addicts and dropouts, Manson and the girls settled into
• 38:43
  Speaker 7: a communal life. And while he spent time working on
• 38:47
  Speaker 7: his music, Manson also used the opportunity to search for
• 38:50
  Speaker 7: new recruits. In December 1967, 14-year-old dropout Diane Lake attended
• 38:57
  Speaker 7: a party at the Spiral Staircase house and became easy
• 39:01
  Speaker 7: prey for an ex-convict who was twice her age.
• 39:04
  Speaker 6: Charlie comes up, gives me a, you know, shares his
• 39:07
  Speaker 6: root beer with me, which was apparently really an honor.
• 39:11
  Speaker 6: and invites me to come and sit in the circle
• 39:15
  Speaker 6: and sing with them.
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: He was playing the.
• 39:18
  Speaker 6: Guitar and the girls were all surrounding him and they
• 39:21
  Speaker 6: all came up and hugged me and made me feel really,
• 39:25
  Speaker 6: really welcome. Later, Charlie took me under his wing and
• 39:29
  Speaker 6: under his spell and he seduced me.
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: He was funny.
• 39:36
  Speaker 6: He was kind of impish, childlike, playful. You know, he
• 39:41
  Speaker 6: had this, he'd shake his head and his hair would
• 39:43
  Speaker 6: kind of you know, dance around a little. I mean,
• 39:47
  Speaker 6: I thought he was, I thought he was, I was
• 39:49
  Speaker 6: attracted to him. I thought he was good looking.
• 39:52
  Speaker 7: Instantly welcomed by the other girls in Manson's troupe, young
• 39:55
  Speaker 7: Diane quickly fell in with the group's rituals of hallucinogens
• 39:59
  Speaker 7: and music, learning every word to Charlie's songs and joining
• 40:03
  Speaker 7: them in their communal performances.
• 40:05
  Speaker 6: I think we took acid at least once a week.
• 40:08
  Speaker 6: We'd sit around in a circle and Charlie would kind
• 40:10
  Speaker 6: of administer it like a sacrament. You know, he'd place
• 40:14
  Speaker 6: it on your, you know, on your tongue and go
• 40:16
  Speaker 6: around the circle. I mean, it was, you know, it
• 40:19
  Speaker 6: was special. And most of the trips were good, and
• 40:22
  Speaker 6: most of them were centered around music. I enjoyed his music.
• 40:27
  Speaker 6: At that time, that, you know, a solo artist with
• 40:30
  Speaker 6: his guitar was not that uncommon.
• 40:35
  Speaker 7: But by 1968, Charlie began to question whether his chances
• 40:39
  Speaker 7: of making it in the music business may be improved
• 40:41
  Speaker 7: if he had a band behind him. From the spiral
• 40:44
  Speaker 7: staircase house and a long sunset strip, Manson put the
• 40:48
  Speaker 7: word out that he was forming a group and looking
• 40:50
  Speaker 7: for young, gifted musicians. One of the first to turn
• 40:54
  Speaker 7: up for an audition at the communal house near Topanga
• 40:56
  Speaker 7: Beach was guitarist Ernest Knapp.
• 40:59
  Speaker 5: It was creepy right off the bat. He just had
• 41:02
  Speaker 5: this sense about him that was.
• 41:08
  Speaker 7: Just uncomfortable.
• 41:10
  Speaker 5: Oddly, I didn't audition with the other musicians, I just
• 41:14
  Speaker 5: auditioned for Charlie and his family. And I sat up
• 41:18
  Speaker 5: in the middle of the living room floor, put my
• 41:21
  Speaker 5: amp down and plugged it in. Three of the girls
• 41:24
  Speaker 5: had percussion instruments, shakers and a tambourine and some little drum,
• 41:30
  Speaker 5: and actually were accompanying me. So, which I liked, you know.
• 41:36
  Speaker 5: I'll take any help I could get, you know.
• 41:39
  Speaker 7: Knapp was invited to join the band. and the following
• 41:42
  Speaker 7: week returned to rehearse with Manson's quickly assembled ensemble.
• 41:46
  Speaker 5: Once we had some songs we knew we could play,
• 41:49
  Speaker 5: we said, OK, Charlie, what you got? And he performed
• 41:53
  Speaker 5: his stuff for us. I thought he had talent and
• 41:56
  Speaker 5: I thought his songs were viable. It was more of
• 42:00
  Speaker 5: a singer-songwriter type of presentation.
• 42:04
  Speaker 7: Naming the band The Milky Way, the following day they
• 42:07
  Speaker 7: played their one and only public performance, an audition for
• 42:10
  Speaker 7: the Saturday night slot at the local live bar, the
• 42:13
  Speaker 7: Topanga Chorale.
• 42:15
  Speaker 5: We all met down there and loaded up into a
• 42:18
  Speaker 5: couple of cars and drove on up to the chorale,
• 42:21
  Speaker 5: which at that time was a country western beer bar
• 42:25
  Speaker 5: higher up in the canyon. But we were like probably
• 42:28
  Speaker 5: one of the first hippie bands to try to play there.
• 42:33
  Speaker 5: And this was in the afternoon and there was the
• 42:35
  Speaker 5: owner and a couple of guys sitting around And they
• 42:40
  Speaker 5: were not very nice about it.
• 42:42
  Speaker 7: And said, no. Manson's only ever band was Stillborn, and
• 42:48
  Speaker 7: he refocused on his work as a solo artist. And
• 42:51
  Speaker 7: despite its failure, the project had brought him into contact
• 42:54
  Speaker 7: with another confident young musician. Bobby Beausoleil, who bragged about
• 42:59
  Speaker 7: his affiliations to the band Love and his late night
• 43:02
  Speaker 7: jam sessions with Frank Zappa, would become a sporadic presence
• 43:05
  Speaker 7: around the family over the coming two years.
• 43:09
  Speaker 3: He was more talented than Charlie. Everybody who saw the
• 43:13
  Speaker 3: two of them together would agree. But Beausoleil, as a
• 43:17
  Speaker 3: creative artist, certainly saw there was a lot of creativity
• 43:20
  Speaker 3: in Charlie Manson. And there was a certain bond that
• 43:23
  Speaker 3: was formed between them.
• 43:25
  Speaker 10: They shared a musical symmetry. They had a similar outlook.
• 43:29
  Speaker 10: They complemented each other quite well. But Bobby Beausoleil was
• 43:34
  Speaker 10: a strong male. He had his own independent mind. That's
• 43:37
  Speaker 10: not something that really fitted in with Manson's family. So
• 43:41
  Speaker 10: while they walked similar paths, Beausoleil was never a car-carrying
• 43:45
  Speaker 10: member of the Manson family.
• 43:47
  Speaker 7: But he was well-connected. As Manson was looking to move
• 43:51
  Speaker 7: on from the spiral staircase, Beausoleil suggested the family head
• 43:55
  Speaker 7: north into Topanga Canyon and move into an empty property
• 43:59
  Speaker 7: where he had been staying in Horseshoe Drive. Here, in
• 44:04
  Speaker 7: March 1968... The family were joined by Phil Kaufman, Manson's
• 44:08
  Speaker 7: fellow inmate at Terminal Island, who was a free man
• 44:12
  Speaker 7: once again.
• 44:13
  Speaker 4: When I got out in 1968, Gary Stromberg knew another
• 44:17
  Speaker 4: guy I knew, Harold Shrew. And Harold had been in
• 44:21
  Speaker 4: contact with Charlie. So when I got out, Harold took
• 44:25
  Speaker 4: me to Charlie. When I first met him after he
• 44:28
  Speaker 4: got out, that wasn't the guy I knew in the
• 44:30
  Speaker 4: yard singing The Shadow of Your Smile.
• 44:33
  Speaker 7: As impressed as he was by Manson's harem of women,
• 44:37
  Speaker 7: Kaufman was also amazed at the transformation in his music.
• 44:41
  Speaker 7: And in the compositions themselves, he could see how these
• 44:44
  Speaker 7: new songs Charlie was writing were being used to seduce
• 44:47
  Speaker 7: more followers.
• 44:49
  Speaker 4: He had a message. They have a meaning. They're kind
• 44:54
  Speaker 4: of a Pied Piper meaning. Charlie went from Frankie Lane
• 44:58
  Speaker 4: to kind.
• 44:59
  Speaker 8: Of an acid music.
• 45:01
  Speaker 4: He was using it.
• 45:01
  Speaker 7: It was a tool.
• 45:03
  Speaker 4: Because the young people, younger than him, everybody was younger
• 45:05
  Speaker 4: than him, were into the new music. So he put
• 45:09
  Speaker 4: his lyrics to kind of a folky type, because he
• 45:12
  Speaker 4: didn't have a band. And Look at Your Game Girl
• 45:16
  Speaker 4: was the thing.
• 45:17
  Speaker 8: Look at Your Game Girl, come with me.
• 45:20
  Speaker 16: There's a time for living The time keeps on flying.
• 45:34
  Speaker 10: Look at Your Game Girl is certainly the most complex
• 45:36
  Speaker 10: of all of Manson's songs of that period. It's multi-layered.
• 45:40
  Speaker 10: He harmonises with his guitar. It has different tempos. His
• 45:44
  Speaker 10: voice range is considerable on that.
• 45:47
  Speaker 7: So it's a very.
• 45:48
  Speaker 10: And it's hard to say, given what we know about Manson,
• 45:51
  Speaker 10: but it's a very, very well-crafted piece of work.
• 45:55
  Speaker 2: Ah, the feeling's real Look at your game girl.
• 46:06
  Speaker 4: I mean, he was a pitchman. I mean, he was
• 46:09
  Speaker 4: selling something. He was selling him. And they bought it.
• 46:14
  Speaker 4: These girls were lost. These children were lost. And the
• 46:18
  Speaker 4: hippie thing, peace and love, that.
• 46:21
  Speaker 5: Was his pay.
• 46:23
  Speaker 7: But the atmosphere in Topanga wasn't sinister. Peace and love reigned,
• 46:28
  Speaker 7: and the family was beginning to experience Manson's conception of
• 46:31
  Speaker 7: a communal life, free from material concerns. With more new
• 46:36
  Speaker 7: members joining the fold, he taught them how to live modestly,
• 46:40
  Speaker 7: feeding themselves by visiting garbage dumps. Times were good, and
• 46:45
  Speaker 7: these collective activities would find their way into the songs themselves.
• 46:49
  Speaker 4: You're not four, you have a garbage dump. You'll never
• 46:51
  Speaker 4: starve as long as you have a garbage dump. I mean,
• 46:54
  Speaker 4: you buy a piece of cheese, it's dated today. You
• 46:59
  Speaker 4: can't sell it tomorrow. But there's nothing wrong with it.
• 47:03
  Speaker 4: You can take it home, put it in the fridge,
• 47:05
  Speaker 4: or go home and eat it.
• 47:06
  Speaker 7: And that's what Manson did, or I did. I was
• 47:08
  Speaker 7: with him.
• 47:09
  Speaker 6: You know, at first, it's like, ooh, you know, because
• 47:12
  Speaker 6: some of the dumpsters were, you know, they're stinky. You know,
• 47:15
  Speaker 6: they don't get cleaned. They don't get hosed out on.
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: A regular basis.
• 47:19
  Speaker 6: But, you know, there was lots of cardboard in there.
• 47:22
  Speaker 6: But there was also food. I mean, you know, some
• 47:25
  Speaker 6: of them, you know, you'd learn when they threw the
• 47:28
  Speaker 6: food out. you know, at what time, and so some
• 47:32
  Speaker 6: of the stuff was still cold.
• 47:34
  Speaker 4: We were eating America's garbage, if you will.
• 47:39
  Speaker 2: When you're living on the road And you think sometimes
• 47:44
  Speaker 2: you're starving Get on off that trip, my friend Just
• 47:51
  Speaker 2: get in them cans and start carving Oh, garbage dump,
• 47:56
  Speaker 2: my garbage dump.
• 48:04
  Speaker 3: If you want to see who Charlie Manson would have
• 48:06
  Speaker 3: wanted the world to see himself as, this is the image.
• 48:12
  Speaker 3: Not the image of some monster who could make mindless
• 48:15
  Speaker 3: robots go out and kill, but as a wonderful being
• 48:21
  Speaker 3: who could exist on practically nothing, and be richer than
• 48:26
  Speaker 3: all the people who had all the things and might
• 48:28
  Speaker 3: otherwise look down on him.
• 48:31
  Speaker 7: But although the atmosphere within the group was tranquil, for
• 48:34
  Speaker 7: Phil Kaufman, Manson's constant sermonizing was becoming intolerable.
• 48:39
  Speaker 4: That got old, you know. That got old, and I
• 48:43
  Speaker 4: got wiser. And fortunately, I got really wised up. You know,
• 48:49
  Speaker 4: I saw the handwriting on the cell block.
• 48:52
  Speaker 9: It was, you know. Time to get out of there
• 48:54
  Speaker 9: and divorce myself from him.
• 48:56
  Speaker 4: The day I left, a friend of mine came to
• 48:58
  Speaker 4: pick me up.
• 49:00
  Speaker 9: And he said, I got to go, Charlie.
• 49:04
  Speaker 7: He said, yeah, I know. You're still thinking, aren't you?
• 49:07
  Speaker 7: I said, yeah, I'm going to keep it up. Sermons
• 49:11
  Speaker 7: and communal activities may have filled their time, but Manson
• 49:14
  Speaker 7: was also keen to make musical contacts. While he attempted
• 49:18
  Speaker 7: to rub shoulders with the Rocco living in and around
• 49:21
  Speaker 7: Topanga Canyon, he also sent his followers to the Sunset Strip.
• 49:26
  Speaker 7: Here they were to attract the attention of any musicians
• 49:29
  Speaker 7: they may come across and effect an introduction to Manson.
• 49:33
  Speaker 7: And in May 1968, two of the girls hit pay dirt.
• 49:38
  Speaker 3: Ella Jo Bailey, who is known as Yeller, and Pat Krenwinkel,
• 49:44
  Speaker 3: walking down a road in Hollywood, hitching. Car stops to
• 49:49
  Speaker 3: pick him up. A young, good-looking guy says, hey, do
• 49:52
  Speaker 3: you girls need a ride? And he suggests that they
• 49:56
  Speaker 3: go back to his place for milk and cookies. They
• 50:00
  Speaker 3: think they know exactly what that means, but when they
• 50:03
  Speaker 3: get back to his house, which is really a spectacular place,
• 50:07
  Speaker 3: just off the sunset, he really does offer them milk
• 50:11
  Speaker 3: and cookies. And after a while, he says he's got
• 50:14
  Speaker 3: a recording session, he's gotta go, he hopes he sees
• 50:17
  Speaker 3: them again sometime. He's in a band called.
• 50:20
  Speaker 7: The Beach Boys.
• 50:22
  Speaker 3: They dutifully go back and Charlie's.
• 50:25
  Speaker 7: Asking, well, do you meet anybody, do you meet anybody?
• 50:27
  Speaker 3: Well, this one guy who was in the band picked
• 50:29
  Speaker 3: us up and took us back to his house. What
• 50:32
  Speaker 3: band was he in?
• 50:34
  Speaker 7: The Beach Boys.
• 50:36
  Speaker 3: And Charlie, that's it. He is jumping out of his clothes.
• 50:41
  Speaker 3: Where's this guy's house?
• 50:43
  Speaker 7: The beach boy they had unwittingly stumbled upon was Dennis Wilson,
• 50:47
  Speaker 7: the drummer and younger brother of the band's celebrated producer
• 50:50
  Speaker 7: and songwriter, Brian. That night, Manson and his entire family
• 50:55
  Speaker 7: set off for Wilson's property on Sunset Boulevard, keen to
• 50:58
  Speaker 7: make a real impression.
• 51:00
  Speaker 3: Dennis Wilson, middle of the night, coming back home, pulls
• 51:04
  Speaker 3: into his driveway and the lights are on in his
• 51:07
  Speaker 3: house and there's a school bus parked there there's people
• 51:12
  Speaker 3: in his house he gets out of his car and
• 51:15
  Speaker 3: he's going in carefully because he's a rich guy you
• 51:18
  Speaker 3: never know what's going to be there and out comes
• 51:21
  Speaker 3: this little short dude with a beard hey man how
• 51:27
  Speaker 3: are you acting like a host and the first words
• 51:29
  Speaker 3: out of Dennis's mouth are are you going to hurt
• 51:32
  Speaker 3: me And Charlie Manson kneels down and he kisses Dennis
• 51:38
  Speaker 3: Wilson's foot. Do I seem like somebody who's going to
• 51:41
  Speaker 3: hurt you, man?
• 51:42
  Speaker 7: Come on in.
• 51:43
  Speaker 3: And Dennis goes in and there in his house is
• 51:46
  Speaker 3: the Manson family making themselves at home.
• 51:49
  Speaker 7: With half-naked girls sprawled around his house, Dennis Wilson was
• 51:53
  Speaker 7: instantly enchanted by Manson and his followers. Of all the
• 51:57
  Speaker 7: Beach Boys, they had unwittingly met the one who would
• 51:59
  Speaker 7: be most open to their charms.
• 52:02
  Speaker 8: Dennis Wilson was 100% different from all the guys in
• 52:05
  Speaker 8: the rest of the band in one important way. He
• 52:08
  Speaker 8: was the athlete. He was the guy who went out
• 52:10
  Speaker 8: and surfed. And, of course, the girls liked him the most.
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: He was, you know, very ruggedly.
• 52:16
  Speaker 8: Handsome, and he had a way with women. The other guys,
• 52:19
  Speaker 8: you know, were sort of like, Brian is tall and gawky,
• 52:22
  Speaker 8: and Carl's, like, chubby and taking guitar lessons, and Al's
• 52:26
  Speaker 8: going to be a dentist, and Mike's working at a
• 52:28
  Speaker 8: gas station and is sort of like the jerk lead.
• 52:30
  Speaker 9: Singer, you know.
• 52:32
  Speaker 8: Dennis Wilson was the embodiment of what the Beach Boys
• 52:35
  Speaker 8: were about. Their first songs were about surfing and cars.
• 52:38
  Speaker 8: Brian Wilson was writing songs about Dennis' life.
• 52:42
  Speaker 7: And the family had burst into Wilson's life at a
• 52:45
  Speaker 7: perfect juncture. In the past year, the Beach Boys had
• 52:49
  Speaker 7: suffered a series of commercial disappointments, with their in-house genius
• 52:53
  Speaker 7: Brian Wilson losing artistic control of the band and mentally
• 52:56
  Speaker 7: struggling following his prolonged use of LSD. trying to refresh
• 53:02
  Speaker 7: their tired image in the new hip world. In the
• 53:05
  Speaker 7: weeks before the Manson family arrived, Dennis had been on
• 53:08
  Speaker 7: the road for a tour that paired the band with
• 53:10
  Speaker 7: the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. This prominent Indian guru had been
• 53:15
  Speaker 7: elevated to superstardom following his involvement with the Beatles. Yet
• 53:19
  Speaker 7: the combination of his speeches on transcendental meditation with a
• 53:23
  Speaker 7: rock and roll show unsurprisingly failed to make any impact.
• 53:27
  Speaker 9: It was a disaster. I mean, the people that want
• 53:30
  Speaker 9: to come see the Beach Boys don't want to see Maharishi,
• 53:33
  Speaker 9: and the people who want to see Maharishi don't want
• 53:35
  Speaker 9: to see the Beach Boys.
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: It didn't work.
• 53:36
  Speaker 9: Interesting idea, but, you know, it was a failure.
• 53:40
  Speaker 18: 68 was a rough year for them. The Maharishi tour
• 53:43
  Speaker 18: was a disaster. They had problems with the southern elements
• 53:48
  Speaker 18: of their tour because of the Martin Luther King assassination.
• 53:51
  Speaker 18: They were losing money. They were hemorrhaging money. The records
• 53:54
  Speaker 18: weren't selling. They really weren't catching up with people culturally.
• 53:59
  Speaker 18: They were still wearing matching outfits on stage. So by 1968,
• 54:02
  Speaker 18: I think that the Beach Boys were really perceived as
• 54:07
  Speaker 18: part of the past.
• 54:09
  Speaker 7: But Dennis wasn't interested in being part of the past.
• 54:13
  Speaker 7: A young man ever alive to new ideas, he had
• 54:16
  Speaker 7: been fascinated by the Maharishi's teachings and was looking for
• 54:19
  Speaker 7: greater meaning in his life. Manson's sermons denouncing material possessions
• 54:25
  Speaker 7: and celebrating communal and spiritual unity, along with the sexual
• 54:29
  Speaker 7: allure of the girls, won him over immediately, and he
• 54:32
  Speaker 7: invited them all to join him at his 14400 Sunset
• 54:36
  Speaker 7: Boulevard home.
• 54:38
  Speaker 6: Dennis was a fun guy. I remember him being kind
• 54:41
  Speaker 6: of a wild man, though. He liked to love fast cars,
• 54:47
  Speaker 6: fast women. You know, he liked living in the fast lane.
• 54:51
  Speaker 6: Dennis had just come off of like a retreat or
• 54:54
  Speaker 6: something with the Maharishi Yogi. So I think he and
• 54:59
  Speaker 6: Charlie kind of fit that guru. I think that Dennis
• 55:03
  Speaker 6: was looking for this kind of inspiration.
• 55:08
  Speaker 18: Dennis was always looking for more. He was always looking
• 55:11
  Speaker 18: for the next thing. And he was like a child
• 55:14
  Speaker 18: in that way. And I think that these people really
• 55:19
  Speaker 18: interested him. Part of the thing for Dennis at that
• 55:22
  Speaker 18: time was that he harbored a certain amount of guilt
• 55:26
  Speaker 18: for all that he had, for all of the wealth
• 55:29
  Speaker 18: and all the trappings that came with it. I don't
• 55:32
  Speaker 18: think he ever really felt like he deserved it. I
• 55:36
  Speaker 18: think he felt like he got all of this basically
• 55:38
  Speaker 18: because of his brother, and that all of this stuff
• 55:41
  Speaker 18: just came to him not by his own hard work
• 55:45
  Speaker 18: or not by his own talent, but just by luck.
• 55:48
  Speaker 7: And Wilson had only moved into his sprawling rented property
• 55:52
  Speaker 7: on Sunset Boulevard recently, following the breakdown of his first marriage.
• 55:56
  Speaker 7: With Manson and his wandering Harim, now permanent houseguests, he
• 56:00
  Speaker 7: contacted his close friend and collaborator, Greg Jacobson, and invited
• 56:04
  Speaker 7: him to the party.
• 56:06
  Speaker 9: My first exposure to the wizard, as Dennis would call him,
• 56:09
  Speaker 9: was he called me up one night, and Greg, you
• 56:12
  Speaker 9: have to come down here, man. You've got to see
• 56:13
  Speaker 9: this guy. He's the wizard, and he's got all these girls.
• 56:16
  Speaker 9: For me, it wasn't, okay, Dan, you know, I'd heard
• 56:20
  Speaker 9: it before, girls in a party, and I'm married, I've
• 56:22
  Speaker 9: got a couple of kids. So I never responded until,
• 56:26
  Speaker 9: you know, it was sometime maybe a week later when
• 56:28
  Speaker 9: they were much more part of the whole scene down
• 56:32
  Speaker 9: there at the house. I must say this, when Charlie
• 56:34
  Speaker 9: was around, everybody knew it, he had an energy that
• 56:38
  Speaker 9: you couldn't not pay attention to Charlie. He was a
• 56:41
  Speaker 9: likable person. He was very charming and he paid attention
• 56:45
  Speaker 9: to you. I mean, I can understand why Dennis called
• 56:47
  Speaker 9: him the wizard because he did have that unique ability
• 56:53
  Speaker 9: to make you feel like you were, he was concerned,
• 56:57
  Speaker 9: you were important. He didn't just shine you on.
• 57:01
  Speaker 6: Just living on that estate was magical. I remember, you know,
• 57:07
  Speaker 6: getting high and drinking like, orange juice or grape juice
• 57:13
  Speaker 6: that was just, you know, heavenly.
• 57:16
  Speaker 9: Don't forget, Dennis had left his house and his family
• 57:19
  Speaker 9: and his wife and stuff. And now he had all
• 57:22
  Speaker 9: this literally adoration and he had all these girls. They
• 57:25
  Speaker 9: were making him clothes and they were they were they
• 57:28
  Speaker 9: almost would bow down to him. So I'm sure for
• 57:32
  Speaker 9: the moment he was very charmed by the whole scene.
• 57:36
  Speaker 7: But it wasn't all about sex, drugs and expanded consciousness.
• 57:40
  Speaker 7: Wilson was also fascinated by Manson's music. And with his
• 57:45
  Speaker 7: older brother, Brian, withdrawing from his role as the Beach
• 57:48
  Speaker 7: Boys' driving force, the other band members were keen to
• 57:51
  Speaker 7: find their own voice within the group, none more so
• 57:54
  Speaker 7: than Dennis.
• 57:55
  Speaker 19: At the time, he was developing his skills on the keyboard.
• 58:01
  Speaker 19: He would come in in the morning and practice and
• 58:05
  Speaker 19: work things out and sometimes Brian would help and show
• 58:09
  Speaker 19: him things but most of the time he was experimenting
• 58:12
  Speaker 19: on his own so he was different from the other
• 58:15
  Speaker 19: guys who were familiar with chords and transitions and that
• 58:20
  Speaker 19: kind of thing you know but he was extremely talented
• 58:23
  Speaker 19: he was a.
• 58:24
  Speaker 18: Fast learner 1968 was the first time that he was
• 58:28
  Speaker 18: even being looked at as something that was serious musically
• 58:34
  Speaker 18: and Brian was allowing the others to show what they had,
• 58:38
  Speaker 18: and Dennis was showing a knack for writing songs. He's
• 58:43
  Speaker 18: a novice, but it's obvious that there's something there.
• 58:47
  Speaker 7: The Beach Boys had also recently set up their own
• 58:50
  Speaker 7: record label, Brother Records, with an eye to signing new
• 58:53
  Speaker 7: talent that would better reflect the times than their own
• 58:56
  Speaker 7: stale act. Impressed by Manson's musical talents, Wilson hoped to
• 59:01
  Speaker 7: both learn from and collaborate with his new house guest.
• 59:05
  Speaker 9: It was probably the first time that Dennis got interested
• 59:08
  Speaker 9: in somebody and the music at the same time, almost
• 59:11
  Speaker 9: like a producer would start considering how you deal with
• 59:14
  Speaker 9: an artist. And I think that was where Dennis was
• 59:16
  Speaker 9: coming from. And he realized that he really had something
• 59:19
  Speaker 9: that he could bring to the table. And so he
• 59:21
  Speaker 9: became musically Charlie's mentor, let's say.
• 59:24
  Speaker 6: Primarily the relationship bound them together was music. What I
• 59:29
  Speaker 6: remember is that he was truly fond of Charlie. I mean,
• 59:33
  Speaker 6: he introduced Charlie to his friends and Charlie was teaching
• 59:38
  Speaker 6: him how to play the guitar. And he, you know,
• 59:41
  Speaker 6: it was kind of a mutual admiration, bromance or whatever.
• 59:46
  Speaker 6: I mean, that's what I remember seeing is that they,
• 59:51
  Speaker 6: I think they genuinely liked each other.
• 59:55
  Speaker 18: It must have been a bit of a vindication for
• 59:58
  Speaker 18: Manson to be taken seriously by somebody as well-known as Dennis.
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 18: Even though Dennis hadn't really developed himself as an artist yet,
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 18: Dennis was a superstar. Suddenly you are collaborating with someone
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 18: who is very well-known and comes from a family that
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 18: is hugely respected in the industry.
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 7: Along with Greg Jacobson, Wilson was also keen to introduce
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 7: his dynamic new house guest and collaborator to another friend,
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 7: record producer Terry Melcher. The son of Doris Day and
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 7: the partner of rising star Candice Bergen, with his prominent
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 7: role in the L.A. music scene, Melcher was a vital
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 7: link between Hollywood past and present.
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 13: Terry Melcher was somebody who was very much part of
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 13: the Hollywood entertainment scene and You know, he produced the
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 13: first two Birds albums, which are hugely important. He was
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 13: very involved with Paul Revere and the Raiders, who were
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 13: big hit makers at the time. I mean, everybody knew
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 13: who Terry Melcher was. And so, you know, to get
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 13: his blessing or to summon his interest would have been
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 13: a big get for any aspiring songwriters.
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 7: Over the coming months, Manson became close enough to Melcher
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 7: that he was invited to the Beverly Hills property the
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 7: producer rented in Cielo Drive. And although Melcher and Jacobson
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 7: were his most frequent visitors, Dennis Wilson's home was a
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 7: popular hangout for many prominent musicians.
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 10: Dennis's house was a gathering point. Being very liberal, people
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 10: felt welcome and could drop in at all hours, so
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 10: many people called in on Dennis, and obviously, collided with
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 10: the Manson family. The likes of Stephen Stills, Glen Campbell,
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 10: Neil Diamond was another. Neil Young, freshly released from Buffalo Springfield,
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 10: came across Manson, and he was blown away by Manson's
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 10: musical playing. If reports were to be believed, he was
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 10: enchanted with Manson, and she bought him a motorcycle, took
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 10: him along to meet Mo Uston at Warner's, who, if
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 10: accounts to be to be believed, wasn't that impressed. So
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 10: I think Manson's personable presence enchanted people. The problem with
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 10: Manson is once you bounce that down onto tape, it
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 10: loses everything. So basically then what you're left with is
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 10: some songs. You don't have Manson the character, you don't
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 10: have Manson the girls. And I think that's what really
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 10: enchanted people, was the package.
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 7: Now an accepted figure within the upper echelons of the
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 7: LA counterculture, Manson's presence at parties and clubs became common.
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 7: And in the very nerve center of the scene, on
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 7: the Sunset Strip and its premier venue, the Whiskey-A-Go-Go, he
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 7: made an indelible impression.
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 9: There was an incident at the Whiskey one night. We
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 9: were all there at the table. Charlie had come with us.
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 9: Dennis was there. Terry Melcher was there. So we were
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 9: all there, you know, drinking beer and having a good time.
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 9: And we noticed a bit of a commotion coming from
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 9: the dance floor. And the whiskey's packed. I mean, it's
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 9: shoulder to shoulder. The girls are up in the cages
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 9: at the time of the whiskey. And the band is
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 9: playing full on. The band is really into it because
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 9: there's something going on. I stood up on the chair.
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 9: I stood up in the back of the booth. And
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 9: I said, hey, you guys, you've got to see this.
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 9: And it was Charlie in the middle of the dance
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 9: floor dancing. And he literally cleared the dance floor of
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 9: the whiskey. I mean, people slowly pulled back until... And
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 9: I swear to God, to this day, it looked like
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 9: electricity was coming out of him. I mean, that kind
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 9: of energy. And he literally blew everybody away on the
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 9: dance floor by himself. He wasn't, you know, there's nobody
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 9: could even come close to dancing with him. So, but
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 9: that was Charlie. I mean, when he, he had that,
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 9: that explosiveness, that energy.
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 7: Although he was making his mark on the scene, by
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 7: the late summer, Manson and his family had outstayed their
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 7: welcome at Dennis Wilson's house. In August, the Beach Boys
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 7: were embarking on an extensive tour of the U.S. and
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 7: Canada to promote their latest album, and Wilson decided this
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 7: would be the perfect time for his house guests to
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 7: move on.
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 10: The party had to end sometime, and it was costing
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 10: Dennis a fortune, and all the recounts would be believed.
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 10: It was $ 100, 000 in food, gonorrhea treatment, lost clothing, everything.
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 10: I mean, they were bleeding him dry.
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 9: I was tall. by Dennis. He says, hey man, I'm
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 9: going on the road. Can you find us a new place?
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 9: He says, I want my stuff out of there. Charlie
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 9: didn't have much choice. The house got closed down. I
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 9: closed it down while Dennis was gone. He came back
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 9: a couple weeks later to a new house.
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 7: Their friendship and musical collaboration continued, however, and Manson used
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 7: the opportunity to relocate his growing family to a more
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 7: isolated venue. Spahn Ranch, 30 miles north of Dennis' Santa
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 7: Monica home, was a once-thriving movie location during the heyday
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 7: of Western films the previous decade. Now largely inactive, it
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 7: proved perfect for Manson's needs.
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 3: Cult leaders can always be identified by a couple of
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 3: things they do, and Manson did them all. The first
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 3: thing is you have to find people who feel put upon, persecuted,
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 3: and convince them that you know the way to protect them,
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 3: but only you. It has to be me. The second
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 3: thing you try to do is isolate them. You've got
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 3: to get them away from outside voices, their own families, friends, media,
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 3: anybody who would say, wait a minute, this guy's a crackpot.
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 3: You want to get them to the point where the
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 3: only voice they hear is yours. That's not going to
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 3: work at Dennis Wilson's house. Spahn Ranch, just outside Los Angeles.
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 3: And if you hear the distance involved, that it's not
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 3: that many miles, you think, oh, gee, it's just going
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 3: to be smog and more big buildings. But it's actually
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 3: sort of this natural area that seems like it's the frontier,
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 3: it's the country, it's as far removed from big cities
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 3: you can imagine, and yet it's only about a 25-minute drive.
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 3: Charlie still can reach Los Angeles, but he can isolate
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 3: his followers.
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 7: At Spahn Ranch, the family became a commune once again,
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 7: and its reputation grew around Los Angeles. New followers found
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 7: their way to this rustic idyll, along with members of
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 7: biker gangs, the Straight Satans and the Satan Slaves, and
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 7: figures from the music world.
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 10: The Manson family's presence at Spahn's Ranch initially was like
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 10: a psychedelic little house on the prairie.
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 7: I mean, it was just a lovely throwback.
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 10: You know, these guys were on an old film set
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 10: and they were dressing up in costumes and it was
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 10: a happy-go-lucky scene. It was free love, free drugs, music,
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 10: free food from the dumpster and famous people were dropping in.
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 7: You know, Dennis Wilson was there.
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 10: He took the girls on a garbage dump drive. It
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 10: said Jim Morrison went there.
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 9: Whenever Terry and I showed up, or Dennis and I
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 9: showed up out at the ranch, he would definitely have
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 9: everything set up. In other words, when we were there,
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 9: everybody was on alert and we were supposed to be entertained.
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 9: I said, Terry, we should, this should be filmed. We
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 9: ought to film this thing. This is, this is kind
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 9: of history. This is really unusual. I mean, you have
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 9: the girls, you have the horses, you have some cowboys,
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 9: you have the hippies, you have the motorcycle gang, and
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 9: you have this big movie ranch. Come on, I mean,
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 9: you couldn't make that kind of stuff up. I thought, Terry,
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 9: we should be filming this.
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 7: And while the family were acclimatizing to this new rural life,
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 7: Dennis Wilson announced that the Beach Boys had agreed to
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 7: record one of the songs that he and Manson had
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 7: been working on earlier in the summer. This track ceased
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 7: to exist. perfectly captured the cult leader's spiritual outlook.
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 2: Just come and say you love me.
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: Give up your world.
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 9: It was more Charlie's composition than Dennis's because Charlie would
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 9: really come from a different place. Charlie was much more philosophic,
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 9: kind of the Eastern philosophy, and Dennis was fascinated with
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 9: that to some degree. He could smell that there was
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 9: something there, but he didn't know what it was. So
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 9: he went along with that. He liked that. That was
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 9: something new. In other words, the Beach Boys weren't writing
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 9: about that kind of stuff either. They were still doing
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 9: surf songs and good vibrations and so on, which was
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 9: all cool. But this was a big departure. And it
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 9: was very much the 60s, you know. This was new.
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 7: But as the band went into Brian Wilson's home studio
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 7: to record the track in September 1968, they shaped the
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 7: song into their own creation. and its name was altered
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 7: to Never Learn Not To Love. Stephen Desper, the band's
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 7: in-house engineer, oversaw the sessions.
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 19: We were all aware that Dennis had a friend named
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 19: Charles Manson, and the two of them were both musicians
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 19: and artists. As musicians do, they compare notes, they write
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 19: things together. This was a collaboration and Charles and Dennis
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 19: had worked on it together. It may have been the
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 19: initial idea may have been Charles's, but he had given
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 19: it to Dennis and been compensated for it. And the
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 19: Beach Boys were taking it and embellishing it as they
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 19: do and making it their own.
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 15: Come on, come on, you and that pretty girl My
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 15: life is yours and you can have my world I'm
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 15: your kind, I'm your kind and I see Never had
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 15: a lesson I ever learned And I know I could
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 15: never learn not to love you.
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 18: Dennis, who knew his way around the studio and knew
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 18: his way around vocal arrangements, took that idea and expanded
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 18: it into something that was more palatable, that was pop.
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 18: And again, for the Beach Boys, though, it was something
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 18: that was pushing their sound forward.
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 20: Coming now closer.
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 18: I think it's a really good song. I think it's better, actually,
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 18: than it gets credit for. The harmonies are just gorgeous
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 18: on that song. I think that the collaboration between Dennis
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 18: and Manson really showed potential with this Never Learn Not
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 18: to Love song. I think it definitely works. I think
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 18: it's a win for the Beach Boys. And I think
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 18: an album full of that kind of sound would have
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 18: been amazing for them at the time.
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 7: Yet it was not to be. While the recording should
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 7: have provided the family with new hope, back at Spahn Ranch,
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 7: the atmosphere was changing and Manson's commune was losing its focus.
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 9: Things were getting a little bit more rougher. Everybody, I think,
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 9: started pulling away because more and more we were hearing
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 9: stories of Satan's slaves were now hanging out out there.
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 9: The picture was, the flower part was going away. It
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 9: wasn't flowers and beads anymore. It was motorcycles and gasoline
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 9: and harder core drugs and people coming from downtown L.A.
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 9: that nobody knew. And winter was coming. It was kind
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 9: of like the summer was, you know, as the season
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 9: was closing. It was getting darker earlier and so on.
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 7: And this reflected a darkness that had been spreading throughout
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 7: the counterculture during 1968. The Summer of Love was now
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 7: a distant memory. The Vietnam War continued to escalate. And
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 7: following the assassinations of first Martin Luther King and then
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 7: Robert Kennedy, the younger generation's faith in conventional political change
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 7: was crushed. Across the nation, the counterculture took up arms
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 7: and prepared for battle with the authorities, with violent clashes
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 7: breaking out in several cities. At the same time, the
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 7: peaceful civil rights movement was also transforming, and as riots
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 7: erupted following King's assassination, black power became a new slogan
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 7: for numerous groups looking to confront their white oppressors. And
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 7: all of these currents fed directly into the mind of
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 7: Charles Manson. Now his sermons altered, and his spiritual vision
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 7: of a communal society was replaced by predictions of a
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 7: coming apocalypse, a violent uprising, in which African Americans would
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 7: overthrow the existing order.
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 13: The ideas that Menzies was playing around with, race war, revolution,
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 13: the sense that everything was falling apart, I mean, these
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 13: were commonly thought ideas. Even at the point that Martin
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 13: Luther King was assassinated, he had been outflanked on his
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 13: left by more militant black political figures. So once he
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 13: was shot and killed, there was the message of, you
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 13: see where nonviolence gets you? The idea that the structure
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 13: was under assault coupled that with the complicated, to say
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 13: the very least, racial history.
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 1: Of the United States.
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 13: The sense that these forces were potentially in charge of
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 13: a takeover, that again was something that was very much
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 13: in the air.
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 7: But Manson took these common beliefs and warped them into
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 7: a very singular vision. In September, aware that his control
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 7: over his followers was slipping at the overpopulated Spahn Ranch,
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 7: he scouted a new location for their commune deep in
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 7: the heart of Death Valley. 200 miles north of Los Angeles,
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 7: Barker Ranch offered total isolation, and he fed this into
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 7: his prediction of the coming revolution. When the black population
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 7: rose up to overthrow the white authorities, Their commune would
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 7: be hidden in this remote desert retreat. And when the
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 7: dust settled, they would emerge to rule over a brave
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 7: new world.
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 6: Times were different. You know, it wasn't the same loving,
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 6: commune kind of enlightenment thing anymore. You know, there was
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 6: an agenda. He'd always been kind of fostering and laying
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 6: some groundwork for this race war. I think he truly
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 6: believed that this was going to happen, and so he
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 6: was always kind of preparing us. But the whole impetus
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 6: was to make money, to get dune buggies and knives
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 6: and guns or whatever and hide out in the desert
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 6: until this war thing was over.
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 7: And just as music seemed to have receded into the
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 7: background of the family's day-to-day existence... a record was released
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 7: that shook Manson to his very core. Having sent a
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 7: number of his followers to Death Valley to prepare their
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 7: new accommodation in the desert, he and the remaining family
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 7: members moved into a house on Gresham Street in the
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 7: northern part of Los Angeles. And it was here that
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 7: he first heard the Beatles' new LP, commonly known as
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 7: The White Album. Through a number of its songs, somehow
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 7: the Beatles were sending a message directly to Manson himself.
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 7: confirming his prophecies of a violent race war.
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 6: When I came back from the desert to Gresham Street,
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 6: and it was all this frenetic energy, and a lot
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 6: of it had to do with the fact that Charlie
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 6: felt like the White Album, the Beatles through the White Album,
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 6: were telling him that this black-white race war was helter-skelter,
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 6: it's coming down fast, you know, and he would play
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 6: it backwards. He was obsessed, and I remember he.
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 1: made me stay and.
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 6: Listen and pee my pants on the rug because he
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 6: wouldn't let me leave to go to the bathroom. No,
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 6: you stay here.
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 8: I want you to hear this.
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 16: Have you seen the little piggies crawling in the dirt?
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 6: And for all the little piggies, life is getting worse.
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 3: Piggies was one of the first he talked about, written
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 3: by George Harrison, and George later said his mother actually
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 3: suggested some of the lyrics that Charlie thought the Beatles
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 3: were proclaiming, about how there were certain people that needed
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 3: to be punished. What they need's a damn good whacking.
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 10: Harrison was just doing a dig at the upper classes,
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 10: et cetera, et cetera, but of course Manson saw it
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 10: as a call to arms. What they need's a damn
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 10: good whacking. Piggies is certainly a violent song, and the
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 10: word pig would play an important part in the Manson
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 10: family's infamy later on.
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 17: Blackbird singing in the dead.
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 16: Of night Take these broken wings and learn to fly.
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 14: All your life.
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 22: You were only waiting for this moment.
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 3: To arrive The song Blackbird, Charlie led his followers to believe,
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 3: was particularly significant. That although black people, in Charlie's view,
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 3: were very inferior, they had been enslaved, they had been
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 3: mistreated for so long, and now the Beatles were saying
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 3: they were going to rise up. You were only waiting
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 3: for your moment to arise. And then there's the real hook.
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 3: Helter Skelter. In Britain... people would realize Paul McCartney is
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 3: talking about an amusement park ride. But in America, nobody
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 3: knew what a helter-skelter was. And Charlie took advantage of that.
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 7: When I get to the bottom, I go back to
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 7: the top of the slide.
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 11: First stop and a turn, now to go.
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 7: For a ride.
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 11: Till I get to the bottom and I see you again. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 3: When you get to the bottom, you go back to
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 3: the top. That's the blacks. They're at the bottom. They're
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 3: going to go to the top. Helter Skelter is the
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 3: name the Beatles have given to the race war that's coming.
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 9: Charlie bought into that because it was coming from the Beatles.
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 9: This fit Charlie's predictions and they'd that that was coming,
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 9: that war, that black-white war was coming.
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 7: Life within the family radically shifted in the early months
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 7: of 1969. For their exodus to the desert, they would
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 7: need vehicles, gasoline and weaponry, and Manson returned to his
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 7: criminal ways to fund these new activities. But the musical
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 7: dream was far from over. In March, Dennis Wilson reappeared
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 7: with the offer of a demo session for Manson. The
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 7: results would be presented to the Beach Boys themselves to
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 7: see whether they would sign him to their new label,
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 7: Brother Records. The recording would take place at Brian Wilson's
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 7: home studio with the band's engineer, Stephen Desper, in charge
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 7: of the session. It was a remarkable opportunity.
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 19: Someone knocked on the studio door and said, your talent
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 19: is here. So I met them at the front door.
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 19: It was Charles and He had with him five girls.
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 19: He got his guitar out and he had talent. I
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 19: can see why Dennis wanted to do a demo with
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 19: him and consider him as a talent that they would
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 19: sign and produce. It was the producing part that bothered me.
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 19: Once he got in front of the microphone and into
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 19: the recording environment, he was not like other people. It
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 19: was all very foreign to him, and he was annoyed
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 19: by the whole thing. And I just wasn't feeling comfortable
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 19: about being around him.
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 6: Charlie had his way of doing things, and he knew best.
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 6: Being a rock star, a famous rock star, was not
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 6: his highest priority. Because if it was his highest priority, oh,
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 6: to meet The Beach Boys to record in their studio?
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah!
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 10: What do you want me to wear?
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 6: How would you like my hair?
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 16: You know?
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 7: Right?
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 19: After the first song, he came up in the control
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 19: room and we made a playback. In the course of
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 19: the playback, he pulled out a six-inch switchblade and started
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 19: cleaning his fingernails. I said to him, Charlie, you're going
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 19: to have to take the knife out of the studios.
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 19: And the reason for that was because it's Brian's house
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 19: and he has family there. He has little girls upstairs.
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 19: I don't know what this guy is, you know. Anyway,
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 19: he called one of the girls and they took the
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 19: knife out to the car and then I had to
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 19: go out and get them back in the studio, make
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 19: sure they weren't wandering around the house and all that.
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 19: But he liked what he had done and was satisfied
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 19: with it. I guess he was there about three or
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 19: four hours. pretty well into the evening.
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 7: Despite Manson's satisfaction with his performance, he had failed to
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 7: win over Stephen Desper, whose job it was to report
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 7: back to the band and their management.
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 19: I took the tapes to the office. They asked me
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 19: how it went, and I said, well, he won't take direction,
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 19: and I don't think he's going to be producible. But
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 19: his songs are fairly good. I like the lyrics and
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 19: so forth, and, you know, take a listen.
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 7: Brother Records were not interested, and although this news never
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 7: fed directly to Charles Manson himself, he assumed from their
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 7: silence that he was not going to be part of
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 7: their roster. His attentions then turned to Terry Melcher, the
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 7: producer who he had been socialising with since the previous year,
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 7: and who was still an infrequent visitor to Spahn Ranch.
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 3: Charlie figures out when Dennis Wilson can't get him a
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 3: record deal that, wait a minute, I miscalculated. The artists
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 3: aren't high enough on the food chain themselves. And now
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 3: he's got a different target in mind. That target is
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 3: Terry Melcher. You have to remember that Manson has been
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 3: trying to get Melcher to listen to him for over
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 3: a year. And he's getting put off, and he's getting
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 3: put off. And finally, Melcher said, I will come out
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 3: to Spahn Ranch. I will listen to you. He sets
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 3: up a time and a date.
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 6: It raised everybody's hopes that we were going to make
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 6: a record, you know, and earn some money. And really,
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 6: at that point, the money was to go for gas
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 6: and vehicles and food and supplies for the desert.
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 3: Terry Melcher has other things going on in his life.
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 3: His mother's estate, I mean, there's problems going on, and
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 3: he doesn't go. To him, well, so what? I'll just
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 3: call the guy up at some point and say, hey, sorry,
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 3: I couldn't make it last time. To Manson, it's not
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 3: only a personal betrayal, but it threatens his hold on
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 3: his followers, and he's furious. And he goes looking for
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 3: Terry Melcher. And the first place he goes looking for
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 3: Terry Melcher is the place that he knew Terry Melcher
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 3: lived in, Cielo Drive.
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 7: But Melcher's moved.
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 3: He and Candace Bergen have gone to a place on
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 3: the beach, a property that Doris Day owned. And now
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 3: there's new folks renting. Roman Polanski and Sharon Tate.
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 7: Polanski and Tate were one of L.A. 's most glamorous couples,
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 7: representative of a new Hollywood that was embracing the counterculture.
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 7: Polanski's European films earlier in the decade had brought him
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 7: to international attention, and it was while working on the
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 7: last of these, The Fearless Vampire Killers, that he cast
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 7: and fell in love with Sharon Tate, the lead actress.
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 7: Close friends of Terry Melcher and Candice Bergen, the couple
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 7: had moved into the house on Cielo Drive in March 1969,
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 7: and it was at the end of that month that
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 7: Charles Manson came walking furiously up the driveway looking for Melcher.
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 3: Sharon Tate has a photographer, her personal photographer, who happens
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 3: to be out there. And the guy sees, you know,
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 3: storming up the drive, this little scrubby-looking guy looking kind
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 3: of furious. What do you want? You know, I'm looking
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 3: for Terry Melcher. Well, this is, you know, the Polanski residence.
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 3: You're in the wrong place. The owner lives out back.
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 3: Manson says, I'll go see him. Well, just stay off
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 3: the lawn. Stay away from the main house. And he
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 3: goes storming up. And the guy who owns the property says, oh,
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 3: he's moved in Charlene. I don't want you coming around again,
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 3: you know, without telling people you're on your way. And
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 3: Manson is storming off, and as he's storming off, a
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 3: beautiful woman walks out of the main house, and he
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 3: looks at her for a minute, and then he storms away.
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 3: Charlie Manson and Sharon Tate did look each other in
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 3: the eye, very briefly.
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 7: When he was finally able to locate Terry Melcher, Manson
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 7: rearranged their meeting, and on June 6, 1969, the producer
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 7: traveled to Spahn Ranch to watch the 34-year-old ex-convict perform
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 7: an elaborate set. It would take weeks before Manson was
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 7: able to draw a response from Melcher as to whether
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 7: he would be recommending him to Columbia Records. And it
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 7: was not the response that he was hoping for.
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 9: Terry finally told Charlie, he said, Hey, Charlie, you know,
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 9: I really appreciate your music. It's really good. But, you know,
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 9: it's just not my cup of tea. I don't know
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 9: what I would do with you in the studio. And
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 9: Charlie was heartbroken. He was crushed with that.
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 6: Charlie was really counting on it. And I think that
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 6: he had his hopes up. And I think they encouraged it.
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 6: I think that they should have been a little bit
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 6: more up front in the beginning. But maybe they saw
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 6: something in him.
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 1: And I think Dennis did.
• 1:26:59
  Speaker 9: I think that was really a karate chop to the neck, boy.
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 9: You know, really. Because I know he was really thinking
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 9: that he had a real in there. I mean, Terry
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 9: was a record producer. This is what recording artists need,
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 9: a record producer with a track record and a carte
• 1:27:17
  Speaker 9: blanche to a big studio. Yeah, that's everything if you're
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 9: Charlie at that point. So yeah, that was crushing. I'm
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 9: sure that was crushing.
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 7: The events that tragically followed were fueled by this rejection
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 7: and the desperation that was setting in through the family's
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 7: chaotic activities. And as had been the case in his youth,
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 7: Manson proved a hopeless criminal.
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 3: At this same time, Charlie's been warning about Helter Skelter
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 3: and we've got to get back to the desert. And
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 3: the way he's getting money to buy the supplies they
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 3: need is by doing drug deals. And among the people
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 3: he's doing deals with, there's a music teacher named Gary
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 3: Hinman that he knows, and there's a big black guy
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 3: known as Lotsa Papa. And Lotsa Papa claims to be
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 3: a black panther. And Hinman's talking about going to Europe,
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 3: so that means Hinman's got some money. With Lotsa Papa,
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 3: a drug deal goes wrong. Charlie, with a Buntline Special.
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 3: 22 pistol that he brought, shoots him and thinks he's
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 3: killed him Because he's killed lots of Papa, suddenly becomes
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 3: convinced that the Black Panthers are going to be coming
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 3: after Manson in the family. And Charlie may have talked
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 3: about racial apocalypse and everything else and was exaggerating, but
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 3: Charlie was scared shitless of the Black Panthers.
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 7: That disastrous drug deal in July 1969 was followed by
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 7: an even worse event at the close of the month.
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 7: The family's sometime cohort, Bobby Beausoleil, was running a drug
• 1:28:51
  Speaker 7: deal involving his Topanga Canyon supplier, the musician Gary Hinman.
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 7: and the motorcycle gang the Straight Satans, who were frequent
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 7: guests at Spahn Ranch. When the bikers accused Beausoleil of
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 7: ripping them off with inferior product, he and three members
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 7: of the family visited Hinman to get their money back.
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 7: But a fight ensued. The event spiraled out of control,
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 7: and after two days in his apartment, Bobby Beausoleil murdered Hinman,
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 7: scrawling messages in the musician's blood across the apartment walls.
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 7: It took the police only two weeks to apprehend the murderer.
• 1:29:26
  Speaker 10: The death of Gary Himman, which involved several members of
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 10: the Manson family and principally Bobby Beausoleil, who was not
• 1:29:33
  Speaker 10: a car-carrying member of the Manson family but was certainly
• 1:29:36
  Speaker 10: closely allied in many ways at this point also to
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 10: drug dealing with the Manson family. Ultimately, and if who
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 10: we are to believe, but apparently, allegedly, Manson had said
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 10: to Beausoleil, you know what to do. which led to
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 10: Hinman's death. Beausoleil spinning out of control is picked up
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 10: very soon, and with blood all over him, it led
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 10: back to the murders, and Beausoleil is arrested. Manson's prison
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 10: house would say, well, you know, this is gonna come
• 1:30:05
  Speaker 10: back to me. He might not have said you know
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 10: what to do, but certainly the strands were all running back.
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 10: The drug deal was conducted from Spahn's ranch, possibly facilitated
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 10: by Manson. It was certainly all going to lead back
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 10: to him.
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 7: Fearful that he would be caught up in the Beausoleil case,
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 7: Manson declared that the time for Helter Skelter had come
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 7: and sent four of his followers into the Los Angeles
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 7: night to commit a copycat murder, led by 24-year-old Tex Watson.
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 7: There were two objectives. Firstly, that new crimes would lead
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 7: the police to assume that Beausoleil was innocent and that
• 1:30:46
  Speaker 7: the killer was still on the loose. And secondly, that
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 7: the police would target African-Americans for the murders and thus
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 7: set the race war in motion. And looking for high-profile targets,
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 7: Manson sent his hunting party to Terry Melcher's old residence
• 1:31:02
  Speaker 7: on Cielo Drive.
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 3: It was location. He needed to kill famous people and
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 3: try to make it look like the Panthers had done
• 1:31:11
  Speaker 3: it to get the heat off Bobby Beausoleil. The place
• 1:31:15
  Speaker 3: that he was most familiar with where rich, famous people
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 3: had to live was Cielo. If somebody lived where Melcher
• 1:31:24
  Speaker 3: had lived, that was somebody important. The second critical thing,
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 3: why that location was chosen, Tex Watson, besides Charlie, had
• 1:31:36
  Speaker 3: been to the house on Cielo and theoretically knew how
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 3: to get there from Spahn Ranch. That's why they picked
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 3: that house.
• 1:31:45
  Speaker 7: The murders that occurred on August 8th, 1969, were amongst
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 7: the most brutal crimes of the era. Sharon Tate and
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 7: her three houseguests slain without any remorse. And the following night,
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 7: the killing spree continued, with wealthy middle-class couple Rosemary and
• 1:32:02
  Speaker 7: Lino Labianca suffering a similarly violent demise.
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 10: Another savage night of killing, but interestingly... In terms of
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 10: the musical aspect, this is the night when they decided
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 10: to daub death to pigs. The night before, they put
• 1:32:18
  Speaker 10: pig on a door again, referencing back to the Beatles.
• 1:32:22
  Speaker 10: The key motif that night was held to skelter, written
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 10: on the fridge door. I have my own feelings that
• 1:32:29
  Speaker 10: why the killings stopped at that point, certainly those sort
• 1:32:33
  Speaker 10: of killings, is that when they went back to Sparns
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 10: Ranch and Manson would debrief them of what had gone on,
• 1:32:41
  Speaker 10: when he heard that Patricia Kramer had written Helter Skelter
• 1:32:44
  Speaker 10: in blood on the fridge door.
• 1:32:45
  Speaker 9: He freaked.
• 1:32:47
  Speaker 10: Everyone knew about Manson's Helter Skelter. Theories, obsessions. There was
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 10: even a nightclub at Spahn's Ranch called the Helter Skelter.
• 1:32:55
  Speaker 10: So I think that's when Manson spooked fully, and that's
• 1:32:57
  Speaker 10: when the move to.
• 1:32:58
  Speaker 7: Barker Ranch occurred. But Manson was still short of cash.
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 7: No longer worried about his relationships in the music industry,
• 1:33:06
  Speaker 7: he decided he was still owed money for the Beach
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 7: Boys' recording of Cease to Exist. whose lyrics Dennis had
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 7: changed without even asking his permission. He set out across L.A.
• 1:33:16
  Speaker 7: to hunt for the drummer and eventually found him with
• 1:33:19
  Speaker 7: Greg Jacobson and the Beach Boys photographer Ed Roach.
• 1:33:22
  Speaker 22: It was just after the Woodstock Festival started, so I
• 1:33:26
  Speaker 22: know it was like a week or two after the
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 22: Cielo Drive episode, and he came in and he just
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 22: jumped into the room and he looked just like he
• 1:33:37
  Speaker 22: looked in the newspapers where.
• 1:33:39
  Speaker 1: His hair was just like standing.
• 1:33:41
  Speaker 22: And he jumped in and he said.
• 1:33:42
  Speaker 7: I just come from the moon.
• 1:33:44
  Speaker 22: And I went, holy shit, this is that guy Charlie.
• 1:33:49
  Speaker 22: And Charlie said, I need to talk with you. And
• 1:33:51
  Speaker 22: he took him outside. Dennis came back in, walked in,
• 1:33:54
  Speaker 22: grabbed the guitar, walked out, came back in without the guitar.
• 1:33:57
  Speaker 7: And he said, I had to give him all my
• 1:33:59
  Speaker 7: money and that guitar.
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 22: Or he said he was going to kidnap my son
• 1:34:02
  Speaker 22: in the.
• 1:34:03
  Speaker 9: Morning and kill him.
• 1:34:04
  Speaker 7: And that was.
• 1:34:08
  Speaker 7: That was over the song. It was the end of
• 1:34:11
  Speaker 7: the relationship and the end of Manson's connections to the L.A.
• 1:34:15
  Speaker 7: music scene. The following week, he and his followers jumped
• 1:34:19
  Speaker 7: into their dune buggies and set out on the road,
• 1:34:21
  Speaker 7: heading for the desert. And while the Los Angeles police
• 1:34:25
  Speaker 7: force struggled to make headway in the investigations of either
• 1:34:28
  Speaker 7: the Tate or LaBianca murders, in Death Valley, this newly
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 7: arrived commune soon sparked the interest of the local law enforcement.
• 1:34:37
  Speaker 7: In October... Across two raids, the police arrested the Manson family,
• 1:34:41
  Speaker 7: having discovered their fleet of stolen dune buggies. Charles Manson
• 1:34:46
  Speaker 7: and some of the murderers were taken into custody, albeit
• 1:34:49
  Speaker 7: on far less serious charges. And while waiting in a
• 1:34:52
  Speaker 7: detention centre, family member Susan Atkins, a participant in both
• 1:34:57
  Speaker 7: home invasions, began bragging about the murders to a fellow inmate.
• 1:35:02
  Speaker 7: It was the lead the investigation needed, connecting the various
• 1:35:06
  Speaker 7: strands of the story and interrogating Manson's followers, the LAPD
• 1:35:10
  Speaker 7: and the district attorney soon were confident they'd found the murderers,
• 1:35:14
  Speaker 7: and they called a press conference on December 1st, 1969,
• 1:35:18
  Speaker 7: to announce that the case was solved. Charles Manson and
• 1:35:23
  Speaker 7: his family became instantly infamous.
• 1:35:26
  Speaker 19: My personal reaction was kind of disbelief at first, because
• 1:35:32
  Speaker 19: he didn't seem that bad. He was a a little weird,
• 1:35:36
  Speaker 19: but I didn't think he was capable, and I didn't
• 1:35:38
  Speaker 19: think those girls out there in the studio were capable
• 1:35:41
  Speaker 19: of stabbing people.
• 1:35:43
  Speaker 4: When I read about it, I was nervous.
• 1:35:47
  Speaker 7: I was shocked, you know.
• 1:35:49
  Speaker 3: I didn't believe it at first.
• 1:35:51
  Speaker 4: The girls, I couldn't believe that they had changed. I mean,
• 1:35:57
  Speaker 4: they went out there and slaughtered people. They're not, look
• 1:36:01
  Speaker 4: at your game, girl. Give it up, give me all
• 1:36:03
  Speaker 4: your love.
• 1:36:05
  Speaker 8: They viciously killed people.
• 1:36:08
  Speaker 9: I was at home, and somebody called me up, hey,
• 1:36:10
  Speaker 9: have you heard what happened? And when I was told that,
• 1:36:13
  Speaker 9: I thought for a second, I said, that's real, that
• 1:36:16
  Speaker 9: really happened. I wasn't surprised even a little bit. It
• 1:36:19
  Speaker 9: all made sense to me that it had gotten that
• 1:36:22
  Speaker 9: far out of balance, that far out of control.
• 1:36:27
  Speaker 7: Within the music world itself, panic quickly spread. Although Manson
• 1:36:31
  Speaker 7: and the murderers were behind bars... many of the extended
• 1:36:35
  Speaker 7: family were still free. Convinced that he was the true
• 1:36:38
  Speaker 7: target of the attack at Cielo Drive, Terry Melcher in
• 1:36:42
  Speaker 7: particular was anxious, while those who had been involved with
• 1:36:45
  Speaker 7: Manson in any way looked to protect their reputations and
• 1:36:49
  Speaker 7: distance themselves from the story.
• 1:36:52
  Speaker 9: Terry went and bought a riot gun, you know, a
• 1:36:54
  Speaker 9: 12-gauge shotgun, the kind of shot-off shotgun that has like
• 1:36:58
  Speaker 9: six shells in it. He literally kept it by his
• 1:37:00
  Speaker 9: front door. Yeah, they were very concerned. Dennis a little
• 1:37:03
  Speaker 9: bit less, but Dennis would more laugh it off. But
• 1:37:06
  Speaker 9: Terry was, yeah, I don't know, Terry took it seriously.
• 1:37:10
  Speaker 9: He didn't know what those people were capable of, and
• 1:37:12
  Speaker 9: he wasn't going to take a chance.
• 1:37:14
  Speaker 19: I got a call from Beach Boy Management. They told
• 1:37:18
  Speaker 19: me they were going to take the tapes and put
• 1:37:20
  Speaker 19: them in a safe place. And they wanted to make
• 1:37:24
  Speaker 19: sure there were no copies or anything like that. Dennis
• 1:37:28
  Speaker 19: was off to a nondisclosed area. Nobody knew really where
• 1:37:33
  Speaker 19: he was, but there was a sense that Dennis was threatened.
• 1:37:38
  Speaker 22: It didn't satisfy him at all that Charlie was in jail,
• 1:37:41
  Speaker 22: that he wasn't in danger anymore. Dennis's whole personality changed.
• 1:37:46
  Speaker 22: He wasn't at all the same person. There was a
• 1:37:50
  Speaker 22: paranoia about him, the fear of how close he was
• 1:37:54
  Speaker 22: to it all.
• 1:37:58
  Speaker 7: And as the district attorney prosecuting the case, Vincent Bugliosi,
• 1:38:02
  Speaker 7: began to look for witnesses to call upon during the trial.
• 1:38:05
  Speaker 7: He found those close to Manson in the entertainment world
• 1:38:08
  Speaker 7: were unwilling to tarnish their reputations by taking the stand.
• 1:38:12
  Speaker 9: Dennis was not going to cooperate with Bugliosi, and neither
• 1:38:16
  Speaker 9: was Terry. I, to this day, believe Terry made a
• 1:38:18
  Speaker 9: deal with Bugliosi. What it was, I don't know. Because
• 1:38:20
  Speaker 9: Bugliosi wanted to bring Dennis into court, I mean, a
• 1:38:23
  Speaker 9: beach boy. He wanted to bring Candace Bergen into court,
• 1:38:26
  Speaker 9: Terry's girlfriend. So, I mean, that couldn't happen in Terry's world.
• 1:38:30
  Speaker 9: And he did everything possible to stay as far away
• 1:38:34
  Speaker 9: from it, and Dennis, the same thing. Where I'm just,
• 1:38:36
  Speaker 9: you know, okay, I was there, I'll tell you what,
• 1:38:38
  Speaker 9: you know, so I cooperated. I wasn't telling any lies,
• 1:38:41
  Speaker 9: and I didn't see anything criminal happen, so I didn't,
• 1:38:45
  Speaker 9: I wasn't saying, oh yeah, I saw the gun or something.
• 1:38:48
  Speaker 9: I'm just, I just told the truth.
• 1:38:50
  Speaker 7: Manson, meanwhile, was trying to keep control of his followers
• 1:38:53
  Speaker 7: from the inside and was eager to generate some income
• 1:38:56
  Speaker 7: that would help him do this. Now that he was
• 1:38:59
  Speaker 7: on the front pages across the world, he decided that
• 1:39:02
  Speaker 7: this was the perfect time to release a record, The
• 1:39:04
  Speaker 7: Rockstar Dream, Refusing to Die.
• 1:39:07
  Speaker 3: Manson felt that the tapes from Brian Wilson's house were
• 1:39:12
  Speaker 3: brilliant music. If this was going to be his only
• 1:39:17
  Speaker 3: chance to get a musical statement out, he liked that idea.
• 1:39:21
  Speaker 7: Also, he had.
• 1:39:23
  Speaker 3: Legal expenses, not just for himself, but for the women
• 1:39:27
  Speaker 3: in the trial. He desperately had to make sure that
• 1:39:29
  Speaker 3: they were going to stay loyal to him. Their lawyers
• 1:39:33
  Speaker 3: all wanted to separate their cases from Manson so that
• 1:39:37
  Speaker 3: they could claim, well, the women were just fooled by
• 1:39:39
  Speaker 3: this man. Charlie needed to keep everybody happy. Charlie had
• 1:39:43
  Speaker 3: to get money, and what better way to do it,
• 1:39:45
  Speaker 3: he thought, than finally releasing this great album of his
• 1:39:49
  Speaker 3: that simultaneously would make him a rock star, and at
• 1:39:52
  Speaker 3: the same time that covers all the legal fees.
• 1:39:55
  Speaker 7: Manson enlisted Lynette Fromm, known within the family as Squeaky,
• 1:39:59
  Speaker 7: to make this happen. And although she discovered that the
• 1:40:02
  Speaker 7: recordings from Brian Wilson's studio were under lock and key,
• 1:40:06
  Speaker 7: She convinced Greg Jacobson to release tapes from a session
• 1:40:09
  Speaker 7: he had arranged at Sound City Studios in mid-1968. She
• 1:40:14
  Speaker 7: then called Phil Kaufman to aid her in the release
• 1:40:17
  Speaker 7: of the record, and Kaufman, who at this time believed
• 1:40:20
  Speaker 7: Manson must be innocent, agreed to help.
• 1:40:24
  Speaker 4: Lynette contacted me, we've got to get Charlie's music out,
• 1:40:29
  Speaker 4: because somehow he thought that the album would, people would
• 1:40:32
  Speaker 4: hear the music, they would understand that that what he
• 1:40:35
  Speaker 4: was doing was valuable.
• 1:40:37
  Speaker 9: So he got the tapes.
• 1:40:38
  Speaker 4: They had quarter-inch tape, and I took it into a studio,
• 1:40:42
  Speaker 4: and we cleaned it up, and we did the mix down.
• 1:40:44
  Speaker 4: I got some people to ship in some money to
• 1:40:46
  Speaker 4: put it out, and we made 300 copies. It was
• 1:40:49
  Speaker 4: the Life magazine cover, which we dropped the F out
• 1:40:54
  Speaker 4: of Life, and it became The Lie.
• 1:40:56
  Speaker 3: It's a lie.
• 1:40:57
  Speaker 7: He's innocent.
• 1:40:59
  Speaker 4: Listen to his music. How could you charge him with
• 1:41:01
  Speaker 4: such a thing?
• 1:41:03
  Speaker 2: Clang, bang, clang, went the big iron door. They put
• 1:41:12
  Speaker 2: me in a cell with.
• 1:41:15
  Speaker 1: A concrete floor.
• 1:41:20
  Speaker 2: Nine other men in that cell with me. I'm owning
• 1:41:24
  Speaker 2: their fate with destiny.
• 1:41:28
  Speaker 20: Clang, bang, clang.
• 1:41:34
  Speaker 1: This is one of the original albums.
• 1:41:37
  Speaker 4: And you can tell it's original by the yellow label.
• 1:41:44
  Speaker 4: Anything else is a bootleg. So he asked me to
• 1:41:47
  Speaker 4: get the album out, and I did. And to this
• 1:41:50
  Speaker 4: day I really regret it, my association. But you can't
• 1:41:54
  Speaker 4: divorce yourself from the past.
• 1:41:57
  Speaker 7: The record, upon its release, received none of the success
• 1:42:01
  Speaker 7: that Manson felt it deserved, and even his infamy failed
• 1:42:05
  Speaker 7: to shift any copies.
• 1:42:06
  Speaker 10: Manson's career as a musician, I think, was of little
• 1:42:10
  Speaker 10: consequence to people looking at the headlines at that time.
• 1:42:14
  Speaker 10: I think they saw him more as a cult leader
• 1:42:16
  Speaker 10: than a musician, and equally, when they heard the music,
• 1:42:19
  Speaker 10: it's difficult to marry that to the carnage that went
• 1:42:22
  Speaker 10: on and the horror.
• 1:42:24
  Speaker 12: So, um.
• 1:42:25
  Speaker 10: a curio at best, hugely distasteful, actually what most people
• 1:42:31
  Speaker 10: thought of it. No record company would touch it of
• 1:42:33
  Speaker 10: any note and it was not going to get any
• 1:42:35
  Speaker 10: radio play. It's just another example of Manson's innocent stroke
• 1:42:40
  Speaker 10: hopelessness that he'd actually imagined that actually anyone would want
• 1:42:43
  Speaker 10: to buy this.
• 1:42:45
  Speaker 7: As the Manson trial became an all-consuming media circus, the
• 1:42:49
  Speaker 7: counterculture itself struggled to deal with this cult leader and
• 1:42:52
  Speaker 7: his hippie credentials. As the crusade against the ideals of
• 1:42:56
  Speaker 7: this movement had been emboldened first by Californian Governor Ronald
• 1:43:00
  Speaker 7: Reagan and then incumbent President Richard Nixon, conservative American values
• 1:43:05
  Speaker 7: were proving more robust than the counterculture had once believed.
• 1:43:10
  Speaker 7: While some tried to politicise the Tate-LaBianca murders and unwisely
• 1:43:14
  Speaker 7: held Manson up as a revolutionary leader, most simply acknowledged
• 1:43:19
  Speaker 7: that these desperate, shocking acts had forever tarnished a movement
• 1:43:23
  Speaker 7: extolling peace and love.
• 1:43:25
  Speaker 10: I don't think by design Charles Manson arrived to destroy
• 1:43:30
  Speaker 10: the hippie dream, but by God he did. And people
• 1:43:37
  Speaker 10: have said that From the moment in December 1969 that
• 1:43:40
  Speaker 10: Manson was on the front of the newspapers, anyone resembling
• 1:43:44
  Speaker 10: a hippie was demonized.
• 1:43:46
  Speaker 13: If you were somebody on the right who just detested
• 1:43:51
  Speaker 13: everything that the counterculture stood for, you couldn't have scripted
• 1:43:56
  Speaker 13: Charles Manson and those heinous murders any better. It gave
• 1:44:03
  Speaker 13: the right every weapon it could use.
• 1:44:07
  Speaker 1: I mean, there was sex. There was drugs. There was violence.
• 1:44:12
  Speaker 1: The Beatles are in there.
• 1:44:13
  Speaker 7: You know, all of it. All of it.
• 1:44:16
  Speaker 1: It just handed it to the right.
• 1:44:19
  Speaker 17: The part of the human spirit that is more tolerant
• 1:44:23
  Speaker 17: and open and trusting and less fearful.
• 1:44:26
  Speaker 9: Is one of our superpowers, really.
• 1:44:29
  Speaker 17: But of course, you set yourself up sometimes. And I
• 1:44:31
  Speaker 17: think that was one of the real shocks of Manson,
• 1:44:33
  Speaker 17: that much like the Hell's Angels at Altamont, in some
• 1:44:39
  Speaker 17: cases we made friends with the wrong people.
• 1:44:42
  Speaker 7: And for many of those who had befriended Charles Manson,
• 1:44:45
  Speaker 7: he would remain a permanent presence in their life. While
• 1:44:48
  Speaker 7: he became an exaggerated villain in popular culture, a crazed
• 1:44:52
  Speaker 7: maniac and psychotic mastermind, for some, drawn into his musical journey,
• 1:44:57
  Speaker 7: he was a real and complex figure, and their association
• 1:45:00
  Speaker 7: with him left lifelong damage. Having placed such faith in
• 1:45:04
  Speaker 7: the man he called The Wizard, After the shocking news
• 1:45:07
  Speaker 7: of the murders emerged, Dennis Wilson was cast adrift. The
• 1:45:12
  Speaker 7: once vital soul of the Beach Boys was left haunted
• 1:45:16
  Speaker 7: by a friendship he could never erase, and over time
• 1:45:19
  Speaker 7: he lost himself in drink and drugs. He died in 1983,
• 1:45:25
  Speaker 7: aged only 39, and had refused since Manson's arrest to
• 1:45:29
  Speaker 7: ever discuss the affair in public.
• 1:45:32
  Speaker 19: He never brought it up, and I didn't think it
• 1:45:34
  Speaker 19: was my place to bring it up, so Dennis never
• 1:45:37
  Speaker 19: spoke about.
• 1:45:39
  Speaker 4: This.
• 1:45:40
  Speaker 19: I'm sure he felt responsible to some extent. I mean,
• 1:45:44
  Speaker 19: he was highly involved in it. It was all mixed
• 1:45:47
  Speaker 19: up in it, you know?
• 1:45:48
  Speaker 22: Dennis never really spoke about the murders. He would reflect
• 1:45:52
  Speaker 22: sometimes back on his experiences with the family more, but never.
• 1:45:58
  Speaker 1: I don't know how much he actually.
• 1:46:00
  Speaker 22: You know, I mean, he really did kind of avoid
• 1:46:04
  Speaker 22: the whole massacre aspect of it.
• 1:46:07
  Speaker 18: Dennis never really recovered from it, from the emotional hit
• 1:46:12
  Speaker 18: that he took from it. Dennis was already the black
• 1:46:15
  Speaker 18: sheep of the band. And, you know, this just basically,
• 1:46:19
  Speaker 18: just as he was starting to grow out of that
• 1:46:22
  Speaker 18: and become something that people were taking artistically, seriously artistically,
• 1:46:28
  Speaker 18: this happened. And it just basically stamped him as the
• 1:46:33
  Speaker 18: loser forever. I think that he thought of himself that way.
• 1:46:40
  Speaker 18: I think it was a battle for people to convince
• 1:46:44
  Speaker 18: him that he was more, that he was more than that.
• 1:46:48
  Speaker 18: And I just think that it followed him all the way,
• 1:46:53
  Speaker 18: all the way to the end. I don't think he
• 1:46:54
  Speaker 18: ever got over it.
• 1:47:20
  Speaker 11: Thank you.