Charles Manson and "Helter Skelter"

On two brutal nights in August, 1969, Charles Manson’s “family” took the lives of seven innocent people.  Ultimately his “family” was brought to justice and convicted of those murders, thanks to sharp L.A. prosecutor, Vincent Bugliosi.  In his book Helter Skelter, Bugliosi describes how these murders happened, who was behind it, and how he succeeded at making sure they did not “beat the rap”.

 The topic has come up various times, so I thought I’d shine light on it from various different angles, with a comprehensive, original twist, at least in this context.

 Manson’s Background.  Born November 12, 1934 in Cincinnati, Ohio.  He came from a broken childhood and never knew his father.  He committed his first armed robbery at age 13.  Over the years he would be in and out of prison so often that by age 32 he had been in prison 17 of those years.  He was released in 1967 and found his way to Haight-Ashbury, San Francisco.  From there he began to assemble his Family, later moving to the Los Angeles area.  With the release of the Beatles’ White Album in late 1968, his philosophy of “Helter Skelter” began.

 Manson’s Music Career.  Such as it was.  He was an aspiring folk rock musician, but could not succeed at getting anyone to take him seriously.  Most of those who dealt with him, including Terry Melcher and Dennis Wilson, thought he had too much intensity and too little talent. 

1.         He made a demo, known as Lie: The Love and Terror Cult (recorded one year before the murders).  I’ve listened to this, and it sounds pretty much like... Led Zeppelin III.

2.         Charlie Manson’s Good Time Gospel Hour, recorded in prison in 1982.  I haven’t heard this one. The name itself reflects Manson’s twisted sense of humor.

3.         One song of his, “Cease to Exist”, from the Lie demo, survives as “Never Learn Not To Love” on the Beach Boys album 20/20 (credited to Dennis Wilson; Manson himself does not appear on this).  This was released about a month after the Lie demo was recorded.  The Beach Boys version is considerably better produced than the stripped down folk sound of the original.  It was also released by the Beach Boys as a B-side to a single, which did poorly, so Dennis Wilson used this failure – of a tune which had been considerably spruced up and issued in the name of an established rock band – to attempt to persuade Manson that his original material was not commercially viable.

4.          A cover of “Look at Your Game Girl” (also from the Lie demo), is hidden at the end of “I Don’t Care About You” on Guns N’Roses’ cover album The Spaghetti Incident?.   Unlike “Never Learn Not to Love”, this version is extremely faithful to the stripped down, bare bones original – especially odd since the rest of the GN’R album is loud, obnoxious punk covers like “Attitude” (Misfits) and “Hair of the Dog” (Nazareth).  For some time Axl was appearing in public in a Manson shirt; I’m unclear as to his motive, but by all accounts Mr. Rose  has some serious mental problems of his own.  Certainly anyone claiming Manson as a role model gives us reason to doubt their judgment; and even to use his likeness simply for notoriety is tasteless and in poor judgment.

 Manson’s Philosophy.  What was “Helter Skelter”?  Manson believed the Beatles were communicating with him through lyrics, including The White Album, and the song “Helter Skelter” in particular.  The album is a double album of studio material, somewhat inconsistent in quality yet the source of such classics as “Back In The U.S.S.R.”, “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”, and “Rocky Raccoon.”  [I actually listened to “Back in the U.S.S.R.” in a hotel room in 1983 with my buddies on a school trip to Kiev, the USSR.]  He also believed that “Revolution #9” actually referred to “Revelation #9” (from the Bible), which mentions a “fifth angel”, who Manson believed was himself, the other 4 being John, Paul, George and Ringo.  (Apparently neither Stuart Sutcliffe nor George Martin, the two with the strongest claims to be “fifth Beatles”, ranked higher than Manson, who had never even met the Beatles.)

            Manson believed that a black vs. white race war, which he called “Helter Skelter”, was imminent.  To instigate this, he orchestrated the murders on August 9 and 10, 1969, hoping that targeting affluent whites and smearing “PIG” on the walls would convince everyone that blacks were behind the killings, inciting whites to rise against the blacks and start the war (he also hoped to “teach the blacks” how to do this by example).  During this war Manson and his family would hide in a “bottomless pit” in the Death Valley desert.  The blacks would eventually win, but find themselves unable to run the country on their own, having been told by “whitey” what to do for so long.  They would seek out the remaining, surviving whites...the Manson Family.  Manson himself, however, would put the blacks back in their place and tell them to go back and pick cotton. THIS was Manson’s “master plan” and the motive behind the Tate and LaBianca murders. 

            As you can see, Manson was extremely racist - in private he referred to blacks by the n- word - and sexist – he believed women were good for sex and having babies, and that was it. 

 The Victims.  Sharon Tate, Jay Sebring, Abigail Folger, Voytek Frykowski, Steven Parent (“the Tate murders”, August 9, 1969), Leno LaBianca & Rosemary Labianca (“the LaBianca murders”, 8/10/69).  Gary Hinman, Donald “Shorty” Shea, John Philip “Zero” Haught, and attorney Ronald Hughes are also considered victims of the “Family.”  Manson himself also attempted to kill Bernard “Lotsapoppa” Crowe, leaving him for dead, but Crowe survived.  In addition, there are several as-yet unsolved murders for which the Family is suspected but no definite proof exists. 

            Tate was a modestly successful actress, married to Roman Polanski, the famous movie director.  Sebring was an extremely popular hair stylist to the stars, who dated models and actresses, and Tate’s former boyfriend.  Folger was the heiress to the coffee fortune, and Frykowski was not really anyone special, just Folger’s boyfriend and a friend of Polanski’s from Poland.  Leno LaBianca was an owner of a grocery store chain; Rosemary was his wife.

            The victims were completely unknown to the killers; the killers were simply told to go to the houses and kill whoever was there.  Manson himself, though, had been to the Tate residence before.  He did not know Tate or the other victims personally, though he had some idea who they were.  Terry Melcher, a record producer, had turned down Manson’s efforts to get a recording contract; he was the prior tenant of Tate’s residence.  It’s not hard to imagine Manson has having ordered the residents of 10050 Cielo Drive murdered under the belief that Melcher was one of them.  In any case they were all Hollywood entertainment types who had “denied him” the musical career he sought.

 The Perpetrators.  Charles Manson, Charles “Tex” Watson, Susan Atkins (aka “Sadie Glutz”, the name “Sadie” taken from the Beatles song, from the White Album, “Sexy Sadie”), Patricia Krenwinkel (“Katie”), Leslie Van Houten, and Linda Kasabian.  Atkins had originally confessed to the murders to two cellmates of hers, and testified to the grand jury for the indictments, but eventually recanted on Manson’s orders.  Kasabian, however, was willing to testify at trial.  She had, in fact, waited in the car on both nights but witnessed several elements of the murders up close, notably Parent being shot point blank in his Rambler by Watson, and Frykowski and Folger emerging from the residence, still alive, barely, only to be killed anyway by Watson and the others.

            What happened to the killers? Manson himself is still in prison, consistently denied parole as he’s still crazy and dangerous.  He, Atkins, Krenwinkel and Van Houten all received death sentences, which were commuted to life imprisonment when California abolished the death penalty.   The three girls appear to have renounced Manson (eventually).  Of his entire family, the only one who still supports him is Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme, most infamous for her unsuccessful attempt to assassinate President Gerald Ford on September 5, 1975. (She shot at him with a .45 automatic but had neglected to rack the slide beforehand, so the chamber was empty and the trigger simply went “click” when she pulled it.)

 Parallels with Adolf Hiter.  Both Manson and Hitler were aspiring – and frustrated - artists.  Hitler was rejected from the various art and architecture academies in Vienna, nor were his watercolors particularly good sellers (they’re in more demand now simply due to his later notoriety than they ever were when he was actually trying to sell them himself).  Manson wanted to be a folk singer, but couldn’t convince anyone to give him a shot.

            They both were fairly unimpressive in size and beauty, but had a phenomenal amount of charisma.  The reaction of followers, both in the Nazi Party and in the Family, to their leaders were remarkably similar.  Each had the ability to persuade followers that (A) he cared about them, (B) he could sense their most basic needs, (C) his commands should be followed without question.  Both leaders were able to evoke steadfast loyalty, devotion and blind obedience, even to the point of being able to order his followers to murder complete strangers.   They were also vegetarians, staunch animal lovers who were nonetheless ruthless with regard to the lives of human beings.

            These similarities were not lost on Manson, who admired Hitler and considered him a “tuned-in” dude with the right ideas.

            On the other hand, Hitler was somewhat of a dull prude.  Not only a vegetarian, he didn’t drink alcohol or party, and wasn’t promiscuous.  He was very serious and didn’t have much of a sense of humor.  He doesn’t give the impression of being fun to be around, his idea of a conversation being a long-winded tirade against some enemy, real or imagined. 

            His intensity was hatred, while Manson maintained a sense of humor.  During trial he would casually “rap” with the prosecutor (unheard of for ANY criminal defendant to do this, much less one on trial for murder and facing the death penalty) and even sent him 4 letters from prison over the years.  He also applied for a gasoline credit card – from jail.  In addition he was bisexual – prison reports before 1967 show various homosexual offenses – and promiscuous among the female “Family” members.

 LSD.  The press at the time locked onto the fact that Manson and his Family were heavy users of LSD.  Even the famous pictures of him show his pupils dilated, well into a trip.  All of his girls admitted they had taken hundreds of trips, no longer bragging but simply stating the facts.

           Yet on the night of the of murders, all of the perpetrators were stone cold sober.  No LSD, no marijuana, no alcohol were involved.   Bugliosi brought this out at trial.  He also brought out, from the experts who testified, that there was no evidence that any murders had been committed by anyone else under the influence of LSD, and that likewise there is no evidence that even heavy LSD use causes brain damage.  The Manson girls, interviewed recently, were all intelligent and articulate.  Of course, under the influence itself, many of these people were incoherent and “off on another planet”, but once back into normal sanity the users exhibit no signs of lasting mental incapacity due to the drug. 

 Movies.  I watched two movies somewhat related to this.  First was “Valley of the Dolls”, a Sharon Tate film.  She plays Jennifer North, an aspiring actress with a surplus of beauty, average intelligence, and almost no talent except to take her clothes off for raunchy French “art” films.  The second was “Helter Skelter”, which pretty much follows Bugliosi’s book, with the major exception of focusing on Linda Kasabian instead of Vincent Bugliosi.  Jeremy Davies does a spectacular job as Manson.  In fact, 3 years before he had extensively studied Manson’s language, dialogue and interviews and perfected the ability to recreate the man even to the point of being able to ad-lib dialogue using Manson’s own words.

 Manson then and now.  The Charles Manson of 1970 was arrogant, cocky, self-confident.  Criminal defendants rarely speak to their prosecutors, even to spit venom at their adversaries.  Yet Manson would casually “rap” with Bugliosi, even admitting that he attempted to murder Bernard “Lotsapoppa” Crowe.  It’s not hard to believe that the cocky, arrogant, charismatic man who would easily converse with the man committed to seeing to it not only that he was convicted of murder, but also received the death penalty, could also easily seduce and hypnotize a whole harem of insecure, shy hippie girls to the point of getting them to murder complete strangers.

            A far more recent interview with Dianne Sawyer shows a completely different Manson.  He no longer has the easy self-confident arrogance, the conviction that he could impose his reality upon those around him.  He still denies responsibility for the murders, but no longer seems to believe that he could convince even Dianne Sawyer of this.  It was like he knew he was guilty and knew everyone else knew it too.  He wasn’t even slick enough to refer to her as “Dianne” or “Ms. Sawyer”, instead he simply called her “woman.” 

            The question becomes, then, is Manson STILL a threat?  Could he be safely released into society?  I think the answer is NO.  Although the Manson girls have since disavowed and renounced their allegiance and compulsion to Manson – and appear to be sincere – this only happened because they were isolated from him and forbidden to meet directly with him.  Only by separating them could the spell be broken.  And even if these girls are sincere and would never rejoin “the Family”, surely there is no shortage of new idiots, Manson Family – The Next Generation, who would eagerly join up with him and do his bidding.  Provided with a new slew of groupies and willing slaves, Manson might well regain his “game” and start all over again.  That’s a risk we can’t take.  Certainly the parole board in 1967 screwed up big time, releasing him against his own wishes and unleashing this crazy maniac on an unsuspecting California.  The current boards do NOT want to make that mistake again.