Original subtitles

Let me explain something to you.

I wrote about a couple of hundred songs.

I've got them all written down. I'll give you an example, man.

I'll try to stick to a song... that'll make you some money.

Let's see.

The mythology of Charlie Manson has come to mean

above all else vicious murder,

but those terrible acts were never what he was aiming for.

The real story of Charlie Manson... is music.

I don't think Charlie could have been Charlie

without the music.

He was a poet and he believed in his music.

Music was the vehicle.

He really wanted to spread his philosophy.

To me that seemed to be the most important and overriding agenda.

In 1968, cult leader

and singer-songwriter Charles Manson

gained access to the top tier of the Los Angeles music world.

Only a year later he was accused of being

the most dangerous man alive.

It might not be as obvious to some people

how involved and ingrained in the music business

Charles Manson seemed to be.

Terry Melcher is producing The Byrds,

The Beach Boys, Brian Wilson.

These are two huge selling record producers

and they're looking at you, Charles Manson.

It could never have happened before or after.

It really was a perfect storm, that period of time.

When somebody like Charlie could walk into the scene.

There was no cap, no limit, there were no rules.

This film tells the story

of Manson's musical dream and how it all fell apart...

The story of Charles Manson

is the story of rejection and collapse.

It was a disintegration of Manson's dreams

and it allowed the madness to rise.

Los Angeles. August 9th, 1969.

At the tail-end of one of the most tumultuous decades

in American history, the city's residents awaken

to the news of a brutal multiple homicide

in the very heart of Tinseltown.

In a crime scene that police say

resembled a ritualistic mass murder,

five persons including the actress Sharon Tate

were found slain at the home of Ms. Tate and her husband,

screen director Roman Polanski.

Ms. Tate who was eight months pregnant

and the other victims were discovered dead this morning

at the Hilltop Estate in Benedict Canyon.

Most have suffered multiple stab wounds,

while one had been shot at close range.

Murders in Los Angeles are

a regrettable formality.

They happen - in California, in America,

especially where gun crime and knife crime is prevalent.

This was out of that league. This was premier league horror.

We are talking about the slaughter

of an 8 and a half month pregnant woman

and the murders of those present

with such violence inflicted on them

which appeared to have no bounds.

This was something else. It was absolutely shocking.

The fact that one of the victims

was a Hollywood star,

and the wife of a famous film director,

saw the story hit the headlines worldwide.

The following day, two more murders were discovered

less than 15 miles away,

again the targets of a savage home invasion,

and this second attack sent further shockwaves

through the local community.

From the beginning, stories would elude

to the savagery, the brutality of what was done

and some facts got in the newspaper.

Within a few days you could not buy a gun

in Los Angeles anymore.

The stores, the shelves were bare.

Guard dogs that sold for $100 before the murders

were going for as much as $2,000.

It would take months for the police

to apprehend the culprits.

And when the arrests were eventually reported,

the world was stunned.

Charles Manson, the head of a hippy commune,

and a number of his mostly female followers, were charged

with some of the most violent murders in American history.

Only two years beforehand,

California had been the epicenter

of the Summer of Love,

where the flourishing counterculture

celebrated peace and understanding.

But this younger generation had always been viewed

with skepticism by conservative Americans,

and over time as the movement became more radical

it also became more threatening.

Through Manson and his band of murderous flower-children,

that potential threat had now become a reality.

The average American

looking at the coverage of the Manson case,

didn't feel any identification with Sharon Tate

or these other families in Hollywood.

What they felt was these kids are out of control.

They experienced it as indistinguishable

from campus rebellions and the riots in Chicago

and protests.

From the standpoint of the so-called silent majority,

it was a sense of these spoilt kids.

All they want to do is this rabble rousing

and take drugs and have sex.

And then you bundle all that up

into the worst possible version of it

and there's the Manson murders.

But the case was also baffling

and the motives for the murders remained unclear.

Although the press were quick

to run stories of drug-fueled orgies and satanic rituals,

as the District Attorney and the police probed

deeper into the testimonies of those involved,

a complex story emerged.

Manson was not simply the isolated cult leader

nor the cold-blooded career criminal

that his profile suggested.

He was also a singer-songwriter

with connections at the very top

of the LA music scene.

About early December 1969,

the first stories started to appear

in the Los Angeles newspapers,

that Manson may have committed this crime

as trying to either kill or get even with Terry Melcher,

who's the son of actress Doris Day.

To young America, Terry Melcher

was a famous name because of his work

with The Byrds, with Paul Revere and the Raiders.

To middle America

he was the son of America's sweetheart.

But as the investigation would continue,

the story started appearing in the paper.

A name at a time.

Terry Melcher certainly,

Greg Jacobson who was part of the music scene,

but other names too.

Dennis Wilson, Neil Young,

John Phillips, Buffy Saint-Marie.

It became apparent early on

that music was a big part of whatever it was

that made up Charlie Manson.

And Manson's musical journey began here.

San Francisco, 1967.

A city at the heart of a cultural revolution.

Since the end of the Second World War

it had emerged as a beacon

for those looking to escape the conservatism

of middle America

and explore alternative lifestyles and attitudes,

and it became the West Coast stomping ground

for the writers of the Beat Generation.

But it was in the mid-1960s

that the city fully blossomed

as a hub of creativity,

its youth fueled by new music, new drugs and new ideas.

And the nerve center

for this cultural and artistic activity

was the Haight-Ashbury district.

Haight-Ashbury in 1967.

In part it's a bit of an accident.

The Beat scene had been located in North Beach.

But there's a new availability of housing, and cheap housing.

San Francisco State University students

start moving in.

And then the artists come

and they create a very...

It's small but it's a vital,

collaborative cooperative do-it-yourself art scene.

The musicians are a big part of that.

The Grateful Dead are there at 710 Ashbury,

Janis Joplin lives there.

Jefferson Airplane is the first big band

to hit it there.

When you put all those creative people together

they start feeding off of each othe's energy.

I think the big picture is the fight

for personal, artistic and sexual freedom.

There was something going on here

that was pushing for expanded freedoms

across many dimensions.

Although in the mid-1960s

the city's crusade for expanded freedoms

was not unique, the driving force

behind its particular vision of freedom was.

While a vibrant youth culture had been thriving

in cities across Europe and America

since the emergence of the Beatles

at the start of the decade,

no other scene had access

to the Haight-Ashbury's drug of choice - LSD.

This powerful hallucinogen was at the very center

of the San Francisco experience,

informing the music, art and ideas

that were emerging from the city.

Where other drugs affected mood,

with LSD a user's perception of reality

was significantly altered,

and after only one "trip"

many felt they had undergone a spiritual awakening.

It can't be overstated, the power of LSD.

It literally elevated people from one place

to somewhere completely different

and transformed people's lives overnight.

Everybody was seeking this enlightenment,

but LSD was kind of a shortcut.

It kind of opened up the top of your head

and let you see, or at least think you saw,

this other way of life.

But it also made us all very vulnerable

to people taking advantage.

And as the San Francisco counterculture began

to attract both national and international recognition

at the start of 1967,

it was the psychologist Timothy Leary

who emerged as the most prominent advocate of LSD,

publicly promoting

its therapeutic and spiritual benefits.

There was a lot of talk

about expanded consciousness.

sometimes that took on very strong spiritual dimensions

in the way people talked about LSD and its uses.

Leary was the new face of that story.

Tim Leary was a Harvard professor

who essentially became the apostle of LSD.

His background gave a patina of a kind of authority

to his ideas about LSD and the new world,

the kind of utopia that it was going to introduce.

The message is very simple.

Six words:

turn on, tune in, drop out.

His slogan became:

turn on, tune in, drop out.

Get high, marijuana, LSD.

Tune in, connect with the kind of images,

ideas, visions that those drugs bring to you.

And then drop out of the society.

There was a sense that utopia is just in the offing.

That was the idea,

that paradise could be regained

and LSD was the path to it.

The drop out part of his message

was the most controversial.

Later he would walk that statement back a bit.

He didn't mean drop out.

He meant think harder about where you put your energy.

But the pebble had been dropped in that water

and it started rippling out in ways

that nobody could finally control,

least of all Timothy Leary.

In the summer of 1967,

the so-called Summer of Love,

young disenchanted people from across America

began dropping out en masse

and flocked to San Francisco,

searching for the utopia

that Timothy Leary's vision suggested was waiting for them.

One of the things we forget

is that Haight-Ashbury was such a concentrated place.

It could perhaps have handled

maybe a thousand people living there, eating there,

part of the community,

but during the so-called Summer of Love

from '67 through '69,

the estimate is to this day

that about 300 kids a day would show up.

And these were the ones who had no money,

they had no place to go,

just the belief if you get there we'll be taken care of.

That is the atmosphere.

It opened up the possibility for predators.

From around the country came hustlers,

the dope dealers, the pimps,

and above all, attracted by this wonderful hunting ground

came Charlie Manson.

First arriving in the Haight-Ashbury district

in the spring of 1967,

Charles Manson was 32 and just as keen to engage

with the utopia on offer as the youths surrounding him.

Freshly released from a seven-year stretch in prison,

like many of those flocking to San Francisco,

Manson too was looking to escape a troubled past

and to make a fresh start in this brave new world.

Born in Cincinnati, Ohio to an unmarried teenager,

Kathleen Maddox, a wayward mother

at odds with her religious family,

young Charlie Manson never knew his father.

And at the age of only 4,

he watched his mother being led away by police

for armed robbery,

for which she would receive a five year jail sentence.

Manson was every part the throwaway kid.

He was passed to friends, to family,

anyone who would take him,

and he was then sent to his grandparents

and then on to his aunt and uncle.

So basically he was passed around

and from an early age he knew he wasn't wanted.

He lived with his aunt, uncle and cousin

and his grandmother came to see him.

There was no reason to say that Charlie's early life

as a child was ideal.

Having your mother in prison never is.

But he always had loving people who cared about him.

The problem was, of course,

that Charlie was from the beginning

a very disagreeable, violent child.

But although aggressive and sullen,

in his aunt and uncle's household in West Virginia

the young Charles Manson also found

a less destructive outlet for his energies.

There was a piano in his uncle and aunt's house

and even as a tiny child,

and you need to remember we're talking about a boy

who even at 5 years old looked perhaps 3.

His hands were tiny.

But he would stay at the keyboard

and by ear pick out songs.

The songs in his life at that time

came from one of two categories,

church music or country music.

He was something of a musical prodigy.

He hated going to church except singing,

and when he would sing,

he would join in so wholeheartedly

that his grandmother would believe the spirit of the Lord

must be descending on this child.

This natural gift for music was not enough

to curb Manson's delinquent tendencies, however.

In his teenage years his criminal activities,

including theft and burglary, saw him arrested countless times

and detained in a number of reform schools

and correctional institutions.

And as he gained a criminal education

while incarcerated,

by his early 20s his main aspiration was to become a pimp.

Manson was every bit the petty criminal.

He couldn't really organize much

and as his rap sheet concludes he kept getting caught.

Charlie Manson was a failure

as a criminal in every way.

He started out shoplifting and always got caught.

He would steal cars, they would track him down.

Finally, when we decided after learning the trade from pimps

and his first stint in prison

that he would run a string of girls,

he could never keep them very long.

The thing that carried over from his early criminal career

is a tremendous eye for those who can manipulate.

Manson would explain

his philosophy of attracting first his prostitutes

and later his female followers

as always find the ones who were bent or cracked

but not completely broken.

Despite a brief attempt

to settle down in the mid-50s

which saw him return to West Virginia

and marry a local waitress,

criminal instincts were now ingrained in Manson.

At the end of the decade

an attempt to establish himself as a pimp in New Mexico

once again led to his arrest,

and this time he was incarcerated

at the isolated, medium- security prison McNeil Island,

on a ten-year sentence.

With no chance of escape he learnt to play the guitar,

and his passion for music returned.

It was at first only a pastime.

And then, in 1964, through the radio

he heard a sound that would change his outlook entirely.

* Oh yeah, I'll tell you somethin'

* I think you'll understand

* When I say that somethin'

* I want to hold your hand

The Beatles' music was extraordinary.

It was vibrant. It was alert.

It just swept up the youth of the world

and everyone who came across them

was affected, even if they disliked them

they were sort of affected by them.

It's impossible to overestimate

The Beatles' impact on aspiring musicians,

Charles Manson among them.

But... everybody, anybody from that generation

talks about The Beatles and the immediate effect.

It was huge, instantaneous and it was lasting.

It was a transformative moment

in his life hearing that music.

What The Beatles do for Charlie Manson

is they not only expand his musical horizons,

but they expand his ambition.

Previously all he wants to be is a successful pimp

where women go out and do all the work for you

and you don't have to work very hard yourself.

Now suddenly he's got a guitar,

he knows how to play it, he's got the inspiration

and he starts writing songs in prison.

Terminal Island, Los Angeles.

It was here, in 1966, that Manson was transferred

to complete his time in prison,

his 10 year stretch reduced due to good behavior.

At this low security prison, Manson met Phil Kaufman,

an actor serving a short sentence for drug possession.

We were walking in the yard every day

between jobs and after dinner and breakfast.

You walk in the yard back and forth.

And this guy was playing a guitar

and he was singing "the shadow of your smile".

I said, "Wow, this guy's cool."

* The shadow of your smile...

So I walked up to say,

let's introduce ourselves.

And he continued playing his guitar

and we were talking and a guard comes up to him

and says, "Manson! You can't play your guitar here.

"You got to play your guitar over there in the music area."

Charlie just kept playing his guitar.

He walked away. And the guard yelled,

"Manson, you ain't never gonna get out of here."

Charlie said, "Out of where, man? The shadow of your smile."

He just carried on. Charlie was he cool.

He played the guitar and sang music that I liked.

He was singing standards.

Like I said, "The Shadow of Your Smile",

other popular songs at the time.

And he sang well.

He sounded like Frankie Laine.

He was a big star back in the 40s

and Charlie and I are both from that era.

We're both older guys.

That was our frame of reference.

We had Frank Sinatra, Perry Como and that genre.

In March 1967,

Manson was up for release from Terminal Island.

And aware of his musical ambitions,

Phil Kaufman gave him the details

of a valuable entertainment contact.

When Charlie was getting out,

I suggested he meet a friend of mine Gary Stromberg,

who was in the music business because I thought he was good.

Once again, this is Charlie in prison I'm talking about.

So I'm taking that persona and introducing him

to respectable people in the music business,

and it turned out just the opposite.

Once he got out he says, "Game on."

Having been incarcerated

since the end of the previous decade,

upon his release Manson was cast

into a totally foreign landscape.

The America he had known had been transformed

by the youth culture revolution that followed

in the wake of The Beatles.

With the assassination of John F Kennedy,

the advent of the Vietnam War

and the draft that was seeing thousands of young men

thrown into a conflict they didn't believe in,

the generation gap that had developed in the 1950s

had now become a chasm.

The counterculture that was spreading across the nation

viewed their elders and the authorities with suspicion,

and was looking to reshape the American way of life.

People realized that as a nation,

we were spiritually bankrupt.

We'd lost our way.

The moral principles of our constitution

and the founding fathers seemed to have been forgotten.

This was a time of deep alienation in the country

because of the Vietnam War,

because of advances in sexual rights

and a greater awareness of racial discrimination

and the civil rights movement.

There was a great division,

but I thought not so much as a negative thing

but one as where we were exploring new things.

We were all going through these sort of phases

of exploration and innocence really.

And the 32-year-old Charles Manson

was very keen to exploit that innocence.

Heading first to Berkeley and then on to San Francisco,

the city enabled him to regain a youth lost in confinement,

and he embraced this new culture

and its liberating power.

In Haight-Ashbury, Manson's first impulse was to stand back

and observe the leaders of this scene.

Over a number of weeks he listened to the local bands,

watched the various preachers and social activists

at Golden Gate park and took LSD for the first time.

Then he headed down the street with his guitar in hand

and began looking for followers of his own.

San Francisco was awash with gurus

and philosophers, preachers, cults, religions,

everything imaginable on every street corner.

Manson had his own brand of philosophy.

He was known as the 'gardener'.

He used to plant seeds in people's minds.

So he brought a package with him.

He was a very crafty and charismatic person.

I mean, he was a great performer and a great preacher.

He did have a good act which was one of cosmic intelligence,

which frankly never made sense to me

beyond two or three sentences, but still he had it down.

Melding concepts from the Bible,

scientology and the acid gurus surrounding him,

Manson's philosophy - that morality was a lie,

that nothing was corrupt except for possessions, the ego

and family - began to draw to him

a small group of young women.

Mary Brunner, Lynette Fromme,

Patricia Krenwinkel, Susan Atkins

- all were seduced by Manson's charisma,

his music and the closeness he promised them.

This small harem of followers would act as Manson's entourage

for the next step in his plan.

With the phone number of Phil Kaufman's music contact,

Gary Stromberg, still to hand,

in November, 1967, he acquired a large yellow school bus

and headed south to the City of Angels,

his musical dream still burning bright.

In California in particular,

even the San Francisco bands that were big

and thought of themselves as sort of the upper echelon,

as Frank Zappa said, everybody had to go down

to Los Angeles and get their hands dirty.

That's where the record companies were,

there's the labels, there's the people who could sign you.

Manson went to Los Angeles for no purpose

other than to become a rock and roll star.

Los Angeles, 1967. A sprawling city

powered by its immense entertainment industry.

And although it had been the heart the American

film world for decades,

its growth as a thriving music capital

was a relatively recent phenomenon.

At the dawn of the decade,

the music industry was predominantly concentrated

in New York.

Yet in 1961 a band emerged

who would help put Los Angeles on the musical map.

Amid a West Coast craze for surfing,

which produced its own local youth culture

and instrumental rock sound,

The Beach Boys released a run of hits

that brought this culture to national attention.

Led by the gifted composer and singer Brian Wilson,

with his brothers and cousin in support,

the band's unique sound

propelled them to the top of the music world

and immediately gave California a cultural kudos.

The Beach Boys

and the surf music phenomenon

out of the West Coast, the waves and the suntans

and the girls in skimpy bikinis and dancing go-go girls

was something that kids in the Mid-West

especially were fascinated by. "I can go out in California

"and be living an endless summer."

Even people in the colder East Coast cities

saw that as an out, way out.

People started to head to California

in the early part of the 60s.

The Beach Boys created that mystique nationally.

* If everybody had an ocean

* Across the U.S.A.

* Then everybody'd be surfin'

* Like Californi-a

* You'd see 'em wearing their baggies

* Huarachi sandals too

* A bushy bushy blonde hairdo

* Surfin' U.S.A.

They had this sort of California sun surf

which for everyone, certainly across America

and certainly across the world,

it was a fantastic package.

And it was a brochure to a lifestyle

which many people aspired to.

So it was good time music.

* I get around get around round, round I get around

* From town to town get around round round I get around

* I'm a real cool head

* Get around round round I get around...

Surf music had been around,

but it was instrumental music.

They never had really good vocals on them

or vocals at all on them.

All of a sudden Brian Wilson matches

that Chuck Berry surf rock energy

with these amazing harmonies,

harmonies that have sort of a jazz element to them.

There hadn't been anything like that.

The Beach Boys didn't just bring

the allure of California to America's teenagers.

In 1964, record companies began opening offices in Los Angeles

and, following the impact

of The Beatles and the British Invasion,

music television shows were in high demand

and began filming at Hollywood studios.

With the industry booming, in LA itself promoters

and A&R men were looking for local bands

to thrust into the limelight.

Enter The Byrds.

The Byrds changed

the West Coast music scene overnight.

We had all this record company and record business

moving out to Los Angeles in 1964

but The Byrds pretty much defined

what the future of music was going to be.

They took The Beatles' beat and The Beatles' harmony sound

and then mixed it with Bob Dylan's lyrical profundity.

* Hey Mister Tambourine Man, play a song for me

* I'm not sleepy and there ain't no place I'm goin' to...

You had a progression in L.A.

The Beach Boys were important in the early 60s

and would continue to be so.

But what The Beach Boys represented

by the time The Byrds came along seemed old school,

this fun and the sun and surfing and all this business.

This sense of a countercultural vision of a new world.

That was kind of inscribed in what The Byrds were doing.

* A time of love, a time of hate

* A time of war, a time of peace

* A time you may embrace...

The Byrds morphed a pop sensibility

with a much deeper theme,

which really up until the end of 1964

no one else had done in pop.

Dylan had done it but he was still a folk artist.

He really hadn't penetrated the higher echelons of pop.

We talk about "Teen Beat" or "16" magazine,

he wasn't featuring in that, but The Byrds were.

The Byrds were definitely something

that was more 60's, more modern.

They had more of a hippy look.

It was pre-hippy

but Crosby wore his cape

and McGuinn wore his weird sunglasses

and they looked a little edgy.

They had a cool sound.

It was just so perfect and right for the time.

And the Byrds' success soon inspired

a number of other local bands, including The Doors,

Love and Frank Zappa and his Mothers of Invention.

With marijuana more readily available in California

than on the East coast or in Britain,

these acts all shared an underground sensibility,

a stoned mystique that distinguished them

from the pop world.

And they developed as part of a blooming scene,

its center of activity the half-mile stretch of clubs

and restaurants in West Hollywood

known as the Sunset Strip.

Here, at venues like the Whisky a Go-Go,

the old Hollywood order was being dismantled

and the seeds of the coming hippy movement

were being sown.

Oh, it was everything.

The Strip was... there was the Whisky and the Trip

and then there were some lesser clubs up and down The Strip.

The Strip was the heart, the Mecca, where you went.

You were either one of those people who was hip,

smoking grass and stuff.

But for those people who weren't into it at all...

Oh, boy! They were like from another planet.

You couldn't even talk to them.

In previous days like The Sunset Strip

when the Trocadero and the Mocambo and the original Ciro's,

those were exclusive nightclubs

where the rich and the Hollywood movie stars went to.

And you had pictures of Charlie Chaplin and Marilyn Monroe

and all the big names there

but it wasn't really accessible to normal 'Joe'.

You know, you'd see these pictures in movie magazines

and that's about it.

Now that group of people had gotten older.

They'd started performing in Vegas

and teenagers took over the nightclubs.

There didn't seem to be this separation.

The musicians were doing their thing

and the audience was doing their thing

but it was all the same thing.

We were getting high.

We were tuning into this expressway to enlightenment.

People were just communing with each other,

both mentally, physically. We were in it together.

And it was into this hip new world

that Charles Manson and his four female followers arrived in late

Immediately arranging a meeting with Phil Kaufman's contact,

Gary Stromberg, who was a talent scout for Uni Records,

Manson prepared his best work for the audition.

And Stromberg was impressed enough

to book an hour long recording session

at the illustrious Gold Star Studios,

the venue from which producers Phil Spector

and the Beach Boys' Brian Wilson

had recorded their most famous work.

The first recording session we know of

for Charles Manson is for Universal Records subsidiary

Uni Records.

The tape remarkably exists.

It's unedited which is unusual...

and it presents a raw, untutored... busker

previewing 20 odd songs...

with no guidance, form or structure whatsoever.

MAN: Hi, Charlie baby.

It's very good.

OK.

Let's see...

Do whatever you feel like doing, man.

Yeah.

Just groove, you know. Tell us when you're gonna start

and we'll turn the machine on.

OK, well, you know...

Can't you just turn it on and let it go?

OK. We're going to let it go right now.

And then take out what you want

and the rest throw it away.

I was startled by Manson's voice.

It seemed different then the voice

that he had when we talked to him...

which must have been a year or two later, in prison.

He was more playful. He... a giggled a lot.

And he seemed nervous.

If I can make myself nervous...

I should be able to make myself unnervous.

And it makes sense that it works both ways, don't it?

He seems younger than he is at the time.

You know he's in his... mid 30s.

And he seems like he's in his early 20s

maybe when you listen to him.

But he's also nervous as hell.

And you know the kind of command, if you know,

if someone were to say to you, "Well, you know this guy

"is going to be like..."

set aside murderer and all the other stuff

but , "cult leader."

You know he's going to be commanding people

and causing them to do whatever he wants them to do.

That just seems absurd.

He's got like ideas for a song,

he's got little sketches in his mind

and some of them really have potential.

They seem like they can become something.

* Your home is where you're happy

* It's not where you're not free

* Your home is where you can be what you are

* 'Cause you were just born to be

* You can have a castle

* And diamonds for all to see

* But, you'll never show you their peace of mind

* 'Cause they don't know how to be free

* So burn...

Your home is where you're happy.

It's a fascinating piece of work.

That was very attractive to young people

with no visible home or no visible background

or no visible structure

or something they've been alienated from

'cause they knew their home wasn't happy.

They knew they weren't free at home.

So they could buy into Manson's utopian world

through the song.

* Would you mind if I approach you

* With this song may I tell you that I watched you

* How very long that I watched you from afar

* And now right here you are, so close to me

* Now I know it isn't proper...

There's a Latin influence.

There's a Jazz influence in his stuff.

I was very surprised to hear

actually the smoothness of some of the arrangements

or potentially these arrangements

had a smoothness to them

that just I would never have guessed

that would have been coming out of Charlie.

The sessions didn't convince Uni Records

that Manson was ready for a recording contract.

Taking the rejection in his stride,

he and his Family looked for accommodation,

and found temporary lodging at a communal house

a short walk from Topanga Beach,

known as the Spiral Staircase.

Sharing the property with various drifters,

drug addicts and drop-outs,

Manson and the girls settled into a communal life.

And while he spent time working on his music,

Manson also used the opportunity to search for new recruits.

In December 1967, 14 year old drop-out Dianne Lake

attended a party at the Spiral Staircase house

and became easy prey for an ex-convict twice her age.

Charlie comes up, gives me a... you know,

shares his root beer with me,

which was apparently really an honor.

And invites me to come and, you know...

sit in a circle and sing with them.

He was playing the guitar and the girls were all surrounding

and they all came up, hugged me, made me feel really welcome.

Later, Charlie took me under his wing and under his spell

and he seduced me.

He was funny. He was impish, childlike, playful.

You know he had this... he'd shake his head

and his hair would kind of dance around a little.

I mean, he thought he was... I was attracted to him.

I thought he was good-looking.

Instantly welcomed

by the other girls in Manson's troupe,

young Dianne quickly fell in

with the group's rituals of hallucinogens

and music, learning every word to Charlie's songs

and joining them in their communal performances.

I think we took acid at least once a week.

We'd sit around in a circle

and Charlie would kind of administer it, like a sacrament.

He'd place it on your, tongue and go round the circle.

I mean, it was... it was special.

And most of the trips were good.

And most of them were centered around music.

I enjoyed his music.

At that time, a solo artist with his guitar

was not that uncommon.

But by 1968, Charlie began to question

whether his chances of making it in the music business

may be improved if he had a band behind him.

From the Spiral Staircase house and along Sunset Strip,

Manson put the word out that he was forming a group

and looking for young, gifted musicians.

One of the first to turn up for an audition

at the communal house near Topanga Beach

was guitarist Ernest Knapp.

It was creepy, right off the bat.

He had this sense about him that was... just uncomfortable.

Oddly, I didn't audition with the other musicians.

I just auditioned for Charlie and his family.

I set up in the middle of the living room floor.

Put my amp down and plugged it in.

Three of the girls had percussion instruments...

shakers, and a tambourine and some little drum

and actually were accompanying me.

So... which I liked. It was...

I'll take any help I can get, you know.

Knapp was invited to join the band,

and the following week returned to rehearse

with Manson's quickly assembled ensemble.

ERNEST KNAPP: Once we had some songs

we knew we could play...

"So, OK, Charlie, what you got?"

And he performed his stuff for us.

I thought he had talent.

I thought his songs were viable.

It was more of a singer-songwriter presentation.

Naming the band The Milky Way,

the following day they played

their one and only public performance -

an audition for the Saturday night slot

at the local live bar, the Topanga Corral.

We all met down there

and loaded up into a couple of cars

and drove on up to the Corral,

which at that time was a country and western beer bar

higher up in the canyon.

But we were probably one of the first hippy bands

to try to play there.

And this was in the afternoon

and there was a couple of guys sitting around,

and they were not very nice about it.

They said... no.

Manson's only ever band was stillborn,

and he refocused on his work as a solo artist.

Despite its failure, the project had brought him

into contact with another confident young musician.

Bobby Beausoleil, who bragged about his affiliations

to the band Love

and his late night jam sessions with Frank Zappa,

would become a sporadic presence around the family

over the coming two years.

He was more talented than Charlie.

Everybody who saw the two of them together

would agree, but Beausoleil as a creative artist

certainly saw there was a lot of creativity

in Charlie Manson

and there was a certain bond that was formed between them.

They shared a musical symmetry.

They had a similar outlook.

They complemented each other quite well.

But Bobby Beausoleil was a strong male.

He had his own independent mind.

That's not something that really fitted in

with Manson's Family.

So while they walked similar paths,

Beausoleil was never a member of the Manson family.

But he was well connected.

As Manson was looking to move on from the Spiral Staircase,

Beausoleil suggested the family head north

into Topanga Canyon,

and move into an empty property

where he had been staying in Horseshoe Drive.

Here, in March 1968, the family were joined by Phil Kaufman,

Manson's fellow inmate at Terminal Island,

who was a free man once again.

When I got out in 1968,

Gary Stromberg knew another guy I knew, Harold True.

Harold had been in contact with Charlie.

So when I got out, Harold took me to Charlie.

When I first met him...

That wasn't the guy I knew in the yard

singing "The Shadow of Your Smile".

As impressed as he was

by Manson's harem of women,

Kaufman was also amazed

at the transformation in his music.

And in the compositions themselves,

he could see how these new songs Charlie was writing

were being used to seduce more followers...

He had a message.

They got a meaning, kind of a pied piper meaning.

Charlie went from Frankie Lane to kind of an acid music.

He was using it.

It was a tool, because young people younger than him,

everybody was younger than him,

were into the new music so he put his lyrics

to kind of a folky type because he didn't have a band.

And "Look at Your Game Girl" was the thing...

"Look at your game girl, come with me."

* There's a time for living The time keeps on flying

* Think you're loving baby...

"Look at Your Game Girl" is the most complex

of all of Manson's songs of that period.

It's multi-layered, it harmonizes with his guitar.

It has different tempos.

His voice range is considerable on them.

So it's a very... It's hard to say,

given what we know about Manson,

but it's a very well-crafted piece of work.

Are those feelings real

* Look at your game, girl

* Look at your game, girl

* What a mad delusion...

He was selling something.

He was selling him.

And they bought it. These girls were lost.

These children were lost.

And the hippy thing, peace and love, that was his bait.

But the atmosphere in Topanga wasn't sinister.

Peace and love reigned, and the family was beginning

to experience Manson's conception

of a communal life free from material concerns.

With more new members joining the fold,

he taught them how to live modestly,

feeding themselves by visiting garbage dumps.

Times were good, and these collective activities

would find their way into the songs themselves.

You're not poor, you have a garbage tent.

You'll never starve, as long as you have a garbage dump.

You buy a piece of cheese.

It's dated today. You can't sell it tomorrow.

There's nothing wrong with it.

You can take it home and put it in the fridge.

And that's what Manson or I did.

I was with him.

You know, at first it was like, eugh!

'Cause some of the dumpsters were, you know, stinky.

They don't get cleaned,

they don't get hosed down on a regular basis.

But, you know, there was lots of cardboard in there.

There was also food.

I mean, you know, some of them, you know...

You'd learn when they threw the food out,

you know, what time.

And so some of the stuff was still cold.

We were eating America's garbage, if you will.

* When you're livin' on the road

* And you think sometimes you're starvin'

* Get on off that trip my friend

* Just get in them cans and start carvin'

* Oh garbage dump my garbage dump

* Why are you called my garbage dump...

If you want to see what Charlie Manson

would have wanted the world to see himself as,

this is the image.

Not the image of some monster

who could make mindless robots go out and kill

but as a wonderful being

who could exist on practically nothing and be richer

than all the people who had all the things

that might otherwise look down on him.

But although the atmosphere

within the group was tranquil,

for Phil Kaufman, Manson's constant sermonizing

was becoming intolerable.

I got old, you know, I got old and I got wiser.

And fortunately I got really wised up

and I saw the handwriting on the cell block.

It was time to get out of there

and divorce myself from him.

The day I left a friend of mine came and picked me up

and he said,

"I got to come, Charlie." He said, "Yeah, I know.

" You're still thinking, aren't you?"

I said, "Yeah, I'm gonna keep it up."

Sermons and communal activities

may have filled their time,

but Manson was also keen to make musical contacts.

While he attempted to rub shoulders

with the rock community

living in and around Topanga Canyon,

he also sent his followers to the Sunset Strip.

Here they were to attract the attention

of any musicians they may come across

and effect an introduction to Manson.

And in May, 1968, two of the girls hit pay dirt.

That was Jo Bailey, who was known as Yeller,

and Pat Krenwinkel, walking down the road

in Hollywood hitching.

A car stops to pick them up. A young good-looking guy says,

"Hey, do you girls need a ride?"

He suggests they go back to his place for milk and cookies.

They think they know exactly what that means,

so when they get back to his house,

which is really a spectacular place,

just off the Sunset,

he really does offer them milk and cookies.

And after a while, he says he's got to go,

he hopes he sees them again sometime.

He's in a band called The Beach Boys.

They dutifully go back and...

Charlie's asking, "Did you meet anybody?"

"Well, there's this one guy who picked us up

"and took us back to his house, you know..."

"What band was he is?" "The Beach... Boys."

And Charlie... that's it.

He is jumping out of his clothes.

"Where's this guy's house?"

The Beach Boy

they had unwittingly stumbled upon

was Dennis Wilson, the drummer and younger brother

of the band's celebrated producer and songwriter Brian.

That night, Manson and his entire family set off

for Wilson's property on Sunset Boulevard,

keen to make a real impression.

Dennis Wilson in the middle of the night,

coming back home, pulls into his driveway

and the lights are on in his house.

And there's a school bus parked there.

There's people in his house.

He gets out of his car and he's going in carefully

'cause he's a rich guy.

You never know what's gonna be there.

And out comes this little short dude with a beard,

"Hey man. How are you?" acting like a host.

And the first words out of Dennis' mouth are,

"Are you gonna hurt me"

And Charlie Manson kneels down

and he kisses Dennis Wilson's foot.

"Do I seem like somebody who's gonna hurt you, man?

"Come on in." And Dennis goes in and they're in his house.

It's the Manson Family making themselves at home.

With half-naked girls sprawled around his house,

Dennis Wilson was instantly enchanted

by Manson and his followers.

Of all The Beach Boys, they had unwittingly met

the one who would be most open to their charms.

Dennis Wilson was 100% different

from the rest of the band in one important way.

He was the athlete.

He was the guy who went out and surfed,

and of course the girls liked him the most.

He was, you know, very ruggedly handsome

and he had a way with women.

The other guys were like, Brian is sort of tall and goggy,

and Carl's like chubby and taking guitar lessons,

and Al's gonna be a dentist,

and Mike's working at a gas station.

He's sort of like the jerk lead singer.

Dennis Wilson embodied what The Beach Boys were about.

Their first songs were about surfing and cars.

Brian Wilson was writing songs about Dennis' life.

And the Family had burst into Wilson's life

at a perfect juncture.

In the past year The Beach Boys had suffered

a series of commercial disappointments,

with their genius Brian Wilson

losing artistic control of the band

and mentally struggling

following his prolonged use of LSD.

Trying to refresh their tired image in the new, hip world,

in the weeks before the Manson Family arrived

Dennis had been on the road for a tour

that paired the band with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.

This prominent Indian guru had been elevated to superstardom

following his involvement with The Beatles,

yet the combination of his speeches

on Transcendental Meditation

with a rock and roll show

unsurprisingly failed to make any impact.

It was a disaster.

The people that want to see The Beach Boys

don't want to see Maharishi,

and the people who want to see Maharishi

don't want to see The Beach Boys.

It didn't work.

Interesting idea, but it was a failure.

'68 was a rough year for them

The Maharishi tour was a disaster.

They had problems

with the southern element of their tour

because of Martin Luther King's assassination.

They were losing money, they were hemorrhaging money.

Records weren't selling.

They really weren't catching up with people culturally.

They were still wearing matching outfits on stage.

So by 1968,

The Beach Boys were perceived as part of the past.

Dennis wasn't interested

in being part of the past.

A young man ever alive to new ideas,

he had been fascinated by the Maharishi's teachings

and was looking for greater meaning in his life.

Manson's sermons denouncing material possessions

and celebrating communal and spiritual unity,

along with the sexual allure of the girls,

won him over immediately,

and he invited them all to join him

at his 14400, Sunset Boulevard home.

Dennis was a fun guy.

I remember him being kind of a wild man,

he liked... loved fast cars, fast women.

He liked living in the fast lane.

Dennis had just come off of retreat or something

with the Maharishi yogi so I think he...

And Charlie kind of fit that guru...

I think that Dennis was looking for this kind of inspiration.

Dennis was always looking for more.

He was always looking for the next thing,

and he was like a child in that way.

And I think that these people really interested him.

Part of the thing for Dennis at that time

was that he harbored a certain guilt for all that he had,

for all the wealth and trappings that came with it.

I don't think he ever felt like he deserved it.

I think he felt like he got all of this

basically because of his brother.

And all of this stuff just came to him,

not by his own hard work or not by his own talent,

but just by luck.

Wilson had only moved

into his sprawling, rented property on Sunset Boulevard

recently following the breakdown of his first marriage.

With Manson and his wandering harem

now permanent house guests,

he contacted his close friend and collaborator Gregg Jakobson

and invited him to the party...

My first exposure to the wizard,

as Dennis would call him, was he called me up one night,

"Gregg, you have to come down here.

"You've got to see this guy. He's the wizard

"and he's got all these girls."

For me it was, "OK, Den, I've heard it before.

"Girls and a party. I'm married. I've got a couple of kids."

So I never responded until it was sometime,

maybe a week later when they were much more

part of the whole scene down there at the house.

I must say this. When Charlie was around, he had an energy.

You couldn't not pay attention to Charlie.

He was a likeable person.

He was very charming and he paid attention to you.

I can understand why Dennis called him 'The Wizard'

because he did have that unique ability

to make you feel like you were... he was concerned.

You were important. He didn't just shine you on.

Just living on that estate was magical.

I remember getting high

and drinking like orange juice or grape juice

that was just, uh... heavenly.

Don't forget, Dennis had left his house

and his family and his wife and stuff.

Now he had all this adoration and all these girls.

They were making him clothes

and they almost would bow down to him.

So I'm sure for the moment

he was very charmed by the whole scene.

But it wasn't all about sex, drugs

and expanded consciousness -

Wilson was also fascinated by Manson's music.

And with his older brother Brian withdrawing from his role

as The Beach Boys' driving force, the other band members

were keen to find their own voice within the group,

none more so than Dennis.

At the time he was developing his skills

on the keyboard.

He would come in in the morning and practice and work things out

and sometimes Brian would help and show him things,

but most of the time he was experimenting on his own.

So he was different from the other guys

who were familiar with chords and transitions

and that kind of thing.

But he was extremely talented, he was a fast learner.

1968 was the first time

he was even being looked at

as something serious musically

and Brian was allowing the others

to show what they had.

And Dennis was showing the knack for writing songs.

He's a novice but it's obvious that there's something there.

The Beach Boys had also recently

set up their own record label,

Brother Records, with an eye to signing new talent

that would better reflect the times

than their own stale act.

Impressed by Manson's musical talents,

Wilson hoped to both learn from

and collaborate with his new houseguest.

It was probably the first time

that Dennis got interested in somebody

and the music at the same time,

almost like a producer would start considering

how you deal with an artist

and I think that was where Dennis was coming from

and he realized that he really had something

that he could bring to the table.

And so he became musically Charlie's mentor, let's say.

Primarily, the relationship

that bound them together was music.

What I remember is that he was truly fond of Charlie.

I mean, he introduced Charlie to his friends.

Charlie was teaching him how to play the guitar

and he, you know, it was kind of a mutual admiration...

bromance or whatever. That's what I remember seeing,

is that I think they genuinely liked each other.

It must have been a bit of a vindication

for Manson to be taken seriously by somebody

as well-known as Dennis.

Even though Dennis hadn't really developed himself

as an artist yet, Dennis was a superstar.

Suddenly, you were collaborating with someone

who was very well-known

and comes from a family

that is hugely respected in the industry.

Along with Gregg Jakobson,

Wilson was also keen to introduce

his dynamic new house guest and collaborator

to another friend, record producer Terry Melcher.

The son of Doris Day

and the partner of rising star Candice Bergen,

with his prominent role in the LA music scene

Melcher was a vital link between Hollywood past and present.

Terry Melcher was somebody

who was very much part

of the Hollywood entertainment scene

and, you know, he produced the first two Byrds' albums,

which are hugely important.

He was very involved with Paul Revere & The Raiders,

who were big hit makers at the time.

I mean, everybody knew who Terry Melcher was.

And so to get his blessing or to summon his interest

would have been a big get for any aspiring songwriter.

Over the coming months,

Manson became close enough to Melcher

that he was invited to the Beverley Hills property

the producer rented in Cielo Drive.

Although Melcher and Jakobson were his most frequent visitors,

Dennis Wilson's home was a popular hangout

for many prominent musicians.

Dennis' house was a gathering point.

Being very liberal, and people sort of felt welcome

and could drop in at all hours,

so many people called in on Dennis,

and obviously collided with the Manson Family.

The likes of Stephen Stills, Glenn Campbell.

Neil Diamond was another.

Neil Young, freshly released from Buffalo Springfield,

came across Manson and he was blown away

by Manson's musical playing.

If reports are to be believed,

he was enchanted with Manson.

He bought him a motorcycle.

Took him along to meet Warners,

who if accounts are to be believed,

wasn't that impressed.

So I think Manson's personable presence enchanted people.

The problem with Manson is

once you bounce that down onto tape it loses everything.

So what you're left with is some songs.

You don't have Manson the character,

you don't have Manson, the girls...

What enchanted people was the package.

Now an accepted figure

within the upper echelons of the LA counterculture,

Manson's presence at parties and clubs became common.

And in the very nerve center of the scene,

on the Sunset Strip

and its premiere venue the Whisky A-Go-Go,

he made an indelible impression...

There was an incident at the Whisky.

One night we were all there at the table.

Charlie had come with us. Dennis was there.

Terry Melcher was there. So we were all there,

drinking beer and having a good time.

And we noticed a bit of a commotion

coming from the dance floor. And the Whisky's packed.

The girls were up in the cages

at the time at the Whisky and the band is playing full on.

The band's really into it because something's going on.

I stood up on the chair.

I stood up in the back of the booth and I said,

"Hey you guys, you've got to see this."

It was Charlie in the middle of the dance floor dancing

and he'd literally cleared the dance floor at the Whisky.

I mean, people slowly pulled back until...

And I swear to God to this day

it looked like electricity was coming out of him.

I mean, that kind of energy

and he literally blew everybody away

on the dance floor by himself.

Nobody could even come close to dancing with him.

But that was Charlie.

He had that explosiveness, that energy.

Although he was making his mark on the scene,

by the late summer Manson and his Family

had outstayed their welcome at Dennis Wilson's house.

In August The Beach Boys were embarking

on an extensive tour of the U.S. and Canada

to promote their latest album,

and Wilson decided this would be the perfect time

for his houseguests to move on.

The party had to end sometime

and it was costing Dennis a fortune

and if all the accounts are to be believed

it was $100,000 in food, gonorrhea treatment,

lost clothing everything. They were bleeding him dry.

I was told by Dennis' PA man.

"I'm going on the road. Can you... find us a new place?"

He says, "I want my stuff out of there."

Charlie didn't have much choice. The house got closed down.

I closed it down while Dennis was gone.

He came back a couple of weeks later

to a new house.

Their friendship and musical collaboration continued,

and Manson used the opportunity to relocate his growing Family

to a more isolated venue.

Spahn Ranch, 30 miles north

of Dennis' Santa Monica home,

was a once a thriving movie location

during the heyday of Western films the previous decade.

Now largely inactive, it proved perfect for Manson's needs.

Cult leaders can always be identified

by a couple of things they do and Manson did them all.

The first thing is that you have to find people

who feel put upon, persecuted and convince them

that you know the way to protect them but only you.

The second thing you try to do is isolate them.

You've got to get them away from outside voices.

Families, friends, media. Anybody who would say,

"Wait a minute, this guy's a crackpot."

You want to get to a point

where the only voice they hear is yours.

That's not going to work at Dennis Wilson's house.

Spahn Ranch, just outside of Los Angeles,

and if you hear the distance involved,

it's not that many miles.

You think, "It's going to be smog

"and more of these buildings."

But it's actual sort of this natural area

that seems like it's the frontier.

It's the country.

It's as far removed from a big city as you can imagine.

And yet it's only about a 25 minute drive.

Charlie still can reach Los Angeles

but he can isolate his followers.

At Spahn Ranch the family became

a commune once again,

and its reputation grew around Los Angeles.

New followers found their way to this rustic idyll,

along with members of biker gangs

the Straight Satans and the Satan's Slaves

and figures from the music world.

The Manson Family's presence at Spahn Ranch

was like a psychedelic little house on the prairie.

I mean, it was just a lovely throwback.

These guys were on an old film set.

They were dressing up in costumes.

It was a happy-go-lucky scene.

It was free love, free drugs,

music, free food from the dumpster

and famous people were dropping in, yeah.

Dennis Wilson was there.

He took the girls on a garbage dump truck.

It's said Jim Morrison went there.

Whenever Terry and I showed up

or Dennis and I showed up out at the ranch,

he would definitely have everything set up.

When we were there, everybody was on alert

and we were supposed to be entertained.

I said, "Terry, we should... this should be filmed.

"We ought to film this thing. This is history.

"This is really unusual."

I mean, you have the girls. You have the horses.

You have some cowboys. You have the hippies.

You have the motorcycle gang

and you have this big movie ranch.

You couldn't make that kind of stuff up.

I thought, "Terry, we should be filming this."

And while the Family were acclimatizing

to this new rural life,

Dennis Wilson announced that The Beach Boys had agreed

to record one of the songs that he and Manson

had been working on earlier in the summer.

This track, "Cease to Exist", perfectly captured

the cult leader's spiritual outlook.

* Cease to exist

* Just, come an' say you love me

* Give up, your world

* Come on you can be

* I'm your kind...

It was more Charlie's composition

than Dennis'.

Charlie would really come from a different place.

Charlie was much more philosophic,

kind of an Eastern philosophy,

and Dennis was fascinated with that to some degree.

He could smell that there was something there

but didn't know what it was. So he went along with that.

He liked that. That was something new.

The Beach Boys weren't writing about that kind of stuff either.

They were still doing surf songs

and "Good Vibrations" and so on which was all cool.

But this was a big departure

and it was very much the '60s, you know.

This was new.

But as the band went into Brian Wilson's home studio

to record the track in September 1968,

they shaped the song into their own creation,

and its name was altered to "Never Learn Not to Love".

Stephen Desper, the band's in-house engineer,

oversaw the sessions.

We were all aware

that Dennis had a friend named Charles Manson

and the two of them were both musicians.

And as musicians do, they compare notes.

They write things together.

This was a collaboration

and Charles and Dennis had worked on it together.

It may have been the initial idea

may have been Charles',

but he had given it to Dennis and been compensated for it.

And... The Beach Boys were taking it

and embellishing it as they do and making it their own.

* ...ooo I love you pretty girl

* My life is yours, and you can have my world

* I'm your kind, I'm your kind, and I see

* Never had a lesson I ever learned

* I know I could never learn not to love you...

Dennis, who knew his way around a studio

and knew his way around vocal arrangements,

took that idea and expanded it

into something that was... more palatable,

that was pop.

And again for The Beach Boys,

it was pushing their sound forward.

* Come in now closer

* Come in closer come in closer ahhhh...

I think it's a really good song.

I think it's better actually than it gets credit for.

The harmonies are just gorgeous on that song.

I think that the collaboration between Dennis and Manson

really showed potential

with this "Never Learn Not to Love" song.

I think it definitely works.

I think it's a win for The Beach Boys.

And I think an album full of that kind of sound

would have been amazing for them at the time.

Yet it was not to be.

While the recording should have provided the Family

with new hope, back at Spahn Ranch

the atmosphere was changing,

and Manson's commune was losing its focus.

Things were getting a little bit rougher,

everybody I think started pulling away,

because more and more we were hearing stories

that The Satan Slaves were now hanging out there.

The picture was... the flower part was going away.

It wasn't flowers and beads anymore.

It was motorcycles and gasoline

and harder core drugs and people coming from downtown LA

that nobody knew. And winter was coming.

It was kind of like the summer was... the season was closing.

It was getting darker earlier and so on.

And this reflected a darkness

that had been spreading throughout the counterculture

during 1968.

The Summer of Love was now a distant memory,

the Vietnam War continued to escalate,

and following the assassinations of first Martin Luther King

and then Robert Kennedy,

the younger generation's faith

in conventional political change was crushed.

Across the nation,

the counterculture took up arms

and prepared for battle with the authorities,

with violent clashes breaking out in several cities.

At the same time,

the peaceful civil rights movement

was also transforming,

and as riots erupted following King's assassination,

Black Power became a new slogan

for numerous groups

looking to confront their white oppressors.

And all of these currents fed directly

into the mind of Charles Manson.

Now his sermons altered,

and his spiritual vision of a communal society

was replaced by predictions of a coming apocalypse -

a violent uprising in which African Americans

would overthrow the existing order.

The ideas

that Manson was playing around with, race war, revolution,

the sense that everything was falling apart.

I mean, these were commonly thought ideas.

Even at the point that Martin Luther King was assassinated,

he had been outflanked on his left

by more militant black political figures.

So once he was shot and killed,

there was the message of

you see where non-violence gets you?

The idea that the structure was under assault,

couple that with the complicated,

to say the very least,

racial history of the United States,

the sense that these forces were potentially in charge

of a takeover -

yeah, that again was something

that was very much in the air.

But Manson took these common beliefs

and warped them into a very singular vision.

In September, aware that his control over his followers

was slipping at the overpopulated Spahn Ranch,

he scouted a new location for their commune

deep in the heart of Death Valley.

200 miles north of Los Angeles,

Barker Ranch offered total isolation,

and he fed this into his prediction

of the coming revolution.

When the black population rose up

to overthrow the white authorities,

their commune would be hidden

in this remote desert retreat, and when the dust settled

they would emerge to rule over a brave new world.

Times were different.

It wasn't the same loving... commune

kind of enlightenment thing anymore.

There was an agenda.

He'd always been kind of fostering

and laying some ground work

for this race war.

I think he truly believed that this was going to happen

and so he was always kind of preparing us.

But the whole impetus was to make money...

...to get dune buggies and knives and guns or whatever

and hide out in the desert until this war thing was over.

And just as music seemed to have receded

into the background

of the Family's day-to-day existence,

a record was released that shook Manson to his very core.

Having sent a number of his followers to Death Valley

to prepare their new accommodation in the desert,

he and the remaining family members

moved into a house on Gresham Street

in the northern part of Los Angeles.

It was here that he first heard the Beatles' new LP,

commonly known as The White Album.

Through a number of its songs,

somehow The Beatles were sending a message

directly to Manson himself,

confirming his prophesies of a violent race war.

When I came back

from the desert to Gresham Street

and there was all this frenetic energy and a lot of it

had to do with the fact that Charlie felt like

The Beatles, through the White Album,

were telling him

that this black/white race war was helter-skelter.

It's coming down fast, you know,

and he would play it backwards.

He was obsessed

and I remember he made me stay and listen

and pee my pants on the rug

because he wouldn't let me leave to go to the bathroom.

"No, you have to you stay here. I want you to hear this."

* Have you seen the little piggies

* Crawling in the dirt

* And for all the little piggies Life is getting worse...

"Piggies" was one of the first he talked about,

written by George Harrison. And George later said

his mother actually suggested some of the lyrics

that Charlie thought The Beatles were proclaiming

about how there were certain people

that needed to be punished.

What they need is a damn good whacking.

* In their eyes there's something lacking

* What they need's a damn good whacking...

Harrison was just doing a dig

at the upper classes etc, etc.

But of course Manson saw it as a call to arms.

What they need is a damn good whacking.

"Piggies" is certainly a violent song

and the word 'pig' would play an important part

in the Manson Family's infamy later on.

* Blackbird singing in the dead of night

* Take these broken wings and learn to fly

* All your life

* You were only waiting for this moment to arise...

The song "Blackbird",

Charlie led his followers to believe

was particularly significant.

That although black people in Charlie's view

were very inferior, they had been enslaved,

they had been mistreated for so long

and now The Beatles were saying they were going to rise up.

You were only waiting for your moment to arise.

And then there's the real hook. Helter Skelter.

In Britain, people would realize Paul McCartney is talking about

an amusement park ride.

But in America, nobody knew what a helter skelter was,

and Charlie took advantage of that.

* When I get to the bottom

* I go back to the top of the slide

* Where I stop and I turn and I go for a ride

* Till I get to the bottom and I see you again...

When you get to the bottom

you go back to the top - that's the blacks.

They're at the bottom, they're going to go to the top.

Helter Skelter is the name The Beatles have given

to the race war that's coming.

* Helter skelter, helter skelter Helter skelter...

Charlie bought into that

because it's coming from The Beatles.

This fit Charlie's predictions. That that was coming,

that war, that black/white war was coming.

Life within the Family radically shifted

in the early months of 1969.

For their exodus to the desert,

they would need vehicles, gasoline and weaponry,

and Manson returned to his criminal ways

to fund these new activities.

But the musical dream was far from over.

In March, Dennis Wilson reappeared

with the offer of a demo session for Manson.

The results would be presented to The Beach Boys themselves

to see whether they would sign him to their new label,

Brother Records.

The recording would take place at Brian Wilson's home studio,

with the band's engineer Stephen Desper

in charge of the session.

Someone knocked on the studio door

and says your talent is here.

So I met him at the front door.

It was Charles and he had with him five girls.

He got his guitar out and he had talent.

I could see why Dennis wanted to do a demo with him

and consider him as a talent they would sign and produce.

It was the producing part that bothered me.

Once he got in front of the microphone

and into the recording environment

he was not like other people.

It was all very foreign to him

and he was annoyed by the whole thing.

And I just wasn't feeling comfortable

about being around him.

Charlie had his way of doing things.

He knew best.

Being a rock star, a famous rock star

was not his highest priority,

because if it was his highest priority,

oh, to meet The Beach Boys,

to record in their studio...

Yeah, what do you want me to wear,

how would you like my hair, you know. Right?

After the first song,

he came up in the control room

and we made a playback.

In the course of the playback

he pulled out a 6 inch switchblade

and started cleaning his fingernails. I said to him,

"Charlie, take the knife out of the studio."

The reason for that was because it was Brian's house

and he has family there, he has little girls upstairs.

I don't know what this guy is... you know.

He called one of the girls and they took the knife

out to the car, and then I had to go out

and get him back in the studio,

make sure they weren't wandering round the house

and all that.

But he liked what he had done, he was satisfied with it.

I guess he was there about three or four hours

pretty well into the evening.

Despite Manson's satisfaction

with his performance,

he had failed to win over Stephen Desper,

whose job it was to report back to the band

and their management.

I took the tapes to the office.

They asked me how it went and I said,

"He won't take direction,

"and I don't think he's going to be producable.

"But his songs are fairly good.

"I like the lyrics," and so forth.

And, you know, take a listen.

Brother Records were not interested,

and although this news never fed directly to Charles Manson,

he assumed from their silence

that he was not going to be part of their roster.

His attentions then turned to Terry Melcher, the producer,

who he had been socializing with since the previous year

and who was still an infrequent visitor to Spahn Ranch.

Charlie figures out,

when Dennis Wilson can't get him a record deal,

that, "Wait a minute, I miscalculated."

The artists aren't high enough on the food chain themselves.

And now he's got a different target in mind.

That target is Terry Melcher.

You have to remember

that Manson has been trying to get Melcher

to listen to him for over a year.

And he's getting put off and he's getting put off.

And finally Melcher said,

"I will come out to Spahn Ranch.

"I will listen to you."

He said, "Set the time and the date."

It raised everybody's hopes

that we were going to make a record,

and earn some money.

And really at that point

the money was to go for gas and vehicles

and food and supplies... for the desert.

Terry Melcher has other things

going on in his life. His mother's estate

There's problems going on, and he doesn't go.

To him, "Well, so what,

"I'll just call the guy up at some point and say,

"'Hey, sorry I couldn't make it last time.'"

To Manson it's not only a personal betrayal...

but it threatens his hold on his followers and he's furious.

And he goes looking for Terry Melcher.

The first place he goes looking for Terry Melcher

is where he knew Terry Melcher lived, Cielo Drive,

but Melcher's moved.

He and Candice Bergen have gone to a place

on the beach, a property that Doris Day owned.

And now there's new folks renting.

Roman Polanski and Sharon Tate.

Polanski and Tate

were one of LA's most glamorous couples,

representative of a new Hollywood

that was embracing the counterculture.

Polanski's European films earlier in the decade

had brought him to international attention,

and it was while working on the last of these,

"The Fearless Vampire Killers",

that he cast and fell in love with Sharon Tate,

the lead actress.

Close friends of Terry Melcher and Candice Bergen,

the couple had moved into the house on Cielo Drive

in March 1969.

It was at the end of that month that Charles Manson

came walking furiously up the driveway

looking for Melcher.

Sharon Tate has a photographer,

her personal photographer who happens to be out there.

And the guy sees storming up the drive

this little scrubby looking guy

looking kind of furious, "What do you want?"

And for Terry Melcher, this is the Polanski residence.

You're in the wrong place. The owner lives out back.

Manson says, "I'll go see him."

"Stay off the lawn, stay away from the main house."

He storms up and the guy who owns the property says,

"Oh, he's moved. I don't want you coming around again

"without telling people you're on your way."

Manson is storming off, and as he's storming off

a beautiful woman walks out of the main house

and he looks at her for a minute,

then he storms away.

Charlie Manson and Sharon Tate did look each other

in the eye very briefly.

When he was finally able to locate Terry Melcher,

Manson rearranged their meeting,

and on June 6th, 1969,

the producer travelled to Spahn Ranch

to watch the 34 year old ex-convict

perform an elaborate set.

It would take weeks before Manson was able

to draw a response from Melcher

as to whether he would be recommending him

to Columbia Records.

And it was not the response that he was hoping for...

Terry finally told Charlie.

He said, "Hey Charlie, I really appreciate your music.

"It's really good, but it's just not my cup of tea.

"I don't know what I would do with you in the studio."

Charlie was heartbroken. He was crushed with that.

Charlie was really counting on it

and I think that he had his hopes up...

I think they encouraged it.

They should have been a bit more upfront,

in the beginning.

But maybe they saw something in him.

And I think Dennis did.

That was a karate chop

to the neck for him,

because I know he was really thinking that

he had it real in there. Terry was a record producer.

This is what a recording artist needs

and a record producer with a track record

and a carte blanche to a big studio.

Yeah, that's everything, if you're Charlie at that point.

So, yeah, that was crushing.

I'm sure that was crushing to Charlie.

The events that tragically followed

were fueled by this rejection and the desperation

that was setting in through the Family's chaotic activities.

And as had been the case in his youth,

Manson proved a hopeless criminal.

At this same time Charlie's been warning

about Helter Skelter

and we've got to get back to the desert.

Nobody here's getting money.

To buy the supplies they need is by doing drug deals.

And among the people he's doing deals with

there's a music teacher named Gary Hinman that he knows.

And there's a big black guy known as Lotsapoppa,

and Lotsapoppa claims to be a Black Panther.

And Hinman's talking about going to Europe.

So that means Hinman's got some money.

With Lotsapoppa, the drug deal goes wrong,

Charlie with a Buntline Special 22 pistol

that he brought, shoots him and thinks he's killed him.

Because he's killed Lotsapoppa,

suddenly becomes convinced that the Black Panthers

are going to be coming after Manson and the Family.

And Charlie may have talked about

a racial apocalypse and everything else

and was exaggerating, but Charlie was scared shitless

of the Black Panthers.

That disastrous drug deal in July 1969,

was followed by an even worse event

at the close of the month.

The family's sometime cohort Bobby Beausoleil

was running a drug deal

involving his Topanga Canyon supplier,

the musician Gary Hinman,

and the motorcycle gang The Straight Satans

who were frequent guests at Spahn Ranch.

When the bikers accused Beausoleil of ripping them off

with inferior product,

he and three members of the Family

visited Hinman to get their money back.

But a fight ensued,

the event spiraled out of control

and after two days in his apartment,

Bobby Beausoleil murdered Hinman,

scrawling messages in the musician's blood

across the apartment walls.

It took the police only two weeks

to apprehend the murderer.

The death of Gary Hinman,

which involved several members of the Manson family

and principally Bobby Beausoleil,

who was not a card carrying member of the Manson Family

but was certainly closely allied in many ways,

at this point also is drug dealing

with the Manson Family.

Ultimately and if who we are to believe apparently,

but allegedly Manson had said to Beausoleil,

"You know what to do", which led to Hinman's death.

Beausoleil is spinning out of control

is picked up very soon with blood all over him.

It led back to the murder and Beausoleil is arrested.

Manson's prison nous would say,

"Well, you know, this is gonna come back to me".

He might not have said, "You know what to do,"

but certainly the strands are all running back.

The deal was conducted from Spahn's Ranch,

possibly facilitated by Manson.

It was certainly all going to lead back to him.

Fearful that he would be caught up

in the Beausoleil case, Manson declared

that the time for 'Helter Skelter' had come,

and sent four of his followers into the Los Angeles night

to commit a copycat murder, led by 24 year old Tex Watson.

There were two objectives.

Firstly, that new crimes would lead the police

to assume that Beausoleil was innocent

and that the killer was still on the loose,

and secondly, that the police would target African Americans

for the murders and thus set the race war in motion.

And looking for high profile targets,

Manson sent his hunting party

to Terry Melcher's old residence on Cielo Drive.

It was location.

He needed to kill famous people

and try to make it look like the Panthers had done it

to get the heat off Bobby Beausoleil.

The place that he was most familiar with

where rich, famous people had to live was Cielo.

If somebody lived where Melcher had lived,

that was somebody important.

The second critical thing why that location was chosen

Tex Watson besides Charlie had been to the house in Cielo

and theoretically knew how to get there from Spahn Ranch.

That's why they picked that house.

The murders that occurred on August 8th, 1969,

were amongst the most brutal crimes of the era,

Sharon Tate and her three house guests

slain without any remorse.

And the following night, the killing spree continued,

with wealthy middle-class couple Rosemary and Leno LaBianca

suffering a similarly violent demise.

Another savage night of killing

but interestingly, in terms of the musical aspect,

this is the night when they decided

to daub "Death to Pigs".

The night before they put "pig" on the door again

referencing back to The Beatles.

The key motive that night was "Helter Skelter"

written on the fridge door.

I have my own feelings

that why the killings stopped at that point,

certainly those sort of killings,

is that when they went back to Spahn's Ranch

and Manson would debrief them of what had gone on.

When he heard Patricia Krenwinkel

had written "Helter Skelter"

in blood on the fridge door, he freaked.

Everyone knew about

Manson's 'Helter Skelter' theories, obsessions.

There was even a nightclub at Spahn's Ranch

called the Helter Skelter.

So I think that's when Manson spooked fully

and that's when the move to Barker Ranch occurred.

But Manson was still short of cash.

No longer worried about his relationships

in the music industry,

he decided he was still owed money

for The Beach Boys' recording of "Cease to Exist",

whose lyrics Dennis had changed

without even asking his permission.

He set out across LA to hunt for the drummer,

and eventually found him with Gregg Jakobson

and The Beach Boys' photographer Ed Roach.

It was just after the Woodstock festival started

so I know it was like a week or two

after the Cielo Drive episode and... he, he came in

and he just jumped into the room

and he looked just like he looked in the newspapers

where his hair was just like standing and he jumped in

and he said, "I've just come from the moon".

I went, "Holy shit, this is that guy Charlie."

Charlie said, "I need to talk with you,"

and he took him outside.

Dennis came back in, walked in, grabbed the guitar

and walked out and came back in without the guitar

and he said, "I had to give him all my money and the guitar

"or he said he was gonna kidnap my son in the morning

"and kill him."

That was... that was over the song.

It was the end of the relationship

and the end of Manson's connections

to the LA music scene.

The following week, he and his followers jumped

into their dune buggies and set out on the road,

heading for the desert.

And while the Los Angeles police force struggled

to make headway in the investigations

of either the Tate or LaBianca murders,

in Death Valley this newly arrived commune

soon sparked the interest of the local law enforcement.

In October, across two raids,

the police arrested the Manson Family

having discovered their fleet of stolen dune buggies.

Charles Manson and some of the murderers

were taken into custody, on far less serious charges,

and while waiting in a detention center,

Family member Susan Atkins,

a participant in both home invasions,

began bragging about the murders to a fellow inmate.

It was the lead the investigation needed.

Connecting the various strands of the story

and interrogating Manson's followers,

the LAPD and the District Attorney

soon were confident they'd found the murderers.

They called a press conference on December 1st, 1969,

to announce that the case was solved.

Charles Manson and his Family became instantly infamous.

My personal reaction was disbelief at first

'cause he didn't seem that bad.

He was weird but I didn't think he was capable.

I didn't think those girls out there in the studio

were capable of stabbing people.

When I read about it, I was nervous. What?

I was in shock, you know. I didn't believe it at first.

The girls... I couldn't believe how they had changed.

I mean, they went out there and slaughtered people.

They're not, "Look at you game girl.

"Give it up. Give it up all your love."

They went out there and viciously killed people.

I was at home and someone called me,

"have you heard what happened?"

When I was told that,

I thought for a second and I said, "That's real.

"That really happened." I wasn't surprised.

It all made sense to me.

It had gotten that far out of balance,

that far out of control.

Within the music world itself

panic quickly spread.

Although Manson and the murderers were behind bars,

many of the extended Family were still free.

Convinced he was the true target of the attack at Cielo Drive,

Terry Melcher in particular was anxious,

while those who had been involved

with Manson in any way

looked to protect their reputations

and distanced themselves from the story.

Terry went and bought a riot gun,

a 12-gauge shotgun with a sawn off short barrel.

It has like six shells in it.

He literally kept it by his front door.

They were very concerned.

Dennis a little bit less but Dennis would more laugh it off

but Terry was yeah... Oh no, Terry took it seriously.

He didn't know what those people were capable of

and he wasn't gonna take a chance.

I got a call from Beach Boy management.

They told me they were going to take the tapes

and put them in a safe place.

They wanted to make sure there were no copies

or anything like that.

Dennis was off to a non-disclosed area.

Nobody knew really where he was

but there was a sense that Dennis was threatened.

It didn't satisfy him at all that Charlie was in jail.

That he wasn't in danger anymore.

Dennis' whole personality changed.

He wasn't at all the same person.

There was a paranoia about him.

The fear of... you know, how close he was to it all...

And as the District Attorney prosecuting the case,

Vincent Bugliosi, began to look for witnesses

to call upon during the trial,

he found those close to Manson in the entertainment world

were unwilling to tarnish their reputations by taking the stand.

Dennis was not going to cooperate with Bugliosi

and neither was Terry.

I believe Terry made a deal with Bugliosi.

What it was I don't know.

Bugliosi wanted to bring Dennis into court,

I mean, a Beach Boy.

He wanted to bring Candice Bergen into court,

Terry's girlfriend.

So, I mean, that couldn't happen in Terry's world.

He did everything possible to... to stay as far away from it

and Dennis did the same thing. OK, I was there.

I'll tell you... So I cooperated.

I wasn't telling any lies

and I didn't see anything criminal happen

so I didn't... I wasn't saying,

"Yeah, I saw the gun or something."

I just told the truth.

Manson, meanwhile, was trying to keep control

of his followers from the inside,

and was eager to generate some income

that would help him do this.

Now that he was on the front pages across the world,

he decided this was the perfect time to release a record,

the rock star dream refusing to die.

Manson felt the tapes

from Brian Wilson's house were brilliant music.

If this was going to be his only chance

to get a musical statement out, he liked that idea.

Also, he had, legal expenses

not just for himself but for the women in the trial.

He desperately had to make sure

that they were going to stay loyal to him.

Their lawyers all wanted to separate their cases

from Manson so that they could claim that,

"Oh, the women were just fooled by this man".

Charlie needed to keep everybody happy.

Charlie had to get money

and what better way to do it, he thought,

than finally releasing this great album of his

that simultaneously would make him a rock star

and at the same that covers all the legal fees.

Manson enlisted Lynette Fromme,

known within the Family as "Squeaky",

to make this happen.

And although she discovered

that the recordings from Brian Wilson's studio

were under lock and key, she convinced Gregg Jakobson

to release tapes from a session he had arranged

at Sound City Studios in mid-1968.

She then called Phil Kaufman to aid her

in the release of the record,

and Kaufman, who at this time believed

Manson must be innocent, agreed to help.

Lynette... Squeaky contacted me,

"We've got to get Charlie's music out,"

'cause somehow he thought that the album would...

people would hear the music and would understand

that what he was doing was valuable.

She got the tape, and I took it into the studio,

we cleaned it up and we did the mix down.

I got some people to chip in some money

to put it out and we made 300 copies.

It was the "Life" magazine cover

which we dropped the 'f' out of 'life'

and it became the 'lie'. It's a lie, he's innocent.

How can you listen to his music,

how can you charge him for such a thing.

* Clang bang clang Went the big iron door

* They put me in a cell With a concrete floor

* Nine other men in that cell with me

* Moanin' their fate, with destiny

* Clang bang clang...

This is... one of the original albums.

You can tell it's original by the yellow label.

Anything else is a bootleg.

So he asked me to get the album and I did.

And to this day I regretted my association,

but you can't divorce yourself from the past.

The record, upon its release,

received none of the success that Manson felt it deserved,

and even his infamy failed to shift any copies.

Manson's career as a musician

I think was of little consequence to people

looking at the headlines of at that time.

I think they saw him more

as a cult leader than a musician,

and when they heard the music, it's difficult to marry that

to the carnage that went on and the horror.

So a curio at best, hugely distasteful,

actually what most people thought of it.

No record company would touch it of any note

and it was not going to get any radio play.

It's just another example

of Manson's innocence stroke hopelessness

that he'd imagined that anyone would want to buy it.

As the Manson trial became

an all-consuming media circus,

the counterculture itself struggled

to deal with this cult leader and his hippy credentials.

As the crusade against the ideals of this movement

had been emboldened

first by Californian Governor Ronald Regan

and then incumbent President Richard Nixon,

conservative American values were proving more robust

than the counterculture had once believed.

While some tried to politicize the Tate-LaBianca murders

and unwisely held Manson up as a revolutionary leader,

most simply acknowledged

that these desperate, shocking acts

had forever tarnished a movement extolling peace and love.

I don't think by design Charles Manson arrived

to destroy the hippy dream, but by God he did,

and people have said that from the moment in December 1969

that Manson was on the front of the newspapers,

anyone resembling a hippy was demonized.

If you were, somebody on the Right,

who just detested everything

that the counterculture stood for,

you couldn't have scripted Charles Manson

and those heinous murders any better.

It gave the Right every weapon it could use.

I mean, there was sex, there was drugs, there was violence.

The Beatles are in there. You know, all of it. All of it.

It just handed it to the Right.

The part of the human spirit

that is more tolerant and open

and trusting and less fearful

is one of our super powers really.

But of course you set yourself up sometimes

and I think that was one of the real shocks of Manson

that much like the Hell's Angels at Altamont,

in some cases we made friends with the wrong people.

For many who had befriended Charles Manson,

he would remain a permanent presence in their life.

While he became an exaggerated villain in popular culture -

a crazed maniac and psychotic mastermind -

for some drawn into his musical journey,

he was a real and complex figure,

and their association with him left lifelong damage.

Having placed such faith in the man he called The Wizard,

after the shocking news of the murders emerged,

Dennis Wilson was cast adrift.

The once vital soul of The Beach Boys

was left haunted by a friendship he could never erase,

and over time he lost himself in drink and drugs.

He died in 1983, aged only 39,

and had refused since Manson's arrest

to ever discuss the affair in public.

He never brought it up

and I didn't think it was my place to bring it up.

So Dennis never spoke about this.

I'm sure he felt responsible to some extent.

He was highly involved in it, he was all mixed up in it.

Dennis never really spoke about the murders.

I mean, he would reflect sometimes

back on his experiences with the Family,

but never... I don't know how much he actually...

You know, I mean, he really did kind of avoid

the whole massacre aspect of it.

Dennis never really recovered

from the emotional hit that he took from it.

Dennis was already the black sheep of the band

and, you know, this just basically...

Just as he was starting to grow out of that

and become something that people were taking

artistically seriously, this happened,

and it just basically stamped him as a loser forever.

I think that he thought of himself that way.

I think it was battle for people to convince him

he was more than that.

I just think that it followed him all the way,

all the way to the end.

I don't think he ever got over it.