Charles Manson, singer/songwriter

Jeanie

You should read this book. It's an excellent insight as told by the prosecutor of the Manson trials Vincent Bugliosi.


I've also just purchased the DVD of the movie Helter Skelter also based on the book.

I find Manson a fascinating and horrible subject. And would be very interested to hear his music.

The fact that he did know and spend time with the Beach Boys just blows my mind. What on earth must that have been like for them to discover?

musicismylife78

its more than just the beach boys who knew manson.
Uncle Neil Young seems to have supported him, in that he wrote a song off On the Beach from mansons point of view. And even sent manson a motorcycle in prison.

Devendra Banhart, the new indie folk icon, has a manson look to him, and rotuinely mentions in interviews that he feels manson is a hero. he routinely covers one of mansons songs in concert

System of a Down thanked manson for his words and inspiration in the liner notes to Toxicity. In those liner notes you can see them in studio, and on one of the walls are a dozen pictures of manson. They included a quote of his on one of their newer records.

Joni Mitchell, refered to him in song as "the lord on death row"

the hippie press and the hippie culture of the late 60's, supported manson at least initially, and many publications at the time of the murders showed manson as a hippie on a cross.

The notorious activist group the weathermen would greet each other with the "four finger fork" salute at meetings because they "dug" that manson's followers killed the labiancas with a fork.

I have long found manson a polarizing and interesting character. His ideas are bizaare, but he is very intelligent and alot of what he says makes sense.

here is some of his 1970 testimony:
You eat meat and you kill things that are better than you are, and then you say how bad, and even killers, your children
are. You made your children what they are. . . .

These children that come at you with knives. they are your children. You taught them. I didn't teach them. I just tried to help them stand up. . . .

You should all turn around and face your children and start following them and listening to them.

The music speaks to you every day, but you are too deaf, dumb, and blind to even listen to the music. You are too deaf, dumb and blind to stop what you are doing. You point and you ridicule
Most of the people at the ranch that you call the Family were just people that you did not want, people that were alongside the road, that their parents had kicked out, that did not want to go to Juvenile Hall. So I did the best I could and I took them up on my garbage dump and I told them this: that in love there is no wrong. . . .

I told them that anything they do for their brothers and sisters is good if they do it with a good thought. . . .

I was working at cleaning up my house, something that Nixon should have been doing. He should have been on the side of the road, picking up his children, but he wasn't. He was in the White House, sending them off to war. . . .

I don't understand you, but I don't try. I don't try to judge nobody. I know that the only person I can judge is me . . . But I know this: that in your hearts and your own souls, you are as much responsible for the Vietnam war as I am for killing these people
I can't dislike you, but I will say this to you: you haven't got long before you are all going to kill yourselves, because you are all crazy. And you can project it back at me . . . but I am only what lives inside each and everyone of you.

My father is the jailhouse. My father is your system. . . I am only what you made me. I am only a reflection of you.

---

this excerpt shows remarkable sociological depth in terms of what was going on in the late 60's in american politics, in american familes, and in the hearts and minds of the youth at that time.

Thats something that has always reasonated with me. Mansons words in the above excerpt are correct. What he did and what his followers did wasnt good, but we shouldnt just lock people up. And his words show why.

It has always made me angry. What did the parents at that time think would happen? What did people think would happen as kids saw their fellow kids being shipped off to die in Vietnam? What would be the consequences? Obviously the adults didnt listen. As manson said, the music was speaking to the adults in the 60's, in the form of The Beatles, Dylan and Jefferson Airplane, all talking about what was happening, but the adults didnt listen. Now we are stuck in the same situation, a war that has gone on 4 years. Thousands of youth dead on both sides. Politicians and adults who refuse to listen. And music that speaks about the issues Pearl Jam, Bruce, uncle Neil, Tool, Dylan all are continuing to speak out. Yet they dont listen.

What do you think will happen?

Its obvious to me and anyone who has a brain, that we are heading for the same situation as the late 60's. Where fraggings of officers in vietnam, drugged out vets, and lost children back home walked dazed on the streets. And where adults were slaughtered by children.

As long as the war continues this is inevitable. A manson of our generation will rear his or her head. Its inevitable. Manson in the 60's was a logical extention of the war and its aftermath. When children die before their parents it upsets the natural balance. Parents die before kids, thats the way it goes, and thats the way it should happen. And when that is upset, children are aware, and they react.

I want nothing more than to see all my brothers and sisters home from this war tonight. But as long as the war continues we should expect these things to happen. And thats a sad sad fact. When the music speaks to youth as it currently does, and when Bruce sings "bring em home", yet the adults continue sending kids to wholesale slaughter and they are butchered in iraq. What the hell do you think is the expected response by youth? Is it to say "excuse me ms and sir, but you are killing my generation"? Unfortunatly it isnt.

Jeremy1012

Matty Boy wrote:

I've always wondered what Charlie thought of Axl's version of this song.

and indeed Axl's liking for Manson t-shirts in the early 90s (see the video for Estranged)