If Lennon’s quote sounds like a surprisingly equivocal response to an unrepentant racist and misogynist who masterminded the murder of seven people, one of them eight months pregnant – well, there was a lot of that kind of thing about in the wake of the Tate-LaBianca murders. Initially, at least, pop culture’s obsession with Manson seems to have been fuelled by the widespread belief within the late 60s counterculture that he was innocent, a martyr who had been picked on by police as part of The Man’s war against the long-hairs. If you could make a vague and far from watertight claim for a couple of the songs Manson recorded prior to the murders having some musical value – not least Look at Your Game, Girl – there is absolutely nothing worth hearing in the subsequent recordings. If they didn’t satiate your desire for Manson-related product, his years in prison spawned a steady trickle of “new” Manson albums, featuring material recorded behind bars, their market presumably the kind of deeply wearying people keen to impress upon everyone how incredibly transgressive and daring they are. The recordings Manson made before the murders have spawned umpteen cover versions that stand alongside the umpteen songs inspired by or referencing Manson – from Sonic Youth’s Death Valley ’69 to David Bowie’s Sweet Thing to Ozzy Osbourne’s Bloodbath in Paradise. His influence has seeped into popular culture in more subtle ways: in season six of Mad Men, the character of Don Draper’s wife Megan was deliberately styled to reference Manson’s victim Sharon Tate. Mad Men’s Megan Draper: styled like Sharon Tate. ![]() The killings and the seven-month trial that followed were the subjects of fevered news coverage in the US. Manson occupied a dark, persistent place in American culture, inspiring music, T-shirts and half the stage name of musician Marilyn Manson. ![]() It is believed that Manson intended using the murders to incite an apocalyptic race war he called Helter Skelter, taking the name from the Beatles song. He became a singer-songwriter before the Tate murders and got a break in the music industry when he met Beach Boys' Dennis Wilson, who let him crash at his home. One of their victims was the actor Sharon Tate, who was married to Roman Polanski and was more than eight months' pregnant when she was killed.īy the time of his trial in 1971, Manson had spent half of his life in correctional institutions for various crimes. Some became killers under his messianic influence.ĭespite spending more than 40 years in prison for the murders of seven people in 1969, Manson did not carry out the killings. Instead he c onvinced members of his ‘family’ to murder. He led a cult known as the Manson Family in California, most of whom were disaffected young women. That he took their children in when nobody else would … But of course he’s cracked, all right … he’s barmy.”Ĭharles Manson was one of the most notorious murderers of the 20th century. “That he’s a child of the state, made by us. I just think a lot of the things he says are true,” said John Lennon when an interviewer brought up Manson’s name. “I don’t know what I thought when it happened. And the Beatles, with whom he was obsessed, finally heard about him. That was an era when Neil Young attempted to interest Warner Bros Records in Manson’s “unbelievable” music an offshoot of MCA had been sufficiently interested to pay for Manson to record some demos and Dennis Wilson had mooted him as a potential artist for the Beach Boys’ own label Brother, successfully lobbying the band to record one of his songs, Cease to Exist, under the title Never Learn Not to Love. Before the trial was over, Manson’s debut album had been released, albeit on a tiny label set up expressly for the purpose by his friend, record producer Phil Kaufman, rather than one of the major companies he had courted in the late 60s. He finished up on the front of Rolling Stone magazine, a cover apparently designed to make him look exactly like the rock star he had always dreamed about becoming. ![]() T here is a certain grim irony in the fact that Charles Manson’s trial and conviction on seven counts of first-degree murder got him what he wanted.
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