By Denise Hamilton MANSON INC. We’re all curious about what might crook to -adjacent wannabe to L.A.’s hurt us. ur-demon. This couldn’t have happened in Des Moines ―Federico García Lorca or Fairbanks. It could only have taken root in the nutrient sludge of sex, rock and roll, trust funders, he Benedict Canyon house drugs, outlaws, movie stars, crime, mysticism, was demolished years ago. and flower power that defined ’60s L.A. A church looks down on And there it bloomed like a noxious weed—in the old ranch, which is the remote sandy canyons of the , the now a state park. Most rarefied green of Bel-Air, the historic hotels, everyone who fell under recording studios, and boulevards of Hollywood his thrall is dead, or aging and the Sunset Strip. quietly in prison. It fed off a society in turmoil, where the old TNone of that matters. The further events re- and new orders clashed and trust in institutions cede into history, the longer their shadow looms, eroded daily. It required the kind of upheaval that and that of their dark progenitor. we see today, as a new reality-altering drug drips That’s the way it is with myth. With the stories into our veins—the internet. that we tell each other, that we’ve handed down Maybe that’s why now, 50 years on, the tale since before we huddled around the cave fire at only resonates more profoundly. night, seeking safety from predators. Those fables He didn’t kill anyone. were filled with gods, mortals, evil, good, power, and He enslaved the will of others so completely forbidden pleasures; they were meant to teach us that they did it for him, laughing and chanting as and scare us and set us on a path of righteousness. they stabbed with their steely knives, grateful to But what if all this time we were just tricking be chosen. More than anything, that’s what repels ourselves, thinking the danger was out there in us, even as it draws us in. And that’s why he tops the dark and we were safe inside. the demonic pantheon, muscling out L.A.’s more What if the predator has been in the cave with prolific serial killers—the Hillside Strangler, the us from the beginning? Night Stalker, the Grim Sleeper. What if he is inside us? The press had to manufacture lurid nick- This story is real. names to amplify their notoriety. He didn’t need It happened 50 years ago, during the extend- that kind of help. Our L.A. demon had only one ed hangover that followed the . Fifty years after the name—his own. said that it slammed the door on the Manson. . But the decade was already on life support. infamous murders, the He finally died in 2017, after surviving almost You all know his name. He was born else- mythology of Manson a half century behind bars. But as we’ve learned where, in obscure poverty, but, like so many, from zombie and vampire flicks, it’s hard to kill was drawn mothlike to the lights of , shows no sign of abating— the undead. the possibility of shedding the past, reinventing We are complicit in stoking his myth. Greed- himself, and claiming the fame and fortune this nor does the pop culture ily we seek answers: Why did he? How could city has always dangled before dreamers with the cottage industry that has they? Was it drugs? The mob? The government? in wiles of a femme fatale. The cops? Was it premeditated, or a robbery or his cell at Here, he began the metamorphosis from petty arisen around him. drug deal gone wrong? Conspiracy theories swirl Medical Facility in Vacaville, 1982 . Photo by Neil Leifer/Getty Images .

22 • JOURNAL OF ALTA CALIFORNIA • JUL-AUG-SEP 2019 CHARLES MANSON MERCHANDISE PHOTOS BY CHRIS HARDY JUL-AUG-SEP 2019 • JOURNAL OF ALTA CALIFORNIA • 23 ground to wreak . by Leonardo DiCaprio and ) as they Manson even tainted my love of , navigate a rapidly changing Hollywood that no MANSON though I never heard the black uprising Manson longer embraces westerns. The cast includes Aus- divined in “Blackbird.” Nor did the proto-punk de- tralian actor Damon Herriman as Charlie, as well livery of “” inspire anything in me but as as Manson follower Squeaky INC. spasmodic flailing, which I’d perfect in L.A. clubs. Fromme. Oh, and DiCaprio also happens to live Later, working as an L.A. Times reporter and at the top of Benedict Canyon, on a street called passing the Hall of Justice, I pictured the Manson Cielo Drive, next door to a beautiful blond actress around our nightmare-encrusted brains—as they girls walking the corridors with their carved-X named (portrayed by Margot Rob- did around his. foreheads, shaved heads, and tatterdemalion out- bie). So yeah, plenty of Manson, though perhaps Many of us faced dark times, dreamed of fits. They were modern Furies from Greek myth, the biggest fantasy for us in 2019 is a fading cow- remaking the world, sought answers. Would we flickering behind spacey smiles. Manson was boy who can afford Benedict Canyon. have fallen prey to him? To the promise of insta- Loki, the trickster god who could slip his chains The film captures a world, like Manson’s, in family, free love, a communal utopia? Would our and disappear into the ether. Lo and behold, he which fame was always tantalizingly close, or children have? did, returning as the ghost in the machine called fleeting even when you reached it. Will the day ever come when his legend crests, the internet. In his old age, he even found a new was a 1920s-era set that was being used then slowly dwindles until he’s reduced to a bug- Manson girl to adore him and shave off her hair, mainly as a horse ranch when Manson lived eyed avatar of pop evil, screaming his helter-skel- a 20-ish daughter of Missouri Baptists called Star there. Several filmmakers wanted to make doc- ter gibberish into the void? who moved to Corcoran to be near him. umentaries about his family’s hippie lifestyle. Probably not. Manson’s associates knew experimental film- Not when each year brings new books, movies, This is the closest to Pulp Fiction that maker and had been active on the TV shows, songs, websites, podcasts, YouTube I’ve done. fringes of the film and music worlds. videos, bus tours. Not when there’s still such But the big break never came. And so, eaten a robust Manson merch market online—from —, away by hate and jealousy, lusting for revenge T-shirts and coffee cups to his jailhouse flip-flops on Once Upon a Time in…Hollywood and power, Manson took a different path. (asking price: $5,000) to white infant onesies emblazoned with his scrawny, hairy image and us tours are but a sliver of There’s a time for living that evil stare. the pop culture juggernaut Time keeps on flying Manson. that is Manson Inc. The Think you’re loving baby movies, books, reportage, But all you’re doing is crying The truth behind the ’s podcasts, websites, musi- crimes is even weirder, darker, and cals, and even an opera —Charles Manson, more complicated than you know. continue to arrive. In the “Look at Your Game, Girl” 2015 filmManson Family Vacation, two dysfunc- —Description of Esotouric’s Btional brothers tour Manson crime sites while anson was a crap Mansonland Bus Tour trying to bond. In a recent TV series, Aquarius, musician and song- David Duchovny plays an LAPD detective in 1967 writer. But the course n an overcast day in late win- tracking down a missing teen girl who has joined of history might have ter, I clamber aboard the bus. the Manson family. Karina Longworth’s excellent been different if he’d The Manson bus. podcast You Must Remember This devoted an en- made it in rock and Not the beat-up one the tire season to Manson. Numerous novels use the roll. family lived in. That’s long ANDREW COOPER/SONY PICTURES crimes as backdrop (Steve Erickson’s Zeroville) or He got several shots in 1968, when Beach Boy gone. whose brother used to pick up the Manson girls comedy suddenly feels less innocuous: “Turn Up Actress , who plays Sharon Tate in explore growing up in a Manson-like (Emma MDennis Wilson picked up two Manson girls hitch- This black luxury liner hitchhiking. She has friends who were “creepy- Charlie,” it warns us. “Tables Will Be Turned.” director Quentin Tarantino’s new film Once Upon a Time Cline’s ). The angles and approaches to hiking on Sunset and brought them to his Pacific tour was dreamed up by married cultural histo- crawled” by the Manson family—those practice It’s just a coincidence, man. in…Hollywood, filming a scene. The movie, set in the the 50-year-old story are as inexhaustible as Palisades mansion for a romp. Within weeks, Orians Kim Cooper and Richard Schave, founders runs they’d make, breaking into homes, prowling We pass what was once a hair salon owned by summer of 1969, explores Hollywood and celebrity . our imaginations. Manson and his family were living there of the sightseeing company Esotouric. During our around, and leaving traces that they’d been there. , one of the inspirations for the film From June to November last year, L.A. and tooling around town in Wilson’s four-hour expedition, we’ll visit Manson-related “That was my time,” she says. “This is my his- Shampoo, who was murdered with his friend Eyes wide shut, we reconstruct them, visit them, residents might have thought they’d burgundy Rolls-Royce. Wilson liked sites while guest host and author Brad Schreiber’s tory.” and former lover Tate on Cielo Drive. The salon’s summon their ghosts. And we shiver. stumbled through a portal into late- Manson’s guitar playing and got him a lecture connects our demon to organized crime, Our first stop is El Coyote, an L.A. classic gone, but the words “Dolls Kill” are scrawled, Later, Cooper and I discuss Elizabeth Short, the 1960s Tinseltown. recording gig. drug dealers, Black Panthers, sex workers, known more for its strong fishbowl graffiti-style, on a nearby storefront. It’s only the Black Dahlia, whose dismembered body was found That was when the Quentin He even introduced him to Terry and motorcycle gangs. margaritas than for its food, name of a shop, not a reference to Manson’s girls. in a Crenshaw bean field in 1947. Just as Manson Tarantino show rolled in. Bygone Melcher, the son of Cooper and Schave also lead where Sharon Tate ate her At least the letters are white, not written in blood. epitomized the excess of the ’60s, the Black Dahlia restaurants, shops, and movie , who ultimately de- tours that reveal Los Angeles final dinner with friends. They don’t say “Pig.” was a cautionary tale for the film noir ’40s. theaters like the Pussycat clined to sign Manson. Maybe through the eyes of Raymond As we hurtle through The sun emerges, lighting up the Hollywood “They’re both blank slates,” Cooper muses. and the Vogue were mag- he thought Manson stank. Chandler, the Black Dahlia, the city’s past, we use sign like the Promised Land. Then gloom descends “Anything you want to know about the 1940s, Beth ically re-created along Maybe he’d heard about and Charles Bukowski. They’re our smartphones to aug- once more and we drive into darkness. It’s 1 p.m. Short can be it. A hustler, a semi-prostitute, an stretches of Sunset how Manson had pulled all popular, but this one is off ment the lecture, mak- Los Angeles is beaming secret messages to me, actress, this good girl who was mentally disordered and Hollywood a knife in the studio the charts. It sold out so fast ing the years stretch and its native daughter, on a wavelength that hasn’t by grief. In the same way, Charlie can be a victim or Boulevards, and because he didn’t they added a second one. That double back like poison existed for 50 years. a monster. He can be a total charlatan or a maniac. the sidewalks like the way Wil- sold out too. taffy. I scroll through pho- We’re on Hollywood Boulevard now, passing You can project anything onto them that you want. were thronged son’s team wanted I scan my fellow tour-istas for tos of the trial, then glance the renovated Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, where Their personalities were performative.” with long-haired to change his music. Manson groupies. But all I clock out the window, where the the first were held in 1929. By “I am only what you made me,” Manson taunt- girls wearing mini- Despite his lack of are curious Angelenos from 20 to sun is trying to emerge from the late 1960s, it had fallen on such hard times ed the world. “I am only a reflection of you.” skirts, boots, and crochet purses and musical chops, Manson managed 70, loaded down with snacks and water the clouds. We pass a Starbucks, that Manson was running prostitutes there. I don’t remember the Manson killings, but I long-haired guys with bandannas, to achieve rock infamy decades bottles, cheerfully embarking on a descent to and suddenly the coffee mermaid We zigzag onto Franklin Avenue, and our read my parents’ copy of Helter Skelter like all peace beads, and muscle cars. later. Guns N’ Roses covered his the dark side. warps into a wild-haired Manson girl. guide points out the site of a long-demolished my friends. For years, I gave long-haired hip- Tarantino has been secretive song “Look at Your Game, Girl” I meet the 30-ish daughter of cops whose We turn onto Fairfax. A guy talking to himself fleabag apartment where Manson once lived. pies of both sexes a wide berth. There were still about his new film,Once Upon a as a hidden track on their 1993 parents told her all the stories. A techie in a on the street sports the long hair, beard, wild Now it’s a parking lot. I think about how so much Mansonites around, including Lynette “Squeaky” Time in…Hollywood, which opens The Spaghetti Incident? Manson T-shirt who complains that people don’t eyes, and amphetamine physique of a 21st- of L.A. has been bulldozed and rebuilt. The old Fromme, who tried to kill President Ford in 1975. July 26, except to say that it’s not Brian Hugh Warner won mul- remember him anymore. A young true crime fan century Manson. Does he also preach race wars landmarks, famous and infamous. And yet their Like the black goo that bubbles up from the La about Manson. The film follows a cow- tiplatinum success after taking with her aunt. A woman from the West Valley and Armageddon? A billboard for a afterimages are seared into our collective retinas. Brea Tar Pits, they emerged from cracks in the boy actor and his stunt double buddy (played the stage name

24 • JOURNAL OF ALTA CALIFORNIA • JUL-AUG-SEP 2019 JUL-AUG-SEP 2019 • JOURNAL OF ALTA CALIFORNIA • 25 Manson realized at least one of his goals: his vegetarian adherents had farmed and kept goats music is better known today than ever, his songs and sheep. Their wild-haired, group MANSON recorded by global superstars and disseminated had followed Krishna Venta, “the Master,” who online. preached an American Armageddon in which As for Le Pig, it was torn down with the house all but his disciples would be destroyed in a race INC. in 1994. The owner built a new house and had war. Marriages were sexless, but Krishna Venta the street address changed, but people still arrive slept with a different female member each night daily to view and ponder the blood-stained earth. and snuck off to L.A.’s Sodom for gambling and working snippets of Charlie’s lyrics into his sprees. In 1958, two male followers confronted debut. Manson’s eyes glittered when he looked Krishna Venta, and a bomb they and sit at up at me. I was not what he expected. were carrying exploded, killing opposite ends of the musical spectrum, but they I was darker than assumed, a full all involved. both drew inspiration from Manson. head taller and outweighed him by 80 Cooper and Schave, Listening to the dulcet harmonies on the pounds…. His angular face and sable who have researched Beach Boys’ “,” a rework- shoulder-length hair gave him the look the cult, say that Man- ing of Manson’s “Cease to Exist,” is spooky. This of a shrunken, wily-eyed Christ…. son spent time with the is not the tender melancholy of . A He asserted he wasn’t a racist but a Krishnavantas and ab- dissonant specter hovers over it. realist…. Didn’t I realize that what sorbed their ideas. The spent only one mad summer Nietzsche wrote wasn’t intended for the site has passed through with Manson, then fled into the arms of more tra- likes of me? Especially the part about a various owners’ hands ditional demons. A generation later, race of Supermen? since the 1960s. According of Nine Inch Nails submerged himself in the ma- to newspaper stories, the area is cabre by moving into to record —Wanda Coleman, “Love-Ins with Nietzsche” a stronghold for an anti-government conspiracy his landmark 1994 album . group called Sovereign Citizens. A decade after Reznor claims—somewhat disingenuously—that n the summer of 1968, a young Afri- the Manson murders, his paranoid quasi-reli- he didn’t know it was the Tate house when he moved can American poet often spent time gious prophecies found new expression in the in. Still, he embraced the setting, hoping to infuse with her family in Griffith Park. One racist, anti-Semitic novel The Turner Diaries his already dark music with some Manson juju. He day, her musician husband, who was and the string of white power massacres that christened the home studio he built there Pig, the white, told her they were moving began with Timothy McVeigh’s bombing of the word a Manson girl had scrawled in blood across the their blanket to “Charlie’s” tent. Oklahoma City federal building, which killed 168 front door the night of the murders. When Reznor When Manson saw she had a book people. Manson was just ahead of his time. moved out, he took the door as a souvenir. by Nietzsche, he asked to borrow it and, to her Isurprise, politely returned it two weeks later, Merry Christmas Charlie Manson after which they debated black revolution. In a 2000 chapbook, Wanda Coleman recalls that —South Park conversation. “Manson maintained that if…revolution of any t’s been 21 years since the South Park kind was to take place in the U.S., only Whites episode in which cartoon Manson could defeat Whites because Blacks—if Martin breaks out of prison with Eric’s uncle Luther King were any example—did not have the and spends the Christmas holiday guts or the intelligence to lead either an armed or JOHN GILHOOLEY with the Cartman family, where he organized resistance.” Clockwise from top: Esotouric’s Mansonland Bus Tour finally learns the error of his ways At this, Coleman left. But at his urging, she stops near the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood; Sharon and converts the swastika tattoo into also went to “check out his women.” Tate’s sister, Debra, at the Icons & Idols: Hollywood & a smiley face. When the cops arrive, Manson sur- “Two of the dazed-eyed naiads took me by Street Contemporary Art Auction preview in Beverly Irenders. He knows he belongs in prison. the arm and led me to the women’s quarters…. Hills, 2018; a still from a 1998 episode of the cartoon It seems that each generation gets the Man- They liked playing with our kids. But I could not South Park, in which an animated Charles Manson son it deserves. Drug-addled hippie Manson. connect. We had nothing in common. Their sole breaks out of jail and learns the error of his ways . Goth Lucifer music Manson. And today, white interest was their reverence for their Charlie. supremacist, Hollywood, and defanged cultural They spent hours discussing his needs, wants influencer Manson. and lessons. Otherwise, they seemed spaced out, It’s easy to gloss over the real-life costs of or high—flitting about without ambition or pur- pop culture’s breezy embrace of a sinister and pose. I had no experience with the drug culture murderous cult leader. Debra Tate, Sharon Tate’s and no way of understanding who they were.” sister, who became an advocate for victims’ rights Manson also invited Coleman to Spahn Ranch after her sister’s murder, is dismayed by the at- and promised her husband much-needed work. tention lavished on Manson, instead of on his He went alone and returned empty-handed. victims. She once confronted Trent Reznor, ac- “I’d come home and find bouquets of dead ros- Manson and his followers were bad people, he cusing him of using the murders for malevolent es and lit candles in the front gate,” Reznor said told her, and the “work” was stealing cars. publicity. She isn’t happy about the Tarantino at the time. “It was really eerie. Who were they It wasn’t until the following year that Coleman movie, either. leaving the shrines for: Tate or Manson?” learned how bad Manson was, and that he had As Tate told TMZ, “To [celebrities] it’s a pay- The ghosts claimed their pound of flesh. hoped the Tate-LaBianca murders would trigger check and these people just don’t care. They are Reznor entered his own downward spiral of a race war that his family would sit out in the des- terribly hurtful to the actual family and all the drugs and depression, though the album would ert. (Indeed, he was captured at in living victims. They don’t give a shit.” go on to be a worldwide hit and defining sonic .) In Manson’s worldview, black people But sadly, Tate is fighting the darker side of moment of the 1990s. would win the race war, then invite him to rule over COMEDY CENTRAL SARAH MORRIS/GETTY IMAGES human nature. As for Manson’s music, you can judge for your- them after being unable to govern on their own. Manson is a virus, and we’re all infected. n self. If you download his songs, profits go to the Coleman’s chance encounter underscores world, yes, but it, too, revealed his racism. “Paradoxical in all things, Southern California Island on the Land. L.A. native, crime novelist, and former L.A. son of Wojciech Frykowski—the Polish filmmak- what was initially downplayed owing to his more Manson’s apocalyptic notions weren’t even orig- is a land of exaggerated religiosity and also of That included the followers of Krishna Venta. Times reporter Denise Hamilton is the editor of er murdered along with Tate—who won a court sensational crimes. Despite his denials, Manson inal; they were cobbled from the beliefs of previous careless skepticism, where old faiths die and new When Manson moved to Spahn Ranch, he found Los Angeles Noir and Los Angeles Noir 2: The judgment against Manson. Other tape-recorded hated and feared African Americans. The swasti- , , and charlatans who had infested the cults are born,” wrote historian Carey McWil- remnants of this utopian cult living one hill over Classics and was a finalist for the Edgar Award. Manson songs have also surfaced. ka carved between his eyes? A big fuck-you to the region almost since the pueblo’s founding. liams in the 1946 classic Southern California: An in Box Canyon, where since 1949 white-robed Read more about her at denisehamilton.com.

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