There's something kind of quaint about the whole Manson thing to me.
I don't know if you guys agree, but like, and no one get mad at me for this, but just like in today's age when, you know, like it's been well documented, like the era of the serial killers, like kind of past us at this point, like the 60s and 70s in particular were really high volume serial killers eras, you know, and a lot of people make claims about like sociological reasons that that was happening and taking place.
Yeah, leaded gasoline and shit too. Exactly.
But like in today, in today's era, when the acts of violence, you know, public violence that we're most familiar with are just like spontaneous mass shootings, you know, school shootings, or like the Stephen Paddock shit, like, that stuff is so much more kind of, to me, it's so much more viscerally kind of terrifying and like, just nihilistic, because like, Manson, I can almost kind of
almost kind of understand like sort of where he's like he was a frustrated artist and like took too many tabs of acid and went off the deep end at a certain point um but like the the type of evil and violence that we're familiar with today seems so much less i can't understand that shit nearly to the level that i can like sort of understand this weird
hippie burnout freak who was making like kind of shitty Bob Dylan lite albums and trying to get like a bunch of girls to fuck him, basically.
Does that make sense?All right.I'll try to dig you out of this.
Well, I think it's I think it's very juvenile, like compared to a lot of the stuff we see today where someone like brings an AR-15 into a preschool and just domes like 30 kids.
It's a playing pretend thing.I mean, it still operates from this kind of naive role-playing and kind of like just getting off on the imaginative aspects of all of this.It's not like some cold calculated plan.The whole thing was chaotic.
I think the way that it ended up actually happening From what I understand, it's kind of miraculous in the bad way that it even happened.Yes.How many stupid crackpot schemes had this person had in his life, and this is just the one that gets done?
Well, that's like one of the things that I... maybe one of the controversial things that I believe about Manson is that I don't think that the murders were his idea.I really don't think that, like,
I think some of the people that he had brought into his orbit, specifically Tex Watson, if you want to talk about acid and drugs destroying people's brains,
There's an incredible anecdote in the Manson Autobiography about how Tex Watson walked into the kitchen at the Spahn Ranch, or it might have been the Barker Ranch, but one of the ranches.
Walked into the kitchen and this guy named Indian Joe, who is also one of the peripheral family members, who also was incidentally Italian and not Indian.Sure, right.
Obviously, someone named Indian Joe is not going to be Indian at all.
Yeah. um was had like was trying to turn make belladonna root tea and belladonna root is like kind of like deterra or like angel trumpets like a delirium like a really scary like even the most hardened psychedelic explorers are just like don't do it
Yeah, the kind of thing that people post in the Reddit drug forums is like, I have not recovered from this.I'm traumatized and I wish I didn't do it.And you're supposed to boil it and make tea out of it.
And Tex Watson took the root and just took a bite out of it.And apparently he was never the same after that.He was pretty fucked up even before that, but after that he was like... Permanently gone.I mean, also, this is Manson.
You have to take every single Manson story with a grain of salt.Sure.
there's a part where he says that he learned how to sword fight from matadors when he went to mexico city there's like totally dude one of the things that i believe from this autobiography that is like genuinely clear to me is that he didn't mean for anyone to really get killed i don't think he minded when the first few because the first people they killed were like these black drug dealers who came
to hang out.And he talks about that like, well, you know, that's just like, whatever.Who cares about it?Yeah.Who gives a shit?Yeah.
And, um, but when he, like, really what he just, all he wanted was for all the teenage girls he had in his thrall to not leave because everyone wanted to leave when they went out to the desert.
So he started being like, you got to stay here because, uh, the race war is going to happen soon.
Yeah. I mean, it's possible that it wasn't his idea.He seems like a coward.
I mean, it's worth stating, at least just I'm sure this is understood for a lot of people, but like Charles Manson was not present in the house, like with Sharon Tate and the whole crew.Yeah.
The murders took place at, you know, it was supposedly under his direction that Tex Watson and whichever girls went with him did all that shit.But like Manson, as terrible and grotesque and awful as this guy was, didn't actually
Yeah, do that specific shit himself.
I do think that he at least the tape murders He weren't his idea.But once they did the tape murders, I think the LaBianca murders were like he was like, all right, let's In for a penny in four pounds.
Yeah, exactly I do think that the LaBianca murders were his idea and I think he was I think it is true that he was in the car outside while they were doing the murders and But he's like he's just a career criminal.
He's like a mentally challenged career criminal.Sure.He was like 60s Jeffrey Epstein.If Jeffrey Epstein was like mentally challenged five foot four and really poor.
He is kind of speculated to have operated a sort of Epstein-esque role, like purveying... Oh, he did.
Giving young girls over to celebrities who then, I'm sure, would not want to be publicly associated with him. actually kind of having probably blackmail material on these people.
And even if he didn't have that, I mean, he was definitely in a position to offer illicit substances and experiences.
I don't even think blackmail was a factor until after the murders because something's so clear from reading all of this shit and from reading about LA in this period in the 60s and everything you've ever heard is that it's just so normalized.
What's going to happen?He's going to be like, Jack Nicholson had sex with a 14-year-old girl.He's going to be like, tell that to the newspaper, they're going to be like, yeah, of course, everyone is doing that.
Everyone's a pedophile in Hollywood in this period.I think it's only after the murders that it was waking up from a trance and it's like, oh, fuck.
I think that's really partially why it was such a seismic event, is that Manson was in all of these crazy circles with all of these huge movie stars and musicians and everything.
And all of them were having sex with his girls and like tolerating his insanity to kind of just use him for drugs and pussy.And then after he did the murders, they were like, oh, wait, that guy was pretty bad, actually.
And so was like everything that he was doing and everything that I did around him.
It is kind of a complicated story when you look at him as a character.I've never... I mean, I don't want this podcast to be like, we're officially claiming that Manson had no part in these murders.
That is surely... Oh no, he had a part in them, and he should be in jail forever.
No one's claiming that.Yes, yes, absolutely.
The kind of evil he is I think is worth looking into, and the kind of evil that I think you get reading more about him in these anecdotes and just cumulatively the picture that is painted of him is not necessarily an unfiltered pure evil as much as it is a completely tangled up mess.
that has no real way to stop itself from being evil when it's convenient.
Yeah, it's like he kind of has a moral compass that's like one degree off from the standard moral compass of the times.Which over time just means it's... Yeah, he's been walking in that wrong direction for so long that it's just like... Adds up.Yeah.
Yeah. He's more interesting to think about than, you know, serial killers or the Columbine kids or something, you know, not that it's an interesting competition between, again, mass murderers.
We should spend a little bit of time talking about- Why are we talking about him on the Beach Boys podcast?
Why are we talking about Charles Manson, which we'll get to shortly.
Hassa, do you have, just to the extent that it's interesting and that you have any sort of information to deliver, you know, we'll resume the Beach Boys story once he gets out of prison, but leading up to him getting into prison, anything, any fun facts about
the early years of Charles Manson.
Yeah, from he was in a boys reformatory from like 12 to 18 and he got raped like 100 times a day.Okay, well, there's some really horrifying and graphic parts during that.So that's a fun fact.
In jail, he learned how to play music in jail, like learned how to play the guitar from like a bunch of old 50s jailbirds.And he was really digging that scene.
There's this guy named Creepy Karpis who, if anyone is familiar with true crime history and is as obsessed with it as I am, you will recognize Creepy Karpis as a member of the Ma Barker gang, like an associate of Bonnie and Clyde, and is just this weird guy, like bank robber from like the 30s and 40s.
And Yeah, this guy like taught him how to play guitar.And he had a bunch of different instructors.The first time he dropped acid was at a Grateful Dead concert.He really loves music.He loves rock songs?Yeah, that's pretty much it.
He was imprisoned down there on Terminal Island in South Bay, Los Angeles.Very weird place.I've never actually like been there specifically, but just the whole like San Pedro area, which is where it is, is sort of a liminal space.
And then, yeah, I mean, once he's out, he moves on up to San Francisco and just kind of bums around for a little bit in the hate scene.And I think he's over in Berkeley as well.
and just kind of figuring out how to string one day to another, and then ultimately ends up returning back down south to Southern California, which on that note, I can deliver some information here for our Beach Boys out there.
I'm going to quote from Stephen Gaines here a little bit.
I'm just going to set the scene for our friend Old Dennis here, late spring of 68, nearly three o'clock in the morning, returned home to his newly rented home at 14400 Sunset Boulevard down there close to the beach. Dennis had not left the outside.
Spotlights turned on as he pulled his silver Ferrari GTB down the long curving driveway.He was surprised to see that the house was well lit inside, seemingly full of activity.He stopped the car near the rear of the house.
As he got out, the back door swung open and a small man emerged.He was a remarkable vision, like a hippie from a gothic horror movie.He was a slight fellow, scarcely more than five feet tall and a bit hunchbacked.
He wore a work shirt, jeans, and fringed buckskin shoes.His dark, shaggy hair was shoulder-length, and even in the shadows, Dennis could detect a strange, almost crazed look in his dark eyes.
Where this guy's getting any of this information, who knows?But it's a good scene-setting device.Dennis instinctively felt a chill. Something told him this was no ordinary housebreaker and no ordinary hippie.
Without even knowing why, he heard himself ask, are you going to hurt me?The man looked wounded.Do I look like I'm going to hurt you, brother?He asked. Before Dennis could answer, the man dropped to his knees.
Dennis stood there, frozen, as the man leaned forward and kissed his sneakers reverently.Who are you?Dennis asked in wonder.I'm a friend, the man said, and invited Dennis into his own house.The man, of course, is Charles Manson.
He's here because Dennis had picked up two hitchhikers earlier in the day, one who went by the name Yellowstone and another who went by the name Marnie Reeves.
These people turned out to be Ella Jo Bailey and Patricia Krenwinkel, we'll come back to her a little ways down the line.One of the killers.Yes.
Dennis picked them up to fuck them, which he did when he brought them back to his house and they later brought Charles Manson and the rest of the family over because they knew it was a real sick pad and they could all hang out there and have a good time.
So that was the introduction of Charles Manson and Dennis Wilson.Dennis literally walked dick first into Charles Manson and the family.
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