The strange history of The Beach Boys and serial killer Charles Manson
News.com, Australia/March 13, 2016
By Nathan Jolly
WHEN people speak about the dangers of hitchhiking, the warning is usually directed at the one hopping into the vehicle. But when Dennis Wilson — drummer for The Beach Boys — picked up two teenage girls in early 1968 and convinced them to come back to his Sunset Boulevard mansion to hang out, he couldn’t have imagined the evil he was inviting into his life.
The girls were part of the Manson Family, a cult led by charismatic criminal Charles Manson, whose young members quickly moved into Wilson’s house. Just over a year later, the family perpetrated one of the most shocking and infamous crimes of the past century — killing nine people in four locations over a period of five weeks, in what has become known as the Tate/LiaBianca murders.
The Beach Boys soundtracked a perpetually sunny California. But their rose-coloured tales of first dates, surfing safaris, and puppy love couldn’t have been in starker contrast to what happened in 1969.
Interestingly, it was Dennis’ spiritual retreat to India in 1968 with the Beatles, folk singer Donovan, and fellow Beach Boys members that sowed the seeds for this fateful encounter — or at least instilled the mindset that would see Wilson throw open his house to strangers.
In an article published that year, hilariously titled “Dennis Wilson: I Live With 17 Girls” (boy, did that living arrangement backfire!), Wilson tells Record Mirror: “I told them [the girls] about our involvement with the Maharishi and they told me they too had a guru, a guy named Charlie who’d recently come out of jail after 12 years. He drifted into crime, but when I met him I found he had great musical ideas. We’re writing together now. He’s dumb, in some ways, but I accept his approach and have learnt from him.”
At first Dennis Wilson was taken by Charles Manson, and his unorthodox lifestyle. Manson was a struggling musician, and Wilson provided him the types of contacts necessary to achieve his dreams of stardom.
Wilson introduced him to record producer Terry Melcher, who Manson later felt slighted by; his home was the scene of the tragic Tate murders after an enraged Manson mistakenly believed Melcher still lived there.
Wilson also financed recording sessions with Manson and his older brothers Brian and Carl, who produced approximately 10 songs for a debut album — the results of which most likely will never see the light of day. (The perverse possibilities of Brian’s nostalgic, honeyed production mixed with Manson’s message are almost too much to bear.)
In August 1968, Manson threatened Wilson with a bullet, and the relationship swiftly broke down. According to longtime Beach Boys collaborator Van Dyke Parks, Manson presented the bullet, telling Wilson, “Every time you look at it, I want you to think how nice it is your kids are still safe.”
A physical altercation followed — or as Parks put it: “Dennis grabbed Manson by the head and threw him to the ground … He beat the living shit out of him.” Shortly after, a shaken Wilson abandoned the house, never to return. He refused to ever speak on record about this period.
As a creepy postscript, a song Manson wrote in 1968, the ominously-titled Cease To Exist, was reworked slightly by the Beach Boys as the softer — but still eerie — Never Learn Not To Love, and released on the band’s 20/20 album in February, 1969 — hitting stores less than six months before the murders.
With Manson owing Dennis over $100,000 by that point, Wilson took the copyright and was credited as the song’s sole composer — meaning many who cheerfully hummed away to the song over the following years had no idea of the inherent evil of its actual composer, or the twisted backstory that led to the song’s existence.
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