A DAY OF RECKONING: THE MANSON MURDERS
It’s The Beatles, the music they’re putting out . . . I hear what it relates. It says, ‘Rise.’ It says, ‘Kill.’ Why blame it on me? I didn’t write the music.
– Charles Manson, during his trial
John liked to play games with his lyrics, to tease the ‘pseuds’ who sought hidden meaning in his writing. The White Album’s ‘Glass Onion’ was Lennon’s most pointed allusion to this, a song packed with self-references that mock The Beatles’ own mythology. Regrettably, it was not only pseuds who could misinterpret his and his bandmates’ work but damaged individuals, and, in 1969, the White Album found itself at the centre of one of America’s most harrowing murder cases.
Charles Manson had a troubled childhood. He was born in 1934 to an alcoholic mother and absent father, and was in and out of juvenile and adult correctional facilities for much of his early life. By 1967, a pimp and a petty thief, he found himself in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district, the epicentre of hippie dropout culture. His charisma attracted a gang of followers – mostly young, vulnerable women he called the ‘Manson Family’ – which then developed into a Doomsday cult. In 1968, they travelled to LA and took residence in a dilapidated ranch just outside the city.
Manson was convinced he was a talented singer-songwriter and started to make contacts in the music industry. Through Beach Boy Dennis Wilson, he met Byrds producer and son of Doris Day, Terry Melcher, who invited him to his studio to lay down demos. They also discussed making a documentary about the Family, but Melcher was unsettled by Manson’s behaviour and didn’t think much of his songs. Manson was furious.
When the White Album came out, Manson was convinced that The Beatles were speaking directly to him. He conflated his obsession with the Book of Revelations with ‘Helter Skelter’, believing it to be a warning that an apocalyptic race war was just around the corner, a conflict that would see his Family take their place as rightful leaders. He interpreted ‘Blackbird’ and ‘Rocky Raccoon’ as further hints of Black Power, and ‘Piggies’ as confirmation of that the Establishment was due a day of reckoning.
When the deluded Manson felt that the race war was not coming quickly enough, he decided that the Family should speed things up. His solution was to kill affluent white people in an attempt to make the deaths appear racially motivated.
On 8 August 1969, Manson instructed members of the Family to go to Terry Melcher’s house and kill everyone as gruesomely as possible. The property was occupied by Sharon Tate and Roman Polanski. Polanski was in London working on his latest film, and Tate, eight months’ pregnant, was socialising with friends Jay Sebring, Wojciech Frykowski and Abigail Folger. They were all brutally murdered, and their blood was smeared on the walls with the slogan ‘PIG’. Steven Parent, who was visiting the house’s caretaker at the same time, was also killed. The next day, Manson, who was angry about the sloppiness of the murders the night before, took the Family to shop owners’ Leno and Rosemary LaBianca’s house, where he tied them up and ordered their killing. Again, after their brutal stabbings, the Family daubed the house with bloody messages: ‘Rise’, ‘Death to Pigs’ and ‘Healter [sic] Skelter’.
Manson and his cohorts were convicted of eight murders in total. Manson died behind bars, aged eighty-three, in 2017. Four months later, his ashes were scattered on a California hillside. The mourners included long-time Family member Sandy Good.