Cease to Exist

Charles Manson was born in Cincinnati Ohio to a sixteen-year-old woman named Kathleen Maddox who was originally from a Conservative family in Kentucky. His biological father was believed to be a man named Colonel Hendersen Scott, Jr. from of Catlettsburg Kentucky whom Manson had no memory of. His birth certificate only listed his name as "Manson" after his mother married a man named William Eugene Manson who worked as a dry cleaner. Young Charles was mostly left with babysitters while his mother spent most of her time on alcohol binges. Maddox and Manson would divorce on April 30th 1937. Two years later Maddox was arrested for assault and robbery with Kathleen earning a five year jail sentence. Young Carlie's care was placed with relatives of Maddox in West Virginia. He would discover a love for music while living with them thanks to the piano in their house.

Maddox was paroled in 1942 and moved with Charles to Charleston West Virginia. She continued to spend her nights drinking while young Charlie developed a talent for truancy. after a move to Indianapolis Indiana Maddox re-married to a man she met through Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.

As a teenager Manson was arrested countless times and spent most of his time incarcerated and learning criminal trades from his various cellmates.

In his early twenties he aspired to be a pimp. However, his ability to get away with various crimes was not usually successful.

At one point when he was not in prison he was briefly married to a waitress in West Virginia. after the failed marriage, he traveled to New Mexico to establish himself as a pimp but was soon arrested again and was sentenced to ten years at a medium security prison. While learning guitar and serving his sentence in the year 1964 he overheard something on the radio that would change his life and ambitions forever. The sound was the first American single from a rock group from Liverpool England called The Beatles "I Want To Hold Your Hand" This group who would dominate US pop radio for the rest of the decade and would factor largely in Manson's new aspirations as a Singer/Songwriter. Manson was later transferred to the Terminal Island prison in Los Angeles California where he would start writing songs on the guitar with encouragement by fellow inmate Phil Kaufman who also told Charlie about a contact in the music business. Manson was released from prison with a clear ambition, to become a successful musician. He was thirty-two years old.

He first went to San Francisco which was then an established base for the counterculture which that was attracting young people throughout America. He would immerse himself in the San Francisco cultural scene and take LSD the preferred drug of the counterculture at the time for the first time.

He would attract various female followers who were on the scene at the time. attracting them with his acoustic guitar playing and would start developing philosophies and world views that would ultimately lead to the creation of his "Family" the name by which he referred to the group of followers whom he would soon make infamous including Patricia Krenwinkel, Susan Atkins and others. He would then from his contact in the music business take possession of a yellow school bus which he and his followers would drive into Los Angeles which at the time was the epicenter of American Rock at the time. Los Angeles started to take over from New York as the heart of the music scene throughout the early sixties especially with the ascension of the Beach Boys in the early sixties and their odes to the Southern California lifestyle largely driven by musical genius, Brian Wilson had become a pop culture phenomenon from 1962 and were one of the few American Bands that could initially compete with The Beatles and other British Invasion groups. After the success of The Beach Boys many record labels started opening offices in Los Angeles and various A&R men came to scout new talent and one of the acts scouted and ultimately signed to Columbia Records was a group called the Byrds who would bring folk elements including various Bob Dylan and Pete Seeger covers overlaid with electric twelve String guitars by leader Jim McGuinn to create a new genre called folk-rock.in 1965. over the next few years more local acts such as the Doors, Love and Frank Zappa made their mark on the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood. Charles Manson and his followers arrived in Los Angeles in the Fall of 1967 right after the so called "Summer of Love" whose highlight had been the famous Monterey Pop Festival which was a free concert in Monterey California which introduced and featured artists like Jimi Hendrix, The Who, The Byrds, Buffalo Springfield. Sadly The Beach Boys pulled out at the last minute due to the emotional stress of Brian Wilson failing to complete his would-be masterpiece SMiLE as well as the fact that younger brother Carl was fighting to obtain conscientious objector status to avoid being drafted in the Vietnam War. The Beach Boys reputation would suffer immensley from their failure to appear at Monterey. Mansoon's contact who was a scout for Uni Records managed to book some studio time in the legendary Gold Star Studios home of Producer Phil Spector's "Wall of Sound". Most of what he recorded were more concepts than fully fledged songs. However, The songs are not too bad but did not convince Uni Records to give him a recording contract. The family soon moved to a house near Topanga Beach known as the "Spiral Staircase" while there he recruited more new followers such as fourteen-year-old Diane Lake.

Charlie would teach his followers the songs he wrote word for word and the group would take weekly communal LSD trips. In 1968 Charlie decided that in order to achieve his dream of recording his songs he would need backing musicians, he auditioned several prospects including Guitarist, Ernest Knapp who found the auditions quite disturbing despite acknowledging that the songs were quite strong. Also joining for musical reason was Guitarist, Bobby Beauselli. The family moved further into Topanga Canyon to a place known as Horseshoe Drive where old cellmate Phil Kaufman briefly joined the family and was impressed with the quality of the songs Charlie was writing at the time, most famously "Look at Your Game Girl". Soon Manson was sending his followers to hang out at various places around L.A. where professional musicians tended to frequent to have them attract people in the music to him. In May 1968 they succeeded when members Ella Jo Baily and Patricia Krenwinkle were picked up while hitchhiking by Beach Boys Drummer Dennis Wilson whom he took to his house near Sunset Boulevard to sleep with them. Despite the recent wane in the bands popularity especially after a financially disastrous tour with the Indian Guru, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi whom most of the Beatles has disavowed, Manson knew the Beach Boys were a huge band and that Dennis would be a great conduit to the music scene at the time.

After attending a recording session later that day. Coming home Dennis discovered that Manson and his followers had invaded his house. He carefully entered the house where he meets Manson. Dennis asks Manson if Manson plans to hurt Dennis. Manson denies that and kisses Dennis Wilson's foot. He walks in his house to find Many of Manson's female followers making themselves at home in his house. He was quickly won over and enchanted by Manson and his followers who would follow Manson's every whim as well as Dennis' own feelings of lacking a spiritual lack and guilt due to the fact that he felt that his success depended on his older brother, Brian.

To his friends and bandmates Dennis would refer to Manson as "The Wizard" and was impressed enough by his music to consider signing him to the Beach Boys' Brother Records label which had been set up a year earlier by Brian's friend David Anderle as their personal custom label.

Dennis soon started introducing Manson to his friends in the music business most significantly former Byrds Producer Terry Melcher who was the son of Hollywood legend Doris Day.

During this period Melcher would be invited by Melcher to a party at a house he rented on Cielo Drive which would later become an important part of the Manson story because of the subsequent events to come.

While living with Dennis, Manson came in contact with various legendary musicians at the time as Stephen Stills and Neil Young from the band Buffalo Springfield, Session guitarist turned famous country singer Glenn Campell and Neil Diamond.

Though he had made several contacts because of his connection with Dennis, eventually Dennis grew tired of living with the family especially since they were draining him financially which was a major concern to the fact that The Beach Boys as a touring group was also having financial problems. Manson and his family out of Wilson's home to the desolate former Western movie set in the California desert, "Sphan Ranch" 30 miles north of Los Angeles. It was close enough to Los Angeles to be accessible to the giants of the music industry. What's more Dennis had decided to record a modified version of one of Charlies songs "Cease to Exist" for the Beach Boys final album on Capitol Records, 20/20 though Dennis took the sole songwriting credit after slightly modifying the lyric to be less controversial to the Beach Boys mainstream audience and re-titling the song " Never Learn Not To Love" which they ended up performing on National Television on the Mike Douglas Show in early 1969. Manson was obviously not happy about this and his relationship with Dennis soured.

Meanwhile at Sphan Ranch, Charles Manson's relationship with his family started to turn darker. He was starting to become paranoid that some sort of horrific event was coming due to the recent assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and the ensuing racially motivated riots. He started to think that some sort of apocalyptic race war would be coming and the family started hoarding weapons and in November of 1968 Manson believed his theories about the future were somehow confirmed by of all things, The Beatles self-titled double album often known as the "White Album".

He thought there were clues in various songs on the album that somehow confirmed his apocalyptic vision. Among the songs referenced was the George Harrison song "Piggies" which was indeed a commentary on the upper class and how Harrison thinks that they need a "Damn Good Whacking". Manson would interpret this as a call to arms against the upper classes.. The Paul McCartney song "Blackbird" was indeed a black empowerment song, but most certainly not the violent vision Manson was interpreting it. Most confusing of all was his interpretation of the song "Helter Skelter" also written by McCartney. McCartney wrote the song about an English Fairground Slide and was designed to prove that the Beatles could rock just as hard as their rivals at the time, The Who. Manson interpreted the song as being about a coming race war between black Americans and White Americans and adopted the term "Helter Skelter" as the name for the supposedly coming war.

In early 1969, Dennis Wilson would re-connect with Manson and offered him to do a demo session at his brother Brian's home studio. Beach Boys engineer Stephen Desper found the session unnerving especially since he was using a knife to clean his fingernails which Desper disapproved of seeing as how Brian, his wife Marilyn and their infant daughter Carnie were also in the house at the time. Desper also felt that Charlie's inability to take direction made him unfit for studio recording despite the quality of his songs. However, despite the rejection from Brother Records, Manson realized he still had a potential ally in Terry Melcher. Melcher ultimately was unable to visit Charlie at the ranch. Enraged at this, Manson traveled to Melchers former home on Cielo Drive and discovers that he had since moved out and that the house was now rented out to film director Roman Polanski and his wife Actress Sharon Tate. While Manson left and probably were not aware of the significance of Polanski and Tate he does know that whoever is living there were significant in Hollywood circles. Soon afterward Melcher wrote to Charlie to inform him that Melcher had no desire to produce an album for Manson.

He amasses an arsenal of weapons via a series of drug deals. Unfortunately, during a failed drug deal with music teacher Gary Hinman, Boby Beausoleil ends up murdering Hinman.

Soon afterward fear consumes Manson's mind and he decides to take his revenge out on whoever was living in the Cielo house to spur on his race war idea of "Helter Skelter". He would assume that since whoever lived there was famous, and/or well socially connected. He thought that the significance of the murder of the people in the house would somehow end up possibly convince people that this would somehow be conflated with the Black Pather Party.

Manson decides to send a group of his followers led by Charles "Tex" Watson and consisting of Patricia Krenwinkel, Susan Atkins and recent recruit and unknowing getaway driver, Linda Kasabian. Kasabian is not told that people will be murdered in the process. The first person murdered was nineteen year old Steven Parent who was shot in his car while attempting to leave the scene. The killers went inside and brutally murdered the 8 -months pregnant Sharon Tate and three of her friends, Hollywood hair stylist Jay Sebring, Coffee heiress, Abigal Folger and her boyfriend Voytek Frykowski. House owner Hollywood director Roman Polanski was in Europe at the time. The following night the murder spree continued with the killing of successful grocers Leno and Rosemary LaBianca in their house in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles.

At the LaBianca home the assassins of the previous night along with additional family member Leslie Van Houten in addition to murdering the La Biancas also used their blood to write various messages associated with lyrics on the Beatles White Album. including "Death to Pigs" and a misspelled Healter Skelter on the refrigerator door.

Manson having learned about the message on the fridge, freaked out.

In a desperate attempt for money, he once again sought out Dennis Wilson to demand royalties for the sales of "Never Learn Not To Love" which he had been deprived of by Dennis taking the sole credit. He showed up at the house of Dennis's friend and collaborator Gregg Jakobson who threatened Wilson over the life of hi sons and stole money and a guitar.

A few weeks later the family was arrested when their fleet of stolen cars was discovered.

Due to Susan Atkins bragging about the murder of Sharon Tate to a fellow inmate. The case was soon solved. and in 1970 during one of the most infamous trials of the 20th Century. Manson and three of his female followers were sentenced to death, Tex Watson was later charged in Texas and driver Linda Kasabian who was not directly involved in the murders was the star witness.

A terrified Terry Melcher refused to testify at the trial to prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi. as did Dennis Wilson. Dennis would continue to be haunted by his involvement with Manson for the rest of his life which followed him to his eventual drowning death in December of 1983.

Terry Melcher would continue to produce albums until the rest of his life but unfortunately most were relatively unsuccessful albums by the Byrds and Beach Boys.

The sentences of the Manson killers were later reverted to life in prison. Manson himself finally passed away in November of 2017 at the age of 83. Most of his followers later renounced him. Susan Atkins passed away in prison from cancer in September 2009 at the age of sixty-one.

Leslie Van Houten was released on parole in 2023, and Patricia Krenwinke and Charles Watson remain incarcerated.