by Jeff Guinn
• • •
The city’s growing notoriety for racial unrest was somewhat offset by its simultaneous recognition as the new center of yet another art form—one that, by the mid-1960s, frequently eclipsed all others in terms of cultural impact. L.A. already dominated film and television. Now it wrested primacy of recorded music from New York. In the mid-1950s, Hollywood movie studios identified American teens as a separate market from their parents. Some landmark productions like Rebel Without a Cause resulted, but many of the films tied in to the same cute teenage romance themes that typified most of the pop chart hits emanating from New York and its Tin Pan Alley songwriters. But these films had soundtracks, and many of the songs celebrated California with its sunshine and surf. California-based groups like The Chantay’s (“Pipeline”) and the Surfaris (“Wipe Out”) made considerable market impact. TV teen idol Ricky Nelson began churning out hits in L.A. studios. The Beach Boys had a string of hits about surfing and hot rods and being true to your school. By 1964 the Beatles dominated pop music, but West Coast producers and musicians were also succeeding. Market-savvy, profit-driven L.A. music moguls set out to discover and sign a new generation of teen idols. There was a wealth of available talent—Brian Wilson, Randy Newman, Frank Zappa, and Phil Spector, among others, had all grown up in or around the city. Children of the older stars got their own opportunities, in some cases because their parents owned substantial chunks of the record companies: Nancy Sinatra as a solo artist, Dean Martin Jr. and Desi Arnaz Jr. in the group Dino, Desi and Billy, Terry Melcher in several surf bands. In 1963, records produced in New York topped the pop charts for twenty-six weeks, with L.A. singles reaching number one for just three weeks. By 1965, L.A. was on top for twenty weeks and New York for just one.
Television reinforced L.A.’s new supremacy. In 1964 Dick Clark moved his popular American Bandstand program from Philadelphia to Los Angeles. Soon three more network dance shows broadcast from L.A.—Where the Action Is! (ABC), Shindig! (ABC), and Hullabaloo (NBC). At the movies, in their cars listening to the radio, at home watching TV, California-based music, often with California-centric lyrics, permeated the lives of American teens.
Initially it seemed that the latest singing stars would not be much different from the preceding generation—essentially clean-cut kids singing about young love and, in the case of surf music, having appropriate outdoor fun. The most conservative parents would have allowed TV and recording star Ricky Nelson to date their daughters. But the emergence of the counterculture resulted in a significant change in the growing youth music market. It was impossible to be certain whether hairy message music would be a brief fad or a long-term phenomenon, but L.A. record executives didn’t care. There was a clear change in the critical youth market, and they moved to meet it.
Hordes of wannabe musicians made their way to L.A., certain that they were destined for stardom and desperate to land a recording contract. Many of them found their way to clubs along Sunset Strip that designated specific nights of the week for hopefuls to jump onstage and play one or two songs. The legendary Troubadour on Santa Monica Boulevard held open mike nights on Mondays. Future superstars like Jim (later Roger) McGuinn and David Crosby got their starts there. Others lucked into short stints as house bands. Johnny Rivers, the Doors, and Frank Zappa’s bizarre Mothers of Invention gained much of their early fame from regular appearances at the Whisky a Go Go. Record company talent scouts trolled the clubs on a nightly basis, often basing their signing decisions on the look more than the sound of an individual artist or a band.
The musicians might consider their songs to be spiritual or social anthems, but to the record labels the music was product. Many newly signed acts, entering a recording studio for the first time, were appalled to learn that most or all of the instrumental work and even some of the vocals would be provided by veteran studio musicians. Muffed chords and sloppy rhythm might be overlooked onstage if performers were charismatic enough, but for radio airplay—still the critical factor in sales—the sound had to be perfect. Given the multitudes panting for a chance to record, studio executives weren’t inclined to be tactful. At Columbia, Terry Melcher, at twenty-two already a veteran recording artist in his own right, was placed in charge of a promising band called the Byrds, five refugees from the folk music scene who were set to record Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man.” Melcher quickly determined that only lead singer McGuinn was a competent enough instrumentalist to play on the track. The four other Byrds were told to step aside for studio musicians, then and in several subsequent sessions. When the drummer complained, Melcher gave him a choice: shut up or get out. The drummer shut up, and “Mr. Tambourine Man” was a number one hit. In this as in most cases, record producers knew what they were doing. No unproven artists were allowed to do as they pleased in the studio. The bottom line, the only factor that ultimately mattered, was whether someone could sell enough records or not. Genius on the artist’s part, whether genuine or self-perceived, didn’t matter a damn.
For those musicians who came to L.A. and made it big, stardom and all its perks were instantaneous. After one hit, especially if more of the same seemed in store, record companies offered substantial advances on future royalties. Many of the newly wealthy had no concept of money beyond spending it fast. Overnight pop stars gleefully snapped up mansions previously owned by film legends. After “California Dreamin’ ” became a smash hit in February 1966, the Mamas and the Papas husband-wife team of John and Michelle Phillips bought the spacious Bel Air Road home of Jeanette MacDonald. Not to be outdone, their bandmates Denny Doherty and Cass Elliot respectively purchased the glamorous residences of Mary Astor and Natalie Wood. The overweight Elliot couldn’t resist also treating herself to a flashy new red Porsche, even though she was unable to wedge herself into it. L.A. music veterans with strings of hits (written, performed, or produced) also paid their way into the toniest L.A. territory. Beach Boys songwriter and leader Brian Wilson bought a Bel Air mansion and promptly outraged his stodgier neighbors by painting it purple. His brother Dennis rented a luxurious log cabin hunting lodge originally owned by Will Rogers near the far west end of Sunset Boulevard. Terry Melcher and his girlfriend, actress Candice Bergen, daughter of radio and TV star Edgar Bergen, rented a smaller residence at the top of steep Cielo Drive in the Benedict Canyon area; the house, owned by agent-to-the-stars Rudi Altobelli (Henry Fonda, Katharine Hepburn), was distinguished by its magnificent view of the sprawling city below.
Not all the new generation of music heavyweights felt drawn to luxury living. Some preferred country life, or at least what passed for it on the L.A. scene. Topanga, west of an extensive state park but still within easy driving distance of the Strip and city recording studios, was a hilly alternative, and Laurel Canyon offered pleasantly rustic touches like a general store. For others who simply couldn’t live without instant access to Pacific waves, there was Venice Beach and Santa Monica and Malibu. And, for virtually everyone, there were the magic clubs on the Strip—when not performing, L.A.’s music stars delighted in dropping by the Whisky or the Troubadour, sipping drinks with their show business peers or graciously interacting with their public. Every weekend and most weekday nights the Strip was jammed with happy, hooting young crowds. After numerous complaints about underage drinking and drug use, in the fall of 1966 the LAPD and Los Angeles County Sheriff’s office announced joint plans to begin enforcing a previously obscure curfew requiring anyone under eighteen to be off the streets by 10 P.M. At the same time, the County Supervisor’s Office made public a potential plan to bulldoze part of the Strip to make way for a new freeway. In November, after numerous arrests for curfew violations and the news that Pandora’s Box, a popular club, would be closed and leveled to widen the street, about three-hundred protesters surrounded the club. A city bus was overturned, but there was no other overt violence. Unlike the desperate black poor of Watts, these were mostly pissed-off, affluent, or at least middle-class, white kids, raising a little hell because they might no
longer be allowed to stay out as late as they pleased. But the LAPD took no chances. There were arrests, and cops used billy clubs on demonstrators not obeying orders quickly enough to vacate the area.
Previously, most prominent white L.A. pop stars hadn’t been moved enough by social or antiwar protests to compose songs about them. After Watts, Frank Zappa, frustrated by how widely his fellow musicians ignored the event, tried to capture the incident in song. But the Sunset “riot” caught the attention of Stephen Stills, a member of the L.A.-based Buffalo Springfield. Stills crafted a catchy tune about battle lines being drawn, and young people speaking their minds while in danger of the Man coming to take them away. “For What It’s Worth” rose to number seven on the national hit parade, and gave the impression that L.A. musicians and youth were in the forefront of what the media increasingly perceived as a generational revolt. On April 25, 1967, CBS aired a documentary titled Inside Pop: The Rock Revolution, improbably hosted by Leonard Bernstein. McGuinn, lead singer of the Byrds, earnestly declared to viewers that “We’re out to break down those barriers that we see to be arbitrary. I feel like there’s some sort of guerrilla warfare, psychological warfare going on, and I feel like a guerrilla.”
By the last weeks of 1967 there was a city-wide sense of unease in Los Angeles. Joan Didion, reflecting later on that time and place, concluded that “there were odd things going around town. . . . Everything was unmentionable but nothing was unimaginable. . . . The jitters were setting in.” So, too, were the Santa Ana winds, hot gusts frequently topping a hundred miles per hour that annually plagued Los Angeles and the surrounding area from late fall through early spring, drying out the land and paving the way for periodic brush fires that destroyed substantial sections of the region. Local legend had it that the scorching winds were evil omens; in one of his L.A. noir stories, Raymond Chandler wrote that each year when the Santa Anas arrive, “meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands’ necks.” And that November, along with the winds, Charlie Manson blew back into L.A., bringing with him the first stirrings of another kind of conflagration.
The school bus broke down on the way from San Francisco to L.A. and Charlie had to stop and fix it. He was an adequate mechanic, having worked in the garages of some of the reform schools where he’d spent his teenage years. Charlie was hyper during the trip; he was anxious to get and sign that recording contract. He talked about it some with the others on the bus, making sure they understood that what was good for Charlie was going to be good for them, too. Whatever this Gary Stromberg guy at Universal was like, they had to help Charlie impress him. Members of real families always backed each other up. Everyone got that a label deal was important to Charlie, but misunderstood why he wanted one so badly. His followers had no idea that Charlie was obsessed with becoming famous; he told them that his goal, his mission, really, was to teach the world a better way to live through his songs. If he wasn’t given that opportunity, it was the world’s loss, not Charlie’s.
It was easy for Charlie to get in to see Stromberg. Phil Kaufman’s name really did have cachet. It was Stromberg’s job to seek out potential talent, and Kaufman wasn’t one to recommend too many people. If Kaufman saw something in this guy, he was worth auditioning. Charlie took a little extra time cleaning up for their first meeting. He bathed and put on clean clothes, but what Stromberg remembered most later on was that Charlie arrived barefoot. He proudly showed Stromberg the bus, now painted white. On the inside, there was a coffee table suspended by ropes or wires from the roof, and a battery-powered turntable and an old icebox. The group had scrounged a box of cream puffs on the trip down from San Francisco, and they hospitably offered Stromberg some. Until the cream puffs ran out, this was what Charlie’s followers ate. When Stromberg invited Charlie up to his office, all four girls tagged along—Bruce Davis wasn’t around on this particular trip. Charlie brought his guitar into the office with him and was eager to talk about his music, but Stromberg was distracted by the way Mary, Lynne, Pat, and Susan constantly watched Charlie, waiting for him to signal whatever it might be that he wanted them to do. What he wanted that day was for them to sit back and let him wow Stromberg with his songs. Stromberg listened and thought there was enough potential to arrange a three-hour studio session, a chance to hear how Charlie sounded in one of Universal’s recording studios. He set up the session and Charlie knew that it was all about to happen. His dreams were going to come true.
But the session was an unmitigated disaster. Charlie was out of his depth in the studio, put off by the microphones and wires and barked commands from the session engineers. At one point he turned to Stromberg and complained, “I ain’t used to a lot of people.” Stromberg didn’t deem anything from the session worthy of a recording contract. He tactfully suggested that maybe Charlie ought to work on the songs some more, and maybe at some unspecified point in the future they could try again. It wasn’t an absolute turndown, but close.
Stromberg didn’t think his time with Charlie was entirely wasted. He and some other Universal executives were discussing a film in which Christ would return to the modern-day world. Charlie clearly had some interesting interpretations of the Bible. Stromberg suggested that he stay around for a few days to talk about Scripture, and Charlie was glad to. He and Stromberg and the four girls went out to lunch a few times and hung out on the beach. Charlie talked about how the Bible made it clear that women had to gladly submit to men. To prove his point, he ordered Lynne to get down on her knees and kiss his feet. After she did, Charlie dropped down and kissed hers, just to make the additional point that women who did what they were told were rewarded. He also went on about how material possessions were wrong; to truly own something, you had to give it away first. Stromberg followed Charlie and the girls down the beach one day, listening to Charlie proselytize to some people gathered around. One man, who’d checked out the bus, called Charlie on it: If he really didn’t need anything, why did he own such a tricked-up ride? Cooler than hell, Charlie said he didn’t need the bus and flipped the guy the keys. The guy jumped in and drove off, leaving Charlie and the girls without transportation—Charlie didn’t seem to care one way or the other. A few hours later the man brought the bus back. He returned the keys to Charlie and said he really didn’t want it, he’d just wanted to see what Charlie would do. For the girls, it proved again how special Charlie was. Stromberg didn’t know exactly what to think, but it was impressive all the same. He enjoyed consulting with Charlie on the Jesus project, which was soon shut down by Universal higher-ups who considered the symbolism—Jesus was to be black, the Romans modern-day Southern rednecks—too controversial.
Charlie wasn’t crushed by his brief experience with Universal. Stromberg didn’t reject his music—hadn’t the guy said they ought to try again someday? The truth was probably that Stromberg just wasn’t enlightened enough to understand what Charlie was doing. He would remain an option, but now that they were in L.A., Charlie and the girls could look around and find somebody else important in the music business who, unlike Stromberg, would get right away what the songs were about, and the kind of star Charlie would instantly become as soon as somebody was smart enough to sign him up and get his music out there to the people. And Charlie felt that he’d learned a valuable lesson—he was never, ever going to let any more studio monkeys tell him how he was supposed to play his songs. Charlie was going to do his music his way because he (and only he) knew best.
Charlie and the girls had probably been sleeping in the bus on the beach or in the Universal parking lot, but if they were going to remain in L.A. they needed someplace to stay, certainly one with showers. Charlie didn’t mind grime, but no matter how much he lectured them about vanity, the women complained about feeling dirty and wanted to clean up. Fortunately, in late 1967 L.A. was populated with lots of generous-hearted people who were willing to share their roofs and their bathrooms with penniless pilgrims. After minimal asking around Charlie and the girls ended up in wild, beautiful
Topanga Canyon, where they stayed at a quirky house known as the Spiral Staircase. All sorts of eclectic indigents found temporary lodging there; the owner liked colorful characters. Charlie and his female followers fit right in. They hung out and Charlie spun his tales and took his guitar and played some songs. He enjoyed talking music with other residents and the daily flood of drop-ins who came by certain that there would always be somebody interesting to talk to or jam with. One of them connected perfectly with Charlie right away—Bobby Beausoleil was his kind of guy, very musical and street-smart.
Charlie and Beausoleil became real friends, which was almost unprecedented for Charlie. He liked to look people over and figure out what they could do for him before letting them get too close, though he might pretend from the start that they were soul mates. But it was immediately apparent that Beausoleil had a lot to offer. Charlie noticed, as everyone around Beausoleil couldn’t help noticing, that the guy always had a few girls trailing after him, catering to his every whim. Unlike scrawny little Charlie, who had to attract his females by force of personality and smooth, beguiling preaching, Beausoleil got his because he was sexy and handsome. Charlie instantly envisioned Beausoleil as a potentially invaluable member of his group if only he could somehow be won over—Beausoleil could recruit some prime women, who could in turn lure in more men. Charlie gave it his best shot, talking about being part of a real family and surrendering your ego, but Beausoleil was all about ego. He gloried in his good looks and had the same high opinion of his musical talent that Charlie had of his own. Beausoleil constantly bragged about his shows back in the Haight, including lots of dazzling late night jams with Frank Zappa. Beausoleil thought Charlie was an interesting guy and wanted to spend more time with him, but he wasn’t going to submit to somebody else’s leadership. Beausoleil told a disappointed Charlie that he “didn’t travel with anybody.” In the end, they decided to form a band together. They called themselves the Milky Way and played one or two shows at small local clubs. It was an uneven musical partnership—Beausoleil was a much better guitarist than Charlie, even though Charlie either wouldn’t admit it or else was so self-deceptive that he didn’t realize it—and nothing much came of the collaboration. Beausoleil and his latest girlfriends were soon out on the road again, but he and Charlie kept in touch.
