by Jeff Guinn
Wilson went so far as to get Stephen Despar, who’d built the studio for Brian and worked on some of the Beach Boys’ albums, to run the session. Before Despar met Charlie, Dennis advised him not to believe anything he might have been told by other Brother Records staff—Charlie had talent but was usually misunderstood. Despar was agreeable; after working with quirky Brian, who was currently grossly overweight and liked to record wearing only pajama bottoms, he figured it would be impossible to run a session for anybody odder.
Despar was used to musicians arriving with lots of instruments and, he hoped, charts of the songs they wanted to record so he could get a better idea of what he was expected to get on tape. Charlie only had one guitar, but he also brought along several girls from the Family whose sole function seemed to be rolling joints and asking to use the bathrooms upstairs. Brian Wilson didn’t even leave his bedroom to greet Charlie. Brian’s wife, Marilyn, appalled at her unkempt guests, Susan Atkins in particular, scrubbed all the toilets in the house with disinfectant after they left.
Despar expected Dennis Wilson to come with Charlie and produce the session, but Dennis never showed. So Despar did his best to set up microphones and tried to make Charlie feel comfortable. When Charlie took out a cigarette but couldn’t find a match in his pockets, Despar went into Brian’s kitchen and found matches for him. Charlie made a point of thanking him profusely. Then they began recording, and it simply didn’t work. Charlie resented even mild instructions to move closer to the microphone, or warnings that his guitar was out of tune. These were his songs and he would perform them his way; Despar’s job was to keep the tape rolling. Despar had every right to feel offended—Brian Wilson and the other Beach Boys were also temperamental, but they were established artists with exceptional musical credentials, not some scruffy wannabe whose songs, so far as Despar could tell, were nothing special. Still, Dennis had asked him to do what he could with Charlie, so Despar suggested they try again the next night. Maybe the guy would be a little more relaxed then, a little more cooperative. But Charlie wasn’t. He resented all of Despar’s suggestions, and pulled a knife when Despar decided that he’d heard enough. Despar walked out and called a senior staffer at Brother Records, complaining that “this guy is psychotic.” He was assured that whatever had been recorded so far was plenty. Despar told Charlie that the sessions were over, and somehow Charlie left convinced that he’d done so well a Brother Records recording contract was forthcoming.
It wasn’t, but when Dennis listened to the tapes he thought that “Cease to Exist” had potential. The Beach Boys were preparing to record another album, and Dennis wanted to contribute several tunes. Maybe, with some tweaking, “Cease to Exist” might be one of them. When Dennis told him what he was considering, Charlie was thrilled. He expected that the song would be recorded by the Beach Boys exactly as he had written it, or at least that his lyrics would remain intact. Wilson let him believe it.
Toward the end of the summer, the Beach Boys left L.A. on a brief concert tour. Charlie and the Family stayed at Dennis Wilson’s Sunset Boulevard lodge while he was away. They’d already claimed all of his possessions as their own, and now they glommed on to one of his charge accounts. When Wilson returned home after his week on the road, he was surprised to be called in by the accountants in the Brother Records office. They demanded to know how it was possible for Dennis to run up an $800 Alta Dena Dairy bill during the time that the Beach Boys had been away on tour. Wilson realized what had happened, but the bill was in his name, and Brother Records had to pay it. He caught hell for the expenditure, and in turn he got really pissed off at Charlie. When Wilson added everything up, including a Mercedes that someone in the Family totaled, he calculated that his summer guests had cost him at least $100,000. It had to stop.
But Wilson didn’t take the obvious step of throwing Charlie and the Family out. He still liked most of the girls, he believed Charlie had potential as a collaborator on song lyrics, and—bottom line—Charlie was scary. When the guy waved his knife it was hard to tell if he was kidding or serious. So Wilson opted for a nonconfrontational separation. His lease on the Sunset Boulevard lodge was about to expire. A few weeks before it did, Wilson packed some essential belongings and moved out without telling Charlie that he was leaving or where he was going. Wilson rented a house above the Pacific Coast Highway. Because he didn’t intend to completely eliminate all contact with Charlie and the others, Wilson made sure that his new place was too small for the Family to move in once they discovered his whereabouts.
When Wilson’s former landlord tossed Charlie and the Family out of the lodge on Sunset, it was inconvenient but not catastrophic for them. Though they’d miss the constant freeloading at Wilson’s expense, the group had another option, a place where they already stayed sometimes. Now they’d make their arrangement with the doddering, nearly blind owner permanent. Gathering their remaining Dennis Wilson spoils—clothing, knickknacks, even some Beach Boys gold records—everyone piled into the old school bus and set out for Spahn Ranch.
CHAPTER TEN
The Ranches
When the Family’s school bus broke down once again and the necessary repair proved beyond Charlie’s skill as a mechanic, Sandy Good said that she had a friend in the area who could probably fix it. He lived on a ranch about thirty-five miles northwest of downtown L.A., near the Simi Valley and the Santa Susana Mountains. Charlie went to investigate and was excited by what he discovered. Spahn Ranch was a bucolic paradise, hundreds of acres of rugged, beautiful foothills and craggy heights bisected by streams, dotted with caves, and populated with all sorts of wildlife. A western movie set dominated one long, low valley, and it was instantly recognizable to anyone who’d grown up watching the ubiquitous cowboy TV shows of the 1950s since several of those series were filmed there. Most of the set consisted of store fronts without additional walls, but there were some complete buildings, including a saloon. A few other shacks were scattered around the property. Charlie realized instantly that this was a perfect place to bring his followers; all he had to do was convince octogenarian owner George Spahn to let the group move in.
Spahn, limited in his movements because of poor vision, was wringing money out of the ranch by renting horses to visitors who wanted to get away from the city and lose themselves in trail rides. For $1.50 apiece they could saddle up and head into the property’s hills. Spahn employed several ranch hands to care for the horses, deal with the customers, and, so far as they could in any spare moments, keep the movie set clean and in reasonable repair—sometimes instead of renting horses people just wanted to check out the place they’d seen so often on TV. But upkeep was sporadic, and the set looked shabby when Charlie arrived. His pitch to Spahn was simple: He and a few friends would like to live out on the ranch. They didn’t have money to pay rent, but they were good workers and would pitch in to keep the movie set sparkling (or as clean as possible, considering the dust blowing everywhere) and help out the ranch hands as needed. Charlie himself had lots of experience with horses because he’d worked at a racetrack back home in West Virginia. Best of all, the girls who’d be moving in with Charlie would be glad to do some housekeeping for Spahn in the main house where he lived, and do whatever else they could to make his days a little more comfortable. Was it a deal?
There were already a few other informal tenants on the ranch, and Spahn didn’t mind a couple more. To make sure his host didn’t reconsider, Charlie installed Lynne as Spahn’s housekeeper. Sex with George was part of her responsibilities, along with cleaning and fixing the old man’s meals. That was okay with her because Charlie taught that every kind of love was good. Spahn certainly liked physical contact with Lynne, quick little pinches especially. Lynne responded with high-pitched squeals, and George began calling her “Squeaky.” The nickname stuck. Soon the Family members called her that, too.
Spahn was expecting perhaps a half dozen others to move in with Charlie, but the initial count of newcomers was closer to eighteen and within a few
months grew to approximately thirty-five. Charlie explained that most of them were itinerants, friends of his who would just be there for a day or two before moving on. Instead, it was the ranch’s other squatters who left; Charlie and the Family pressured them to go so that they could pick the best shacks on the property. To shelter his other followers who didn’t have sufficient cover, Charlie ordered Tex Watson to build additional lean-tos and extend some of the movie set false fronts into complete structures. To keep Tex off-balance and willing to perform hard unpaid labor, Charlie initially withheld full Family membership from him. He was allowed to be at the ranch and do whatever he was told, but Charlie said that Tex still had not surrendered his ego sufficiently to become a permanent part of the group. If Tex worked really hard and never complained, he might eventually convince Charlie otherwise. Tex, often befuddled with drugs, spent every waking hour demonstrating that he was an egoless, willing worker.
Above all, Charlie appreciated what the ranch location had to offer—the kind of isolation necessary to keep the Family members separated from any influence other than Charlie’s own. It was hard to hold their attention when he tried to preach to them at Wilson’s; the drummer’s other friends were constantly rushing in and out. At Spahn Ranch, Charlie could march everyone off to an isolated hill or canyon and preach as long as he liked without the danger of distractions. In late summer, when Wilson abandoned the mansion and Charlie and the Family had to leave, too, it was a simple matter for Charlie to load everyone in the bus and move them to the ranch full-time. George Spahn didn’t notice any difference, but his colorful bunch of ranch hands did. They were led by Juan Flynn, a towering Army Vietnam veteran. Shorty Shea yearned for a career in the movies and soon earned Charlie’s antipathy by advising George Spahn to sell out to developers. Johnny Swartz was useful because he would let the Family borrow his battered yellow 1959 Ford for trips into the city. Teenage Steve Grogan seemed so stupid that some of the Family assumed he must be retarded. Unlike Flynn and Shea, Grogan loved everything about Charlie and his followers and begged to join them. Intelligence mattered far less to Charlie than unwavering loyalty, and Grogan was soon brought into the Family. His new name among them was Clem, and sometimes they called him Scramblehead. There were other hands who worked at the ranch for a few weeks or months and then moved on.
Flynn expected the Family to earn its keep with lots of hard work. Charlie couldn’t have agreed more—whenever he wasn’t preaching to them or putting them to work on his own errands, he wanted his followers to be busy. It kept them from thinking too much. Under Flynn’s supervision they cleaned horse stalls and saddle tack, helped rent rides to customers on days when ranch visitors were especially numerous, hauled hay, cut brush, and performed any other chores that needed doing. Charlie was careful, though, not to let anyone think that Flynn in any sense supplanted him as the Family’s leader. One day when Flynn wanted everyone up and working, Charlie directed his followers to the movie set saloon instead, where he sat them down to listen while he preached. Flynn, whose temper was sometimes terrible, roared with fury and charged at Charlie. It was a physical mismatch; Flynn was more than a full foot taller than runty Charlie. But, with the Family watching, Charlie didn’t back down. Flynn got in Charlie’s face, towering over him and shouting. Calmly, Charlie took out a pack of cigarettes, struck a match, and lit one. Then Charlie, looking Flynn straight in the eye, held the match flame to the soft skin underneath his own wrist, and the peculiar stench of scorched flesh wafted in the air. Charlie didn’t even blink; he said softly to Flynn, “You know, brother, there’s no such thing as pain.” Totally deflated, the hulking ranch hand walked away, and the Family was reminded why Charlie Manson was its undisputed leader.
Using the school bus, Johnny Swartz’s Ford, or whatever other vehicles were handy, Charlie and other Family members could drive into L.A. or around the country outside Spahn Ranch. Daily trips were necessary to scrounge food from grocery store dumpsters. Charlie was still recruiting, too, though now he relied mostly on current followers to invite potential disciples out to the ranch. Then Charlie would talk to them and see how they interacted with the others in the Family. At some point anyone promising would be quizzed about money and possessions—there had to be some immediate advantage to Charlie for a person to be invited to join. And, always, Charlie’s decision was final; if he didn’t find a candidate acceptable, it didn’t matter what the others thought. Once someone was admitted to the Family fold, there was a transition period when Charlie placed the newcomer under the supervision of one of his veterans—Pat, Susan, Mary, Squeaky, or Little Paul Watkins. Not everyone got through this probationary period, particularly if their only real attraction to Charlie was whatever money they had or a car’s pink slip. Once otherwise undesirables were relieved of whatever they had that Charlie wanted, they were sent on their way.
Charlie began enforcing a new rule for full-time women followers. No female in the Family was ever to carry money, even pennies. When they went out panhandling, one of the men always came along and any coins or bills collected had to immediately be handed over to him. Charlie never explained why he’d imposed the new edict, but it was a popular rule among pimps. If one of their women wanted to sneak away, she couldn’t afford a pay phone call to relatives or friends, let alone cab or bus fare. It was one more way for Charlie to be in absolute control.
All that summer and fall the Family expanded. Among the new full-fledged members were Cathy Gillies (“Capistrano”), Tom Walleman (“T.J.”), John Philip Haught (“Zero”), Simi Valley Sherri, and two other arrivals Charlie initially wanted to turn away. Gypsy and Leslie Van Houten had finally split from Bobby Beausoleil. When they presented themselves to Charlie at Spahn Ranch, he ordered them to go back; Beausoleil was a useful friend and Charlie didn’t want to offend him by taking away his women. But Gypsy pleaded, and Charlie reconsidered. Gypsy, in her late twenties, was a bit older than the rest of the Family members. She was prepared to devote herself completely to Charlie, and it was obvious she’d be an effective recruiter for him—she’d already talked Leslie into wanting to join the Family. Leslie was more intelligent than Charlie liked his followers to be; smart people might question his teachings. But she was very attractive, and along with Ruth Ann would give Charlie two pretty girls to use to get what he wanted from men outside the Family. Another of Leslie’s attributes, probably the one that ultimately tipped Charlie in her favor, was her excellent secretarial skills, including shorthand. He assigned her to follow him around whenever he was composing song lyrics. It had always been hard for Charlie to remember them; now Leslie would use shorthand to record them, and afterward write them out. She was frustrated because Charlie often sang sounds instead of words. When he did, she was required to spell out the sounds as best she could. And, as Charlie anticipated, Gypsy soon emerged as a leader among the women, a whip cracker committed to ensuring that all of Charlie’s instructions were followed to the letter.
After the Family settled in at the ranch, a staff member of the Free Clinic came out to stay with them for a while. Alan Rose had been intrigued with Charlie and his followers since he met them in the Haight, and he thought he might join them himself. After a few weeks Rose decided to return to San Francisco instead—there were some personal matters there that he needed to deal with—and he and Free Clinic founder David E. Smith decided to write a professional paper on the group. In September 1970, when it finally appeared in the Journal of Psychedelic Drugs, it explained in clear, objective terms how Charlie used sex to break down female initiates, drained his followers of any money or material possessions they had, forced anyone he deemed undesirable out of the group, and concluded that the real conundrum was “why . . . were these young girls so attracted and captivated by a disturbed mystic such as Charlie?” But as Rose, Smith, and others described a typical day at the ranch, there was very little disturbed about it. Charlie tried to lull his flock with preaching, drugs, and sex punctuated by enough hard physical labor to
keep everybody moderately worn out.
The day started early. Everyone was up around 7 A.M. to feed the horses and take them out to pasture to graze. Then, after a hurried breakfast—usually whatever food was left over from dinner the night before—the horses were retrieved and saddles were fetched so that rides would be available to whatever visitors might show up. A few Family members stayed available to serve as trail guides while the rest cleaned out stalls and hauled in fresh hay. Once that was done, Juan Flynn might have other repair work to assign, and on mornings when there didn’t seem anything else to do Charlie would set everyone to virtual busywork, sweeping away the ubiquitous dust from the wooden sidewalks on the movie set or doing inconsequential landscaping on property where for centuries nature had left its mark. Sometimes it seemed to some of the Family that Charlie had them doing little more than digging holes and then filling them, but his orders were never to be disputed. If anyone did mutter complaints, other Family members, often led by Gypsy or Little Paul, would loudly upbraid them—how dare they question Charlie?
Mornings were for work. There was no lunch break—the two daily meals were breakfast and dinner. Later in the day there were frequently LSD sessions orchestrated by Charlie. He would choose the time and bring everyone into one of the movie set buildings or guide them out to an isolated spot on the ranch. Doses of acid were passed around—Charlie would personally place the drugs in his followers’ mouths, but sometimes didn’t take any himself so he would remain in control of his faculties. Then, as everyone was tripping, Charlie would talk, often about himself as Jesus. A few times he simulated being crucified. Charlie emphasized that LSD was holy; using it made you learn about yourself, who you really were.
