by Jeff Guinn
Two days later in L.A., the Beach Boys did some recording, too. Dennis Wilson had been tinkering with “Cease to Exist,” changing lyrics as well as the music. Charlie’s original version explained to a girl that “submission is a gift” to give to her brother; among other revisions, Dennis changed “brother” to “lover,” transforming the theme from spiritual enlightenment to sexual surrender. Instead of ceasing to exist, the girl was seduced into ceasing to resist. Dennis changed the title, too—“Cease to Exist” became “Never Learn Not to Love.” The Beach Boys layered on their trademark harmonies and the result was judged acceptable enough to include on the album. On the credits, Dennis listed himself as sole composer. It was a deliberate insult. Wilson had been thinking again about all the money it cost him as Charlie and the Family’s summer host, and besides that, on a recent trip out to Spahn Ranch, Clem took off in Wilson’s Ferrari at Charlie’s suggestion and totaled it. The guy damn well owed Wilson a lot and taking credit for Charlie’s song was payback. It was L.A. show business royalty in action—a Beach Boy could do what he wanted, and a wannabe like Charlie couldn’t stop him. Sure, Charlie would be pissed when he found out, but maybe he’d learn from this who was boss if he and Wilson worked on any other songs in the future.
Even as “Cease to Exist” morphed into “Never Learn Not to Love,” Charlie was preoccupied with something else. Spahn Ranch was fine in most ways, but there were still too many distractions for the Family there. Charlie controlled access to cars, and Spahn was too far out of L.A. for anyone to walk there, but the bikers offered rides when anyone asked and it was too easy for people like Susan to get out without any supervision. Sometimes Family members asked guests to stay the night without getting Charlie’s permission first. One morning Charlie had to run off a guy who spent an unauthorized night with Leslie out in the ranch caves, and the next day the jerk came back with some mean-looking friends and told Leslie right in front of Charlie and some of the Family that she should leave the ranch with them if she wanted. Luckily Leslie opted to stay with Charlie, but what if she hadn’t? It might have encouraged some of the others to think about leaving, too. Charlie’s goal was a record deal, and the Family was one of his main tools in obtaining it. Having followers hanging on his every word and gratefully doing his bidding also satisfied his obsession with being in charge.
With about three dozen members in his flock, Charlie was now less concerned about recruiting than maintaining control over the followers he had. Though he still made occasional exceptions—a schoolteacher the Family nicknamed Juanita arrived with a vehicle and a lot of cash, maybe $10,000—for the most part Charlie informed Little Paul Watkins and Gypsy that he didn’t want anyone else brought in as prospective members. What he wanted now was some new roost that was so far removed from the city, from civilization, that he would be the only influence on the Family. Charlie himself would still find ways to commute to L.A.; he wasn’t about to lose his music industry contacts. Thanks to one of the Family, Charlie had a possible location in mind.
• • •
Sometimes Cathy Gillies talked about “Grandma’s place,” a property called the Myers Ranch that was so far in the depths of Death Valley that it was hard to reach even by car. Charlie set out on a fact-finding expedition and it was everything that he hoped for. Getting there from Los Angeles took hours, first by highway, then by rough backcountry road, and finally on through virtually impenetrable Goler Wash, with the Panamint and other craggy ranges with dire names like the Last Chance and Funeral Mountains looming above like serrated teeth. The entire area was wild and harsh. The scattered settlements in forbidding Inyo County—Trona, Shoshone—were more outposts than towns; Independence, the county seat, wasn’t much better. The closest town, Ballarat, was a virtual ghost town, but it had a bare-bones general store, the only place where basic necessities could be purchased. Wildlife abounded, but not humans. The county population was less than two people per square mile. Many of these were transients, prospectors poking around ridges hoping to strike gold. Permanent residents were mostly iconoclasts who had deliberately removed themselves from the outside world. Law enforcement, always of some concern to Charlie, was sporadic. There were a few county police officers and some rangers assigned to Death Valley National Park. Mostly the desert denizens were left alone, just the way Charlie wanted.
It was possible in some scattered locations to live decently, if not in luxury. Underground streams cut beneath the desert floor, so wells and irrigation sometimes were options. Cathy Gilles’s relatives made their ranch almost attractive, with vegetable gardens and a few well-kept buildings. But Charlie was drawn to the adjacent property; the living area of Barker Ranch consisted of two stone houses, a shed, and a small pool that provided water. A generator was available to supply very limited electricity; the property was fifty miles away from any power lines. The main house had a wood stove and a bathroom with shower and sink. The closest major city was Las Vegas, just beyond the California-Nevada state line. The ranch was primitive and so far removed from any semblance of modernity that it seemed like the far end of the world. Charlie looked up owner Arlene Barker and asked permission for him and the Family to stay there. He explained that he was an important musician hoping for some solitude to work on new material. To prove his point, he gave Barker a Beach Boys gold record that had been taken from Dennis Wilson’s lodge on Sunset Boulevard. It was fine with Barker, so most of the Family moved in. Charlie left a few members behind at Spahn Ranch, and, probably using some of newcomer Juanita’s money, sent Family member Bruce Davis and Sandy Good’s husband, Joel Pugh, to London, where they spent time at the Scientology headquarters. Charlie was always looking for new material to flesh out his preaching. Davis returned a few months later, but Pugh stayed behind.
Almost immediately, many of Barker Ranch’s new residents began complaining. The place was blistering hot. Spahn Ranch had been bad enough, but at least it wasn’t hundreds of miles from anywhere. There were telephones and lots of shady places on Spahn, not like here where there wasn’t even radio reception and you had to check under every rock for snakes and scorpions. Because cooking had to be done on a wood stove, wood had to be chopped before any meals were prepared and that was awful work in the blazing heat. Charlie did his best to shut down the bitching. Sometime soon, he warned, things in the outside world were really going to turn bad—out-and-out street combat—and “young loves” like the Family were going to be particular targets. He’d found a place where they were safe, and now they were complaining? What was the matter with them? Out here in the desert they’d set up a perfect community and soon other young loves fleeing the bloodthirsty mobs in the cities would come flocking to it. Charlie’s followers would be shining symbols of the only purity left in the world. And somewhere nearby in the desert was a hole, a hidden hole that led down into wonderful tunnels that would let anyone travel anywhere on earth. Charlie and the Family would find that hole. He mentioned it frequently during group LSD trips at Barker. The idea of the hidden hole held the attention of his acid-addled audience. Why couldn’t there be such a thing? They tried to adjust to their harsh new living conditions, but problems that Charlie hadn’t anticipated soon emerged.
At Spahn Ranch, it was a simple thing to scrounge food from L.A.-area groceries, but these so-called garbage runs were impossible in Death Valley, where there were no grocery stores. One time when the food supply ran particularly low, Charlie told the women to fan out into the desert and bring back edible plants. When they told him they didn’t know anything about desert plants, Charlie said that as women they were supposed to know about such things, so go out and gather something. But they couldn’t, even when he bawled them out for being unwomanly. So to feed the Family, Charlie had to either buy food from the limited stock at the Ballarat general store, or else bring it in every few days from a city, which was inconvenient given the difficult travel conditions between the ranch and either L.A. or Las Vegas. Buying food also required money, and out in t
he desert Charlie didn’t have any sources of that. He tried sending some of the girls to Las Vegas to panhandle and they had limited success, claiming to passersby in front of casinos that they needed donations to buy food for an Indian tribe. But Charlie saw real danger in letting his followers spend much time there; he’d brought them to Death Valley to keep them away from disruptive outside influences, and Las Vegas was a hotbed of temptation.
A dwindling drug supply was also a concern. In L.A. Charlie could get his hands on as much acid and weed as he needed, from the bikers visiting Spahn Ranch or from dealers. In the past, Charlie was in position to trade things for the drugs—motorcycles donated to the Family, beadwork done by the women, sex with some of the girls if that was what a supplier wanted. But out in the desert there was nobody to donate tradable goods, let alone swap significant quantities of drugs. Charlie needed a constant supply of LSD for group tripping sessions, and weed to help everybody take the edge off any frustrations with the primitive conditions on Barker Ranch.
The isolation of Barker Ranch was a significant advantage, but the drawbacks, particularly in maintaining adequate supplies of food and drugs, tipped the scales in favor of Spahn. The dilemma for Charlie was that he’d just convinced his followers that Barker was where they belonged. Their belief in him might be shaken if he now told them that it was better to return to Spahn. He needed a reason for the reversal in message, and just before Thanksgiving Dennis Wilson gave him one.
Dennis Wilson was not a man to hold a grudge, and though he lacked self-discipline he was also not a fool. “Never Learn Not to Love,” his reworking of Charlie’s “Cease to Exist,” had turned out well. It wasn’t the best song on the Beach Boys’ forthcoming album; “Do It Again,” a tuneful tribute by Brian Wilson and Mike Love to the good ol’ days of sun and surf, would be the first cut released as a single, and “I Can Hear Music,” a remake of an old pop tune, was scheduled as the second. But “Never Learn Not to Love,” with Dennis credited as sole composer, was considered strong enough by the rest of the band to be a candidate as a B side to one of those releases or, at least, a third single culled from the album. That meant considerable extra composing royalties for Dennis if “Never Learn Not to Love” backed a hit. So he not only stood to earn back some of the money it had cost him to host Charlie and the Family, it was possible that future collaborations with Charlie could result in more income. True, Charlie probably wouldn’t be happy when he found out what Wilson had done to “Cease to Exist,” but if it was presented right—Hey, you got a song recorded and it might be just the beginning, isn’t that great?—then maybe he’d quickly get past it and there’d be more collaborating. Besides, Wilson wouldn’t mind more time with the girls in the Family. He knew Charlie had brought most everybody to Barker Ranch, so toward the end of November Wilson decided to drive up there, tell Charlie the good news, and insist that he come back to L.A. for a proper celebration. Wilson invited Gregg Jakobson to make the trip with him. One of the vehicles that the Family used to move to Barker was a jeep that belonged to Jakobson, and they’d never returned it. So Jakobson said he’d go to get his jeep back, and he also thought it would be a chance to see Ruth Ann again. It took forever for the two of them to get to Barker; to Jakobson, it seemed like falling off the edge of the world. They arrived to a warm welcome, and Wilson told Charlie the edited news that his song had been recorded, it was going on the new Beach Boys album and let’s go back to L.A. and party. Charlie was thrilled.
Charlie felt that he couldn’t be away from L.A. at such a critical time; surely all the important record industry people who listened to the album—it was going to be called 20/20—would think “Cease to Exist” was clearly the best song on it, and they’d want to snap up the guy who wrote it. The Family would have to be moved back to Spahn right away. Charlie didn’t reveal to his followers that his personal ambitions were the reason they were going back. He explained that winters in Death Valley were just as brutally cold as the summers there were broiling. The buildings they were living in weren’t heated. Out of consideration for the Family’s health, Charlie had decided to lead them back to L.A. When winter passed, he’d see about returning to Barker Ranch. Everyone was happy, Charlie most of all.
Wilson and Jakobson spent the night at Barker. Wilson was allowed to romp with the girls of his choosing. Jakobson, inconveniencing Charlie because he wanted his jeep back, wasn’t allowed to have sex with Ruth Ann. Charlie wanted to send a message to Jakobson, but he also didn’t want to alienate him since Jakobson still might prove useful in getting a record deal. So Charlie told Jakobson he could sleep with Leslie instead. Jakobson was initially angry, but Leslie was pretty and he thought she was a sweetheart, so he went along with it. The next day he and Wilson and Charlie headed back to L.A., with most of the Family following after them. Charlie left a few members back at Barker, just so nobody could move into the Family’s place.
• • •
There was an immediate complication. Squeaky approached George Spahn to ask if the rest of the Family could move back to his ranch, certain that he’d agree. But Spahn surprised her by saying that they couldn’t; he’d decided that having longhairs around made the place look bad. Charlie, preoccupied with his imminent rise to recording fame, didn’t feel like trying to convince Spahn otherwise. The old man permitted a few Family members to hang around sometimes—he didn’t want to lose Squeaky’s ministrations. Meanwhile, Charlie found a two-story house on Gresham Street in Canoga Park above Topanga. There was enough money to rent the place for a couple of months. Charlie got the Family moved in and waited for the Beach Boys’ 20/20 album to be released in January; big things would undoubtedly happen right afterward. Meanwhile, he kept the girls busy with garbage runs and the men working on cars. It occurred to Charlie that if they did live out in Death Valley again, it would be a good idea to have a fleet of vehicles capable of navigating the area. So Tex and the others began renovating cars into dune buggies. Charlie preached and supervised acid sessions, and at night amused himself by soaking in a hot tub while Leslie read to him from the Bible, always the Book of Revelation. Charlie loved all the imagery, and some of it made its way into his sermons. More and more now he referred to himself as the Second Coming of JC, his term for Jesus Christ. Sometimes he ordered everyone to baaa like sheep because he was the Good Shepherd, and they did.
Charlie not only interpreted the Bible for his followers, he defended it to them. Though they all respected and feared him, sometimes Charlie’s edicts elicited at least mild protest, especially among the women when he reminded them in some new way that they were completely subservient to the group’s men. He always cited the Bible as the basis for his rules—like modern-day evangelical fundamentalists on cable TV and talk radio, Charlie explained that if something was in Scripture it had to be true, and he would not tolerate any debate. They should not, could not, take issue with Charlie, who was JC come again, or the Word of God. Later, Charlie’s former followers ridiculed the widespread belief that the Family practiced Satanism or even sympathized. Charlie was Jesus returned to earth, and Satan and all his followers and works were the enemy, not allies.
It was more difficult to keep the Family busy in town than on the Spahn and Barker ranches, but around the same time Charlie and his followers returned to L.A. the Beatles released their new album. It was a double disc set, crammed with twice as many songs for the Family to listen to over and over as they’d had from Magical Mystery Tour. The band titled it The Beatles, but the defiantly blank cover was a stunning departure from popular rainbow psychedelic designs. Almost instantly the album acquired a new, universal name: the White Album.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The Bible and the Beatles
The White Album consisted of thirty exceptionally eclectic songs, ranging from ersatz music hall to frantic rock ’n’ roll to a children’s lullaby. Though their fans didn’t know it, the Beatles were wracked by dissension throughout the entire recording process—at one point drummer Ring
o Starr actually quit the band, though his departure was never made public and he was coaxed back within weeks. Two vinyl discs resulted from the internal squabbling because none of the Beatles allowed any of his songs to be cut in favor of compositions by the others. Critics generally praised the album—after all, it was by the Beatles—but after embracing previous releases by the band as clear-cut social commentary, many listeners couldn’t find any consistency or theme this time.
Charlie wasn’t confused at all. He gathered the Family around at the Gresham Street rental house and had them listen to the White Album over and over. He demanded that they pay special attention to the songs “Piggies,” “Blackbird,” “Revolution 1,” “Revolution 9,” and “Helter Skelter.” Though each tune on the record had prophetic significance, Charlie explained, these songs were musical road maps to the immediate future. “Piggies” described the disgusting sense of entitlement enjoyed by the very rich and powerful, and concluded that they needed “a damn good whacking.” “Blackbird” predicted an uprising of the downtrodden blacks—this was the moment for them to arise. “Revolution 1” was a call to arms. “Revolution 9,” a pastiche of electronic effects and sound bites including the clatter of machine guns and human screams, was the soundtrack of the coming fury, and “Helter Skelter” provided a formal name for the chaos soon to come. In the best Dale Carnegie tradition, Charlie made certain that his followers felt these interpretations were theirs as well as his; he gravely asked everyone for comments about the songs, then wove whatever they said into a larger context. Everyone should feel incredibly proud, Charlie declared—not only was the White Album the Beatles’ collective call to arms to the entire world, it was specifically directed toward Charlie and the Family. Sometime in 1969, the Family would return to Barker Ranch in Death Valley, and the Beatles would join them there. Charlie determined this based on a line in the song “Honey Pie” that referred to crossing the Atlantic. With his usual assumption of superiority and entitlement, Charlie felt certain that the Beatles would come to him and his followers. To get the process under way he sent letters and telegrams of invitation to the Beatles’ office in England. There was no response, but Charlie wasn’t deterred. The Beatles were only part of the truth he now revealed. He preached to the Family that a black uprising was imminent not just because the Beatles said so, but also the Bible. In fact, the Bible prophesied not only the uprising, but also the Beatles themselves, and Charlie Manson, too. It was all in the final book of the New Testament.
