Manson: The Life and Times of Charles Manson Hardcover

by Jeff Guinn

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Thwarted Dreams

  America was seething in May 1969. Tension crackled across the land. Mankind’s first moon landing was scheduled for late July, but there remained an overall sense of foreboding, as though the trauma of 1968 might have been preamble to something even worse.

  Focused more on Vietnam and international tensions, President Nixon disdained hippies and student radicals, finding little if any difference between them. He also had no empathy for frustrated black rioters. Though he was not antagonistic toward minorities and believed in government programs to bolster them socially and economically, the president regarded blacks as fundamentally inferior to whites. Nixon lectured staffers that “the key is to devise a system that recognizes this while appearing not to.”

  So as the weather warmed, blacks in city ghettos again began to lash out, and young white radicals who previously studied articles on organizing peaceful protest marches began poring over blueprints for making homemade bombs.

  There was plenty of new evidence to cite as additional signs of the coming Helter Skelter, but Charlie ignored it all. At Spahn Ranch, preparations for race war were set aside once again so that everyone could get things ready for Terry Melcher. Charlie’s outrage when Melcher stood him up in March, and his desperation to impress him now in May, made it obvious to even his most blindly devoted followers that nothing mattered more to their leader than getting a record deal. If they hadn’t realized before how much Charlie wanted it, they did now. On May 18, as he waited for Melcher to show up at Spahn, the sharpest-eyed among his followers realized that Charlie was nervous.

  Melcher arrived at the ranch ready to get down to business. His time was limited; he had no interest in freshly baked snacks or messing with the girls. Charlie wanted a chance to audition—all right, Melcher told him, play me your music. Charlie fetched his guitar and strummed. The women stripped, then began humming and providing percussion accompaniment. A few used tambourines. The rest knocked pieces of wood together. As they kept time to Charlie’s songs they also danced, swaying in the dusty sunshine. Charlie put all that he had into his performance. Melcher listened intently. At one point Charlie took a short break. During this time-out he tried to engage Melcher in a philosophical conversation, explaining how it was possible for anyone to “exist in a place” without restrictions, where you lived well on other people’s garbage. Melcher wasn’t interested. He was there to evaluate Charlie’s music, not the Family’s lifestyle. Charlie played and sang some more, and then the audition was over.

  Though Charlie anticipated an immediate contract offer, Melcher was noncommittal. Taking Charlie aside, he said polite things about several songs being interesting. He knew a guy, Mike Deasy, who besides being a great session guitarist had his own recording van and liked going onsite to record Indian tribal music. Melcher said that he’d come back with Deasy, who might be interested in what Charlie was doing. Meanwhile, he gave Charlie $50, all the cash he had with him, to buy hay for the ranch horses or whatever the Family needed. Melcher had grown up in homes with fully stocked pantries and refrigerators. Charlie’s talk of feeding not only the Family adults but also their children from garbage bins bothered him.

  Melcher left immediately after handing over the money. The Family gathered around Charlie—what did Melcher say? Did Charlie get his record deal? It was a ticklish moment for Charlie. Melcher had promised to come back and listen to Charlie again, but this time with somebody else who might want to record him. Even at his most self-delusional, Charlie couldn’t mistake the underlying message that Melcher was probably going to pass. He might change his mind after the second session, but for now Charlie had to tell his followers something. So Charlie announced that Terry Melcher had given him money. Charlie made sure that the Family thought it was in the nature of a signing bonus. And Melcher was coming back soon with a recording van! Charlie explained that he turned down a chance to sign a contract with Melcher on the spot because, after all, Charlie Manson’s word was his bond and he didn’t believe in written contracts.

  The ploy worked. So far as Charlie’s followers were concerned, the audition had been a tremendous success, as of course it had to be, since he was infallible.

  Terry Melcher left Spahn Ranch that day feeling certain that Charlie Manson had nothing to offer musically. He recalled later that Charlie’s songs were “below-average nothing, and as far as I was concerned, Manson was like every other starving, hippie songwriter who was [currently] jamming Sunset Boulevard, a hundred thousand every day, who looked, dressed, talked and sang exactly like Charles Manson, sang about the same topics of peace and revolution, about the themes that were in the Beatles’ albums.” It was possible, Melcher believed, that his friend Mike Deasy might see something in Charlie’s music that he didn’t, though if Deasy did any recording with Charlie it would be for such a tiny niche audience that very few records would be sold, let alone the unfathomably enormous number necessary to make Charlie more famous than the Beatles. Melcher talked to Deasy, and they agreed to go to Spahn on June 6, meaning Charlie had almost three weeks to build up his hopes again.

  During those three weeks, Charlie put everyone back to work on Helter Skelter. There were dune buggies in various stages of repair scattered around the ranch. Towing them into the buildings where Tex and the bikers worked required particularly strong tethers, so Charlie went to a surplus store in Santa Monica and bought several hundred feet of white three-ply nylon rope, which was much cheaper than towing chains. Everyone was kept working at a feverish pace, but as they worked the Family members chattered about Charlie’s record deal with Melcher. Despite Charlie’s warnings about the coming race war, most members of the Family weren’t happy about returning to desolate Barker Ranch. The time they’d spent at Dennis Wilson’s log cabin mansion was very much on their minds. If Charlie became a rock star—as, of course, he inevitably would—then they could all live in posh digs like Wilson’s instead of scorpion-infested desert shacks. That was certainly much more appealing.

  On June 6 Melcher and Deasy arrived at Spahn. Gregg Jakobson was with them. Charlie performed his songs for them, with the Family women providing background vocals and percussion. In a spectacularly wrongheaded attempt at hospitality, someone slipped Deasy LSD and he suffered a horrendously bad trip. Melcher and Jakobson had to get him home and as they guided him toward their car, with Charlie walking hopefully alongside them and the rest of the Family trailing along behind, veteran Hollywood stuntman Randy Starr, who often hung out at Spahn, staggered up. He was dressed all in black, belligerently drunk, and waving an old-fashioned six-gun. Starr reminded Melcher of the Lee Marvin character in the movie Cat Ballou—so far as he was concerned, the guy offered no real threat at all. But Charlie, faced with the end of his rock star dreams, screeched, “Don’t draw on me, motherfucker,” and began, Jakobson recalled, “to beat the shit out of [Starr] right in front of us.” Melcher was disgusted. Sure, the guy was twice Charlie’s size, but he was just drunk and acting stupid. There’d been no reason to beat him up.

  A few days later, perhaps in person but probably over the phone since Melcher didn’t have time to waste making yet another trip out to Spahn, Charlie got the response that, at some level, he knew was coming. Because Melcher wasn’t insensitive to Charlie’s hopes, it was the classic producer’s tactful turndown: “You’re good, but I wouldn’t know what to do with you.” And with that, Charlie Manson’s dream of becoming a rock star more famous than the Beatles was essentially over.

  The constant danger for gurus is that they must keep producing new wonders for their followers. They can’t let the act get stale or seem to be wrong about something or, worst of all, to fail publicly. Charlie had let the Family see how much he wanted a record deal; he’d made them part of his all-out effort and it came to nothing. If they began to doubt him because of that, how long would it be before they lost faith in Helter Skelter and refused to be led into a life of hardscrabble austerity in Death Valley? They
were already wondering when Charlie would cut his first album with Columbia. Charlie had to think of something fast, an explanation of why Terry Melcher’s rejection wasn’t really failure on Charlie’s part. He came up with a beauty.

  Terry Melcher, Charlie told his followers, had promised him a contract and then reneged on the deal. Didn’t everyone recall that Melcher gave Charlie money, a down payment, back in May? And then after he returned in June Melcher said he was going to give Charlie a call soon and get it all set up. Charlie took Melcher at his word because he was so honest himself. When Charlie promised to do something, he did it. But not Terry Melcher. Despite being so impressed by Charlie’s music—everybody remembered how impressed Melcher was, didn’t they?—for some reason he had decided to withhold Charlie’s healing music from the rest of the world. Terry Melcher had betrayed Charlie, just like those betrayals of Jesus in the Bible, and so this was yet another sign that the prophecies in Revelation and the White Album were coming true. Melcher’s heinous act was just one more piece of the apocalyptic puzzle fitting neatly in place. Just as Charlie had foretold, Helter Skelter was coming down fast.

  The Family believed him. At that point, they had little choice. They’d surrendered their lives and wills to Charlie. They moved forward in preparations for Helter Skelter, but as they did they sensed a permanent change in their leader. Before, Charlie always leavened any inner rage with periods of outer calm. But after Terry Melcher’s turndown, Leslie Van Houten remembers, Charlie “stopped pretending that he wasn’t angry. He was mad all of the time.”

  Charlie realized that Melcher had been his last good chance for a record deal, but he didn’t quite give up. Though he kept it from most of the Family, during the summer of 1969 Charlie made a few last-ditch efforts to enlist new superstar patrons. Bobby Beausoleil pitched Charlie’s songs to Frank Zappa. Gypsy met Paul Rothchild, the producer of the Doors, and played him the tapes of Charlie’s 1968 recording session in Van Nuys. Charlie performed some of his songs for Mamas and Papas vocalist Cass Elliot. They all passed, which didn’t improve Charlie’s disposition.

  The Family’s approach to Helter Skelter grew darker, even sinister. On Charlie’s command they began stealing things during their creepy-crawling, often items that could be traded or sold, always credit cards if they could get them. Charlie learned where Terry Melcher lived on the beach in Malibu and sent a creepy-crawl team there. They stole a telescope off his porch, intending the theft as a message to Melcher that they could always find him. But Melcher had no idea he’d been robbed by the Family; he thought some run-of-the-mill thief had swiped the telescope. After turning Charlie down for a record deal, he hadn’t given him another thought.

  Charlie began suggesting that the creepy-crawls could be ratcheted up even more—perhaps some Piggies could be kidnapped, or even tied up in their homes and frightened to death. Death was much on Charlie’s mind and the frequent topic of his sermonizing during group LSD trips. Everyone was afraid of death and that was foolish, Charlie preached, because death and life were the same. He had a question for his followers—“Would you die for me?” Under the constant influence of the drug and Charlie himself, they assured him that they would.

  But that summer some of them began to waver. They didn’t like the prospect of living out on Barker Ranch, or else they were nervous about all the guns and creepy-crawling or just sick of serving at Charlie’s beck and call. Pat Krenwinkel left with a biker; Charlie tracked them down just south of L.A. and told Pat she had to come home with him. Pat was so astonished by his ability to find her, which she attributed to Charlie’s special powers rather than his extensive contacts in the biker community, that she complied. When Leslie Van Houten began grumbling, Charlie put her in his dune buggy and drove to the top of the Santa Susanas, parked, and told her, “If you want to leave me, jump.” Leslie didn’t want to jump, and so she stayed.

  Charlie couldn’t prevent every defection, especially among the contingent he’d sent ahead to Death Valley while he remained at Spahn. Word reached him that Brooks Poston had left Barker Ranch to work with prospector/rival guru Paul Crockett, and that Juanita also deserted to marry one of Crockett’s partners. Charlie needed some kind of uprising that he could interpret to his followers as the beginning of Helter Skelter so they believed they had no option other than to stay with him, but the blacks weren’t cooperating. He told Watkins that any delay was the result of black people being too stupid to know how to get Helter Skelter started. Well, it was going to happen that summer, and apparently Charlie would be the one to show them how to do it. That was too much for Watkins. The next time Charlie sent him out to Barker to check on things there, he joined Paul Crockett, too. Charlie had lost his most effective recruiter. That made him even more determined to keep the rest of the Family together. The best way to do that was to get them away from L.A. and into Death Valley, where they would be even more dependent on Charlie. Of course, Crockett was out there, but Charlie had plans for him.

  The Family suffered an additional loss through arrest. Spahn ranch-hand-turned-Family-member Steve Grogan—Clem Scramblehead—was jailed for child molestation and indecent exposure. He told police that “the kids wanted me to . . . the thing fell out of my pants and the parents got excited.” Despite his well-deserved reputation as the dumbest of all Family members, Clem was a very useful disciple to Charlie. He would do anything Charlie wanted, provided that whatever he was asked to do wasn’t too complicated. Now he was gone.

  With no further chance to get a record deal through L.A. contacts, the Family wondering when exactly Helter Skelter was going to start, and Paul Crockett poaching his followers from Barker Ranch, Charlie was desperate to leave Spahn Ranch for Death Valley. But money remained an issue; without a lot of it, they couldn’t survive long in the desert. Drug deals were the best source for quick cash, and Charlie decided to work another contact besides the Straight Satans bikers. Luella, the girl Tex Watson lived with during his AWOL months from the Family, was still dealing, and on July 1 Tex called her to say that he had twenty-five kilos of prime weed. Luella agreed to bring in a buyer who would put up $2,500 in advance, skim a few kilos for herself, and make a nice profit. What Tex didn’t share with her was that there were no twenty-five kilos. He was going to take the $2,500 and “burn” Luella and her buyer. If they traced Tex back to Spahn, Charlie would swear that Tex had disappeared weeks earlier.

  Everything went wrong. Luella’s buyer was a tank-sized black dealer named Bernard Crowe, whose street nickname was Lotsapoppa. Tex got the $2,500 up front, but Lotsapoppa and his boys said they’d keep Luella until they took delivery of the weed. They told Tex in graphic detail what would happen to her if they were stiffed. Tex swore he was on the up-and-up, then took the money back to Charlie at Spahn. Lotsapoppa soon guessed that he’d been swindled, and called the ranch demanding to talk to Tex. Charlie stuck to the plan, telling him that Tex was gone and he had no idea how to contact him. Lotsapoppa described what he was about to do to Luella. Charlie didn’t care about that, but he was terrified by what he heard next. Lotsapoppa declared that he was a member of the Black Panthers. If he didn’t get his weed or his money, he was going to gather an army of his Panther friends, come out to Spahn Ranch, and kill everybody there.

  This was a threat that Charlie took seriously. In prison, he’d been intimidated by the Black Muslims, and since his brief stay in Berkeley he’d believed that the Black Panthers were lethal to anyone who crossed them. Much of his Helter Skelter preaching was predicated on the Muslims’ and the Panthers’ militant attitudes spreading throughout the black community. No whites could possibly stand up to them. In truth, by the summer of 1969 the Panther organization was in disarray and in no position to organize an attack on a sprawling ranch. Lotsapoppa wasn’t even a member of the Panthers. But Charlie believed him. He didn’t want to give the money back—he needed it for Death Valley and, besides, he was already concerned that his hold over the Family might be growing tenuous. He couldn’t let
them see him backing down. So Charlie, certain that he was cornered, told Lotsapoppa that he would meet him at his home in North Hollywood. Then he and Family member T. J. Walleman set out. On the way, Charlie explained what they were about to do. He had a handgun that he would tuck in the back of his pants. When they went into the apartment, he would go in first with Walleman directly behind him. When Charlie gave a signal, Walleman would yank the gun free and shoot Lotsapoppa. As usual, Charlie wanted someone else to do the dirty work.

  Lotsapoppa had two confederates with him at the apartment. Walleman lost his nerve and Charlie had to pull the gun himself. Walleman told Tex Watson later that the pistol misfired on the first try, but then Charlie managed to shoot Lotsapoppa in the chest. The big black man toppled over. Charlie then waved the gun at the other two dealers, and he and Walleman raced back to Spahn. Afterward Charlie was furious with Walleman for panicking. Having seen firsthand that Charlie was capable of murder, Walleman fled the ranch. Charlie bragged to everyone how he’d done what was needed, how he blew a Black Panther away, just stood there unafraid and shot him dead. But he remained convinced that at any moment a Panther hit squad, now bent on revenge as well as retrieving the $2,500, might launch an attack on the ranch. Charlie ordered male Family members and friends from among the bikers to man all-hours lookout posts; he handed around some of the guns acquired for the Helter Skelter escape to the desert. Charlie stressed that he wasn’t afraid for himself; it was the Family he wanted to protect. Everyone was on the alert for Panther infiltrators. None was discovered, but over the next few weeks the Family was suspicious when more black tourists than usual came to the ranch to rent horses. Charlie even worried when a bus full of blacks passed by the front ranch gate. He pointed it out to the Family, suggesting that the Panthers were scouting their defenses. Charlie wanted Helter Skelter to begin with a black attack on whites, but not on him. He used the Lotsapoppa incident as proof that the race war was definitely drawing near. They needed to raise money and get out to the desert before they were swept up in it. Meanwhile, he maintained the armed lookouts. Gypsy told a television interviewer decades later that “it wasn’t peace and love and hippies anymore. It was almost like an army.”