CHARLIE MANSON'S MUSICAL TOSS
A CRITICAL ANALYSIS
A CRITICAL ANALYSIS
Way back in the centuries-past, some time in the 1960’s, a young
fella from Cincinnati took quite a shine to The Beach Boys. Easy
to understand why, man, I mean those cats had some good tunes.
The Sound Of Pets, their 1966 masterpiece, knocked The Duke
sideways when I first stuck it into a personal CD player in a
Dublin hotel room.
“Wouldn’t it be nice if we were older?
Then, we wouldn’t have to wait so long.”
Has there even been a better articulation of adolescent longing?
Granted, the fella was far from an adolescent, but shit, man,
teenagers had only been invented a couple years ago, the rules
were still a little hazy round the edges.
This young fella, though, the one what was so enamoured of The
Beach Boys, he was so in awe of their studio alchemy, in fact,
that he went ahead and made friends with them, and tried to get
his own musical career off the ground by weight of association.
“I know Dennis Wilson, man, so y’all better be giving me a
record deal, is what, especially since I got some ridiculous
fucking jazz-folk bullshit for to sell.”
That young fella was none other than Charles Manson, a fella
what would take none too kindly to rejection on this particular
issue. Realising that his recordings were at best intriguing, at
worst diabolically awful, those label-execs directed him towards
the door marked “Don’t be so fucking stupid”, a door which,
incidentally, happened to be right next to the one marked “Come
on, man, let’s kill some folks.”
Even when the Beach Boys went ahead and recorded one of Manson’s
tracks, (Cease To Exist, retitled Never Learn Not To Love and
appearing on the 20/20 LP), still nobody cared two golden turds
for the fella himself.
Those folks at Decca what turned down The Beatles, they must’ve
felt like someone just pissed in their coffee when I Wanna Hold
Your Hand went to No.1 in every country from here to Pluto.
Similarly, I imagine all those folks what told Manson he sucked,
I’m guessing maybe they felt a little pang in their guts round
about the morning of 10 August 1969.
“If only, man. If only I’d let him put out his stupid damn 6th
form crap.”
The Beach Boys, too, must’ve felt a bit weird about it all.
Maybe we shouldn’t have put that song on there after all, they
may have mused.
The Beach Boys, of course, aren’t the only rock n’ roll types to
have recorded a Manson composition. They are, granted, the only
ones to have done so before he went ahead and killed a few folks
on account of John Lennon told him to or some such demented shit.
Guns N’ Roses, for example, included a cover of Look At Your
Game, Girl as a hidden track on their fairly embarrassing covers
album The Spaghetti Incident? Stunt-work it may have been, but
it did illustrate one especially troubling fact; Manson could
write a tune.
Look At Your Game, Girl is one of the great “lost” recordings of
the 1960’s. A haunting, disarmingly perky affair that, thanks to
both recording methods what left a lot to be desired and also
the later antics of the songwriter, sounds unpleasantly
threatening to contemporary ears, particularly if those ears
belong to The Duke, who found it highly threatening indeed.
It’s nothing, though, compared to the faintly psychedelic folk
of People Say I’m No Good. “They all look at me and they frown”,
Manson sighs. “Do they really think I look so strange?” Who
knows, man? Some folks get all uppity when they see a swastika
on a forehead, I guess. Go figure.
“The young might not be so dumb after all”, he sneers. “And from
the young you might learn.”
Obviously, statements like these ensure that the recordings take
on a truly disturbing air in light of what happened shortly
after, but at the time, would anyone really have guessed this
moaning son of a bitch was any more demented than any of those
other folks smoking the drugs and writing the tunes? To be
honest, if I’d a been there, I’m pretty sure I’d have been more
suspicious of Jim Morrison.
The track just kind of pitters out, not really reaching a climax
of any worthwhile nature. It feels like some lonesome cry
carried along on some dust-flecked wind, just passing by our
ears and then moving along a bit further up the road.
Cease To Exist, the track later adapted by The Beach Boys, is a
wholly unspectacular slab of bar-room-boogie-infected pish. Of
the recordings available, it’s the least affecting. Coasting
along on the kind of peace-and-love vibe that would later
manifest itself in the slaughtering of a pregnant woman, it
trounces with violent gusto the notion that Manson was some kind
of prophet or visionary.
In 1970, Manson released a compilation of his recordings
entitled Lies, in a bid to fund his legal strife. It has,
fittingly enough, become something of a cult item, a record
what, I would imagine, has been purchased more times than it has
been listened to. It looks good on a shelf, and serves also as a
decent conversation piece for when folks are getting a little
soused around the skull and feeling a tad hypothetical.
What if, man? What if Manson’s increasingly deranged behaviour
hadn’t scared away all those executives? What if someone had
said, “O.K, then, let’s put these records out?”
Maybe Manson would have just gone ahead and died in a bath-tub,
coked to the eyes and yacking about peace and love and helter
skelters. As it happens, he instead followed his “artistic
vision” along the path of the recruiting mentally-disturbed
teenagers and propagating his self-pitying, homicidal bullshit
among them.
Listening to those recordings, however abominable some of them
may be, it’s impossible not to feel a little moved. He was
obviously a very unhappy individual who, like plenty of others,
spent a little too long pondering his predicament.
Shit, man, move on is what you want to be doing. Festering in
your own dementia is only gonna make matters worse.
Thanks Folks.
Drop The Duke A Line Via Electronical Email
fella from Cincinnati took quite a shine to The Beach Boys. Easy
to understand why, man, I mean those cats had some good tunes.
The Sound Of Pets, their 1966 masterpiece, knocked The Duke
sideways when I first stuck it into a personal CD player in a
Dublin hotel room.
“Wouldn’t it be nice if we were older?
Then, we wouldn’t have to wait so long.”
Has there even been a better articulation of adolescent longing?
Granted, the fella was far from an adolescent, but shit, man,
teenagers had only been invented a couple years ago, the rules
were still a little hazy round the edges.
This young fella, though, the one what was so enamoured of The
Beach Boys, he was so in awe of their studio alchemy, in fact,
that he went ahead and made friends with them, and tried to get
his own musical career off the ground by weight of association.
“I know Dennis Wilson, man, so y’all better be giving me a
record deal, is what, especially since I got some ridiculous
fucking jazz-folk bullshit for to sell.”
That young fella was none other than Charles Manson, a fella
what would take none too kindly to rejection on this particular
issue. Realising that his recordings were at best intriguing, at
worst diabolically awful, those label-execs directed him towards
the door marked “Don’t be so fucking stupid”, a door which,
incidentally, happened to be right next to the one marked “Come
on, man, let’s kill some folks.”
Even when the Beach Boys went ahead and recorded one of Manson’s
tracks, (Cease To Exist, retitled Never Learn Not To Love and
appearing on the 20/20 LP), still nobody cared two golden turds
for the fella himself.
Those folks at Decca what turned down The Beatles, they must’ve
felt like someone just pissed in their coffee when I Wanna Hold
Your Hand went to No.1 in every country from here to Pluto.
Similarly, I imagine all those folks what told Manson he sucked,
I’m guessing maybe they felt a little pang in their guts round
about the morning of 10 August 1969.
“If only, man. If only I’d let him put out his stupid damn 6th
form crap.”
The Beach Boys, too, must’ve felt a bit weird about it all.
Maybe we shouldn’t have put that song on there after all, they
may have mused.
The Beach Boys, of course, aren’t the only rock n’ roll types to
have recorded a Manson composition. They are, granted, the only
ones to have done so before he went ahead and killed a few folks
on account of John Lennon told him to or some such demented shit.
Guns N’ Roses, for example, included a cover of Look At Your
Game, Girl as a hidden track on their fairly embarrassing covers
album The Spaghetti Incident? Stunt-work it may have been, but
it did illustrate one especially troubling fact; Manson could
write a tune.
Look At Your Game, Girl is one of the great “lost” recordings of
the 1960’s. A haunting, disarmingly perky affair that, thanks to
both recording methods what left a lot to be desired and also
the later antics of the songwriter, sounds unpleasantly
threatening to contemporary ears, particularly if those ears
belong to The Duke, who found it highly threatening indeed.
It’s nothing, though, compared to the faintly psychedelic folk
of People Say I’m No Good. “They all look at me and they frown”,
Manson sighs. “Do they really think I look so strange?” Who
knows, man? Some folks get all uppity when they see a swastika
on a forehead, I guess. Go figure.
“The young might not be so dumb after all”, he sneers. “And from
the young you might learn.”
Obviously, statements like these ensure that the recordings take
on a truly disturbing air in light of what happened shortly
after, but at the time, would anyone really have guessed this
moaning son of a bitch was any more demented than any of those
other folks smoking the drugs and writing the tunes? To be
honest, if I’d a been there, I’m pretty sure I’d have been more
suspicious of Jim Morrison.
The track just kind of pitters out, not really reaching a climax
of any worthwhile nature. It feels like some lonesome cry
carried along on some dust-flecked wind, just passing by our
ears and then moving along a bit further up the road.
Cease To Exist, the track later adapted by The Beach Boys, is a
wholly unspectacular slab of bar-room-boogie-infected pish. Of
the recordings available, it’s the least affecting. Coasting
along on the kind of peace-and-love vibe that would later
manifest itself in the slaughtering of a pregnant woman, it
trounces with violent gusto the notion that Manson was some kind
of prophet or visionary.
In 1970, Manson released a compilation of his recordings
entitled Lies, in a bid to fund his legal strife. It has,
fittingly enough, become something of a cult item, a record
what, I would imagine, has been purchased more times than it has
been listened to. It looks good on a shelf, and serves also as a
decent conversation piece for when folks are getting a little
soused around the skull and feeling a tad hypothetical.
What if, man? What if Manson’s increasingly deranged behaviour
hadn’t scared away all those executives? What if someone had
said, “O.K, then, let’s put these records out?”
Maybe Manson would have just gone ahead and died in a bath-tub,
coked to the eyes and yacking about peace and love and helter
skelters. As it happens, he instead followed his “artistic
vision” along the path of the recruiting mentally-disturbed
teenagers and propagating his self-pitying, homicidal bullshit
among them.
Listening to those recordings, however abominable some of them
may be, it’s impossible not to feel a little moved. He was
obviously a very unhappy individual who, like plenty of others,
spent a little too long pondering his predicament.
Shit, man, move on is what you want to be doing. Festering in
your own dementia is only gonna make matters worse.
Thanks Folks.
Drop The Duke A Line Via Electronical Email
