In the months leading up to the Tate/LaBianca murders in August 1969, Charles Manson often spoke to the members of his "Family" about Helter Skelter, an apocalyptic war arising from racial tensions between blacks and whites. This "chimerical vision"--as it was termed by the court that heard Manson's appeal from his conviction for the killings--involved reference to music of the Beatles (particularly songs from their 1968 double album The Beatles, also known as "the White Album") and to the New Testament's Book of Revelation.
Manson and his followers were convicted of the murders based on the prosecution's theory that they were part of a plan to trigger the Helter Skelter scenario.
Maps, Directions, and Place Reviews
Background
Manson had been predicting racial war for some time before he used the term Helter Skelter. His first use of the term was at a gathering of the Family on New Year's Eve 1968. This took place at the Family's base at Myers Ranch, near California's Death Valley.
In its final form, which was reached by mid-February 1969, the scenario had Manson as not only the war's ultimate beneficiary but its musical cause. He and the Family would create an album with songs whose messages concerning the war would be as subtle as those he had heard in songs of the Beatles. More than merely foretell the conflict, this would trigger it; for, in instructing "the young love", America's white youth, to join the Family, it would draw the young, white female hippies out of San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury.
Black men, thus deprived of the white women whom the political changes of the 1960s had made sexually available to them, would be without an outlet for their frustrations and would lash out in violent crimes against whites. A resultant murderous rampage against blacks by frightened whites would then be exploited by militant blacks to provoke an internecine war of near-extermination between racist and non-racist whites over blacks' treatment. Then the militant blacks would arise to sneakily finish off the few whites they would know to have survived; indeed, they would kill off all non-blacks.
In this holocaust, the members of the enlarged Family would have little to fear; they would wait out the war in a secret city that was underneath Death Valley that they would reach through a hole in the ground. As the only actual remaining whites upon the race war's true conclusion, they would emerge from underground to rule the now-satisfied blacks, who, as the vision went, would be incapable of running the world. At that point, Manson "would scratch [the black man's] fuzzy head and kick him in the butt and tell him to go pick the cotton and go be a good nigger".
The term "Helter Skelter" was from the Beatles song of that name, which referred to the British amusement-park ride of that name but was interpreted by Manson as concerned with the war. The song was on the Beatles' White Album, first heard by Manson within a month or so of its November 1968 release:
Former Manson follower Catherine Share, in a 2009 documentary called Manson, for Cineflix Productions et al., claimed:
Fulfillment
In the months before the murders were conceived, Manson and his followers began preparing for Helter Skelter, which they thought inevitable. In addition to working on songs for the hoped-for album, which would set off everything, they prepared vehicles and other items for their escape from the Los Angeles area (their home territory) to Death Valley when the days of violence would arrive. They pored over maps to plot a route that would bypass highways and get them to the desert safely. Indeed, Manson was convinced that the song "Helter Skelter" contained a coded statement of the route they should follow.
Manson had said the war would start in the summer of 1969. In late June of that year, months after he had been frustrated in his efforts to get the album made, he told a male Family member that Helter Skelter was "ready to happen". "Blackie never did anything without whitey showin' him how," he said. "It looks like we're gonna have to show blackie how to do it."
On August 8, 1969, the day Manson instructed his followers to carry out the first of two sets of notorious murders, he told the Family, "Now is the time for Helter Skelter." When the murderers returned to Spahn Ranch, the Family's Los Angeles area headquarters, after the crime, Manson asked Tex Watson, the sole man among them, whether it had been Helter Skelter. "Yeah, it was sure Helter Skelter," Watson replied.
At the conclusion of the second set of murders, the following night (August 9-10), one of the killers wrote "Healter [sic] Skelter" on the refrigerator of the house in which the murders took place. That, along with other references to Beatles songs, particularly "Piggies", was written in blood.
Family Vision Associates Video
References to the Beatles and the Book of Revelation
When the Beatles first came to the United States, in February 1964, Charles Manson was an inmate in the United States Penitentiary at McNeil Island, in southern Puget Sound. He was serving a sentence for attempting to cash a forged U.S. Treasury check; he was 29 years old. His fellow inmates found his interest in the British rock group "almost an obsession". Taught by inmate Alvin Karpis to play the steel guitar, Manson told many persons that "given the chance, he could be much bigger than the Beatles."
To the Family, a few years later, Manson spoke of the Beatles as "the soul" and "part of 'the hole in the infinite'". When he delivered the Helter Skelter prophecy around the campfire at Myers Ranch, the Family members believed it:
In My Life with Charles Manson, Paul Watkins wrote that Manson "spent hours quoting and interpreting Revelation to the Family, particularly verses from chapter 9". In an autobiography written with assistance some years after the murders, Tex Watson said that, apart from Chapter 9 of the Book of Revelation, the Bible had "absolutely no meaning in our life in the Family". (Even so, Watson stated that "we... knew that Charlie was Jesus Christ.")
For a period in his childhood, Manson lived with an aunt and uncle, while his mother was in prison. He later told a counselor that the aunt and uncle had "some marital difficulty until they became interested in religion and became very extreme".
Beatles lyrics, as interpreted by Manson
- "I Will"
- "Honey Pie"
- "Don't Pass Me By"
- "Yer Blues"
- "Blue Jay Way"
- "Sexy Sadie"
- "Rocky Raccoon"
- "Happiness Is a Warm Gun"
While in the Death Valley area after the New Year's Eve gathering at which Manson announced Helter Skelter, the Family played over and over the White Album's five following songs:
- "Blackbird"
- Helter Skelter
- "Piggies"
- "Revolution 1"
- "Revolution 9"
In his autobiography, Tex Watson tied the prophecy to one more White Album song, "Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey", though he changed monkey to monkeys, plural. While on LSD at a party in late March 1969, Watson explained, he and two Manson girls realized they themselves were "the monkeys,... just bright-eyed, free little animals, totally uninhibited". As they started "bouncing around the apartment, throwing food against the walls, and laughing hysterically", they were, in their own view (if not that of the others in attendance), "all love--spontaneous, childlike love". It would seem Watson took the song's "me and my monkey[s]" to signify Manson and the Family, though he does not say it that way; he fails to indicate whether the interpretation was brought to Manson's attention.
Manson himself invoked "Yellow Submarine", a Beatles song that was released in 1966 and that inspired an animated movie of the same title. The movie was released in the United States in November 1968, within a week or so of the White Album. In the first months of 1969, after he had delivered the Helter Skelter prophecy around the New Year's Eve campfire near Death Valley, Manson applied the name "Yellow Submarine" to a canary-yellow, Canoga Park house to which the Family repaired at his instruction. There, as they would prepare for Helter Skelter, they would be "submerged beneath the awareness of the outside world".
Book of Revelation, as interpreted by Manson
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 9:
CHAPTER 10:
CHAPTER 16:
CHAPTER 21:
CHAPTER 22:
Synthesis
To Manson, the synthesis of Beatles and Bible was hardly to be questioned:
Abbey Road epilogue
If Manson's interest in and references to Magical Mystery Tour constituted a prologue to his focus on the White Album, there was also a kind of epilogue in the form of Family references to Abbey Road, the Beatles album that came after the White Album.
Abbey Road was released in the United Kingdom in late September 1969, after the murders. By that time, most of the Family was at the group's camp in the Death Valley area, searching for the Bottomless Pit. Around October 1 (the U.S. release date), three Family members arrived at the camp with an advance copy of the album, which the group played on a battery-operated machine.
In the second week of October, the desert redoubts were raided by law officers who found the Family with stolen vehicles, including dune buggies; Manson and several others were arrested. By mid-November, when Manson had become a suspect in the Tate-LaBianca murders, Family members who had been released from jail had made their way back to Spahn Ranch. There, on November 25, 1969, the LAPD confiscated a door on which someone had written "Helter Scelter [sic] is coming down fast."
A photograph shows the confiscated door was also inscribed with "1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 -- ALL GOOD CHILDREN (Go to Heaven?)" [sic]. This children's rhyme is heard in "You Never Give Me Your Money", a song that appears on Abbey Road. In October 1970, the prosecution offered testimony about the door during Manson's trial for the Tate-LaBianca murders; but only the "Helter Skelter" inscription seems to have been noted.
In late September or early October 1969, before the arrests, Tex Watson had left the desert camp and gone on to separate himself from the Family. Late in the separation, he, too, bought a cassette recording of Abbey Road. Walking for miles across the desert to rejoin the Family in late October, he played his tape continuously to see what The Beatles might have to tell him. When, at the last moment, he turned back, an old prospector informed him the arrests had taken place. Watson returned to his native Texas, where his own arrest, for the Tate-LaBianca murders, occurred a month later.
In late July 1970, while Manson was on trial, three persons were hacked, two fatally, on the beach near Santa Barbara, California. One of the Manson girls spoke of this incident as "Maxwell's Silver Hammer", an Abbey Road song that plainly is about homicidal madness.
Timeline
1967
- March 21: Charles Manson, aged 32, is released from Terminal Island, San Pedro, California, after seven years' imprisonment for attempting to cash a forged government check. He is granted permission to move to San Francisco.
- Summer: Manson and the first members of what will come to be known as his Family leave the San Francisco area in an old school bus they modified in hippie style. (In an alternate account, some months of Manson travels and acquisition of Family members precede the group's departure from San Francisco in the school bus, around November 10.)
- November 27: The Beatles' album Magical Mystery Tour is released in the United States. The Family will come to call its geographical and psychological movement in the school bus "the Magical Mystery Tour".
1968
- April 4: Martin Luther King, Jr., is assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee.
- Late spring: Having ended up in the Los Angeles area after months of roaming through the West Coast and the Southwest, Manson and the Family become associated with The Beach Boys' Dennis Wilson after Wilson picks up two female Family members hitchhiking in Malibu. Several Family members begin living in Wilson's Pacific Palisades home while, by midsummer, others will be living at the Spahn Ranch in (or near) Chatsworth. During the spring/summer of 1968, Dennis Wilson also introduces Manson to his friend Terry Melcher, a record producer who has worked not only with the Beach Boys, but also with The Byrds, Paul Revere & the Raiders, The Mamas & the Papas, and many other L.A.-based musical acts.
- August 9: Gregg Jakobson, another music industry friend of Dennis Wilson, pays for studio time to record songs written and performed by Manson.
- August: Three weeks before the lease on his house is to run out, Dennis Wilson has his manager evict the Family members from it.
- October 31: Having been consolidated at the Spahn Ranch since the eviction from Dennis Wilson's house, the Family members set out in a new school bus (purchased September 1) toward Death Valley to set up an alternate base.
- November 1: The Family members arrive at the Death Valley area's Golar Wash, maybe 120 miles (190 km) north of Los Angeles and 90 miles (140 km) west of Las Vegas. They load themselves into the unused Myers Ranch, which is owned by the grandmother of a new Family member.
- November 3: When Manson and Family member Paul Watkins take a short trip from Golar Wash to visit "Ma Barker", owner of another unused (or little-used) ranch, not far from Myers, Manson presents himself and Watkins to her as musicians in need of a residence congenial to their work. When she agrees to let them stay at the ranch if they'll fix what needs fixing, Manson honors her with one of The Beach Boys' gold records, several of which he'd been given by Dennis Wilson. On the way back to Golar Wash, Watkins, who has seen a newspaper while they've been on their trek, mentions a police shooting of a young black in San Francisco; Manson replies that a black revolt has been building up for years. He says the killing of Martin Luther King, Jr., is a "heavy number."
- November 13: Animated movie Yellow Submarine, based on the song of the same name by The Beatles, is released in the United States.
- November 25: Release of the Beatles' White Album (formal name, The Beatles) in the United States. (Release in the United Kingdom was November 22.)
- Mid-December: Family member Paul Watkins and two female Family members go to Los Angeles for a few days. While they're there, they see Yellow Submarine.
- Before the end of December: While back at Spahn Ranch, Manson and Charles "Tex" Watson visit an acquaintance in nearby Topanga Canyon. When, in response to a question from the acquaintance, they tell him they haven't heard the new Beatles album, he plays it for them.
- New Year's Eve: Around a campfire on a bitter cold night at the Myers Ranch, the Family members listen as Manson lays out the prophecy of Helter Skelter.
1969
- ~January 10: Word comes from Manson, who is in Los Angeles, that the Family is to move from the desert to a house he's found in Canoga Park. Because the canary-yellow house is a place where the Family, preparing for Helter Skelter, will be "submerged beneath the awareness of the outside world," Manson dubs it the Yellow Submarine.
- Mid-February: While riding in a car with Paul Watkins, Manson sees a white woman and a black man holding hands on the street. He explains to Watkins that that's why black men have not yet risen up in rebellion against whites: they're pacified by access to white women.
- Before mid-March: In preparation for a visit they are for some reason expecting from Dennis Wilson's friend Terry Melcher, owner of a record company, Family members clean the Canoga Park house, set up their instruments, and prepare vegetables, lasagna, salad, French bread, freshly baked cookies, and marijuana. They are hoping Melcher will agree to record the music they've been preparing to trigger Helter Skelter; Melcher doesn't arrive.
- March 23: Entering uninvited upon 10050 Cielo Drive, which he has known as the residence of Terry Melcher, Manson gets a cool reception from a male friend of Sharon Tate, who, with her husband, Roman Polanski, is the new lessee; Tate looks on. Manson, who possibly knows Melcher no longer lives at the place, has come calling for someone and is told to check the guest house; after briefly going back to the guest house, he leaves. In the evening, when he enters the property again, Manson is received with an equal lack of enthusiasm, at the guest house, by landlord Rudi Altobelli, an entertainment-industry figure who had met him the previous summer through Dennis Wilson. Though Manson asks for Melcher, he prolongs the conversation with Altobelli and attempts to establish a connection with him. Altobelli, who will be going to Europe the next day, lies that he will be out of the United States for a year; he gives Manson incomplete information about Melcher's new location. In learning that Manson had been directed to the guest house by persons at the main house, Altobelli expresses his wish that Manson not disturb his tenants. Manson leaves; Tate later asks Altobelli whether "that creepy-looking guy" showed up at the guest house.
- ~April 1: The Family starts settling back into the Spahn Ranch, which they had quit after owner George Spahn, under pressure from police, had shut down an unlicensed nightclub they'd set up at the ranch to raise money for their preparations for Helter Skelter. They will not concern themselves with Spahn's objections; during Helter Skelter, they must be at Spahn, from which they'll have a "clear escape route to the desert."
- Mid-June: While Manson and Family member Paul Watkins are discussing Helter Skelter, Manson tells Watkins "it looks like we're gonna have to show blackie how to do it."
- July 27: In a dispute over money, Family member Bobby Beausoleil acts on Manson's instruction to murder Family acquaintance Gary Hinman. After stabbing Hinman to death, Beausoleil writes "Political piggy" on a wall in Hinman's blood.
- August 6: Beausoleil is arrested after he is caught driving Hinman's car; the knife he used to stab Hinman is found in the car's tire well.
- August 8: In the afternoon, Manson tells the Family members, "Now is the time for Helter Skelter."
- August 9: After midnight, acting on Manson's instruction, three Family members including Tex Watson murder Sharon Tate and four other persons on the premises of 10050 Cielo Drive. Susan Atkins, one of the killers, writes "Pig" on the house's front door, in Sharon Tate's blood. When the killers and a fourth Family member, who accompanied them, return to Spahn Ranch, Watson assures Manson it was Helter Skelter.
- August 10: After midnight, three Family members acting on Manson's instruction murder Leno and Rosemary LaBianca at their Los Feliz home, next door to a house at which Manson and Family members had attended a party the previous year. Using LaBianca blood, one of the killers writes "Rise" and "Death to Pigs" on the living room walls. She writes "Healter [sic] Skelter" on the refrigerator.
Impact
Manson entranced youths of the 1960s, and at first he and his Family represented a peaceful, harmonious, and loving revolution to strive for a better world than they inherited. To Tex Watson, Manson had exactly the type of love that he needed. Through this convincing love that Manson put out, he was able to create murderers for his plan to start a race war.
Watson, who, as noted above, was with Manson when Manson first heard the White Album, took part in both the Tate murders and the LaBianca murders. Indeed, in his own recounting of the crimes, he is the only killer to participate directly in every one of the seven homicides and is the sole killer of at least three of the victims. While awaiting trial, he told other Family members, "It seemed like I had to do everything."
On the late 1968 day he and Manson first heard the album, Watson separated himself from the Family, which he did not rejoin until the following March (1969). By that time, Manson's prophecy had captured the group's imagination, but Watson would be a while in grasping its details. In his 1978 autobiography (as told to Ray Hoekstra), he wrote as follows:
Manson's testimony
At his 1970 trial for the Tate-LaBianca murders, Manson was permitted to testify, after the attorneys for the other defendants and him had attempted to rest their case, without calling a single witness. Lest he violate the California Supreme Court's decision in People v. Aranda by implicating his co-defendants, the jury was removed from the courtroom. He spoke for over an hour. As for Helter Skelter, he said the following:
As to there having been a conspiracy, of which he was alleged to have been a part, to commit the murders, Manson said this:
In various press and parole board interviews, Manson has dismissed the Helter Skelter conspiracy as an invention by the trial prosecutor to tie him to the murders. At about the one-fifth point of his 1992 parole hearing, Manson said the following:
Primary sources
More detail about Helter Skelter is found in the following:
- Prosecution's closing argument in trial of Charles Manson and others for the Tate-LaBianca murders. This includes references to and excerpts from testimony of Paul Watkins.
- Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders by Vincent Bugliosi with Curt Gentry
- Will You Die for Me? by Charles Watson as told to Ray Hoekstra
- My Life with Charles Manson by Paul Watkins and Guillermo Soledad
As has been noted, Bugliosi led the prosecution in the Tate-LaBianca trials; at the time of the trials, he was a Los Angeles Deputy District Attorney. Charles Watson is the above-mentioned Family member who took part in the murders. Watkins was an above-mentioned Family member who was not involved in the murders.
Another source is The Family by Ed Sanders (Thunder's Mouth Press, New York, 2002. ISBN 1-56025-396-7). Sanders covered Manson's trial for the Los Angeles Free Press; during the trial and in the period that led up to it, he spent time in the company of Family members. His book avoids much detail of the Beatle and Bible references, but it enables the reader to grasp Manson's vision of the Family as marauders wheeling through Helter Skelter's chaos. (When originally published, in 1971, the book was entitled The Family: The Story of Charles Manson's Dune Buggy Attack Battalion.)
See also the trial testimony of Gregg Jakobson, who met Manson at the home of Beach Boy Dennis Wilson in May or early summer of 1968 and who arranged a recording session for Manson in August of that year. Jakobson indicated that Manson and he had talked about Manson's "philosophy on life" in various settings "innumerable times" - "Maybe 100."
Footnotes
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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