Murder Ballad MondayDeath Valley ’69: How Charles Manson Murdered the ’60s (Part One) - Page 4
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Death Valley ’69: How Charles Manson Murdered the ’60s (Part One) — 9 Comments

  1. This is a GREAT article. Thank you so much. Never heard a more chilling song than Neil Young’s Revolutionary Blues… it amazing at the same time.

    • Thanks, Steve. Will check it out. A lot of great music related, directly or indirectly, to Manson (and more covered in Part 2 of the article — especially Neil Young). There was a lot more I’d liked to have covered if not for space constraints.

  2. interesting read. love sonicyouth. did u find any evidence in yr research that manson actually killed anyone? I couldn’t be sure. yet we fixate on him. one thing to tell someone to go kill but another to actually plunge the knife in sharon tate’s body. its like we fictionalized it right as it happened, ignore the girls doing violence, focus on the man who told them to. I feel its a strange kind of mysogyny to act like these girls were brainwashed, as if that’sa thing. as if they were less guilty than manson. we all have potential to be knife wielders, but I dont think manson did much beyond telling stories. its like listening to knoxville girl and then murdering. crazy. scary.

    • Thanks, Rennie. Manson shot a drug dealer named Crowe and left him for dead (he lived). He stabbed music teacher Gary Hinman but left him for his followers to finish off. He bound the LaBiancas, but left before the killing began. He participated physically in the murder of Donald “Shorty” Shea. Other than that no one knows for sure. Manson was an ex-con who knew what would and wouldn’t land him in the gas chamber. The D.A. had to prove that he ordered the Tate/LaBianca murders knowing that his followers would do what he told them to (he used to order them to do outlandish, non-homicidal things to test them, Binding of Isaac-style). Obviously, the Tate/LaBianca killers did what he told them. But only some Family members participated in violence while others, though devoted to Manson and the group, refused and/or left when things turned bloody. This implies that some were already capable of (even enthusiastic re:) coldblooded murder while others weren’t. The fixation on Manson as “worse” than the other killers began almost immediately in 1969. But he was far from a mere storyteller. In Ed Sanders’ words, he “grooved with gore.” He was 33 while his “girls” were mostly teenagers. He beat them, raped them, fed them after the dogs at mealtime, trained them with guns and knives, and did all the standard cult isolation stuff to break down their sense of independence. There’s plenty of guilt to go around but Manson was guilty as hell (IMO). One of the problems writing this was that, because I wanted to focus on the music and the impact of Manson’s mythic role on culture, vis-a-vis “the sixties,” I had to skip the details of the crimes, investigation, and trials (hence my disclaimer about “have been debated in mind-numbing detail elsewhere”). Opinion on the part of folks who know vast amounts about this stuff range from Manson was the devil to Manson was a gentle hippie and was framed. (People sure do project their own inner conflicts on others.) Such questions and those that you ask are fascinating and vital to pose … but it’s a music blog so I tried to behave and stay on point. Thanks for your note. SLJ

  3. Nice piece. Interesting to consider the evolution of rock: How it affected culture and how the culture affected it.

    • Thanks, Laura. The Manson tale was such a nexus of various cultural threads that impacted each other — one of the reasons I think it continues to fascinate.