Tonight! The Charlie Manson Band

by Michael Beiriger

  The men were building dune buggies - stripped down, military-like vehicles that had oversized, low-pressure tires and a beefed-up suspension. Dune buggies are extremely agile in sand and are particularly suited for fast travel in the open deserts of California.

  “Hey, Spence!” said Charlie to a tall, gaunt man. “How long ‘til this one’s finished?”

  Spence looked up, cross-eyed from pot. He was shirtless, smeared with sweat and motor oil. The long braid of his hair swung across his back when he stood up. He was heavily tattooed on his arms and had a tattoo of the classic slot machine payoff across his back: ‘7-7-7.’

  “Uh, Charlie, hi, uh, man. Um, well - almost done with that one there, but ya gotta get the tires, man. And, uh, the shocks, too. The shocks. Tex was supposed to get ‘em, but I can’t find him, man.”

  “We’ll get that stuff. I’m takin’ a trip into Reseda today. What about the ID numbers and plates, dude?”

  Spence laughed as he wiped his hands on a shop rag. “In the wind, man. In the wind.” Charlie laughed, too. “Far out. Cool, man. Later.”

  But Manson’s mood darkened again as he continued on toward the Rock City Cafe. He was crashing - hard – and worried. Three dogs chased him and each other in the dust, yipping. Coming from the other side of the western town movie set he saw Squeaky running and yelling at him.

  “Charlie! Charlie! Guess wha-”

  “Shut up, woman!” He grabbed her peasant blouse and pulled her close. Then he grabbed a hank of her hair and twisted her face to his. “I told you to watch that damn TV!” he shouted.

  “I did, Charlie! I did! Ow!” Nobody had grabbed her hair like that since her stepfather took the belt to her.

  “Was there anything on there about Tex and Sadie?”

  “No! But, you won’t believe it Charlie! It’s happening! Helter Skelter!”

  “What? You’re not making any sense, girl!”

  “No, no – really, Charlie! Blackie just offed five rich white pigs up in Bel Air! We’ve got to get to the desert, man!”

  Charlie abruptly let her go. “What do you mean, ‘blackie’?’

  “Like you been telling us, Charlie! They got five dead piggies up there, and they got no clue what happened!” She was laughing nervously now, smoothing her hair.

  Manson stood in the August sun, bug-eyed and speechless. He seemed to be having trouble comprehending what he had just heard, and ran his hands through his long, oily black hair. He turned toward the cafe.

  Squeaky called out, “Charlie? What are we going to do?”

  Goin’ up the Country

  1968 Robert Hite

  August 11,1969

  1:00 pm

  Marv turned his Dodge west onto Santa Susana Pass road. For hundreds, maybe thousands of years it had been a native path, then a stagecoach route, and then the only paved road to Simi, Somis, and other farming towns in Ventura County. The new 118 Freeway, the Simi Valley Freeway, was completed three years earlier and had taken away the bulk of the traffic. That suited the homesteads and ranches along the old Pass Road just fine.

  Marv had been to the Spahn Ranch once before, a day and night he couldn’t forget. About a year earlier, Marv Feld first saw Charlie Manson during a party at Dennis Wilson’s house, as Charlie entertained a room of spellbound hipsters and groupies with his unique brand of singing and dancing. Marv then kept running into him at more Hollywood music parties. When Dennis finally introduced Marv to Charlie one night, Marv was pleased to find that Charlie was excited about Marv’s work as a record promoter. Then Charlie played several demo song tapes for him in the midst of the roaring party, and invited him to come out to his ranch the following day.

  Marv wasn’t sure what to think about the songs – or Charlie. Manson seemed like any over-amped, rambling hippie type, but he had an incredible sway over his friends – his ‘Family,’ he called them. There were always at least three or four girls and guys with him, and they would do anything he told them to do. Anything! Girl on girl, even guys on guys - unbelievably far out! When they left a scene, there were always more people going back to the ranch than Charlie had brought with him.

  “What’s with that guy?” Marv asked Dennis Wilson, sharing a joint.

  “Charlie? Man, he’s one w-i-l-d cat! He is so fuckin’ real, it’s scary!” Wilson said, watching Charlie dance a crazy spinning dance with two naked girls. “You wouldn’t believe the things that he’s done, the shit that’s come down on him. And after all that shit, he’s found a way to, umm, live, like…” Wilson struggled to find the words from his limited marijuana and tequila vocabulary. “He’s just got it figured out, man!” he shrugged. “No bullshit. He just lives exactly like he wants. Like we all should, if we just had the balls!” Dennis laughed hard, choking on the joint smoke. But Marv latched onto what Dennis had just said: If we just had the balls! At this crazy party, more than a little high, he suddenly envisioned a solid framework for his dream – to own a record company and produce his own hit songs. And this vision centered on Charlie Manson, his diamond in the rough.

  Now, in the August heat, Marv followed Santa Susana Pass Road as it twisted up into rocky canyons of sandstone boulders and scrub oak. The boulders and exposed rock had a sculpted, monumental look. The whole world has seen these vistas in films since the earliest moving pictures produced in California. Mostly seen in westerns (‘Oaters’, their critics sneered), the look was unique enough that any movie that called for an exotic exterior setting would shoot there. There were even film sets of cabins, mines, ranch houses and western pioneer towns scattered through the hills and valleys.

  As Marv made the next turn, he saw an old sign for the ‘Iverson Ranch.’ This was a classic Hollywood story that Marv knew about. Back in the ‘teens, this failed orange grove had become a huge shooting set for the new western movies. Then, as things tend to go in Hollywood, a competing ranch - the ‘Spahn Movie Ranch’ - opened across the Pass Road south of the Iverson ranch. Later the Iverson ranch was split in two by the new Simi Valley freeway, and by that time the westerns had lost their hold over the American psyche. Both movie ranches fell onto hard times.

  What happened to the Westerns? Marv thought. Why did they just disappear? Except for ‘Gunsmoke’ and ‘Bonanza’, they all disappeared after Kennedy bought it in ‘63. It was a fucking gold mine! This led him to musing about the pop music game and it’s shimmering, mirage-like success. Its forecast: Hot today, Shit tomorrow.

  Marv stomped on the brakes. “Fuck!” he yelled. He had almost missed the entrance to the Spahn Ranch.

  Run, Run, Runaway

  1961 Del Shannon, Max Crook

  August 11, 1969

  12:30 pm

  Sherrie felt she had no breasts, really. She wasn’t exactly flat-chested, but her boobs were more like molded shapes on her chest. Pudgy her whole life, her boobs were just another disappointment in her 17 year saga of disappointments.

  They didn’t jiggle or dance like the other girls’ did as Klem fucked her, there in the little shack next to the ranch café. Klem didn’t seem to mind. In fact, she knew now, Klem didn’t seem to care about much of anything except getting high or laid – hopefully both.

  She’d always been the ugly one. School, home – it didn’t matter. She knew it, everyone knew it. Her father, the bastard, reminded her often, especially in front of her sisters - gleefully, when he was drunk.

  “Takes after her mother!” he would say, slurring, and her mother would laugh.

  So long, assholes. Don’t let’s keep in touch.

  Even here at the ranch she knew she was the last choice. Charlie would only fuck her when he was completely stoned.

  So, Klem’s attention was appreciated. She wanted to please him. And she had found that she liked sex. She felt she had discovered something of her own after coming to this ranch, something that men wanted from her.

  The window in the fake storefront of the shack said ‘Assayer’ in old-timey lettering. Sherrie’s puppy, Ringo, barked
, growled, and nipped at their feet as she and Klem rolled on the beaten, stained mattress. A little record player in the corner played a long, tinny song from a Grateful Dead album. Sherrie didn’t groove to their music much, but it seemed to get Klem in the mood. But it reminded her of the bikers when they would roar into the ranch, dismount and chase the women like the pirates in that crazy new ride at Disneyland. Put on the Dead and spread! they would shout, with their hyena laughs.

  Sherrie and Klem didn’t notice Manson come into the room. Practiced at stealth, he walked up to them silently and put his hands on his hips.

  “Klem!” he barked.

  Startled, they both twisted over to stare at Manson. Ringo barked at him furiously.

  “Charlie! Jesus –” Klem gasped, went rigid, and came. He groaned and pulled himself off Sherrie, panting.

  “Charlie, babe! C’mon, baby. Take over for Klem!” Sherrie opened her legs and drew her knees up.

  “Klem, c’mon in here. I gotta talk to you.” Manson turned on his heel, his moccasins now making little slapping sounds as he walked into the café.

  “Aww, jeez,” Sherrie whined. Charlie was in a foul mood, and he was the only guy who could make her come while screwing. He would go and go, keep going, go again. He would take the girls beyond excited, beyond satisfied, beyond sore, into a drug-like state of intoxication. The ‘Charlie High’ the girls called it, giggling. This, Charlie instructed, was not sex but real love. All those other dudes might as well be animals, he said, screwing like a cow or a donkey.

  Thinking about Charlie, she reached down with her hand.

  Klem found Charlie at the end of the bar in the café, sitting near the pay telephone on the wall. Kat was there with him. Klem, barefoot, had thrown on a pair of worn, filthy jeans with an embellishment of paisley cloth that flared at the bottom of the legs. He stunk of sweat and sex.

  “What’s happening, man?” he asked, scratching at his adolescent beard.

  Manson spoke to him in a low tone. “You got a driver’s license, right? No tickets or warrants?”

  “Yeah,” Klem answered.

  “Cool. You guys gotta go on a mission with me tonight.”

  “Another creepy crawl, Charlie?” Kat asked. The Family members, led by Manson, had developed a far out ‘Creepy Crawl’ game. They would leave late in the night in dark clothes, and prowl the hillsides and rich neighborhoods. Carefully picking a house, they would search for an unlocked entrance and silently file in. Quickly, they rummaged around, stole food, might rearrange furniture, and then leave. It was sure to be a real mind-fuck for the rich piggies to wake up in a disturbing, altered environment in the morning. Manson was quick to point out the lesson: all those people are living their fantasies of safety, wealth, and privilege… It all could be taken away in seconds… Control over life was an illusion, flimsy as tissue.

  “No, not a creepy. But sort of like that. We are definitely gonna fuck some piggies up, tho!’ he smirked. “Be ready later tonight, get some sleep before. Take another set of clothes. Get some speed.”

  He sighed, drooping. “I need a joint, man.” Charlie looked over at Kat and she saw that his eyes were almost closed. “I am racked.”

  Kat rummaged in her knit bag and pulled out a small antique tin box. It had been a patent medicine case long ago, and what was left of the paint showed a colorful weaved flower design. She pried it open and handed Manson a joint.

  “Has anyone heard from Tex or Sadie?” Manson asked as he took a long drag of the pot. “Fuck, they got the Ford. I need that car now, man!”

  Get a Job

  1957 Earl Beal, Raymond Edwards, Richard Lewis, William Horton

  August 11, 1969

  1:30 pm

  The blue Dodge bounced and shuddered as Marv forced it down the rutted gravel road toward the ranch. Lulled by the heat, a covey of quail scattered in surprise, and large brown grasshoppers tried to jump and fly out of the way. The dust cloud spun up by the car blew back when he made a sharp turn, covering everything in the open car, including Marv, with a hot, gritty powder.

  “Crystal Blue Persuasion” by Tommy James and the Shondells was playing on the radio. Roulette Records did a good job on that single, he thought. It could have been interpreted as a drug song, but had made it up the charts.

  A short fanfare sound of trumpets and teletypes erupted from the radio speaker.

  “This is Ron Call with your KJH breaking news at 1:30. Police investigating the murders of five persons in Bel Air have released the names of three of the victims. They are: actress Sharon Tate, coffee heiress Abigail Folger, and celebrity hair stylist Jay Sebring. The IDs of the other victims are still pending. LAPD say they are holding a man believed to be a tenant on the property for questioning.”

  “Jesus!” Marv cried out. What next? The whole beautiful California trip was going sour - worse by the day, it seemed. Ever since JFK was shot, he thought again. This whole damn country is losing its mind. Assassinations, Nixon, riots, cults, gurus… . But he also saw that new music was exploding in the midst of all the chaos, and Marv was determined to make a wave and ride it as long as he could. Cults! And here I am driving right into one! Marv chuckled to himself. When I’m finished, this cult will be the only one everybody will be talking about! He smiled at the idea of the big players in the biz talking about him.

  He crossed over a dry creek bed and drove onto the main street of the fake old town. Every person he could see stopped to check him out. It made him feel uncomfortable, but Marv learned his first trip here that they were always on the defensive - for good reasons. A pack of dogs chased the car, barking and howling. Another line of defense. He couldn’t remember if the dogs were actually friendly or not.

  Marv drove into the dirt and gravel parking plaza and pulled up to the saloon building named “Rock City Café.” He knew from his previous visit that the cafe was a sort of headquarters for the group. The dogs were incessant.

  “Hey!” he yelled. “Cool out these dogs, man!” He laid on the car horn. “Anybody here?”

  Kat emerged into the sunlight, shielding her eyes with her hand. “Dogs!” she yelled, and they instantly quieted and formed a circle around her. “It’s cool!” She stomped her heavy old cowboy boot on the wooden porch. “Go!” The dogs reluctantly backed away, still keeping a wary eye on Marv.

  “The ranch is closed on Mondays.” said Kat, putting her hands on her hips. “Open tomorrow at 8.”

  “Uh, actually, I’m here to rap with Charlie. I talked to him a few days ago about coming out here today.” Marv was really sweating now that the car had stopped, and he bent his face to wipe it on the shoulder of his shirt.

  Kat looked him over for a few more seconds, then shouted into the café door. “Charlie! There’s some dude here to see you!” She turned and walked back inside and Marv admired the ass wrapped in her tiny cut-off jean shorts.

  Marv got out of the car, came around to the steps of the café, and stopped to light a Marlboro with his lighter. Before he got to the second step, he looked up to see Charles Manson standing over him on the porch, tensed up.

  “Do I know you, man?” Manson asked, unfriendly.

  Marv was startled. He could see that Charlie was wound very tight – a Charlie he had not seen at the parties in Hollywood. Manson looked angry and worn out. He was wearing his usual buckskin pants and vest over a green tee shirt.

  “Charlie – hi, man! Remember we talked at the party after the Byrds’ gig last week? And I met you a few times at Dennis Wilson’s house?” Marv pulled off his shades - maybe this will help.

  Manson scanned the ranch and the road. “I’ve met thousands of people, man. I’ve been to thousands of places.”

  Marv wasn’t expecting this. “You played me some of your demos at Dennis’ house, remember?”

  Manson’s eyes started to relax, and his body bent a little. Then he laughed. “Oh! The salesman dude!”

  “Uh, not a salesman, man – an independent record promoter.” Marv corr
ected.

  Manson snorted and laughed. “You’re all salesmen, man! ‘Selling plastic ware’ – didn’t you even hear the lyrics to that song they played that night?”

  “Oh – oh yeah!” Marv laughed nervously. Already, this was not going as he had imagined. “Yeah, I guess they’re right.”

  Charlie stood there giggling, just staring at Marv. After a few tense seconds Manson asked, “What’s up, man? What do you want? If you think you can score here, you’re crazy man!” More laughing.

  “No! No, man. I’m not here to score. I came out to talk about your songs, remember? I’m really stoked about your music and your scene, and I want to promote it. I know the kids will eat it up, man, if we can just let them hear it and see you, hear what you’ve got to tell the world!”

  Manson looked at Marv, really, for the first time. “My music?” he said derisively. “My music’s over, man. I’ve been blown off by some of biggest assholes in Hollywood. Way bigger than you!” He looked away again. “And things have changed too much. The shit is too heavy now, man. Way too heavy.” Charlie glanced sideways at Marv. “How about one of those smokes?”

  Marv shook out a cigarette from the hard pack Marlboro box. As Manson took the cigarette Marv reached up with the lighter. He was thinking he might have a foothold, now.

  “Charlie – seriously, man. I hear something there. I know this shit, man – I’ve made my living for the last eight years pushing singles. I know we can do it! Let’s go inside, and we can rap.”

  Charlie looked him over again and blew a stream of smoke into the scorching air. “Alright, man, it’s your trip. I think you’re wasting your time – and probably mine. What was your name again?”

  “Marv Feld. Marv.” He offered his hand, but Manson just turned away to the door.

  They entered the dark café and Marv followed Manson to a wooden picnic table in the back of the room. It was a bit cooler inside, but not air-conditioned. A small round fan from the Thirties rotated and whirred in a corner without much effect. As they sat down, Kat brought out a plastic gallon milk jug full of water, and two waxed-paper cups.