HELTER SKELTER THE MUSICAL Charles Manson
Sep 17, 2008
The hills are alive with the sound of The Family...
BY MIKE SHANLEY
The ESP-Disk label has maintained a four-decade reputation as a credible underground label in part because many of its releases were of dubious quality and would never have seen the light day otherwise. So along with seminal albums by the Fugs, Albert Ayler and Pearls Before Swine, there came the awful-yet-fascinating Erica Pomerance, Cromagnon and MIJ the Yodeling Astrologer. And all these years later, some of them would fit right in on a playlist with any supposed freak folk act. Ahead of their time? And how.
Then there's sweet Charlie Manson, who sings about love and how it will find your young heart. There was a time, when lines like that - and a handsomely hirsute face like Michael "Meathead" Stivic or LA Woman-era Jim Morrison - could woo a young woman's heart. Good thing the revolution never came.
Sings has been released by several labels, including ESP and Awareness, an imprint created by Phil Kaufman, the man to whom Manson passed these recordings when both were in jail. ESP issued Sings in the early ‘70s under the title LIE after Manson was serving a life sentence; label founder Bernard Stollman compares its release to Alfred Knopf's publishing of Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf. There was a time, he recalls in the liner notes, that the Manson family trial seemed like little more than a government plot to discredit the hippie movement. The songs include uncredited contributions from members of the Manson family, and thereby warrant their release, he says. All royalties from sales of the record are paid by the label to the estate of Wojciech Frykowski, an actor and victim in the Polanski murders, whose family won a civil suit against Manson. So you can listen to the latest reissue, from the rejuvenated ESP (www.espdisk.com) with a clear conscience.
Still, that gives no indication about what it sounds like. For the uninitiated "Look at Your Game Girl," starts the album with the idea that maybe there was a sensitive side to Charlie, with its sweet seventh chords and his gentle voice.
That lasts all of 2:01.
"Ego" begins with a sinister strumming, some sloppy hand drums and what sounds like two voices in his head escaping onto the tape: "It's inside. It's in the back. The front. No, it's in the back, no it's in the front..... they shoved it in the back... all the love in the back." Any chance of separating the image of this aspiring folk singer from the guy in jail with swastikas on his forehead ends with the second track.
Some of the songs, which were recorded in 1967-68, reveal a half-decent songwriter, but with a total of 26 of them - the original album had 14 - they all get lost in a sea of banged acoustic guitars and plain melodies. A few things do stand out. The 39-second, chirpy "I'll Never Say Never to Always," sung by anonymous females, was probably meant to sound sweet, but it now evokes images of knife-wielding chicks. Manson cracks himself up in "Devil Man" after singing, "All we want is your evil soul," as if he might not have taken himself too seriously at one time. A three-minute interview includes the Manson-ism, "I was so smart when I was a kid, that I learned that I was dumb."
One tantalizing side note: the song "Cease to Exist" had so impressed Dennis Wilson (who for a short period had come into Manson's orbit) that in 1968 he convinced his fellow Beach Boys to cut a version of it, with him on lead vocals and retitled "Never Learn Not to Love." The song appeared on the album 20/20 and as the B-side to "Bluebirds Over the Mountain." Significantly, it did not bear Manson's name; Manson was reportedly paid an undisclosed amount of cash and Wilson took the songwriting credit.
Cultural baggage and dubious artistic quality aside, this oddity deserves high marks for its mere existence. And in the ESP canon, it sounds as oddly entertaining as the Godz's imitations of horny felines on "White Cat Heat."
Track Listing
1 Look at Your Game, Girl
(2:01)
2 Ego (2:26)
3 Mechanical Man
(3:15)
4 People Say I'm No Good
(3:16)
5 Home Is Where You're Happy
(1:26)
6 Arkansas (3:02)
7 I'll Never Say Never to Always
(0:39)
8 Garbage Dump (2:32)
9 Don't Do Anything Illegal
(2:49)
10 Sick City (1:31)
11 Cease to Exist
(2:10)
12 Big Iron Door
(1:08)
13 I Once Knew a Man
(2:31)
14 Eyes of a Dreamer
(2:32)
15 Devil Man (2:30)
16 More You Love
(1:40)
17 Two Pair of Shoes
(1:56)
18 Maiden with Green Eyes (Remember Me)
(1:24)
19 Swamp Girl (1:57)
20 Bet You Think I Care
(2:11)
21 Look at Your Game, Girl (Alternate
Version) (1:45)
22 Interview (3:15)
23 Who to Blame
(2:26)
24 True Love You Will Find
(2:52)
25 My World (1:44)
26 Invisible Tears
(1:33)
[Manson montage courtesy IrfanView]
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