Manson’s Record Album Will Be Issued Next Week
Friday, February 27th, 1970
CHATSWORTH, Calif., Feb. 27 – “Everybody says you’re no good…Charles you don’t do like they think you should…”
Twelve songs pressed into one album and considered hippie cult leader Charles Manson’s “only defense” — his music — will go on public sale next week, family members said Thursday.
“Everyone else was afraid to put out the album,” Katherine “Gypsy” Share, one of the family members, said in an interview at the Spahn Ranch in Chatsworth, “so we had to do it ourselves.”
The first pressing, the dark-haired girl indicated, was 2,000, “because that’s all the money we have.” The album is on the Awareness label.
“As soon as more money comes in, we’ll make more records,” Miss share said.
“We really didn’t want to charge for the record, but our manager, who’s handling the music – he’s all business – said we’ve got to charge mainly because we need the money to make more records. He feels if we don’t charge, the people will send in 50 cents and want the record. So we have to charge $4 apiece. But if someone wants to give us $10 or $15 or $1000, that’s fine.”
The records, the girl said, will be mailed from the Spahn Ranch, using Post Office Box 606, “just down the road.”
Although the songs are all written, sung and accompanied by Manson, aided by various family members, the cover design was not attributed to the family’s “leader.”
The front cover of the album, Gypsy explained, is a picture of Manson as shown on the front cover of Life Magazine with the “f” elminated “Lie,” instead of Life.
“We picked the most rediculous picture we could, the one that everyone looked at — the wild-eyed one. We left all those captions that were on the magazine — the ones that said ‘hippie cult leader murderer’ and ‘kill-cult leader’ and all those crazy things.
“But on the back cover,” she adds, “is a beautiful picture of Charlie together with a reproduction of the only interview that Charlie ever got out of jail to a newspaper person. All the other interviews are lies — all opinions of the people that came in to see him.”
There will be some notes in the back cover, written by various family members, including Gypsy.
“Everybody has said, ‘What is the Family?’ So I just put: ‘Family? I fell in love with Bob, and Bob was already in love with Squeaky and Snake and in the meantime, Bruce fell in love with Sue, and Clem fell in love with…But actually we’ve all just fallen in love with each other — one by one.'”
But despite the cover, the inside — Charlie and his Music — is the most important.
“Most of the songs you’ll hear were made up at the moment. There were a few songs Charlie sang that people liked so much that someone in the family would remember it for him. So they’d sing it. The next time they’d say, ‘Sing that song again’ and he’d say ‘how does it go?’ So they’d sing it back to him and he’d remember it. There are maybe 20 songs that we’ve helped him remember.”
One of the songs Gypsy says, is “Cease to Exist.”
“The Beach Boys did it — but they changed a few words they couldn’t understand. They didn’t understand ‘Cease to Exist,’ so they put ‘Cease to Resist.’ And they changed ‘I’m your Brother’ to ‘I’m your Lover.’ ln the album Charlie sings it with the words he wrote.”
Most of the records, she says, are old songs that Manson has written, but to album buyers they won’t be old “because they’ve never heard them. They’re all beautiful.”
The one Manson wrote while in prison, Gypsy says, is actually a children’s song, but “it’s a song for everybody:”
“I’ll never say never to always.
I’ll never say always to none.
To seem is to dream, a dream my love.
Cause one is one is one.”
There’s another song she says, “People Think I’m No Good,” which will raise a lot of eyebrows.
“Charlie wrote it years ago, but a lot of people will take this music and say ‘what does this mean, and this must mean that’ and try to put it to the case. But it was written way before any of the murders happened.
“There’s a song in there called “Sick, Old, Sick City” where he says he’s going to say good by to this sick, old, sick city. But it’s very gentle. It’s not a protest song. He just says, ‘look at what you’re doing to yourselves, people.’ It’s very gentle.”
“But some people are going to take it and put whatever opinion they have anyway. They’ll say ‘ah ha! See, this means that he didn’t like this. And see this means the establishment that…and see where he’s hostile there’.
“These songs were all written from love, and he speaks the truth,”
“But I don’t think it’s going to change too many people’s minds. The people that don’t have an opinion, they’ll see what he is. And the young people will certainly see the love. And anybody who’s open enough will see the love.
There’s another song, she says, “Don’t do anything illegal, beware of the eagle that’s right in the middle of your back.” It deals with “having to have your ID (Identification) — even to go to the store — you’ve got to have your ID.”
But the songs, she says, “just tells about what’s happening. He sings about what’s happening inside you; he sings about love; he sings about the soul; he sings about the mark of the beast that he (Charlie) talks about.”
The mark of the beast she explains, is “stamped on the forehead. It talks about it in Revelations, and in every picture taken of Charlie, in the back is the mark of the beast — the policeman.”
Recording of Manson’s music came about, the girl relates, because of various “visitors” at the ranch.
“Recording people would come in and listen to us singing, and they’d say ‘This must be recorded — I’ll make you a million dollars’. We didn’t care about money, but finally they hounded us enough so we’d all get in the bus or truck or whatever we had and all go running into the studio.
“They’d set up all the microphones and we’d sing a song and all of a sudden they’d say ‘cut — do that one over again’. But with us there’s no doing over again.
“Then, we’d be in the middle of a song and they’d say ‘wait a minute we’ve got to change this microphone here and change this over here’. What we finally got through was all of their confusion.
“In fact in the album we sing a song “Mechanical Man” and we were singing to the engineer because we were trying to sing a song and he kept interrupting us. We started singing all the confusion that there was around us:
“I am a mechanical man…I do the best I can…”
Although they went to the studios on invitation, she says, the records were never pressed.
“It’s hard enough to get the music out now, because the music tells the truth, gently. But no matter how gently, the people don’t want to hear the truth.
“They (the recording officials) loved it when they heard it here at the ranch, and it was always going to go out, but never did.
“But whatever reason they had, we know that everything works perfectly. Who was to know that this was going to happen, but whatever happens was perfect. It might not seem so — all those innocent people in jail — but we know everything will come out OK. And the music is coming out just at the right time.”
But family members are not worried about sale of the album:
“No matter what, people are going to want to hear the album.
“If Life Magazine can sell out on a bunch of crazy nonsense, they’ll want to hear the music even just so they can say: ‘Look, hear the horrible murderer sing.'”
By MARY NEISWENDER
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