Lie - The Love and the Terror Cult

It’s difficult to listen to these songs without judgment. After all, the guy singing them is convicted murderer Charles Manson. But just two years prior to the Tate/LaBianca murders of 1969, Manson and his clan briefly stayed at the home of Beach Boy Dennis Wilson, who was impressed with Manson’s charisma and adoring female friends. Wilson paid for these demos, which mostly sound like David Crosby singing folk songs, though you can hear how Manson influenced girls in the lyrics of the breezy “Look At Your Game Girl” where he sings about how a girl’s catty ego is a transparent game and that to walk in his footsteps would be much more liberating. Similarly, in the more sultry sounding “Cease to Exist” (which the Beach Boys covered and renamed “Never Learn Not to Love” on their 1969 album 20-20) Manson sings for a pretty girl to shed her ego and give into submission in order to truly understand love. Tinges of Manson’s mania can be heard eerily piping from the psychedelic folk tune “Don’t Do Anything Illegal” and “Mechanical Man.”