Tonight! The Charlie Manson Band Read online

  Tonight!

  the

  Charlie Manson

  Band

  A Novel by

  Michael Beiriger

  CONTENTS

  Dead Man’s Curve

  Leader of the Pack

  Under Assistant West Coast Promotion Man

  Squeaky

  Goin’ up the Country

  Run, Run, Runaway

  Get a Job

  Them Changes

  Goin’ Home, t’ See My Baby

  Mean with a Blade

  MaxTone Records

  There’s a Meetin’ Here Tonight

  Twenty Flight Rock

  Woodstock

  In the Pines, In the Pines

  We Are Rolling

  Sign Here, Initial Here and Here

  Goin’ to a Go Go

  In The Midnight Hour

  Sandy

  Down In the Valley

  Born To Be Wild

  This Is Dedicated to the One I Love

  No Particular Place To Go

  You Only Hurt the Ones You Love

  Too Much Monkey Business

  Boys

  Money (That’s What I Want)

  Stormy Monday

  Those Kicks Just Keep Getting Harder to Find

  Coming into Los Ange-lees

  Mr. DJ

  I See the Party Lights

  The Big Show

  Boom Boom! - Out Go the Lights

  So You Wanna Be a Rock and Roll Star?

  My Generation

  That’s The Stuff You Gotta Watch

  In My Midnight Confession

  Suspicion – Deep In My Heart

  The Big Hammer

  Fishin’ Blues

  Woke Up This Mornin’

  Look at Your Game, Girl

  The Thirteen Question Method

  Charley Brown

  Back Door Man

  Ride Your Pony

  Hitchhike – Hitchhike, Baby

  Cigarettes and Coffee

  Bad Moon Risin’

  Downtown

  Save the Last Dance for Me

  Big Rock Candy Mountain

  Disclaimer

  Dead Man’s Curve

  1965 Roger Christian, Jan Berry, Artie Kornfeld, Brian Wilson

  August 11, 1969

  1:32 am.

  The four in the car were wild-eyed and panting from the adrenaline and speed that had boosted them through the last hours. The ‘59 Ford screeched through the sharp turns on the mountain road, radio blaring. They had accomplished the mission that Charlie sent them to do and now were desperate to get as far as they could from the house on Cielo Drive and the carnage there. One woman in back was wailing uncontrollably, and the other woman in the backseat was pulling urgently on the sobbing woman’s bloody shirt trying to get it off.

  “Linda!” Patty yelled. “We have to get this top off!”

  Tex, the driver, flung a long-barreled pistol out the window. It caught his eye and he watched, mesmerized, as it spun in an elegant flat loop, arcing slowly over the road and down into a dark, brushy canyon.

  “Linda! Stop crying! Shut up!” Sadie screamed from the front seat while removing her own blouse, also soaked in blood.

  “Can’t you fucking shut her up?” Tex yelled at Patty, turning to look in the back seat. “Patty! Get rid of that knife!” Patty let go of Linda and fumbled with her knife.

  The speeding car hit a patch of gravel at the edge of the road. “Tex!” Sadie screamed as she made a frantic lunge for the steering wheel.

  • • •

  One wheel of the car still turned. The Ford had come to rest on its roof down at the bottom of the small canyon, every surface crushed or broken in some way. The dust cloud from the crash began to settle in the desert night.

  One of the four people in the car was thrown from inside as it flipped and rolled downhill, but only far enough to become pressed into the earth, dead, underneath the wreckage. A semi-conscious rasping moan came from inside the car. The car radio continued to play music from some station there in Los Angeles, and it echoed about the canyon.

  ‘… ain’t got no sugar daddy …’

  The gas tank, ruptured, flooded the passenger cabin. Soon the vapor from the pooling gas reached a creosote bush that smoldered from contact with the exhaust pipe. A sucking whoosh, and the car was swallowed up in an orange ball of flame wreathed in black smoke.

  ‘…but I got what it takes - ‘

  The fire killed the radio. The last strains of the music swirled in the canyon, then disappeared with the smoke. But the repercussions of what happened this night would echo for a hundred years.

  On Mulholland Drive above, skid marks led to a smashed wooden railing. A warning yellow traffic sign with a black arrow was backlit by the nightglow of the San Fernando Valley. Its arrow pointed to the right, and the number 15 was printed below it. There was only the sound of fire - the hiss and pop of rubber, brush, and bodies being consumed in the growing pyre.

  There was no moon, as they had planned.

  Leader of the Pack

  1964 Ellie Greenwhich, Jeff Barry, George Morton

  August 11, 1969

  9 am

  The women were wary of Charlie this morning. They knew he had been up all night, waiting. Waiting for Tex, Sadie, Patty, and Linda to return home, to the Spahn Ranch, from some mission that Charlie had sent them on. It was not like Tex, the driver, to stray far from Charlie Manson’s orders.

  It was 9 am and already 85 degrees. Since it was a Monday the ranch was closed to horse riding customers, and no filming was scheduled for today. There was a slow gathering of the Family – which is what they called themselves – from across the reaches of the ranch, all drifting toward the building called the Rock City Cafe. Even though it was built as a movie set of an old West saloon, a real kitchen had been built onto the back. It was a small snack bar for the ranch patrons, and it became the mess hall and command post for Charles Manson and his Family.

  Two young women, Sandy and Kat, were busy putting breakfast together for the 20 people at the ranch. Or maybe it would be 22 or 25 this morning – they never knew how big the Family would be at any time. Charlie and the guys (and the girls, too) were always sweet talking any girls they would meet – hitchhikers and runaways, mostly – to come enjoy ranch living, Family style. We got dogs and horses!

  Kat leaned at the kitchen door and stared at Charles Manson, who stood silhouetted by the light from the large saloon window. She felt a connection to him that even she didn’t really understand. His back was to her as he watched the road, the ranch, and his people moving toward him. Some might think him short, but after one look in his eyes they would never think it again. Thin but strong, Charlie was worshipped by the Family for being exactly who he was, all the time. Being unpredictable was a game he loved to play, and nobody ever knew exactly what he was thinking.

  Manson had honed and sharpened his identity through 25 years of grinding against the system – specifically, the ‘justice’ system. First locked up at age ten, he endured a process that was designed to cower and break a person and used it instead to forge and refine himself into a hardened steel persona. His times on the outside were really no more than short vacations that enabled him to commit another crime or violation that sent him back. Along the way he got the best prison education a punk could hope for. Manson was bright and watchful, and found it easy to learn the finer points of all the simple scams and crimes. He was schooled in Scientology by one inmate, White Aryan Brotherhood dogma by another. He learned to play guitar, sing, and goof off for the other inmates. Manson paid particular attention to the pimps – the crowd of pimps, young and old - in the cell
blocks and exercise yards.

  “Where’s the breakfast, woman?” Manson shouted. “Have the dogs ate yet?” Dogs and other animals were always fed first, no matter what the human conditions were.

  “Dogs are fed, Charlie. There’s oatmeal now, or you can wait for eggs. You want coffee?”

  “Hell no!” Manson was wired enough, scraping down the rough edged slope from last night’s LSD and speed. He was trying to pull his concentration tight. Chances were it was going to be a very bad day.

  “Where are those fuckers?” he seethed. “It would be just like Tex to screw this up!” He turned to the gathering Family. “Squeaky! Get back to Spahn’s trailer! See if there’s anything about Tex and the girls on the TV. The rest of you: be cool! Be ready for shit to come down hard today. You know this game.” Manson let out a short, rushed giggle. “It’s the ‘I don’t know nothin’ game. Hide everything the pigs would want, and hide it good! And get rid of any kids here under 18.” He turned to the man next to him and spoke in a lower voice. “Let’s get the guns put up.”

  Manson and Steve Corgan went to their small armory off the cafe. They had run this routine many times – moving the guns to a cache up the hill from the cafe. Steve, a Viet Nam veteran, biker, and semi-permanent resident of the ranch, had become the gun expert after a short time. He fell into the Family life easily. Plenty of pussy, no hassles, weed for days. Just a little clap from time to time, was all.

  “Charlie, man, aren’t we gonna need these for the Panthers?”

  “It’s not the fucking Black Panthers I’m worried about today!” Manson muttered. “It’s the pigs.”

  Steve pulled up. “Well, I gotta split if the cops are coming. I got that warrant.”

  “That’s cool. The less trouble here today the better, man. Some days you ain’t nothin’ but trouble!” Manson squinted at Steve. “You gotta get clear on this shit, man. In jail, out of jail – it’s all the same thing! They’re running their Cops and Robbers game, and I’m running my own. They think they can change people like you and me, man!” Manson laughed his speedy giggle. “Can you fucking believe it? But that’s cool – that’s their game. I have seen it up close and personal.”

  They found the flat rock they used to cover the opening of the little cave and pushed it aside. Piled inside the cave, wrapped in plastic bags, were pistols, rifles, ammunition, a hundred or so tabs of acid, weed, some speed, credit cards, cash, and license plates. Manson tossed a shotgun and another pistol into the cache. He and Steve then heaved the rock into place.

  “We’ll come back later and roll away the stone, man!” Charlie cracked up. “Just like ol’ J.C.! Me and J.C., man!”

  Under Assistant West Coast Promotion Man

  1965 Nanker Phelge

  August 11, 1969

  11:00 am

  The air in the San Fernando Valley, even before noon, was blow-torch hot, brown, and felt heavy as a wool coat. Entire mountain ranges disappeared in the stinking soup created by two hundred thousand tailpipes, seven thousand gas pumps spewing 87 regular, and a 24-hour parade of roiling deep-fat fryers.

  It was not one of Marv Feld’s best days. As he clawed his way north through traffic on Topanga Boulevard in his powder-blue 1966 Dodge Dart convertible, he dragged on his cigarette and cursed himself for not buying the hardtop with the air conditioning. The stop-and-stop traffic made the August heat and smog unbearable. But Maxie, his girlfriend, had begged for the convertible – said it made her feel more free and in touch with nature.

  He stubbed out his cigarette angrily. The radio was killing him. “I’d pay to know who the hell’s workin’ that record!” he muttered. Marv Feld was a travelling record promoter – the best on the West Coast. KJH, Los Angeles’ biggest Top 40 station, was falling into line with other stations from the East, claiming that “Love Theme from the Movie ‘Romeo and Juliet’” was the #1 song for the last two weeks. The sappy orchestra instrumental sawed on and on. He couldn’t turn it off - it was his business to know what pop radio stations were playing. He had already called all his allies and enemies in the record promotion game and they seemed as mystified as he was about the single’s success. Sometimes, he knew, a record caught fire all on its own. “The people choose their hits” – sage advice from his mentor, John Riggano, the king of the old time record promoters.

  But they can only choose from the songs they are allowed to hear, Marv reminded himself. Small consolation this day. The last three records he had worked stiffed in the territory he covered – California south of the Bay area cities. In a business with a memory limited to hits only, this was not good. Even though each of those records sank to the bottom of the charts everywhere else in the US as well, Marv took it as a bad mark for him.

  His last assignment was working a single from a group called The Nether, coming from Swami Records out of New Orleans. Marv begged Swami for a larger fee, knowing the kind of grease needed for a stiff like that single. Those Cajun shmucks are too dumb to know what it takes now, he sighed to himself. In the parlance of his business the disc was what they called a turd, and it could never be polished up to be anything else.

  Marv stopped again for a light at Devonshire. His long black hair, limp in the heat, drooped down each side of his head in independent ringlets. Marv was 37, and had put on a lot of pounds since his scrawny rockabilly days. More than one asshole had ragged him recently about his emerging resemblance to Ben Franklin. Ben Franklin in Hawaiian shirts, Marv’s favorite attire. The light turned green and as he powered the Dodge past a slow moving grandma, Marv felt his mood lifting.

  Marv Feld was making his way toward the northwest corner of Los Angeles County, to a piece of the Old West that had never died – the Spahn Movie Ranch. He was determined to put into action his idea – part of a plan to be a major force in the music business - that would finally lift him up to the Valhalla Estates of the rock world. He was sick of driving up and down California pitching singles, sick of Maxie’s complaining, sick of his family’s sneering lack of respect. His idea was not without risk - nothing was a sure thing in the crazy record biz. But Marv knew in his gut that everything he learned so far was telling him it could work.

  Squeaky

  August 11, 1969

  10:30 am

  Squeaky Fromme climbed the four steps up to the door of the rundown trailer, doing as Manson had directed. Each step creaked as the dried desert wood gave under her weight, and the old aluminum screen door squealed as she pulled it open. She was upset that he made her miss breakfast. This is some silly shit! she fumed. Tex and the girls on TV?

  “Squeaky?” an elderly man inside called. He never knew who was coming or going anymore. Kids everywhere, dammit.

  Old Man Spahn sat in his recliner, his cane and an empty coffee cup beside him. He sported a new straw Stetson cowboy hat and a pair of very dark sunglasses. He was parked in front of a small television that showed a distorted picture but broadcast a very clear, loud soundtrack. The picture didn’t matter – George Spahn had been blind for years.

  Squeaky - small, thin, and with a voice to match - had been taking care of George since she, Manson, and the other original girls had come to the ranch. It had been a long trip since their first days together in the Haight-Ashbury, even further from Squeaky’s childhood in Orange County. They all worked on gaining Spahn’s trust from the start, and now ran the ranch for him. George especially liked Squeaky’s company at night, in his old swaybacked bed.

  “Yep, it’s me, George.”

  “Busy yet?”

  “No, George, it’s Monday - remember? Closed today.”

  “Oh. You should tell me,” Spahn said, irritated.

  “I did tell – what’s happening on the TV?” She realized that the soap opera he would normally be ‘watching’ had been replaced by a breaking news broadcast.

  “Ah, some kind of police thing. Beverly Hills, I think.”

  Squeaky tried to adjust the antenna rods to get a better picture. Anytime the picture was good,
it would dissolve to static as soon as she let go of the antenna. So she held on to the rods.

  “We are still waiting for Coroner Noguchi to come down from the house. We’ve been told he will make a statement.”

  The TV picture showed a southwest style ranch house on a wooded hill, surrounded by policemen, police cars, ambulances, and press.

  “Wow!” said Squeaky in her high, trilling voice. “What the hell? Some movie star?”

  “Again, if you are just joining us – police say five people were viciously murdered last night here in this house on Cielo Drive in the Bel Air Hills. LAPD press spokesman Sgt. John Finley reports that they have no suspects or witnesses yet, but they only arrived at the house a few hours ago after a maid discovered the gruesome scene.”

  Squeaky’s face took on a stunned look. “Far out, man,” she whispered. “Far - fucking - out!”

  “It’s the drugs, dammit!” cried Spahn. “This town has lost its marbles! Goddam junkies!” He spit on the floor.

  Squeaky was mesmerized. ‘Damn!’ she thought. ’This is exactly how Charlie said would it go down! Rich pigs taken out by the blacks. A new class and race war. Starting now! The Black Panthers were really only the vanguard – like a scouting party.’

  Dazed, she let go of the antenna and the TV instantly exploded into loud static.

  “Damn you, Squeak - put it back!” the old man shouted.

  Squeaky moved the antenna rods so that the sound was clear when she let go. The picture became a black and white mess of wavy, repeating lines.

  “ … I’m Cal Worthington down here at Worthington Ford in… .” the TV blared.

  “Where’s my show?” George Spahn demanded.

  But Squeaky was already out the door.

  • • •

  On the walk back to the Rock City Cafe, Charlie and Steve met another man working in the heat, taking a blue Volkswagen Beetle apart. They were surrounded by several VW carcasses, and the man was stripping the blue Beetle of its exterior shell. Next to it, a different car was now only a frame, engine, and seats, resting on railroad ties. Behind that was a third vehicle that had been finished to Manson’s design.