charles manson tour la

Manson Family Murders funeral limo tour of LA

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Ovation Hollywood

Ovation Hollywood is a shopping and entertainment complex located in Hollywood, Los Angeles. It features stores, restaurants, a movie theater, bowling alley, and the Dolby Theatre which hosts the Acad...

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6801 Hollywood Boulevard, Hollywood, 90028

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• May 23, 2024

2024 Thank you for visiting!

Though no longer on the streets of Los Angeles, Dearly Departed Tours continues online. Leaving our beloved Hollywood broke our hearts, but it allows me the freedom to travel and give “tours” on YouTube. Everything contained in our Museum of Tragical Artifacts (including the car) is stored away until a new location can be found in the Palm Springs area.

PRIVATE TOURS:

If you are interested in hiring me for a private tour around the Los Angeles area, feel free to get in touch. The Tate/Labianca Helter Skelter case continues to be my specialty and a smaller vehicle gives us access to Spahn’s Ranch, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood locations and a whole lot more.

If you are interested in becoming a benefactor, boy oh boy that would be the answer to our wishes. Please visit our YouTube page – Scott Michaels or Dearly Departed Tours. Our company always provided quality content and we continue to do so. We also still have Tragic Artifacts from notorious locations in our online store.

In the meantime,”if you would like to support my adventures, below is a link to my Patreon page (with exclusive features), Venmo. Thank you”.

CONTACT: [email protected]

If you would like to support me here is my Patreon link and Venmo, thank you in advance!

Tours Into The Secret Heart of Los Angeles

Press clips

Alta : Mystery novelist Denise Hamilton joins us on the Mansonland tour, just one stop on a deep dive into the Charles Manson Industry…

Spectrum News 1 video : A sneak peek of some of the sites that flesh out the lost world of psychedelic Los Angeles, as featured on the Mansonland tour. In this special event tour, a sequel to his popular tour about Patty Hearst and the Symbionese Liberation Army, author Brad Schreiber ( Revolution’s End: The Patty Hearst Kidnapping, Mind Control, and the Secret History of Donald DeFreeze and the SLA ) takes us deeper down the counterculture rabbit hole, for a wild ride through the mean streets of Los Angeles, on the trail of the Manson Family.

August 1969, the city shuddered at news of two brutal and apparently random home invasions, the first claiming the lives of actress Sharon Tate and four visitors in the Hollywood Hills, the second leaving supermarket owners Leno and Rosemary LaBianca lifeless in Los Feliz. The unknown killers left a chilling message for the public: cryptic phrases scrawled in the victims’ blood.

What followed is perhaps the best documented criminal investigation and trial in history, concluding in the murder convictions of a sinister crew of hollow-eyed cultists and the elevation of small-time hustler Charlie Manson to the starring role of America’s Bogeyman.

You already know the story of Charlie’s brainwashed family of acid-damaged dropouts, their black school bus and stolen dune buggies, Charlie’s thwarted musical ambitions and dreams of a coming race war called Helter Skelter. It’s the true crime story that’s inspired dozens of books, documentaries, podcasts and dramatizations. (If you’d like to read up on the case before taking the tour, our Kim Cooper considers The Family by Ed Sanders a great example of immersive true crime reporting, and host Brad Schreiber’s research for this tour relied most upon Nikolas Schreck and his definitive, nearly 1,000 page work, The Manson File: Myth and Reality of an Outlaw Shaman .)

But the truth behind the Manson Family’s crimes is even weirder, darker and more complicated than you know.

To truly understand the Manson Family, you must understand Manson’s relationship to Los Angeles, and the complex web of underworld activities that entwined drug dealers (both local and international), movie stars, organized crime, sex workers, the Black Panthers, motorcycle gangs and Charlie Manson’s gang of true believers.

So join Esotouric for a time travel trip to that hot summer of 1969, as Brad Schreiber gives us a fresh perspective on dark secrets and repugnant characters. The crimes are white collar, blue collar and bloody red, as the optimism and warmth of the ‘60s comes to a shattering Los Angeles cataclysm. We’ve got some special surprises in store–you won’t want to miss it!

Please note that this is a Special Event, and vouchers and discounts good on our regularly scheduled tours are not accepted for this tour.

ABOUT GUEST HOST BRAD SCHREIBER

BRAD SCHREIBER has written for all media. He has been a producer, executive, director, consultant and actor. His early-years biography Becoming Jimi Hendrix was called “fascinating” by the New York Times and inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Library. He was Vice President of Storytech Literary Consulting, founded by story structure expert Christopher Vogler, for 11 years. In television, he created the series North Mission Road, which ran for six seasons on tru-TV, based on his book Death in Paradise: An Illustrated History of the Los Angeles County Department of Coroner. He was a writer, producer and development executive for L.A. PBS affiliate KCET -TV, and director of development for TV/film director Jonathan Kaplan. Schreiber’s writing has been honored by the Edward Albee Foundation, the National Press Foundation and others. Schreiber has taught at the American Film Institute, the Directors Guild of America, University of Wisconsin, Madison and many other locations, in the US, Canada and Mexico. His book, Revolution’s End, an expose of the Patricia Hearst kidnapping, won 2017 awards from the International Book Awards and Independent Publisher Book Awards and is being developed as a television series.

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New Bus Tour Tracks the Trail of the Manson Murders 50 Years Later

LOS ANGELES –  For fans of off-beat history and true crime in Los Angeles, the sightseeing company Esotouric is offering a new tour that tracks the trail of events related to the Manson murders.  

Brad Schreiber leads a four-hour bus tour along with Richard Schave and Kim Cooper, who own Esotouric.

• Chuck Moshontz's Encounter With the Manson Family

The company gives more than a dozen different tours discussing L.A.’s underbelly.  They’re newest is "Mansonland," which they started in August of 2018, about a year after Manson's death.

"Manson and his followers had a connection to the LaBiancas. It was not a random murder," Schreiber said.

So far, they’ve given three Mansonland tours, all of which have sold out.

"This is a very Los Angeles story," Schave said.

Schave and Cooper say most of their customers are Angelenos, authors, and historians looking for a deeper understanding of counterculture in L.A. or who are interested in true crime. 

"I think everyone’s really impressed that there’s just all these layers to this block," Shave said.

On Waverly Drive in Los Feliz, the LaBianca house still stands, looking much as it did 50 years ago.  

It’s currently up for sale…listed for almost $2 million.

"Leno LaBianca was on the board of the Hollywood National Bank, which was infiltrated by the mob. More interestingly, Rosemary LaBianca was a dealer of Mescaline and LSD and had a connection to a mafia drug dealer who went to the Cielo Drive house, just hours before the murders there," Schreiber said.

Just next door is the historic Earle C. Anthony House, built in 1927.  It can't be seen from the street but it became known as a party pad for some of the Manson family, including Linda Kasabian. 

"A year before the murders, Linda Kasabian is making noise next door and who complains about it to the police, Leno and Rosemary LaBianca," Schreiber said.

"You can’t talk about Charles Manson without talking about the Hall of Justice," Schave said, standing on the steps in front of the building.

Manson was held there on the upper floors during the trial, while members of the Manson family would congregate outside the building.

"The trial of Charles Manson and the family was the last great trial at this building," Schave said.

The tour also stops at El Coyote, which opened in 1931. The landmark restaurant on Beverly Boulevard is where Sharon Tate and her friends had their last meal. There happend to be a Once Upon a Time in Hollywood billboard right behind it.

Then, there's Jay Sebring's old salon on Fairfax Avenue.

"Everyone got their haircut at Sebring, and it changed the way men had their haircut," Schave said.

The space is now home to the GoodForm Salon and Dan’s Hair Salon. 

"It was a rather large complex, and you can see that there’s a back room here. That back room used to be for very VIP private clients," Schreiber said.

Sebring was a stylist to the stars, who pioneered using European techniques to cut hair in the US, but it was also a front for a darker side.

"Sebring was an ex-lover of Sharon Tate and was one of the major cocaine dealers to the stars in Los Angeles," Schreiber said.

Fifty years later, it's still a city caught up in the mystery and horrors surrounding the Manson case.

The next Mansonland tour is scheduled for August 31 at noon. It leaves from Urban Radish in the LA Arts District. 

For more information, click here .

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Helter Skelter: The True Tour of the... - Dearly Departed Tours

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Very interesting and informative tour of Hollywood and the sights of some of the most famous deaths... read more

so much knowledge and also a very fun trip to the gorey side of Holliwood, The tour guide was... read more

Helter Skelter: The True Tour of the Manson Murders

Some when in LA will go to Disneyland, Universal Studios or Venice Beach...I like to do something different and you can't get more different then the Dearly Departed Tours Company. They have recently moved shop and now are 5901 Santa Monica Blvd conveniently located near the Hollywood Forever Cemetery (another great place to visit). I have done 2 tours with Dearly Departed and this one is the Charles Manson Tour. I think everyone has heard of Charles Manson and most will know the famous murder case of the late 60s. I have read a lot on the "Mason Murders" so I was right up with what happened but even if you know nothing this tour will give you everything. Done in a few hours, you are taken around in a van with a video and some notes to help you with your journey. I had Dearly Departed Tours co-founder Scott Michaels take us through the grisly locations of where both murder sites took place...1st at the LaBianca's and then the "Tate"house or least the road of 10050 Cielo Drive (the house was demolished in 94 and now there is another) plus other places that the killers drank water and got rid of their clothes. You get time for some lunch and also check out the macabre Dearly Departed museum which in itself is worth the trip. If you are bored with the "same old, same old" tourist attractions and want to see the real Los Angeles, give this a try...I dare you. Erin

Scott is a fountain of knowledge on the Manson Family and in particular the murders. The tour used multi media including Scott's live commentary to really paint an informative picture. Interesting for anyone who's heard of Charlie Manson regardless of how much you know or thought you knew. Well worth it, thanks Scott

I was very impressed with my tour and am going back again, The staff is very friendly, and I felt when I was on the tour that the guide was very knowledgeable .

Did the dearly departed tragically history tour. Brian did a wonderful, great job narrating this trip, never a dull moment. We learned a lot of interesting facts and stopped at many places (thanks for going out of your way to take us to the Halloween houses), I would suggest you take notes as many topics were discussed and it's hard to remember them all. Would have loved to be able to google afterwards for more facts and info, but couldn't remember all of the topics. I would strongly recommend this tour as it really is very different compared to all of the other tours offered in Hollywood. Would do it again, can't wait until they get their other artifacts on display in the new office. everyone here are so friendly and awesome. We all had a great time. Thanks again from all of us in CANADA. You made our day.

Very interesting and fun. Learned a lot and fell into a murder internet hole after because I wanted to know more and more lol

We enjoyed our tour with Brian -tragical histories tour he was very nice and funny . The tour was interesting and informative we visited sites of black dahlia , Micheal jackson, the witch house , river Phoenix (VIPER ROOM)and others and by request the houses from the film Halloween I only wish that the museum was open during our visit but they just relocated pairs nicely with a visit to the museum of death

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Manson Family Murders

• Hollywood & Highland, 6801 Hollywood Blvd., Los Angeles

Meet at the mini HOLLYWOOD sign in the courtyard of the Hollywood and Highland center.

Journey back through '60s Los Angeles, as your chauffeur-guide spills the terrible secrets of what happened with Charles Manson and “the family”, and why. All will be revealed, in a vintage funeral limousine and 3.5 hours of scary sights.

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Mapping 13 key locations in the 1969 Manson family murders

From the Tate house to Corcoran State Prison

As Joan Didion wrote in her 1979 essay collection The White Album , the sixties "ended abruptly” on August 9, 1969, the night the Manson Family committed the brutal and infamous murders of five people at the home of actress Sharon Tate and director Roman Polanski. The following night, in Los Feliz, the "family” murdered two more innocent people, chosen randomly. The authorities were stumped; their main suspect, a groundskeeper at the Tate house, was released after passing a polygraph test.

Seven murders in two days was horrible, and without any idea of who did it, the city was on edge: "A Beverly Hills sporting goods store sold 200 firearms in two days. The price of guard dogs rose from $500 to $1,500," according to Los Angeles magazine .

Eventually the world would learn about the Manson Family, a cult in thrall to a man named Charles Manson, living together at the remote and abandoned Spahn movie ranch deep in the Valley. Below we've mapped all those and more important locations in the history of the cult that changed Los Angeles forever.

• The Story of the Abandoned Movie Ranch Where the Manson Family Launched Helter Skelter [Curbed LA]

Dennis Wilson's House

Dennis Wilson got involved with the Manson Family when he picked up two Family girls hitchhiking by the side of the road; he brought them to his Rustic Canyon house, they hung out, everyone left. He returned home late that night to find Charles Manson in his house with about a dozen, mostly female guests. Manson and the guests stayed for a few months, at a cost of $100,000 to Wilson.

• Open in Google Maps

The "Yellow Submarine"

The former site of a pre-Spahn-Ranch hangout for the Family.

28 Clubhouse Avenue

Another pre-Spahn-Ranch home base for the Manson Family. The November following the Tate/LaBianca murders, police responded to a possible lead at this address, where they found their potential witness dead from "suicide."

Hinman House

On July 31, police investigated the murder of music teacher Gary Hinman at his Topanga Canyon house. There were several similarities between Hinman's murder and those at the Tate house that pointed to Manson and his Family.

Valley of the Dolls actress Sharon Tate (married to director Roman Polanski) was eight months pregnant at the time she was murdered on August 9, 1969, along with Folgers coffee heiress Abigail Folger, her lover Voytek Frykowski, hairstylist Jay Sebring, and teen Steven Parent. The house at 10055 Cieldo Drive was demolished in the 1990s; the new house on the property has a different house number and is owned by Full House creator Jeff Franklin.

LaBianca house

Leno LaBianca, owner of a chain of supermarkets, and his wife Rosemary, who ran a successful clothing business, were murdered one night after the murders at the Tate house, on August 10, 1969. The house is still standing but the house number has been changed.

According to Helter Skelter , a gun used in the Tate murders was found here, "lying next to the sprinkler, under a bush," by a 10-year-old boy.

Blood-covered clothes found

Clothes disposed of after the murders at Tate's house were found thrown off a hillside across from 2901 Benedict Canyon by a TV crew and a reporter from the LA Times attempting to trace the steps of the perpetrators on the night of the murders.

Spahn Ranch

Charles Manson and 27 members of his Family were arrested here in an early morning raid on August 16, 1969, but for charges related to stolen vehicles. Prior to housing the Family, the property had been a popular movie ranch and horse-riding spot.

Barker Ranch

Raided in October 1969, Manson's group was using this Death Valley ranch as a shelter after leaving Spahn. (Some members of the Family were also living at the nearby Myers Ranch.) He and 23 of his followers were arrested in what Helter Skelter describes as a three-day-long raid. (This raid was also largely related to stolen cars found on the property.) The ranch suffered a fire in the spring of 2009, but many of the stone structures are still standing, according to Atlas Obscura .

Inyo County Courthouse

Charles Manson was officially indicted here for the Tate and LaBianca murders. He was then transported to the Hall of Justice Downtown, where his trial later took place.

Hall of Justice

Charles Manson was held in jail here. Eventually, he and Family members Patricia Krenwinkel, Susan Atkins, and Leslie Van Houten were found guilty of the murders. Another Family member, Tex Watson, was tried separately and also convicted.

Corcoran State Prison

Charles Manson is serving out his sentences here, in a special section of the prison that's apart from the general population.

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California Today

California Today: Charles Manson’s Grip on Los Angeles

By Jennifer Medina

• Nov. 21, 2017

Good morning.

(Want to get California Today by email? Here’s the sign-up .)

When Scott Michaels began the “Helter Skelter” tour about eight years ago, he offered it roughly once a month. Now, he guides people around the sites of the Manson family murders at least once a weekend, often selling out weeks in advance.

The three-and-a-half-hour tour is often filled with middle-age adults who were children during the murder spree that Charles Manson, who died Sunday , orchestrated in the summer of 1969.

“There’s seemingly no end to it,” said Mr. Michaels, who runs several other tours through Dearly Departed, his company and museum. “A lot of it has to do with the feeling that this scared us all. Up until then you thought you were safe in your own bed.”

The fact that the murders happened “in the sanctuary of the home” contributed to much of the fear that captivated people at the time, said Steve Oney, who wrote an oral history of the killings for Los Angeles Magazine in 2009.

“It was the modern L.A. noir murder because Manson’s cohorts butchered people in their homes and this is a city of homes,” Mr. Oney said. “Until then, this was a very open city, a very porous city, and people weren’t necessarily guarded.”

The Manson murders, Mr. Oney said, “changed everything.”

“L.A. went from being an embracing place to a more cautious and paranoid place,” he said. “It went from being a place where you went to ring a doorbell any time of day or night to an era of gated communities.”

It’s difficult to imagine now, Mr. Oney said, but Mr. Manson was easily able to penetrate the glamorous circles in Hollywood from his perch as a “street hustler.”

Mr. Michaels said that while his tour is focused on the historic sites, in some ways the fascination with Mr. Manson is “a little less about the murders and more about the myth.” Now that the man has died, will the mystique die with him too?

California Online

(Please note: We regularly highlight articles on news sites that have limited access for nonsubscribers.)

• Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti is openly considering a run for president in 2020. He faces tough odds — he would be the first sitting mayor elected to the White House. [ The New York Times ]

• Facing accusations of sexual harassment and assault from several women, Assemblyman Raul Bocanegra said Monday that he would resign from his seat next fall. The reports about the San Fernando Valley lawmaker come as many women in the state capitol complain of a culture that condones sexual harassment. [ The Los Angeles Times ]

• A federal judge in San Francisco blocked President Trump’s executive order to cut funding from so-called sanctuary cities — local jurisdictions that limit their cooperation with federal immigration authorities. [ The Associated Press ]

• The Republican lawmaker Tom McClintock has not faced serious opposition since he was elected to Congress nearly a decade ago. Now, three Democrats — all women — are vying for his seat representing Northern California. [ The Los Angeles Times ]

• California Democrats voted this weekend to make it harder for incumbents to receive the state party’s official endorsement — a change that will have its first test in the campaign for the United States Senate. [ The Los Angeles Times ]

• Uber plans to add as many as 24,000 self-driving Volvos into its extensive ride-hailing network, according to a deal announced Monday, trying to ready itself for the day when self-driving cars become mainstream. [ The New York Times ]

• Want to buy a home in San Jose? You’ll likely need a household income of more than $200,000, according to a recent study. The region is the most expensive metro area in the country. [ The Mercury News ]

• Disneyland is no longer selling its annual pass for Southern California residents. At $469, the pass was one of the park’s least expensive options for an annual pass and had been hugely popular — the move is seen as an attempt to manage the crowds at the park. [ The Orange County Register ]

• Wild turkeys seem to be on the prowl in some Bay Area suburbs — and while some residents are embracing them, the large birds are not universally welcomed guests. [ The San Francisco Chronicle ]

• Della Reese , who played an angel on television and was an ordained minister in real life, died at her home in Encino on Sunday. She was 86. [ The New York Times ]

• The Central Valley will have a new route to the Midwest next summer, with daily nonstop flights from Fresno to Chicago . [ The Fresno Bee ]

And Finally ...

The stretch of the Owens Valley had been cleared of Native Americans decades before. In the 1940s, the federal government found a new use for Manzanar as the site of one of the largest Japanese internment camps.

It was on this day in 1945 that the camp was closed for good.

While many of those who had spent years in the camp left eagerly, some refused to leave because they had lost everything when they were forcibly removed from their home years before. Some were removed by force once again.

As they left, the people who had been incarcerated were given $25 and a one-way train or bus ticket back to the towns where they had lived before the war.

Today, there is an annual pilgrimage to the site which draws hundreds of people to the area .

California Today goes live at 6 a.m. Pacific time weekdays. Tell us what you want to see: [email protected] .

The New York Times has dozens of journalists based in California. They will be contributing to California Today while we seek a permanent California Today columnist. Check out the job posting for the weekday newsletter here .

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Charles Manson Helter Skelter - Dearly Departed Tours

• United States    
• California (CA)    
• Los Angeles    
• Los Angeles - Things to Do    
• Dearly Departed Tours

Very interesting and informative tour of Hollywood and the sights of some of the most famous deaths... read more

so much knowledge and also a very fun trip to the gorey side of Holliwood, The tour guide was... read more

Charles Manson Helter Skelter

Took this tour back In April, two of us were dedicated Scott Michaels fans. He himself gave the tour, and it was even better than the movie he made. The tour shows you everything you could dream of seeing when it comes to Manson trivia and history. All from the comfort of an air conditioned bus. Plus he is a safe driver! I suggest getting there early to check out the storefront. If you are interested in Hollywood history and death you must check this out! Worth every dollar you spend.

Toured the city with guide JS and enjoyed his history and tales of the city. I would take it again, just wish they had a bus with windows high in the sides as some sites were hard to see from my seat.

I was very impressed with the driver's ability to get around the rain soaked LA traffic and the two story "museum" of odds and ends from celebrity auto accidents, plane crashes and murders. The highlight of the tour is the secret cemetery where Marilyn Monroe, Dean Martin, Natalie Wood and about 20 additional TV and film stars are buried. Overall, if you have a couple of hours to kill with out of town guests and nothing better to do, maybe consider this tour.

I know its morbid right!!! Not even close, Brian was our guide and he was hilarious and super informative. He kept us entertained even my husband enjoyed this tour.

My friends and I took 2 back-to back tours with DDT (The Tragical History Tour & Horror Movie Location tour), and we couldn't have been more pleased! We were doing a Halloween themed vacation in October of last year, and both these tours did not disappoint. If you are an avid horror movie fan, then you MUST not miss the Horror Movie Location tour. Our guide Brian was nothing short of entertaining, and extremely knowledgeable. I will definitely take a tour again. And as a travel agent, I will definitely be promoting these tours for those looking for something a little different.

This was a fun little tour we took at the last minute when we had a free afternoon. Our tour guide spoke so fast he was a little hard to understand, but he was friendly and the sites we visited were interesting.

Charles Manson

Similar artists on tour, concerts and tour dates, about charles manson.

'Manson Family Vacation' Trailer: Everybody Freaks Out When You Bring Up Charles Manson

In Manson Family Vacation , Jay Duplass plays a Los Angeles family man whose life is upended when his burnout brother Conrad, played by Linas Phillips , shows up on his doorstep. Conrad doesn't just want to chill on the couch, however. He's fascinated with the story of Charles Manson, and wants to do a tour through the LA landmarks that play a part in the horrible story of Manson and the murders committed in his name.

Road tripping through the history of the Family is a weird way to bring a small family together, but maybe it will work? Check out the Manson Family Vacation trailer below.

I can kind of sympathize with the brother Conrad here, because I spent some of the past month completely immersed in Karina Longworth's great podcast You Must Remember This .

The last season of that podcast was a twelve-episode examination of the Charles Mansion story, detailing participants from Manson and his "family" to Roman Polanski and Sharon Tate, Dennis Wilson, Kenneth Anger, and Candice Bergen, and talking about exactly the LA history that Conrad is obsessed with. (That booth in the trailer, for example, where Conrad says Sharon Tate ate her last meal is at El Coyote, just a couple blocks from The New Beverly Theatre.) It's a great account of the Manson story and all the social and cultural factors that played into it, with no romanization to gloss over how terrible many of Manson's actions, big and small, actually were.

I guess a movie about the guy sitting in the back yard listening to the podcast wouldn't have the same effect, however, so I can understand why Jay Duplass's character has to go along for the ride to find out all this weird stuff for himself.

Manson Family Vacation is set to hit iTunes and On Demand on October 6. Trailer via The Orchard .

Nick Morgan (Jay Duplass) has it all: a loving family, a beautiful home and a successful law practice in Los Angeles. His estranged brother Conrad (Linas Phillips) has nothing but a backpack. When Conrad shows up for a surprise visit, all he wants to do in town is go to the infamous Manson Family murder sites. Reluctantly, Nick joins him and ends up on a road trip that leads the brothers into the modern-day world of Charles Manson.

PHOTOS: LA's Hall of Justice once home to notorious criminals

LOS ANGELES (KABC) -- Hundreds of historic artifacts belonging to the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department will soon be moved to a new museum at the historic Hall of Justice in downtown Los Angeles.

The iconic 14-story building, which was closed as a result of damage from the 1994 Northridge earthquake, reopened in October 2014 following a $233 million renovation.

Built in 1925, the Hall of Justice was a central hub for L.A. County law enforcement, home to the sheriff's department, the coroner and the court system.

Crews worked to preserve some remarkable features, including courtrooms and the original jail cells that housed the likes of notorious serial killer Charles Manson and Sirhan Sirhan, who killed Sen. Robert F. Kennedy.

See photos from the exhibit and get more details here: http://abc7.la/1fEaSjB .

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• LOS ANGELES
• LOS ANGELES COUNTY
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• LOS ANGELES COUNTY SHERIFF'S DEPARTMENT
• CHARLES MANSON

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Why smaug is the only dragon in lotr & the hobbit (what happened to the others), horizon debuts to one of kevin costner's worst rotten tomatoes scores.

• The Beach Boys documentary sheds light on the band's connection to notorious cult leader Charles Manson.
• Brian Wilson's deep themes in "Pet Sounds" marked a change for the Beach Boys with the rising popularity of 1960s counterculture.
• Dennis Wilson's association with Manson and the tragedy of the Manson Family murders haunted him.

The new Disney+ music documentary, The Beach Boys , tells the story of the titular band’s journey to becoming one of the biggest bands in American history. The Beach Boys had many shocking reveals , including the band’s relationship with notorious cult leader and murderer Charles Manson . There have been many movies and TV shows about Charles Manson , but The Beach Boys provides an interesting perspective on him through the lens of the group's surviving members. The Beach Boys is about much more than the band’s controversy, but their struggles and conflicts were some of its most interesting aspects.

The Beach Boys have a long history. They were formed in California in 1961 and are still performing today, even with band members in their early 80s. Through these concerts, iconic albums, “Greatest Hits” compilations, and the use of Beach Boys’ songs in movies , their legacy still endures and has already lasted for generations. The Beach Boys also included singer-songwriters Lindsey Buckingham, Ryan Tedder, and Janelle Monáe to speak about their love for the band and their influence on them. They tended to have a more wholesome image in comparison to their peers, but they had their own problems.

Charles Manson Wrote A Song With The Beach Boys

Charles manson co-wrote a song with dennis wilson.

Charles Manson is understandably best remembered for leading the Manson Family cult that committed at least seven murders during “ Helter Skelter .” Manson was a serial criminal, having spent over half of his life in correctional institutions before the murders, which occurred when he was 35. At the same time that Manson was growing his Family, which was thought to have approximately 100 members at Spahn Ranch, he was working as a singer-songwriter and trying to break into the mainstream Los Angeles music industry.

The Beach Boys started the 1960s performing fun surfer bro music aimed at younger audiences. In 1966, they took a turn with "Pet Sounds," which is often considered their best album. Brian Wilson, the band’s leader at the time, started to delve into more important, and sometimes distressing, themes with his lyrics. In that time frame, Laurel Canyon became a center for counterculture and home to many top folk and rock musicians , such as Joni Mitchell, Cass Elliot, Carole King, Jim Morrison, and members of The Beach Boys.

Rotten Tomatoes ranks the best music industry-focused documentary films, including Gimme Shelter, It Might Get Loud, and many other inspiring films.

Dennis Wilson was the middle brother of Brian and Carl Wilson and one of five original Beach Boys members alongside his brothers, cousin Mike Love, and their friend Al Jardine. In the late 1960s, Dennis started hanging out more with the fringe members of the LA music scene, including Charles Manson. They became songwriting partners, and Dennis reworked Manson’s song “Cease To Exist” into the 1968 Beach Boys single, “Never Learn Not To Love.”

Not Every Beach Boys Member Approved Of Manson

The manson murders happened a year after the song’s release.

Dennis also tried to get his fellow Beach Boys members into the scene he was increasingly becoming entrenched in. While some members hung around Laurel Canyon, notably Brian, they weren’t as involved with the world of counterculture, drugs, and “ consciousness ” that people like Dennis and Charles were. As Love said in The Beach Boys , Dennis was a “ wild person .” Yet, he was able to get The Beach Boys interested in meditation.

Love also shared that Dennis had once picked up a group of girls who were hitchhiking. When Dennis told them he was working with the now-controversial Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the creator of Transcendental Meditation, they said they had their own “ guru ,” Charles “Charlie” Manson . Love claimed he only met Manson once, saying “ that was enough for [him] .” Love spoke more about that meeting in an ABC News interview.

Charles Manson Tried To Kill Producer Terry Melcher

The mansor murders haunted dennis wilson.

Famous producer Terry Melcher, the only child of actress Doris Day, befriended The Beach Boys in the mid-1960s and played on their “Pet Sounds” album. Knowing this, Manson asked Dennis to introduce them, assuming Melcher would be his ticket out of the fringe and into the mainstream. When Manson eventually auditioned for Melcher, the producer wouldn’t sign him, enraging the cult leader. Additionally, Dennis didn’t give Manson co-writing credits on “Never Learn Not To Love.” After many threats, Dennis and Melcher distanced themselves from Manson.

In August 1969, Manson sent four of his Family members to 10050 Cielo Drive to murder everyone in the house. He believed it to be the home of Melcher and his girlfriend, actress Candice Bergen. However, they’d sold the house and the new owner leased it to director Roman Polanski and his 8-months-pregnant wife, actress Sharon Tate . She was killed along with four other occupants.

In The Beach Boys Disney+ documentary, Love said he thought the murders “ weighed upon Dennis pretty heavily .” Jardine added that while it wasn’t Dennis’ fault, “ he always felt bad about it ever since .” Heartbreakingly, Dennis Wilson died at 39 of drowning while intoxicated. The Beach Boys was dedicated to Dennis and his younger brother, Carl, who died of lung cancer at 59.

Source: ABC News

The Beach Boys (2024)

The Beach Boys on Lana Del Rey, Charles Manson and their wistful new Disney+ doc

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Mike Love is sitting in a blah-looking room in a Sheraton hotel in North Carolina, the garish pattern of his signature Hawaiian shirt popping against the ochre wallpaper behind him.

The 83-year-old Beach Boys frontman came to Charlotte the other day to play the Lovin’ Life music festival alongside Post Malone and DaBaby, and 36 hours later he’s still in the mood to brag: “We had several thousands of people singing along to our songs,” he says in a Zoom call. “A lot of teenagers and stuff dancing around. Pretty phenomenal considering we’ve been doing this a little over 60 years.”

As fans of the Beach Boys know, “we” requires a bit of unpacking.

Six decades after Love formed the band in suburban Hawthorne with his cousins Brian, Dennis and Carl Wilson and their friend Al Jardine, a Beach Boys concert these days means a performance by Love and Bruce Johnston, who took over onstage for Brian Wilson after Brian quit touring in 1965, and a number of very capable backing musicians. (Jardine refers to this outfit as “Mike’s band.”) Brian, the acknowledged mastermind of one of America’s most transformative rock acts, eventually returned to the road and toured regularly under his own name with Jardine and other players until 2022, when health troubles forced him offstage again.

So: two sets of Beach Boys, driven apart by fights over money and creative control, neither containing any of the blood relatives whose crystalline harmonies lifted the group’s music to a kind of celestial state.

Yet Love has old family ties on his mind as he discusses “The Beach Boys,” a sunny if slightly wistful new documentary co-directed by Frank Marshall and Thom Zimny that premiered Friday on Disney+. The Beach Boys’ story has been told countless times in other films and shows and books and podcasts — “too many times,” Johnston, 81, notes with a laugh in a separate call. But this was an “opportunity to show that this is a family situation,” Love says. “A family band.”

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Love, who co-wrote many of the Beach Boys’ biggest hits with Brian, recalls learning to sing half a century ago “at birthday parties and Thanksgiving and Christmas parties and New Year’s Eve”; he remembers blending his voice with Brian’s in the car on Wednesday nights as they drove home from Angeles Mesa Presbyterian Church in Windsor Hills. “When we had my Dorsey High School senior trip, I invited Brian to go with me,” he tells The Times. “I didn’t invite a girl. I was a little shy and awkward and everything. But nice cousin Brian — we went to Catalina and back.”

In the movie, Love’s blue-gray eyes well up as he describes his bond with Brian, whose mental health struggles could make it difficult to communicate with other people even as his music was expanding the scope of pop in the mid-1960s.

“There was so much love and so much rapport between us at that time that it showed up on the records,” Love says from Charlotte. “They talk about Elton John and Bernie Taupin. Well, it was Mike Love and Brian Wilson — Brian Wilson and Mike Love, whatever.”

With a blend of archival footage and interviews with the band’s surviving members — Dennis Wilson died in 1983, Carl in 1998 — the new documentary comes at a moment of high visibility for the Beach Boys, who three years ago drafted Irving Azoff’s Iconic Artists Group to “preserve and grow their legacy in a digital era,” as a statement put it.

Beyoncé interpolates a bit of “Good Vibrations” on her hit “ Cowboy Carter ” album, while Lana Del Rey turned up with the band at last month’s Stagecoach country music festival in Indio. “My daughter Ambha, who’s 28, she’s been a fan of that person since she was Lizzy Grant,” Love says, referring to Del Rey’s former stage name. “She even told Lana, ‘Hey, I’ve been playing my dad your music since I was 12.’ Lana got a kick out of that.”

Just this week, the Beach Boys’ “Pet Sounds” — the classic 1966 LP that set a new benchmark for expressive pop sophistication — landed at No. 20 on Apple Music’s much-discussed ranking of the 100 best albums of all time.

Says Zimny, known for his earlier docs about Elvis Presley and Bruce Springsteen : “They created a sound that’s still active in our dreams today.”

Less happily, the Beach Boys have been in headlines this month as a result of Brian’s being placed under a conservatorship following the recent death of his wife, Melinda Wilson, who’d been responsible for his care amid a diagnosis of dementia. Brian made a rare public appearance Tuesday night at the movie’s premiere at Hollywood’s TLC Chinese Theater, where he posed for photos with the band for the first time since a 2023 Recording Academy tribute to the Beach Boys.

Yet light and dark have always been intertwined for a famously clean-cut group whose story encompasses substance abuse, mental illness and a bullying father-slash-manager. “The Beach Boys” glides pretty smoothly over much of the rough stuff, though it doesn’t try to steer around Dennis’ ill-advised friendship with Charles Manson not long before the Tate-LaBianca murders.

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“I only met the guy once and that was enough for me, but Dennis had him as his roommate,” Love says today. “The whole thing was terrible. But it happened. It was the reality. It was the ’60s — there were drugs, there was insanity, there was the Vietnam War going on. It was heavy-duty. But you know what? I always like to accentuate the positive. So it’s good vibrations.”

One way of thinking about the power of the Beach Boys’ music is to hear the essential sadness in even the most joyful of their songs. Love’s not so sure about that: “If you’re talking about ‘Fun, Fun, Fun’ or ‘I Get Around’ or ‘Surfin’ U.S.A.,’ there ain’t no melancholy in them,” he says. “Even in ‘The Warmth of the Sun,’ it’s about how you were in love but it didn’t happen — she doesn’t feel the same way anymore, so you’re left. But at least you have the memory of having felt that euphoria of being in love.”

According to Azoff, the veteran music industry insider who manages the Eagles and U2 , “The Beach Boys” grew out of an offer from the cable network Epix (now known as MGM+) to make a documentary about the band. Azoff decided “we could do better than Epix” and brought in Marshall, a longtime presence in Hollywood, and together they went to Disney chief Bob Iger, who Azoff says personally made the decision to buy the doc for Disney+.

For the record:

1:53 p.m. May 27, 2024 An earlier version of this story said the movie “Love & Mercy” was released in 2004. The movie came out in 2014.

“To me, their story hadn’t been told for a while other than Brian’s personal story — and nobody really wants to see Dr. Landy anymore,” Azoff says, referring to late psychologist Eugene Landy, whose controversial treatment of Brian in the ’80s was depicted in the 2014 film “Love & Mercy.”

Marshall was drawn to the group’s family dynamics in part, he says, because he grew up in a musical family: His dad was Jack Marshall, a jazz guitarist and composer who also worked as a producer at the Beach Boys’ record label, Capitol. In 2020 he directed HBO’s acclaimed “How Can You Mend a Broken Heart,” about another band of brothers, the Bee Gees .

“Both those groups had a father figure that was instrumental in their lives — in a good way for the Bee Gees and a not-so-good way for the Beach Boys,” Marshall says. The film examines Murry Wilson’s domineering role in the band’s affairs, including his battles with Brian over their work in the studio and his sale of the group’s publishing in 1969 for less than $1 million. (Billboard estimates that today the Beach Boys’ catalog would be worth more than $200 million.)

“A father should never be a manager — that was really where it all stemmed from,” Jardine, 81, says over Zoom. “He’d be all over the place with us, telling us how to tune up. His famous term was ‘Treble up, boys!’ He’d lost his hearing, apparently, and he didn’t think it was bright enough. Things like that were maddening.”

The movie also hints at the tension between Love and Dennis Wilson — “competitive cousins,” Jardine calls them — as the two vied to be seen as the Beach Boys’ resident heartthrob. “Any time Dennis could upstage Mike, he’d do it,” Jardine tells The Times. “All he had to do is stand up on his drums and hold his hands in the air with his drumsticks and the crowd went crazy. As soon as Mike was delivering a little gab, he’d time it just so that he’d get the applause instead of Mike.” He laughs. “Drove Mike nuts.”

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According to Jardine, Love wasn’t the only target of that energy from Dennis. He remembers the Beach Boys sharing a trailer with the Rolling Stones at a gig in Jacksonville, Fla., in the mid-’60s, “right when they first came over here. They sat at one end of the trailer and we sat at the other. We never spoke. I think Dennis had a problem with Mick [Jagger], as I recall.” He shrugs. “Alpha types.”

Beyond the band’s complicated relationships, “The Beach Boys” tracks the group’s friendly rivalry with the Beatles and highlights Brian’s pioneering role as the band’s producer in an era when few if any pop acts were overseeing their own recordings.

“In 2024 that’s a common thing, but this was a world in which writers, producers and performers were all separate,” says producer Dan Nigro. Known for his work with Olivia Rodrigo and Chappell Roan , Nigro co-wrote and produced a Beach Boys-inspired tune by singer Stephen Sanchez, “ Baby Blue Bathing Suit ,” that’s featured as a bonus track on the documentary’s soundtrack. “Brian was the first person I knew of that was doing it all.”

Producer Mike Elizondo, who served as music director for last year’s Recording Academy tribute, still uses the Beach Boys’ music as a source of motivation when he’s working with an artist in the studio. “Even if we’re not necessarily trying to make a Beach Boys-sounding record, it’s like, ‘Look, this is what’s possible if you’ve got a vision and you forge ahead,’” he says.

Given Brian’s condition, nobody in or around the Beach Boys says they expect a reunion like the one the group convened to mark their 50th anniversary. But Love’s band will be on tour all summer (including an Aug. 30 stop at L.A.’s Greek Theatre), and there’s a limited-edition vinyl reissue of “Pet Sounds” on the way later this year. Last month, a handsome new coffee-table book, “The Beach Boys by the Beach Boys,” was published with photos and detailed reminiscences from the members.

“There’s a lot of nostalgia involved for somebody that was in the band,” Love says of all the retrospective action — so much that it can almost seem painful.

“We were so close growing up,” he says of himself and Brian. “We’d listen to KGFJ and KDAY in his Nash Rambler after we got kicked out of the house for making too much noise because my dad had to go to work at Love Sheet Metal in the morning. We’d literally hang out in the Rambler, listening to the radio, singing things, just cracking each other up.”

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Mikael Wood is pop music critic for the Los Angeles Times.

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