Put on by the children for a lark...
When the Beatles had finished basking in the counter-cultural glow of the (In)famous 1967 Summer of Love with Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, and the quickly becoming tiresome acid alliteration-Thank you Mike Love-of the Magical Mystery Tour, the brilliant lads from Liverpool got dark and serious with The Beatles AKA The White Album, released Nov. 22, 1968.
Charles Manson and his Family duly took note, and although Beatle George Harrison would later note that The White Album music "had absolutely nothing to do with...Californian shagnasties," and ""It was upsetting to be associated with anything as sleazy as Charles Manson," as Harrison said in the Beatles Anthology. Yet many of the songs contained on The Beatles would become LA assistant district attorney Vincet T. Bugliosi's prosecutorial template for the most bizarre and unlikely legally presented motive for mass murder in as Vince liked to opine, the annals of record crime.
And yet this from John Lennon on Beatles music making murder: "Helter Skelter is just a noise" And of Manson, "He's barmy": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uLcBHJwiUA
And Paul McCartney was certainly gobsmacked by the Manson seizure of Helter Skelter, yet there is this: http://beaconfilms2011.blogspot.ca/2015/04/phoney-manson-links.html
Plus an even crazier Macca/Manson one: http://plancksconstant.org/blog1/2012/05/was_paul_mccartney_of_the_beatles_responsible_for.html
Even the loud one (Ringo Starr) weighed in on the CM/HS wedding: "It stopped everyone in their tracks because all this violence came out in the midst of all this love and peace and psychedelia."
And here is a wonderfully compiled and written if myth perpetuating treatise on the whole weird circus:
https://www.beatlesbible.com/features/charles-manson/
But, does the wedding of the Beatles, the Bible and the Bugliosi really amount to more than a whimsical wanking that was just a sign 'o' the times which will eventually be relegated to the dustbin of pop cultural and attendant legal history?
Let us begin by, as asked before on this Blog, do facts and those rendering them-even moi- really matter?
Some may opine that Vince Bugliosi's credibility on just about anything was severely whacked when in 2007 he produced a 1632 page tome on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Reclaiming History, in which Bugliosi deduced, unequivocally, that Lee Harvey Oswald was the sole perpetrator of Kennedy's murder.
(Here is an interesting look at that in a Vince obit: http://jfkfacts.org/vincent-bugliosi-jfk-conspiracy-skeptic-dies-at-80/#more-19451)
Reclaiming History could even be described in some way as fiction as here is the chance that Oswald was the lone perpetrator of JFK's death: ZERO!
And as one popular book on the JFK outrage's title announces, we will "not in our lifetime" know the truth. If ever.
But of course writing books became Vince's after Helter Skelter occupation and as well, you can't believe everything you read, it would be fair to ask if coming up with ridiculous and/or unbelievable scenarios and motives for a murder case were not the Buglioi MO. First HS, then "reclaiming history."
Bugliosi points out in Helter Skelter that a successful murder prosecution need not include a motive and in the case of the Manson murders, nothing could be more right on. Besides key physical evidence, eye-witness testimony from former and then current Family members, Vince T had an embarrassment of riches evidence wise but he also had what he very cleverly deduced was a great gimmick.
Despite the fact that Vince was not the kind of guy who rushed out to Tower to grab the latest Fabs' LP, he was culturally astute enough to dig the incredible allure of mixing the biggest rock band in the history of the world's music with drugs and beautiful people and sex and murder and well, the 60s.
He shook it all up in a Beatle blender and out spewed a sensational, sexy serial murder narrative that the mass media was and is orgasmic with, now approaching 50 years on.
Hangers on to the Family provided Vince with amazing tales of Helter and Skelter and Bugliosi helped those fantasist repeaters to weave a somewhat coherent if not accurate narrative for court-and most importantly-media proceedings. If you doubt this, listen to the hours of interview tapes of those concerned on YouTube.
Sure, the defendants ran their mouths in court about the black magic of Helter Skelter and yet they were just part of the circus of performing seals directed by Charlie and also a possible defense of the mens rea of the accused who were perhaps not as out-of-it nuts batshit crazy as was assumed.
And for those still in the joint for the crimes, it is still (eventually) legally helpful to claim a diminished capacity was to blame for their actions. (Although a listen or read of some of their parole hearings would seem to indicate that the parole board members are hip to this tactic as evidenced by government claims that the convicted Family members are still a "danger" to the community.)
Seriously, think about how the Manson saga would have played out without the inclusion of a Beatles angle to Charlie's koo-koo for coco-puffs philosophy and prophecies entwined with the Bible.
If it were just Charlie interpreting the Bible to his own devices sans Beatles, a big Elmer Gantry yawn would have emanated out of Southern California. Just another "born again" nut reeking havoc was how it would have been seen, and more importantly, covered.
The Beatles were the key to Bugliosi's post law career lottery win, but the lore of Helter Skelter was just nonsensical collateral to the conviction of Manson and 6 of his followers. He and the others were always going to be going down fast.
