The Manson Boys – “The Largest Gonorrhea Bill In History”

We’ll get to your mom in a minute, but first….

This week’s playlist highlights those awkward teenage years of The Beach Boys. Ya know, after the Good Vibrations wore off and they were in a creative desert playing songs written by people like Charles Manson.

The Beach Boys were America’s homegrown defense against the British Invasion. The wholesome and harmonizing family act included three Wilson brothers, their cousin and a close friend. The Beach Boys were competition for The Beatles in the early ‘60s but by 1968 drug use, internal conflicts, creative differences and mental health issues had taken a toll on the group.

Unfortunately the Maharishi didn’t give The Beach Boys the same creative spirit of The Beatles after their meeting.

Dennis Wilson had a blessed life, but a string of poor choices. Certainly one of his most regrettable choices was picking up two female hitchhikers in 1968 and taking them to his rented Sunset Boulevard mansion. That’s because these girls happen to be members of the Manson family, and the next time Dennis came home he was greeted by Charlie who welcomed him to a house full of “family” members.

Dennis enjoyed the company for the most part: plenty of drugs, sex with the multitude of girls who also cleaned and cooked…plus he actually liked some of Charlie’s songs. Dennis even set Manson up with some studio time, but Chuck shit the bed when it came to recording anything of value. Dennis also tried to get the other Beach Boys on board but they thought Mason was creepy…and dirty. Both fair assessments.

After a few months Dennis got sick of his unwanted house guests who he estimated cost him around $100,000 in various expenses. His clothes disappeared along with gold records and one family member even wrecked his Mercedes-Benz.

Sure, that sounds like something that would happen when people have parties at your place. But Dennis went a few steps further with actions like paying to get Sadie’s teeth fixed.

It’s also worth noting that he took the whole family to get penicillin shots. Dennis said, “It was probably the largest gonorrhea bill in history.”

So how did Dennis free himself from the Manson family?

Like a good rockstar he moved in with someone else and had his manager evict the Manson clan.

Though Dennis did get something from Manson…other than the clap. Charlie had written a song called ‘Cease To Exist’ and told Dennis do whatever he wanted with it as long as he didn’t change the lyrics. After a few tweaks The Beach Boys recorded ‘Never Learn Not To Love’ and when Charlie heard the song he was equally pissed for not receiving a song writing credit and Dennis changing some of the lyrics. But even with some slight changes these lyrics are Charlie through-and-through:

“Cease to resist, come on say you love me,

Give up your world, come on and be with me”

Ideas like, “submission is a gift, give it to your lover,” are exactly how Charlie coerced people to giving up worldly possessions to follow Jesus Chuck Superstar. Though it sounds so much sweeter coming from The Beach Boys.

The entire run-in with the Manson family tortured Dennis for the rest of his life and while the death threat that he received from Charlie was shallow, unfortunately the water where Dennis took his final swim wasn’t…

Are you more creeped out by this week’s Storytime or last week’s version on Mason interpretation “The White Album?“

Too be honest, it all feels icky. These are reissues of ideas and writings from August 2016…when these things still seemed kinda funny. But now, in August 2021, after the exposure of so many Manson-like characters over the past 5 years, these stories are even more fucked. The only hope is that we can learn from these cases and speak up sooner when we see weird shit happening to ensure they don’t happen again.

So this week’s playlist tries to highlight some of the good vibrations during these crazy times from ‘68-‘71 when Brian was no longer the group’s leader, the musical world was changing daily and The Beach Boys couldn’t keep afloat.

How do you feel about the situation? Anything else you’d add to this playlist?

Surfs up!