After nearly half a century, is Charlie Manson finally getting what he always wanted?
Thwarted at every turn in becoming a recording artist in his day, his weird songs are being given a national platform on a broadcast network on a new summer show starring David Duchovny.
Amid the Jefferson Airplane, Doors and other carefully chosen period rock in the NBC series “Aquarius” (NBC, 9 p.m.), premiering tonight amid a huge publicity campaign, will be several prominent ballads by Manson, blamed for the spree that killed six in a 1969 bloodbath that helped put an end to the hippie dreams of utopia.
Some will be played by the charismatic actor portraying him in the series, Gethin Anthony (the former Renly Baratheon on “Game of Thrones”). Others will become themes underlying scenes.
Though his songs have been recorded by The Beach Boys and Guns N’ Ruses over the years, this will be the widest platform yet for the music of Manson, one of America’s most reviled criminals, since a 1976 miniseries “Helter Skelter” used a couple of his tunes.
An odd choice perhaps for a network that is more associated with putting on live versions of musicals like “Peter Pan” and “The Sound of Music,” but the Manson tunes may add authenticity to a series set in 1967 that doesn’t quite need it — since it veers quite wildly from the actual story to add all kinds of made up political and sexual intrigue.
Still, one wonders whether the wild-eyed prisoner, now 80, will reap any residuals from his songs’ unexpected resurgence.
When Guns N’ Roses added an uncredited “Look to Your Game Girl” on its 1993 album “The Spaghetti Incident?” it caused an outcry from police and others — enough to cause the president of Geffen records, who said “It is certainly not our intent or desire to glorify or enrich anyone who commits heinous and violent crimes.”
For his part Guns lead singer Axl Rose issued a two-page statement saying “I liked the lyrics and melody of the song” when he first heard it from his brother. Learning it was a Manson song “shocked me,” Rose said, “and I thought there might be other people who would like to hear it.”
His interest was purely sociological, he claimed. “Manson is a dark part of American culture and history. He’s the subject of fear and fascination through books, movies and the interviews he’s done. Most people hadn’t heard anything Charles Manson recorded,” Rose said.
But Manson had written a song that made it to the charts 25 years earlier by the Beach Boys.
The recording of “Never Learn Not to Love,” which charted in 1968 as the B-side of “Bluebirds Over the Mountain,” and appeared on the album “20/20,” grew out of an association between Manson and Beach Boys drummer Dennis Wilson.
Wilson vowed to help Manson in the music industry, and got him an audience with Terry Melcher, the record producer (and son of Doris Day). But no record deal was forthcoming and the Beach Boys adopted Manson’s dark “Cease to Exist” into “Never Learn Not to Love” without giving him songwriting credits.
Manson was furious and tracked down Melcher at his house; by then, though, the record producer had moved. He did, however meet some of its new occupants, which included the actress Sharon Tate and hairdresser Jay Sebring. Five months later, Manson and his gang would return there and massacre seven, writing Beatles lyrics in blood on the walls.
Manson was found guilty and it wasn’t until he was in prison that the songs from his demo tape were released under the title “Lie.” It has since been reissued by small labels interested in its macabre nature and haunting songs like “Look at Your Game Girl.”
But its songs may have never found its widest audience until tonight, on NBC.