PAGE 24 • June 2023 • TABLE HOPPING
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The Write Stuff by Nancy Roberts
Chaos:
Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties by Tom O’Neill Published: 2019 Not long ago, I was asked to attend a “Heritage Day” at a school, and answer questions about the sixties. While acknowledging I was alive then, I also had to admit that I started that decade pretty young. Over the course of that ten year stretch, my focus changed a lot, so my memories and point of observation provided only limited insight. But one thing is absolutely true: in my lifetime, that period of time was one of profound change. Having written that, it can be acknowledged that there have been many decades that can be labeled “full of profound change,” and for a variety of reasons – wars, depressions,
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discoveries, technological change. But at the same time, the 60’s will no doubt always be recognized as a time when people turned a corner, socially and politically in the United States. One of the reasons this corner seems more profound than others is, no doubt, because it seemed to spring organically from the people, as opposed to being imposed upon them for survival – as in the case Charles Manson of a World War, a major economic shift, or the sudden appearance of a technology that changes how we relate (as in, the Internet and cell phones). But – this is the fourth book I’ve read that suggests the change was perhaps not as organic as it felt to anyone living through it. And it’s the fourth book that, curiously, places one Charles Manson somewhere near the center of the action. “Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders” (2001) was prosecuting attorney Vincent Bugliosi’s firstperson account of the summer of 1969, in Los Angeles, a series of brutal, seemingly random murders captured headlines across America. A famous actress (and her unborn child), an heiress to a coffee fortune, a supermarket owner and his wife were among the seven victims, all horrifically killed by members of Manson’s “Family,” a group of hippie kids who sat at the feet of guru Charles Manson and did his bidding. Apparently, at least some of Manson’s purpose was to pay back pop music and culture for not recognizing his genius. But was that all? In “Laurel Canyon: The Inside Story of Rock-and-Roll’s Legendary Neighborhood” (2007) writer Michael Walker suggests that many of the famous, and infamous, not to mention legendary musicians of the late 60s were drawn to The Canyon (this one as opposed to Benedict Canyon, where the victims of the Manson Family met their ugly ends) by forces perhaps bigger than their drive to tune in, turn on, and make music. In his book on the subject, “Weird Scenes Inside the Canyon: Laurel Canyon, Hippies in the 1960s Covert Ops & the Dark Heart of the Hippie Dream” (2014) author David McGowan suggests that many of these hippie songwriters and musicians were the children of high-ranking military men, and, as such,
“What started out as a would-be article for the popular press became a 20-year chase to get “the facts” of the Family, the murders, the investigation, the trial, and Bugliosi’s own account of how the trial went down.”