1/23/2024 0 Comments Runway songs on 8th and ocean![]() ![]() I think Manson chose Sharon Tate and her friends as victims to show how easily it could be done. Why?īecause I think it freaked him out so much-that Manson could have easily killed him or his friend, record producer Terry Melcher (the son of Hollywood star Doris Day). Charles Manson was a career criminal whose darkest impulses came to the fore amid the drug-addled freedom of Los Angeles in the late 196os. But in the times I interviewed him, he would never talk about Charles Manson. Dennis was the least helpful, because he never wanted to commit to a conversation-his thing was always, “Ah, come on up to the room, let’s hang out.” He allowed me to ride in his limo and feel like a rock star for two minutes. The other day, I found a picture of myself with Carl Wilson-September 1, 1974-and I posted it to Facebook and said, “I didn’t realize it at the time but I was researching my new book.”Ĭarl was most helpful, a wonderful gentleman. ![]() In the early ’70s I traveled around with them and interviewed them for stories. Like all people who like the Beach Boys, for me it’s truly a love-hate relationship, in that when they’re good, they’re fantastic, and when they’re not, they’re an embarrassment to the human race. What were your interactions with the Beach Boys like? I could gather all my articles and books and go lie in bed and work for an hour and pass out, then wake up in an hour and pick it up. Because I’ve been carrying this crap around forever. ![]() And then I thought, well, I’ll finally do that. I thought I needed activity, but I think the strain of the daily commute would have been too much, and it was very wise of the dean to insist that I take time off. I was trying to schedule chemotherapy around the daily train schedule. Then when I got diagnosed with cancer, my dean almost demanded I take medical leave. I started thinking about that back in the 1970s. I’d always been struck by what it must have felt like to wake up and look at the Los Angeles Times and see Manson’s picture on the front page and think, wow, that was my roommate. McKeen: I’d been thinking about it for a long time, by which I mean 40 years. Making a TV appearance in 1964 are Dennis Wilson (from left), Mike Love, Brian Wilson, Carl Wilson, and Al Jardine. music scenesters like the Byrds, Buffalo Springfield, Joni Mitchell, and the Mamas and the Papas.Īs many of these artists fell prey to the gathering 1960s storm of fame and drugs and money, Dennis Wilson picked up a couple of sexy hitchhikers, who introduced him to their friend, a rock star wannabe named Charlie… The Beach Boys sang of the sunny side of California beach culture, even though their lives weren’t like that. His book examines their connections to the crack session musicians known as the Wrecking Crew and L.A. McKeen, a proudly self-described music geek, interviewed the Beach Boys several times back in the day. Yet somehow they produced sunny and increasingly sophisticated music that captivated America and the world. There was only one surfer among them (Dennis Wilson) and one musical genius (Brian Wilson), and all of them were brutally bullied by a tyrannical father. McKeen’s Everybody Had an Ocean: Music and Mayhem in 1960s Los Angeles (Chicago Review Press, 2017) begins with the true story of the Beach Boys. A couple of years ago, when illness took him out of the classroom temporarily, McKeen decided to write the story at last. He is now a College of Communication professor and chair of journalism and associate dean, with 12 books to his credit, including the biography Outlaw Journalist: The Life and Times of Hunter S. It’s a story that has often been told, usually as a sidelight to the tale of one side or the other, and it has been nagging at William McKeen since his days as a music journalist in the 1970s. That their paths not only crossed, but intertwined seems both incredible and inevitable. Charles Manson will always be synonymous with the late-1960s California heart of darkness, those chilling hours after the sun went down on the counterculture. The Beach Boys will always call to mind a blue-sky California beach day, real or imagined. ![]()
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