Charles Manson - Lie - The Love and Terror Cult (1970) Review

Charles Manson was the leader of the Manson Family cult in the late 1960s mainly involved in planning the Tate-LaBianca Murders. The murders are considered to be one of the things, among others, that ended the peace-loving hippy movement of the 1960s as it was a sobering moment for the nation.

Many people may be unaware that Charles Manson was an aspiring songwriter before the murders and was able to get connections with many in the industry at the height of leading his cult. I am going to try to solely talk about the music he made and what I think of his songs on this compilation so that I don’t get sidetracked since this isn’t a true crime article, just a music review.

Lie - The Love and Terror Cult was recorded during various sessions at a variety of studios between 1967 and 1968 and allegedly some were recorded with cheap tape recorders too. Phil Kaufman, an infamous person from the music industry in his own right, was an inmate with Manson during an early stint in jail. After the Manson Family committed their crimes and at the height of the trial, Kaufman compiled Manson’s recordings and made a limited release of the recordings which he found impossible to sell at the time. Go figure. While I was in college I found a copy at a record store in San Francisco and it was too interesting to pass up.

The album starts with “Look At Your Game Girl” and it is a good song, arguably the best on the album. The melody is catchy, and Manson has a decent voice on this track. This album has awful production and all the songs are basically demos, but the songwriting is enough to carry this song. This is one of the few highlights of this entire compilation.

Song two is “Ego” and this one is full-on psychedelic folk. This song has parts I enjoy, like the chorus, but you can tell this is still a rough demo. This is the most 60s-sounding song on the entire album and it’s decent though I love 60s psych so it's right up my alley.

“Mechanical Man” is not a good song. There’s too much shit going on and the quality is way too bad. The excess of psychedelic sounds does not have the production value to pull this off so it just sounds like a giant mess. The next song is oddly and hilariously enough titled “People Say I’m No Good.” You don’t say? This song is meandering and goes on too long, but I do like it when it switches up for the last minute. This needed some more refining done to it.

“Home Is Where You’re Happy” is really the only other major highlight on the album other than the opening track. I remember this was the first Manson song I ever heard when a roommate showed it to me and I was shocked that Charles Manson actually had a good song. “Home is Where You’re Happy” has a strong melody and it is baffling how this man made such an upbeat and positive song, but I guess cult leaders as generally viewed as charismatic.

“Arkansas” has the same crappy demo recording quality as the rest of the songs here. This one also has the same type of elongated, whiney singing that doesn’t work too well for me on some of these songs. I like the guitar in this song, but that’s about it.

“I’ll Never Say Never to Always” is barely a song and it feels much more like it was planned to be an interlude or something. It is very 60s psychedelic sounding so it's got that going for it but the “song” is basically a quick a cappella. I could see it working in a horror movie or something like that.

The next song is “Garbage Dump” and the title of the song is what I would describe it as. It’s bad and probably the worst song on the album and it sounds like it was made on the spot while jamming during a recording session.

The next song is another prophetically titled song called “Don’t Do Anything Illegal.” This sounds similar to lots of the other songs on this album. The song is meandering and sounds like a demo someone recorded ten minutes after writing it. As with lots of the songs on here, there is too much going on for the budget and recording gear they had available since it all sounds like crap and not in an interesting R. Stevie Moore-type of way.

(R. Stevie Moore pictured)

“Slick City” suffers from what lots of these songs suffer from. It seems like this could have been more interesting but it ends up just sounding incomplete, like a fragment of a song but at least this one is alright.

“Cease to Exist” is one of the better songs on here. It is not as good as the two better songs on here, but not bad or incomplete like some of the other songs on here. Surprisingly enough, the song was purchased by Dennis Wilson and was remade and released by The Beach Boys. “Big Iron Door” is just a fragment of a song and is only a minute long. The melody during “drinking black coffee with the noise in my head” is really good and pretty much the only good part of the song.

The dramatic, elongated singing doesn’t do it for me, and “I Once Knew a Man” is completely sung in that way. This is one of the songs on here that sounds like a giant mess. He was clearly going for psychedelic but it was recorded so poorly that it just sounds messy. “Eyes of a Dreamer” is the last song on the album and at least it’s a decent complete song. The album works best when it's just Manson and a guitar. This is one that I’d love to hear the fully produced version from the Beach Boy’s studio.

Manson had studio time at The Beach Boys private studio and full songs were produced by Dennis Wilson and The Byrd’s producer, Terry Melcher. Though these songs have never been released and probably never will be, it would be interesting to hear some of these songs fully produced. Too many times on this album there is an excess of poorly recorded people and noise and it has no space so it just sounds so messy.

Overall, this is not a very good album. There are some interesting ideas scattered throughout and I enjoy lots of the psychedelic aspects of it but ultimately feels like snippets and ideas more than full songs. Fair enough, since it is essentially a collection of demos. It is interesting because of the infamous history that it's tied to more than anything. There are only a few good songs worth checking out that had some potential behind them but other than the album is okay at its peaks and bad at its low points. Unless you really want to hear the whole album you can probably just listen to about a third of the album and it’d be a better listening experience.

3/10 - Not Good