CHARLES MANSON Le gourou du rock

by Charles Manson

Fiche transcrite par Memore des hommes. Tristement célèbre pour avoir prétendument ordonné une série de meurtres sanglants qui terrorisèrent l'Amérique en août 1969, Charles Manson est passé, en l'espace d'une dizaine d'années, du statut de gourou de secte criminel à celui d'icône de la sous-culture. Car si le rock (au sens le plus large) s'est toujours nourri de comportements déviants et de personnages sulfureux, aucun n'aura été plus souvent cité que Charlie Manson. Ses morceaux furent repris par un grand nombre d'artistes, sa voix fut largement samplée, son visage est apparu sur moult pochettes de disques et son nom (ou celui de ses sbires) a été plus souvent utilisé dans des chansons que ceux de tous les tueurs en série réunis ! Le présent ouvrage a pour but non seulement de raconter les événements qui valurent à Manson et à sa Family de connaître une gloire malsaine, mais surtout d'étudier l'impact inquiétant qu'ils ont pu avoir sur différents styles musicaux, et ce à travers les témoignages (parfois dérangeants) de nombreux artistes.

Hardcover

First published August 14, 2009

About the author

American criminal who led the "Manson Family," a quasi-commune that arose in the U.S. state of California in the later 1960s.

He was found guilty of conspiracy to commit the Tate-LaBianca murders, which members of the group carried out at his instruction. Through the joint-responsibility rule of conspiracy, he was convicted of the murders themselves.

Manson is forever associated with "Helter Skelter", the term he took from the Beatles song of that name and construed as an apocalyptic race war that the murders were intended to precipitate. This connection with rock music linked him, from the beginning of his notoriety, with pop culture, in which he became an emblem of insanity, violence, and the macabre. Ultimately, the term was used as the title of the book that prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi wrote about the Manson murders.

At the time the Family began to form, Manson was an unemployed ex-convict, who had spent half his life in correctional institutions for a variety of offenses. In the period before the murders, he was a distant fringe member of the Los Angeles music industry, chiefly via a chance association with Beach Boy Dennis Wilson. After Manson was charged with the crimes, recordings of songs written and performed by him were released commercially; a number of artists have covered his songs in the decades since.

Manson's death sentence was automatically reduced to life imprisonment when a decision by the Supreme Court of California temporarily eliminated the state's death penalty. California's eventual reestablishment of capital punishment did not affect Manson, who is an inmate at Corcoran State Prison.