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00:00:19On February 27th, KLX producer Arnold Woods and I went to the California Medical Facility
00:00:25at Vacaville, where Charles Manson is currently being incarcerated.
00:00:29We made the trip at the invitation of Manson, who contacted the station through an intermediary.
00:00:34When asked why he had chosen our station, Manson stated that he liked Berkeley, and so
00:00:38being a Berkeley station, he said he thought he'd offer us a chance at the interview.
00:00:43After being searched by guards at the main entrance to the prison, Woods and I were escorted
00:00:48to a point outside a heavy metal gate.
00:00:50There, we waited for Manson to be escorted to the room on the other side of the gate, where
00:00:54the interview was to be conducted.
00:00:57Manson arrived shortly and was locked inside the room.
00:01:00The gate was then opened, and we two led to the interview room.
00:01:04Hello, thank you very much.
00:01:06Just a few of these people in there were ready to share and get out of the time.
00:01:11Hello.
00:01:13I'm Kennedy.
00:01:15Hi, I'm Kennedy.
00:01:16Hi, I'm Kennedy.
00:01:17Hi, I'm Kennedy.
00:01:17This is my county.
00:01:18I'm a world of storms.
00:01:20How are you doing?
00:01:21The door was locked behind us, and we proceeded to set up our equipment
00:01:24for the interview.
00:01:26Music being the intended topic of discussion, I began the questioning by asking Manson about
00:01:31his friendship with Alvin Carfus, the last surviving member of the Ma Barker gang, who
00:01:35had taught him how to play the guitar.
00:01:37Alvin Carfus showed me some, you know, guitar players change rubs all the time.
00:01:44They show each other different things that they play.
00:01:46You know, he just showed me some of the things that he played.
00:01:50But his style of music was not my style of music, but even though I incorporated some of his
00:01:55repertoire into what I played.
00:02:00He was just a good old man that I met on the road.
00:02:02He had been done wrong also.
00:02:05He never did anything.
00:02:07Jay Huber just put him in jail because he was friends of people that did something, and
00:02:12he wouldn't snitch, and he wouldn't tell, and that was he held his mud for 48 years.
00:02:18How about yourself?
00:02:19Do you categorize yourself in the same way?
00:02:21I don't categorize myself, no.
00:02:23Do you?
00:02:24Do you think you've been done wrong?
00:02:26Oh, yeah.
00:02:27You're way off base.
00:03:02Before the hippies, you know, you guys were kids.
00:03:04They were kids to me, you know.
00:03:07I already went through that.
00:03:08I was Elvis Presley before he was.
00:03:10I understand that you are now going to be producing an album with the punk rock band
00:03:16Black Flag.
00:03:17If you look at everything backwards, Terry Milcher came to me.
00:03:21I didn't go to him.
00:03:22They came to me to play music.
00:03:24Dennis Wilson came to me in the mountains.
00:03:26I wasn't going down there trying to play music.
00:03:29The DA would say, the DA would say, hey, man, you were trying for a record career.
00:03:38I had a record career.
00:03:39I didn't want a record career.
00:03:41I just got out of one prison.
00:03:43I didn't want to go into another.
00:03:45When you do music or you do anything for the public, you've got to be a slave to that.
00:03:50You've got to be there on time.
00:03:52You've got to carry clocks and dollar bills and tax trips.
00:03:57You've got all kinds of things to do.
00:03:58I was free in the mountains.
00:03:59I didn't want them.
00:03:59What do I want a music career for?
00:04:01I've got a music career.
00:04:02I don't need, you know, I play music for music.
00:04:04I don't play music for attention.
00:04:06I don't play music to little girls.
00:04:08I'm not selling records.
00:04:10I don't play music like you guys play music.
00:04:12You're blocked up in little squares to play music.
00:04:15I don't play music like that.
00:04:17Okay, so you aren't doing it for the public's interest.
00:04:19It's purely for your own enjoyment?
00:04:20No, yeah, it's from my own enjoyment, and I found out that in California that in order
00:04:26to get justice, you must buy it.
00:04:29They will not give you what they call fair trials.
00:04:32If you have the rights that our fathers died for, I would have had my trial, and I would
00:04:38have had my rights on my day in court, but I didn't.
00:04:40All I got was you guys blame me for the 60s, and then Jerry Rubin, and A.B. Hoffman, and
00:04:47Timothy Leary, and Barbara Rondas, and all the holy Morrocos, they all run the other
00:04:52way when it got too nasty.
00:04:54They would tell their children, raise up and kill your mom and dad, but then when they
00:04:57raised up and killed their mom and dad, then all the people that said that ran, and then
00:05:01they blamed it over on me and said, oh, well, Charlie Manson's a hippie cult leader, and
00:05:05he made us, he made us kids do all that, but none of them kids that got busted said that.
00:05:10At one time, did you feel any affinity for them?
00:05:13Sure, I still love them, sure, sure.
00:05:15They're still like mine, they're like me, they're like street people.
00:05:19It's like this, man.
00:05:20Back in the 40s, when I'd be on the basketball court, for example, and all the kids would
00:05:26say, hey, your mom's calling you Billy, you know, so Billy would leave, and then John would
00:05:32leave, and Tom would leave, and I'd be out there sitting on the basketball, smoking a joint,
00:05:36you know, and I was unaccepted.
00:05:38I was the outcast.
00:05:40So I ended up stealing a bicycle, and I went to reform school, and then I'd get out 10 years
00:05:44later, and I'd go back to the neighborhood, and I'd go back to the basketball court, and
00:05:48everybody's grown up, and there's a whole new wave of kids there.
00:05:51So we sit, and we talk, and I say, whatever happened to Johnny?
00:05:55Well, he died in Korea.
00:05:57Well, whatever happened to Joe?
00:05:58Well, he's an automobile engineer in Detroit, and whatever happened to so-and-so?
00:06:02Well, he moved to Chicago, and then I steal a car, and I get a gun, and I go robbed
00:06:08in
00:06:08a few places.
00:06:08And then I come back out of prison after 10 years, and I go back over on the basketball
00:06:13court, and the time for Johnny to go home, Johnny doesn't go home, and the basketball
00:06:20court, there's 10 or 15 kids, and it's all the way after dark, and what are you kids doing
00:06:24out after dark?
00:06:25Well, ain't you going to go home for dinner?
00:06:27Oh, no, my mom kicked me out of the house.
00:06:30My mom's a drunk.
00:06:31She don't like me.
00:06:32Yeah, in other words, the last time I got out in 67, the road that I was walking on,
00:06:38hey, there's a whole bunch of kids walking on the same road.
00:06:41I said, well, I didn't know you knew this place.
00:06:43So, in other words, do you feel you had your bed laid for you early on?
00:06:47No, when I heard Timothy Leary say, tune in and drop out, I knew where they were dropping
00:06:52out to, because I had been under that, on the under road, on the back side of what's
00:06:58happening, you know, in other words, in the darkness.
00:07:02Do you have a resentment for types of things that you did encounter when you were a child?
00:07:08No, I don't waste my time with those silly little resentments and hate and all that bitterness
00:07:13and all that.
00:07:14Did it have an effect on you at one time?
00:07:19Just to the point to where I found out what it does to you.
00:07:23In other words, I'm not going to destroy myself because someone else is suicidal.
00:07:29Someone else has got problems, that's their problems, not mine.
00:07:33I got my own road, I walk.
00:07:35So, in other words, you don't feel any remorse for your childhood, but you do feel it did
00:07:41affect you and your outcomes?
00:07:42No, I'm glad.
00:07:43I'm glad to be raised by myself.
00:07:46I think it worked out better.
00:07:48Sometimes the best parents are the worst parents, and sometimes the worst parents are the best,
00:07:53because the worst parents don't teach you anything and leave you to learn for yourself.
00:07:56But you do understand that from somebody else's perspective, they may have felt that they
00:08:02were, you know, detrimental.
00:08:04You know, do you regret anything that occurred in your lifetime?
00:08:08Not to this point, no.
00:08:37Okay, well, let's, let me get back to your music.
00:08:39Go ahead and do whatever you do.
00:08:41So, he got in touch with some kind of lawyer somewhere doing something, and then they got
00:08:45this thing going, and now they're talking about they're coming out with an album.
00:08:48Oh, this is the Us magazine article?
00:08:50Yeah.
00:08:50Yeah, but it's not an album done in a studio, it's a Mickey Mouse little trip for, but knowing
00:08:58the way that the news media has dealt with me, they'll take it and make it into as the
00:09:03best thing that I could do, but it's actually not really, it's not really a reflection of
00:09:07any music that I play, it's a reflection of me passing my time and practicing, you know.
00:09:13I guess you'd call it practicing.
00:09:15I'm not really practicing, I just like to play, you know.
00:09:19You mentioned that, you know, in 1967, you did break up a relationship with both Terry
00:09:25Melcher and Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys.
00:09:28Now, Terry Melcher was the person who had owned the home that Sharon Tate was murdered in earlier,
00:09:36and obviously there were some connections made between his previous ownership of the home
00:09:43man, the eventual death of Sharon Tate and J.C.
00:09:48Bring and Abigail Folger and Wojtek Rakowski.
00:09:51Was there any connection between those events?
00:09:55That's my neighborhood.
00:09:57I run that neighborhood.
00:09:58I run in that neighborhood.
00:10:00But I live on the beach.
00:10:02I live in Venice, Santa Monica, in the mountains.
00:10:06And I went to that house four or five times with a friend of mine that's named Dean Morehouse.
00:10:16He's a religious type fellow.
00:10:20I'm a deacon in the Methodist Church.
00:10:25And I've been to the house and parties.
00:10:30And Watson, Tex Watson, knew the house because he was on the edge of what I was doing.
00:10:38He was watching the way I was doing, what I was doing, putting together whatever I was putting together.
00:10:44So he picked that house.
00:10:48He just went to that house because he knew that house.
00:10:51But it didn't directly have anything to do with me.
00:10:54So it was just coincidence that it happened to be previously owned by Terry Melcher.
00:10:57Yeah, just total coincidence.
00:10:59Tell me about your relationship with Mr. Melcher and how you happened to strike him.
00:11:04I like Terry.
00:11:05Terry's a nice, gentle person.
00:11:07He's a peaceful person.
00:11:08He doesn't lie.
00:11:09He's treated me right.
00:11:11I would consider him a friend.
00:11:13But I think all this madness scared him.
00:11:16I think it scared him to thinking that I'm somebody that I'm not.
00:11:20You know.
00:11:24A lot of people think that Manson is some great monster.
00:11:31But the only monster Manson is is what the media created and the district attorney created.
00:11:39Do you guys realize what's going to happen to this country because of that case?
00:11:43When you can go to college, son, and learn to be a lawyer, and then you can go to a
00:11:48district attorney's position and do anything you want.
00:11:53Now, that makes you the leader of this company.
00:11:55And put anybody on trial and say anything you want to say and tell any lie you want to lie.
00:12:00Why spend billions of dollars for a school to study criminology when all they do is set up on the
00:12:07way to stand and lie?
00:12:08You just lie and you don't need the schools, you know.
00:12:11And the whole thing was a big sham.
00:12:13It was a big act for the world, man.
00:12:16A big play that they put the children on trial for trying to stop the war.
00:12:22And then all the people like Joan Baez and what's that other chick's name?
00:12:30Oh, you mean Jane Fonda.
00:12:31Yeah, Jane Fonda and all those people.
00:12:33They'll scream and they'll holler for the kids to do something.
00:12:36And then when the kids do it, then they say the kids are all fucked up, you know.
00:12:40And the only ones that bring change since time began is the young people.
00:12:45The young people are the ones that have to suffer the sufferings to change the system.
00:12:50Well, we're still working to change the system.
00:12:53We're still improving the system and working within the system.
00:12:56So are you saying that the murders of Sharon Tate and the LaBianca was a political act?
00:13:03My goodness, man.
00:13:04And did you see Jerry Rubin stand up in the TV camera with an M-16 and say,
00:13:10raise up children, kill your moms and dads?
00:13:12You didn't see that?
00:13:13You don't remember that?
00:13:14Sure.
00:13:15Well, you didn't put him on trial.
00:13:16You got Charlie Manson and put Charlie Manson on trial.
00:13:19Did you hear A.B. Hoffman go through all the colleges and give all the speeches to all the young
00:13:24minds
00:13:24about how to shoot cocaine, how to deal with your dope, and how to play in that underworld?
00:13:30And then at the same time, he never spent three days in jail.
00:13:32He owns the judge, he buys and sells judges, and he rides on the top of you children.
00:13:37Then he'll go back and play like he's hiding.
00:13:40Let me explain something to you.
00:13:42To hide from the FBI in the United States of America is almost an impossibility.
00:13:49Slick Willie Sutton, one of the slickest crooks in the world, couldn't do it.
00:13:53You got Patty Hearst, and you got her acting like she's on the run from the law.
00:13:57She was never on the run from the law.
00:13:59She was in the FBI office all the time.
00:14:01You know, and then you got A.B. Hoffman that acts like, oh, I'm with you kids.
00:14:06All right, you kids, you go do this, and then the kids run and do it, and then who gets
00:14:09the blame?
00:14:11You know, the kids get the blame.
00:14:13And then the kids go down and let me take you to Strawberry Field where nothing is real but the
00:14:17medication and the nut warts.
00:14:19And then they cut their wrists and write, I love you, God, all over the walls and hang themselves on
00:14:23the ventilators.
00:14:24You know?
00:14:25Yeah, you take deference with the use of drugs and drinking.
00:14:30Is that an established value of yours that you just don't like drinking and drugs, or was this at any
00:14:35time?
00:14:35I smoke grass, and I've lived around drugs all my life, and I've lived around booze all my life.
00:14:42I'm not against anything.
00:14:43I'm against the misuse.
00:14:47You can misuse anything, man.
00:14:49You know, you can say the guy's hooked on marijuana.
00:14:52And to some people, that's a reality, you know?
00:14:54And then they say one drug leads to another.
00:14:57And to other people, that's a reality.
00:14:58But the younger people don't see how those thoughts became a reality.
00:15:04Why are we fighting drugs?
00:15:05Why do we spend millions and millions of dollars fighting drugs when you can sell it in the drugstore and
00:15:10it wouldn't be a problem?
00:15:11I mean, it doesn't make any sense.
00:15:12You know, the whole thing is silly.
00:15:14It's not the drugs that are bad, and it's not the people that are bad.
00:15:18It's all the mess that you've got created around the misunderstanding of the drugs.
00:15:22There's nothing wrong with drugs.
00:15:24If you're sick in the hospital and they come and give you a shot to take away the pain, you
00:15:28appreciate the drugs.
00:15:29I think God put everything there for us to use.
00:15:33If we misuse it, that's our fault.
00:15:35And one way we're misusing it, we're fighting against a power that we're not going to overcome.
00:15:39We have to flow with the flow of those drugs, you know?
00:15:43Last September, you were severely burned by a fellow inmate who doused you in paint center and lit a match.
00:15:51Anyway, he says you attacked his religious beliefs and threatened him.
00:15:55Was this just an isolated conflict between two inmates?
00:16:01It was in his mind.
00:16:02I didn't have anything in my mind.
00:16:05I'm not thinking about anything.
00:16:07He's arguing with himself.
00:16:09The devil he's chasing is the one that he's living with that's inside of him, you know?
00:16:13His fears and his doubts, he has to deal with.
00:16:16You know, it hasn't got anything to do with me, you know?
00:16:18Like, he could have gotten more argument from the church house than he got from me.
00:16:22I have no religious convictions in any particular direction.
00:16:25I'm my own religion.
00:16:28There's been much publicity surrounding the fact that you were allegedly known as Jesus Christ
00:16:35and that the Manson family was the, quote, chosen few.
00:16:42Yeah.
00:16:42This is part of your district attorney.
00:16:44He had to say all that to win a conviction.
00:16:46He had to hook me up as being a leader in something.
00:16:49I've never led anything in my life.
00:16:50I had a motorcycle, a sleeping bag, and a guitar, and that's it, you know?
00:16:55And if anybody is on the same road I'm on and they need a cigarette or a dollar bill
00:17:01or a ride or they're hitchhiking, I generally help them as much as I can, you know?
00:17:07I never owned that ranch.
00:17:08I wasn't a central figure in anything except the music.
00:17:11I like to play music.
00:17:12I play music.
00:17:13People come around and listen.
00:17:14Okay.
00:17:15If they give me something to eat, okay.
00:17:17If they don't, okay, man.
00:17:18You know, like I'm not, you know, I wasn't waving any flags.
00:17:22I wasn't out to do anything.
00:17:25I just got out of 22 years of prison, man.
00:17:27I just got out of prison.
00:17:29Can you imagine 22 years in prison?
00:17:31Can you imagine that?
00:17:33It is hard to imagine.
00:17:34Well, I just got out.
00:17:35How could I be responsible for the children of the 60s when I was locked up in the dungeon
00:17:40all during the 60s?
00:17:42And as far as me being Jesus, let me explain to this.
00:17:45This is a little before your time.
00:17:47There was a guy named Krishna Vinta.
00:17:48Who claimed that he was the second coming of Jesus Christ.
00:17:52And he had a cult in Box Canyon in Los Angeles.
00:17:55He called it the Fountain of the World.
00:17:57And he was having a sex orgy one night with about 12 or 15 women.
00:18:01And in those days, back during the 40s, that wasn't very well accepted.
00:18:05So what happened was someone put dynamite up underneath his house and blew him up.
00:18:09They blew him up, blew his wife, all his children, blew everybody up.
00:18:13Blew about 15 or 20 people up.
00:18:15And there was bodies all around.
00:18:16I was a kid looking at this.
00:18:18So it just so happened that, I won't say 25 years later, I was standing on the same spot with
00:18:2715 women.
00:18:28And there had been 15 women blew up.
00:18:30And we laughed and we got in a circle.
00:18:32We said, we were blew up here once so that we won't have to blow the world up.
00:18:36So, you know, maybe we can make a little mark here where we won't need to blow the world up.
00:18:41And the next wave of kids can have their game to straighten out another end of it.
00:18:45Like the air, the water, the trees, and the wildlife.
00:18:48See, there's a certain order in life.
00:18:50And the order in life to each man would be himself first.
00:18:53Then after you got yourself in order, then you reach for your city, your town, your country, your world.
00:18:58You know, so it's a guy was trying to put order into his life.
00:19:05And he would preach on the weekends and he would hang on a cross and he'd come down and he
00:19:08had all these followers.
00:19:10All right.
00:19:11When I got out, I was running with a guy named Jesus.
00:19:14Called himself Christopher Jesus.
00:19:16And the cops had a tentative list because we were burning, we were burning up road equipment that was tearing
00:19:23up the land.
00:19:24They were destroying the water and destroying the animals in the deserts.
00:19:28So what I did was I used to go around and burn up all these things that were tearing up
00:19:32the earth.
00:19:34And I would sneak around and do devilish little things to slow their progress down.
00:19:39Because when you see 200,000 or 300,000 animals dying because somebody wants to put a fence across the
00:19:45desert for no particular reason except making money and selling something to the public for a new road production.
00:19:52For all that madness that they play in.
00:19:54And I'd tear the fences down and tear the water and put the water back into the land where the
00:20:01animals can have a game to play.
00:20:06And Jesus was running with me.
00:20:08And we called him Zero.
00:20:10And then when the cops had this list, this tentative list of who's who and what's what, they come up
00:20:17to me and they said, are you Jesus?
00:20:19Because Jesus was spelled like Jesus.
00:20:21And I said, no, my name is Manson.
00:20:23They said, oh, yeah, you're him, son of Manson.
00:20:25Yes, you're him.
00:20:27I said, what?
00:20:28You know, so that when they booked me in the county jail, they thought it was real funny.
00:20:31They booked me as also known as Jesus Christ.
00:20:33I had never had any thought like that in my life.
00:20:36You know, I never needed to think I was anyone.
00:20:40You know, why must I be somebody?
00:20:41You know, I mean, everybody's got a name.
00:20:43I've had thousands of names.
00:20:44I don't need a name.
00:20:45What do I need a name for?
00:20:47You know, I don't even name my dogs.
00:20:49My dogs are just dogs, you know.
00:20:52I named my chickens or, you know, it don't make sense.
00:20:54The whole thing, I'm from another world, man.
00:20:57You guys live in one kind of world.
00:20:59I live in a whole altogether different world.
00:21:01Because you've got to consider I was raised up in jail, not on the street.
00:21:06And as far as the religious aspect, I was a student of Paharasa Yogananda in the 50s and the 40s.
00:21:14You know, I went through all the retreats and I've seen the light.
00:21:18I know all the things that Mashimushi knows or Hushi Pasha or whatever you want to call them.
00:21:24What is prison life like for you?
00:21:26At one time you had said that prison had become home to you.
00:21:29Yeah, prison is a thought.
00:21:30Prison is in the mind.
00:21:31Someone draws a line and says you're in prison.
00:21:33You know, I'm going to put you in prison and your number is 3359 and you're going to do ra
00:21:38-ru, ra-ra-ra.
00:21:39It's a struggle of will.
00:21:40It's a struggle of whose will is doing what.
00:21:43If their will is interposed up over your will, then you're considered to be in prison.
00:21:48But as Ganji would tell you probably that the passive force overcomes all that.
00:22:00There's no prison.
00:22:01Not to me.
00:22:01I'm just here.
00:22:02You know.
00:22:03The people that are in prison are locked up in their minds.
00:22:05They get paid to go back and forwards and torment other people.
00:22:08And I just look at them and it doesn't affect me.
00:22:10Not personally.
00:22:12So do you still consider a prison home in that sense?
00:22:16I'm home.
00:22:16Anywhere I'm at is home.
00:22:18If I'm in Chicago, I'm still here.
00:22:20Anywhere I go, I'm here.
00:22:21If I'm in New York, I'm still here.
00:22:23If I'm in Florida, I'm still here.
00:22:24No matter where I go, I'm here.
00:22:26So home to me is me.
00:22:27You know, I'm my own home.
00:22:28Because I was raised by myself.
00:22:31But someone that was raised with a mother and father, they have the thoughts in their minds
00:22:35and the patterns in their minds of whatever home is to them.
00:22:39Do you consider the idea of being released?
00:22:42Do you want to be released from prison?
00:22:44Released?
00:22:44I just want to be left alone and I'd like to have my own will back to where I could
00:22:48do what I want to do.
00:22:49I would be content and satisfied with the rights that my father's died for.
00:22:53It's so simple.
00:22:54It was all written down in 1776.
00:22:56It was laid out just as beautiful as God had done it.
00:23:00You know, and everybody wants to find a God somewhere, man.
00:23:02And we've got people landing on the moon.
00:23:04My goodness.
00:23:06You know, it's like one guy come up and said,
00:23:07My God quarried 3,200 stone and lifted it up over these mountains and set it perfectly in place.
00:23:14I said, Oh, yeah, you've got a big God.
00:23:16I said, Now look up there.
00:23:17That's 747.
00:23:18I said, Now that's more than 3,200 tons.
00:23:21And it's not only set in perfect place, it's flying around the world.
00:23:24So, I mean, how far would you have to go before you see God?
00:23:27You know, you see space shuttles and you say, God, you know,
00:23:30and these guys are still down here worshiping something that some medieval torture chamber was doing, you know,
00:23:38and nailing people to boards and things and calling it God.
00:23:42You know, I don't.
00:23:44See, that world, I've dismissed that world a long time ago.
00:23:47Really, I have.
00:23:47You know, I've dismissed it.
00:23:49It's gone from my mind.
00:23:50I don't, I don't even, you know, it comes over and says, You pay me some attention.
00:23:54I said, No.
00:23:55Well, you accept our God as being the God.
00:23:57I said, All right, I'll accept anything.
00:23:59You know, now can I get on with my business?
00:24:01You know, they said, Well, we want you to, too.
00:24:03I said, Okay, man.
00:24:04You know, you're all right.
00:24:05I accept everything you say.
00:24:07You think everything's perfect.
00:24:08All right, you guys go your way.
00:24:09Can I leave now?
00:24:10You know, and they say, No, we want to hold you.
00:24:12I said, Why?
00:24:13Because we want to pick arguments with you and throw fire on you and drag you up down the hallways
00:24:17and blame you for everything we don't understand and everything we don't know.
00:24:20You know, I said, Hey, look.
00:24:21I said, Sit down and I'll explain it to you.
00:24:23How simple and childish it is.
00:24:25You all grew up.
00:24:26I didn't.
00:24:27You all grew up and I did it.
00:24:29I watched you all grow up and I said, Wow, you get old and you lose your teeth, your hair
00:24:33falls out,
00:24:34you get fat, you know, and you pay yourself to do all kinds of crazy little things.
00:24:37And I have no judgments against your world.
00:24:40Only what is.
00:24:42But you guys have always, and I say you, you know, I'm talking about the system,
00:24:45has always put its judgments over on me, trying to make me into something that you could relate to.
00:24:50But you can't relate to me.
00:24:52You know, unless you're David Nichol.
00:24:54So I could buy new buggy parts and go out and play in the desert.
00:24:58Let me ask you what the connection is between the Helter Skelter, which was written on the LaBianca's refrigerator,
00:25:04and then there was the, you had written your own song composition called Helter Skelter.
00:25:10I had.
00:25:11Had you not?
00:25:11Who told you that?
00:25:13No.
00:25:14No, I hadn't.
00:25:15No, I hadn't even thought of anything like that.
00:25:17Helter Skelter was painted on different things, man.
00:25:20It was a reflection of, why don't we do it in the road?
00:25:26So, you know, that was your, you see, you guys got to realize, man, I'm 50 years old.
00:25:30Bing Crosby was my heartthrob.
00:25:33Frank Sinatra was my, was my hero.
00:25:37Not the Beatles.
00:25:39In other words, Dean Martin is, lives right across the river from where I live in Wheeling, West Virginia.
00:25:45I'm from Kentucky.
00:25:46I'm a Kentucky boy.
00:25:48You know, I, in other words, like, it took me 20-some years to get to California.
00:25:51Some of you guys are born and raised in California because your parents came here, but, uh, man, I got,
00:25:58uh, I got no thought, you know, I'm not into the same things you guys are into.
00:26:02You know, not now and not during the 60s.
00:26:06In other words, my generation was the 30s.
00:26:08I was raised up during the Depression.
00:26:09You guys don't even know what it's like to be hungry.
00:26:11You know, there's a difference, you know.
00:26:13And the kids, the kids that were running in the street, when I got out, I liked them.
00:26:21I really did.
00:26:22I really, I, you know, if they were my kids, I'd be awful proud of them.
00:26:27Even though they did some dirty, terrible things, they still stopped the war.
00:26:32They did it.
00:26:33You know, and they probably saved a lot of their brothers' lives.
00:26:37But they're still in jail and they have to take the blame for it.
00:26:40But they're not accepted as political prisoners, you know, because some DA had to make up something.
00:26:45Or somebody else tell a lie, say, well, you did it for money.
00:26:48Or he did it for, and there's all kinds of motives that they play with.
00:26:52But, uh, do you ever think he didn't do it?
00:26:55You know, he's always looking for the motive before you find out whether they did it.
00:26:59And then another thing is, you go to court in this country, and it says, uh, they're not interested in
00:27:05why you did it.
00:27:06They're interested in if you did it.
00:27:07But why you did it should be a, should, should, should be a, uh, uh, an issue also.
00:27:12Why are the children doing what they're doing?
00:27:15Why does a child reach up and kill his mom and dad and murder his two little sisters and then,
00:27:20uh, cut his throat?
00:27:22You know, why would a child do something like that?
00:27:25Because we're not raising it up right.
00:27:26We're programming it poorly.
00:27:29Our TVs are murdering people, uh, every 15 minutes.
00:27:32You see two or three people dying on TV.
00:27:34Yet, to the, to the, to the generation of, uh, of the 60s and 70s, well, the TV's raising the
00:27:41children.
00:27:42The TV's their mom and dad's.
00:27:45If you had had a different situation, would you have, uh, turned out differently, or do you think you...
00:27:50No, then I wouldn't know what I know.
00:27:52I'm satisfied with what I know.
00:27:54You know, I've got my world.
00:27:56You know, I've got my world.
00:27:58There's very few people who can say that.
00:28:00They're always, uh, they, they, they must hold on to somebody or something else.
00:28:03I don't hold on to nobody or nothing.
00:28:05You know, I don't need no, I don't need anything.
00:28:08All I need is to be left.
00:28:10My own life, my own life balance.
00:28:12I, I, uh, when I got out of prison, I, I went up in the mountains and I looked around.
00:28:17And I sat down and I seen the water all polluted.
00:28:20I seen the trees being cut down.
00:28:23I seen this concrete maze that man has made.
00:28:26And it's like I had come from another place, uh, that's not the same as the place that you guys
00:28:31are, or that that world lives in.
00:28:33And I, and I thought, well, who's, who's responsible for this?
00:28:37Uh, whose job is this to make sure that, uh, we got air here to breathe because, uh, we're going
00:28:42to run out of air here, man.
00:28:43Well, this whole planet's going to run out of air.
00:28:46And I look at the water and I look at the way they're misusing their resources and the water and
00:28:50how they use tons and tons and tons and tons and tons of paper.
00:28:53You've got 200 million people shoveling paper all day long, you know, and you think, uh, uh, there's something has
00:28:59to be done here, you know, to reach a balance to where we can have life on this planet.
00:29:04You watch the people feed, uh, tons of grain to animals and then they kill the animals and eat the
00:29:12animals.
00:29:13Why don't they just eat the grain and leave the animals live?
00:29:16It don't make sense.
00:29:17Why do they eat any animals?
00:29:18They eat flesh and blood and then they go to church and talk about thou shalt not kill.
00:29:21And they kill every day with every breath they take, you know.
00:29:25And you say, you've got to quit killing the animals, man.
00:29:27You've got to quit eating the flesh.
00:29:29What's wrong with you, man?
00:29:30Gee, man.
00:29:32And, uh, then I say that the life they're killing is mine.
00:29:36And then I go out and they're cutting a great big old tree down.
00:29:39And I say, oh, I feel that.
00:29:41I feel it.
00:29:41What are you doing?
00:29:42You're cutting me down here.
00:29:43So I tell him, don't cut me down or I'll shoot you.
00:29:46You know, if you keep cutting the trees down, I'm going to cut you down.
00:29:49And he said, well, look, I've got a wife and kids.
00:29:51And I need the money.
00:29:52I have a job and I don't know anything else.
00:29:54And I said, well, I can't blame you.
00:29:56Who's your boss?
00:29:57So I go to the boss and the boss says, well, I've worked 20 years to be foreman here.
00:30:02And he says, this is my way of life.
00:30:04And my kids are going to college and I need the money.
00:30:06I said, well, it ain't your fault.
00:30:08And I said, well, who's your boss?
00:30:09And he said, Ace and Ace Lumber Company.
00:30:11So I go to the Ace Lumber Company and they are a subsidiary to a Reverend's Cap Company.
00:30:17And 40% of that stock owned by Reverend Sun and Moon and another, or let me say Korea.
00:30:23I shouldn't say Reverend Sun and Moon because I'm not sure of that.
00:30:25But then another 20% is owned by Bolivia and somebody else owns 10%.
00:30:30And then Margaret of Malibu owns 10% and you go check Margaret out.
00:30:34And she died five years ago and she willed all her assets to the cats.
00:30:40And she's got 300 cats living in a 10-bedroom mansion with a butler and a chauffeur.
00:30:45And everybody's provided for her for life as long as they take care of the cats.
00:30:48And the cats are reproducing themselves.
00:30:50So we've got a legal lock on the trees.
00:30:53And so the cats are walking around cutting all the trees down.
00:30:57And everybody else, you know, in other words, the whole thing is just, man, you've got to redo it.
00:31:01That's all there is to it.
00:31:02You've got to re-wallpaper and change.
00:31:03You've got to change within the system.
00:31:06So that's what we've been doing.
00:31:08And every time you hear, I'm going crazy and I'm busting up everything and I burn up everything
00:31:12and I've went to the nut ward four or five times,
00:31:15then you'll see Governor Brown jump up and say, oh, we've got you a Redwood.
00:31:20You know, there was all the time that we raise hell down here and say, well, anybody that
00:31:25cuts Redwood trees down has no respect for their own children.
00:31:28Those trees are thousands of years old and they belong to the kids.
00:31:31Don't be cutting them down.
00:31:32They say, well, we need our hot tubs, you know.
00:31:35So then we'd get hammers and bust all the windows out and go to the church and bang everything
00:31:38up and burn everything up and say, now, if anybody does that and then their fear gets
00:31:42to running, then the only thing that the politicians understand is fear.
00:31:46You run a little fear at them and then they'll all change their ways.
00:31:49You run a little fear at them and in this respect, they're scared to death of the public.
00:31:54They're scared of the public opinion.
00:31:56They're scared of you guys that do this kind of thing here.
00:31:59Looking back to, you know, the Tate, LaBianca murders, would there have been a more, I use
00:32:06the word acceptable, means of expressing your political thought?
00:32:11You see what I'm saying?
00:32:11You're still stuck in your head that I had something to do with that.
00:32:15So you're still stuck in your head?
00:32:16I'll give it to you this way.
00:32:18Here's what I had to do with it.
00:32:19I've influenced everybody that I was around, but I could influence nobody any more than I've
00:32:24been influenced.
00:32:24If you put me in reform school and you beat me with a leather strap and then you drag
00:32:30me up down the hallways and break my jaw and you bust my eyes and then you throw me
00:32:36out into the world, you see, all the things that you've done to me, I got permission to
00:32:40do to you.
00:32:42Every time that you have misused me when I get back on the street, you wonder why crime
00:32:47raises.
00:32:48I come in here and a cop misuses me in the hallway.
00:32:50Well, when I get out, what am I going to do?
00:32:53If I can see that the state of California can take and kill people in the gas chamber, doesn't
00:32:58that give me permission to do the same thing?
00:33:01You see what I'm saying?
00:33:02You're dealing with one mind, but the people that are running the mind that you're dealing
00:33:06with, they don't even know what the mind is.
00:33:09You know, they think they got a mind.
00:33:11Nobody's got a mind.
00:33:12The mind has everybody.
00:33:14You know, but everybody wants to think they've really got something going, so they play all
00:33:18these different little political games, I'm interested in my life, the order that runs
00:33:23in my atmosphere, in my world, the one I know.
00:33:27I can't know what anybody else knows.
00:33:29All I can know is what I know.
00:33:30I've been raised as a crook, you know, and I've been raised as a criminal, even though
00:33:34my crime hasn't really been but stealing a few cars and running away from home and juvenile
00:33:40delinquent stuff, I have still learned the ways of criminals.
00:33:45Now, I've got no malicious mischief in my mind to do anything other than maybe put some
00:33:53order into the world that I see as mine.
00:33:58Now, I'm going to tell you something that you're not going to like, and probably the
00:34:02world ain't going to like, but I'll tell it to you just like it is.
00:34:07I was raised to ride my own beef.
00:34:09If I do something, I'm responsible for my own actions.
00:34:12If I bust somebody in the mouth, I'll stand up to that.
00:34:16I won't back off of that.
00:34:19If it means my life, I will give my life for my principle.
00:34:23It's that simple, you know.
00:34:27Now, in short, the fire, it didn't budge me.
00:34:31I got out of the fire.
00:34:33It burnt my face off.
00:34:34My whole face was burnt off and all my hands was burnt off.
00:34:37But they all grew back and I'm still here.
00:34:40And I am still in the same thought and I'm not intimidated by anything, ever.
00:34:46And I could die a thousand million more battles and it's still the same.
00:34:49But I am this way.
00:34:52If I wanted to, had it been me up in this Sharon Tate's house, it would have been a lot
00:34:58worse.
00:34:59Thank God that your children did it for you.
00:35:01And I didn't get started on it.
00:35:03Because if I had got started on it, it would have been a lot worse than it was.
00:35:07Because I am ten times worse.
00:35:09So you are maintaining that you have no connection?
00:35:12I didn't have nothing to do with those killings.
00:35:15With that group of murders there, I had nothing to do with that.
00:35:18But now what I have done that you don't know about could be ten times worse than that.
00:35:23And I would be justified in doing it if I did it with my life.
00:35:27And I gave my life for that, just like those children did.
00:35:30The dispensation of truth is not a difficult thing.
00:35:33And most children can understand it.
00:35:35If you are willing to give your life for something,
00:35:40you go and you pick up your uniform,
00:35:42you get your M16, you put your helmet on,
00:35:45and you get in that jungle, and you do what your country tells you to do.
00:35:49If you don't, then there's nothing.
00:35:52You're not there.
00:35:52There's nothing to you.
00:35:54Because all a man is, is honor.
00:35:55If he has no honor and he has no truth,
00:35:57he has no faith, he has no trust, what is he?
00:36:00He's a jellyfish.
00:36:02You know?
00:36:04So, if those are my kids, I would have been proud of them.
00:36:07I really would have.
00:36:08Because I've seen and I understood what happened.
00:36:10Exactly.
00:36:11But I'm bound by another law that you're not bound by.
00:36:14I'm bound by no snitch law.
00:36:15I can't rat.
00:36:17If I rat, then I get killed.
00:36:19Because I live in the underworld.
00:36:21In the underworld, they don't rat.
00:36:22So, you're saying that, despite the fact that you say you weren't connected with it,
00:36:29you know who...
00:36:30Sure, sure.
00:36:31I know the name of every mouse.
00:36:33I know every cockroach.
00:36:34I know what the spiders are thinking.
00:36:36Sure, I know exactly.
00:36:37But it wasn't my affair.
00:36:39It wasn't my road.
00:36:40And it wasn't my business.
00:36:41And if someone thinks that they're right about something,
00:36:44I'm not going to get in their way.
00:36:46Because I've learned...
00:36:47I'll give you this for a lesson.
00:36:48There was two guys in a cell.
00:36:50We'll call one Mr. A and one Mr. B.
00:36:52Mr. A said, I'm going to hang myself.
00:36:55And Mr. B says, no, brother, I like you.
00:36:57I don't want you to hang yourself.
00:36:58And Mr. A said, you know, I'm miserable.
00:37:00And I just want to get out of this world.
00:37:02And I want to go off into another level.
00:37:04I'm gone.
00:37:05And the other guy said, no, I'm not going to let you.
00:37:08So, Mr. A killed Mr. B.
00:37:10And then he hung himself.
00:37:12Well, I'm not going to get in nobody's way.
00:37:14If they're headed to the ventilator,
00:37:16I'm not going to fight somebody to keep them alive.
00:37:18If people are set to commit suicide and they want to go sideways,
00:37:21get them on out the door.
00:37:23I can't use them.
00:37:24I don't need no suicidal maniacs around me.
00:37:26Because I've found this also.
00:37:28Every time you save somebody's life,
00:37:30you've got to be responsible for that.
00:37:32If you see somebody that wants to commit suicide
00:37:34and you say, no, don't commit suicide,
00:37:36and then they go kill your best friend,
00:37:38then you'll wish to hell you to let them go ahead
00:37:40and do what they wanted to do.
00:37:42But this country is overprotective of its people.
00:37:48It's always, in other countries, I haven't found this to be so.
00:37:52But in this country, they don't want you to do this
00:37:54because they're afraid it'll hurt you.
00:37:56Come on.
00:37:58They're afraid it'll hurt you.
00:37:59That's like mother saying, don't climb the tree,
00:38:00you might fall and hurt yourself.
00:38:01Well, she might fall and hurt herself
00:38:03because she couldn't climb the tree.
00:38:05But you're a kid, you can climb the tree.
00:38:07You see what I'm saying?
00:38:08In other words, the older people have always put their values off
00:38:11on the younger people.
00:38:12And it's just the same old process that it's been since time began.
00:38:15The younger people keep throwing it off.
00:38:17And that's what the kids did down there in L.A.
00:38:19They threw that all off of them.
00:38:21They wanted to get their brother out of jail.
00:38:23And if they couldn't get their brother out of jail,
00:38:25you go to a lawyer, and it's known well all through the prison.
00:38:30Nobody likes criminal law.
00:38:32There's no money in criminal law.
00:38:34The criminal lawyers that are there are generally paid by the civil
00:38:38and the colleges.
00:38:44They pay the, what do they call them, public defenders.
00:38:46You know, they have to pay the public defenders
00:38:47because there's just no money in criminal law.
00:38:49It's a dirty business.
00:38:50Nobody likes it.
00:38:51So when you've got a whole bunch of kids that get involved
00:38:56and they go to the lawyer, the lawyer takes their money,
00:38:59tells them a lie, takes their money, tells them a lie.
00:39:03Any place in the penitentiary in the world or in this country you go to,
00:39:06they say, what do you think of a lawyer?
00:39:07And they say, well, they take your money and lie.
00:39:10They take your money and lie.
00:39:11Unless you've got a whole lot of money.
00:39:13Then you give them a little bit and you've got to string them out
00:39:15to where they think they're going to get some more.
00:39:17You know, and you have to play in the larceny
00:39:19because the lawyer has to be worse than the crook
00:39:21or he can't trick the crook to taking a deal and going to jail.
00:39:26In other words, the system is just, it's not what our father's laid out.
00:39:31It's become corroded and it's crusty and it's dusty and it needs redoing.
00:39:36It's been 14 years since you were convicted of the Tate-LaBianca killings.
00:39:40Yet there still exists a group of people who other people designate the Mans family,
00:39:47you designate your friends.
00:39:48And they still remain to this day, even people that you had never known.
00:39:52How do you explain how the Manson family or your friends
00:39:58have been able to stay together this long?
00:40:01We've been truthful with each other.
00:40:03There's one thing I demand with anybody that I'm with
00:40:06is I ain't lying to you, so don't you lie to me.
00:40:10Because if you lie to me, I might just knock you down on the spot.
00:40:14I've got three, four people who don't talk to me at all.
00:40:17If you're not going to talk the truth to me and I catch you in a lie,
00:40:20I'll either get you away from me some way, one way or another.
00:40:22I'll knock you down or do something to you to get you away from me,
00:40:24get you off of me because I don't...
00:40:29I feel that you've come out of it nonetheless.
00:40:33You cannot break man's soul.
00:40:36You can bust his personality up.
00:40:37You can rearrange his thought pattern, but you cannot break his soul.
00:40:41His soul is forever. It's infinite.
00:40:44Has it had an effect on you?
00:40:45How adversely that is?
00:40:48No, it made me a little stronger.
00:40:51A little more stronger than the original feelings that I had.
00:40:55My mind's not changed about anything.
00:40:58I really, I say the mind is not changed.
00:41:00I keep saying my mind, but I know it's not mine.
00:41:02It belongs to everybody.
00:41:04And so does the family that they say it's mine.
00:41:07It's not mine.
00:41:08It's yours.
00:41:09The idea that a group of people associated as they were when you were out of jail does put a
00:41:18scare into some people now.
00:41:19Do people have anything to fear from Charlie Manson's friends?
00:41:23Sure.
00:41:24Sure they do.
00:41:26Yeah.
00:41:27Definitely.
00:41:29Okay.
00:41:29Is that a direct fear or just a fear that they might expose something that...
00:41:36A fear they might do some positive things.
00:41:42A lot of the negative, the negative people would really definitely be afraid.
00:41:47The negative people would be scared.
00:41:48You know, the ones that are wrong.
00:41:51See, when someone does something to you, then they fear you.
00:41:54If no one does anything to you, they have no reason to fear you.
00:41:57If they've never done you any wrong, then why should they be afraid of you?
00:42:02I think somebody calls that karma, don't they?
00:42:05Yeah.
00:42:06And they keep burning me up and saying, my karma's bad.
00:42:08And I keep looking at them and smiling.
00:42:10But then I see two or three thousand dead bodies laying around all burned up.
00:42:13And I say, oh, well, somebody's karma wasn't right there.
00:42:17They did that.
00:42:17Maybe somebody did something wrong, you know.
00:42:19And everybody's been trying to kill me for the last 15 years.
00:42:22They've handcuffed me and drug me up down these hallways.
00:42:25I've been through all kinds of things that nobody wants to know about.
00:42:28Nobody wants to see.
00:42:29We'll just take this one over in the corner.
00:42:31It's like this.
00:42:32You're walking down the street and you see four or five guys kicking a guy.
00:42:35And four or five guys jumping on this guy and jumping up and down, beating him up.
00:42:39And you don't do anything.
00:42:40You just run and hide.
00:42:42So when it comes your turn, when four or five guys jump on you and they start beating you up,
00:42:45and you don't get no help, you don't got no gripe coming.
00:42:49You can't gripe about it because, like, you had your chance and you didn't help somebody.
00:42:54So when it comes your turn to get help, you know.
00:42:57In other words, concern goes beyond what you buy and sell.
00:43:00If you don't buy concern and sell concern, not genuine concern.
00:43:04Genuine concern is genuine.
00:43:05It's from the heart.
00:43:06And if you people in the United States have no heart, then that's not my fault.
00:43:10You dig?
00:43:11I have one.
00:43:14And that's my friends.
00:43:15And that's my family.
00:43:17And you could call that the world, or you could call it a little group of people that were struggling
00:43:24to save the world they lived in.
00:43:26They didn't want the world blown up.
00:43:28They seen them big bombs dropping.
00:43:29They said, please don't blow the world up.
00:43:31We don't want to blow the world up.
00:43:33You know, and we didn't blow the world up.
00:43:35And we're not going to blow the world up.
00:43:37And that's our love.
00:43:38We give you the world, you know.
00:43:40And we didn't blow it up.
00:43:41Now the next generation got it.
00:43:43Now your job is air, water, trees, and wildlife.
00:43:45If you don't save your air, water, trees, and wildlife, our efforts mean nothing.
00:43:50Because what good's the world without life on it?
00:43:53See, in other words, we didn't blow it up.
00:43:55We saved it.
00:43:55We stopped it.
00:43:56We checked the nuclear buttons.
00:43:58Now we're disarming this, and we're putting that on one computer, and we're coming back through the space wars, where
00:44:02we're going to check out all them computers and stop all them, you know, to where we can get one
00:44:08sky.
00:44:09And then we got one sky coming with great ships, big airships coming, where we're going to cut down all
00:44:13the pollution.
00:44:14We've already got these things in motion.
00:44:16We've got things in motion that you don't even know about in your world yet.
00:44:19You watch them on TV, and you dig their science fiction.
00:44:23But we were sincere, and we still are sincere, you know.
00:44:26And when I say we, I don't say we as if I pass out membership cards to say who we
00:44:31is.
00:44:32We is any human being that loves their life and wants to live on earth.
00:44:36Any human being that wants to quit eating flesh and blood with their teeth.
00:44:40You see what I'm saying?
00:44:41And start living where life is, and not living where all this self-destructive madness that was left over from
00:44:45some war that's already been fought in the graveyards.
00:44:50Most people are, their minds are in the graveyards.
00:44:54Their whole behavior patterns have been set by people that are gone.
00:44:57Mark Twain.
00:45:01You disavowed this idea that you were the leader of a religious cult and that type of thing.
00:45:08Yet in 1969, Susan Atkins, or Sadie Mae Gludge, as you called her, said the family was sort of a,
00:45:18she equated it with a religious order.
00:45:21Do you agree with Sadie Mae's?
00:45:26It became something beyond my will.
00:45:30I never said this court is in order yet.
00:45:33I've never rang my courtroom up for anything.
00:45:36I got no judges on nothing.
00:45:38I'm doing what I'm doing.
00:45:40I'm a stubborn old tramp on the road.
00:45:41I'm a hobo.
00:45:42I'm a bum.
00:45:43I ain't got nothing to do with nobody.
00:45:45I don't like it.
00:45:45I throw rocks at people.
00:45:47Get away from me.
00:45:48I got thrown into this to the point to where everybody would come up and say family, family, family, to
00:45:56where it even got in my mind.
00:45:58The family was only a music group.
00:46:00We had played in the chorale on Topanga Canyon and we called, and they said, what's your name?
00:46:04You're going to call yourselves.
00:46:05I said, well, call ourselves Family Jams.
00:46:08So we were Family Jams, you know, and then.
00:46:11Was it that Spahn's Ranch?
00:46:12Yeah, it was just Family Jams and everybody there either took a part in the music.
00:46:17They were singing or playing or doing some sort of thing, sound equipment or whatever.
00:46:23We had cameras.
00:46:23I had a production company.
00:46:25We could have done anything we wanted, but all we were really doing was playing.
00:46:29We were doing it.
00:46:30You see what I'm saying?
00:46:31We used to call that, we used to call that the MMT.
00:46:36The, and we would, it's a play act, man.
00:46:42It's all a big act anyway, you know.
00:46:43It's just a play act, different things.
00:46:45And then when this started correlating and other people started getting their inputs
00:46:52in it, then I seen, hey, I got no control over it, guy.
00:46:55I can't say, well, the Manson family composed 200 people and it did so and so and such and
00:47:01so, because I, you know, I never paid any attention to most of those people.
00:47:05I'm fixing my doom buggy.
00:47:07I'm doing what I'm doing.
00:47:08So in other words, you're saying that there may have been some of your friends who may
00:47:14have been misguided.
00:47:16Each person was their own leader and that family was theirs.
00:47:20The family that Sadie Glutz sees is the family that was hers and that's her family and that's
00:47:27real to her and I'll tell her, oh yeah, well, Sadie, I got to go somewhere right now and
00:47:31I'd be doing something else.
00:47:33And whatever her reality is, hasn't got anything to do with me.
00:47:38And same things.
00:47:39We've got a family in her mind.
00:47:40Each person's got a circle of people in their, in their life that they call their friends
00:47:44or their family.
00:47:45You've got a circle of people that you run in.
00:47:47Would you call that your family or your friends?
00:47:51Friends, family.
00:47:52If you got arrested, they would say, oh, that's your family.
00:47:54Then they arrest everybody you know, throw everybody you know in jail and try you for
00:47:58a whole bunch of things and then you become a family whether you like it or not.
00:48:01You're in a spaceship whether you want to be there or not.
00:48:03I got red on one side, blue on the other, green, gold, yellow.
00:48:07I got all the different girls that got busted.
00:48:09They're all colors.
00:48:10We set that on Indian Mesa in the Santa Susana Mountains.
00:48:15And then you see all the people of the next generation come along and talk about, oh,
00:48:18we're the rainbow people.
00:48:20And then you see A.B.
00:48:21Hoffman getting a haircut and Jerry Rubin getting a haircut going over and telling everybody,
00:48:24all right, now we're all rainbow people.
00:48:26We're not hippies no more.
00:48:27We're in hippies now and we're rainbow people and we're doing this for a dollar thirty-five.
00:48:32You know, and we're getting rich again.
00:48:33And they're getting rich off the blood of the children.
00:48:37And some of the children are strong enough to get back through it.
00:48:39And when they get back through it and they see Timothy Leary, they're going to say,
00:48:43thanks a lot, Tim.
00:48:44You really did us good.
00:48:45You dumped us down a hole and ran off and left us.
00:48:48And then told on us and lied and cheated.
00:48:51Now you're a comedian, huh?
00:48:53Yeah, you definitely are a comedian, all right.
00:48:55And one day somebody might catch him in the alley and give him the end of a garbage can,
00:48:59what he's got coming.
00:49:00And then when he gets what he's got coming, you'll ask,
00:49:02do you have any reason to build the Manson family?
00:49:05Because you've created the Manson family.
00:49:07Now this wave of humanity that has came in, it's coming back out now.
00:49:12And it's mad.
00:49:13And it's angry.
00:49:15It's angry.
00:49:16It never killed anyone.
00:49:17It didn't want to kill anyone.
00:49:19It would rather give its life than kill somebody.
00:49:22It says, here, man, take the gun, shoot me.
00:49:25You take what I'm saying?
00:49:25But let them live.
00:49:28If that's the case, do you...
00:49:30Another level, I feel on another level, I see every time that they tell those lies
00:49:36and every time that they keep this, perpetuate this damn helter-skelter,
00:49:40it adds more power.
00:49:41It gives me more power.
00:49:44It gives me power to pretty soon you're going to have the whole world coming.
00:49:47And I'm going to have the controls then.
00:49:49And then you've got guys now that've got the controls, but they don't have the power.
00:49:53You put somebody with the power as a control and you watch the old buggy rock.
00:49:57Because then the thing will be, then it'll be a whole different world.
00:50:01It'll be a whole different planet.
00:50:02There'll be a whole different perspective.
00:50:05The bureaucratical bullshit will go.
00:50:07There won't be no more bureaucratical madness because we can't afford this.
00:50:10Do you realize what you people are paying for?
00:50:12Do you realize what your tax dollars are paying for?
00:50:15You're paying for a bunch of people that are all stuck back in these things doing nothing.
00:50:19That's walking back and forth, holding them.
00:50:21So the next wave of kids could have to pay their debts.
00:50:25Rather than change it the way it's supposed to be changed, they won't give it up.
00:50:30So we've got to wait for them to die.
00:50:31So we'll wait for a whole wave of them to die.
00:50:33The last four doctors died of heart attacks.
00:50:35The other doctor blew his brains out.
00:50:37Got two more doctors that killed themselves in an automobile accident.
00:50:39So I've got to sit here and wait for the medical association to die out again.
00:50:43So I can get out and then I can be sane.
00:50:46But until then I'm insane.
00:50:47I'm totally insane.
00:50:48Because I've put all these master plans together to destroy the whole atmosphere and pollute the ground.
00:50:56I've created this big monster and I'm the white man.
00:50:59I'm no good.
00:51:00I'm terrible.
00:51:00I'm all the bad things.
00:51:02You know.
00:51:02And I don't see it that way.
00:51:04You know.
00:51:05I don't see it the way other people see it.
00:51:06That's the way they see it.
00:51:08And that's their judgment.
00:51:09That's their circle.
00:51:10That's their family.
00:51:12My family, if they were all in here, I'd just look at it and grin.
00:51:16So you say that you may have made some mistakes, but these mistakes were just exaggerated, blown out of proportion?
00:51:24You know.
00:51:25Because certainly you have to agree from somebody else.
00:51:28You say mistake.
00:51:29A mistake to me is just a lesson, man.
00:51:31When I fall down on the first step, I learn to grab the second step.
00:51:36And if the second step breaks, I don't call it a mistake.
00:51:39I just go for the third step.
00:51:41And when the third step don't work, then I skip on up to the fourth step.
00:51:46But some of your mistakes, you do admit impinged on other people's lives, their ability to judge.
00:51:53Well, some of your mistakes may have impinged on somebody else's right to determine their values.
00:52:01Well, let's split a hair there.
00:52:04The matriarch and the patriarch.
00:52:06The matriarch teaches mistakes.
00:52:08The patriarch doesn't know what a mistake is.
00:52:10There's no such thing as a mistake.
00:52:12Mistake.
00:52:13I can't understand.
00:52:14The word doesn't even correlate in my mind for anything.
00:52:16You know, mistake.
00:52:18People play mistakes.
00:52:20You know, that's stage play.
00:52:21Mistakes.
00:52:21You don't make no mistake.
00:52:22How's the universe going to make a mistake?
00:52:24How can God make a mistake?
00:52:26You know, I mean, if you want to get to the words of it, you know, I mean, you go
00:52:29to the ultimate.
00:52:29If there's one transistor or one little light bulb burnout, them big planes won't fly.
00:52:35They don't make mistakes.
00:52:37Them mechanics don't make mistakes.
00:52:39Them engineers don't make mistakes.
00:52:40They work perfect.
00:52:41That's the reason they fly like they do.
00:52:44There's no mistake there.
00:52:46You know, I don't see any mistake.
00:52:48I can't think of any mistake.
00:52:50In other words, I don't even use that word.
00:52:52If you've got another word, maybe I might understand what you're trying to say.
00:52:55Things that, acts that you had made may have impinged upon somebody else.
00:53:02And you certainly could agree with that, could you?
00:53:05I see what you're saying.
00:53:06Yeah, but it's like this.
00:53:09You go to the ballet and you see the perfection and motion that has been passed down for generations.
00:53:17You see this perfection.
00:53:20And it goes into your eyes and it goes into your mind.
00:53:24And then pretty soon it becomes a part of you.
00:53:27And you dance.
00:53:30And you dance that dance.
00:53:32Is it their fault that you dance the dance?
00:53:38Does that make sense?
00:53:39In other words, people come to me and they see me move.
00:53:43They see what I can do.
00:53:44And then they say, hey, man, I didn't know I could do that.
00:53:46You know, and they say, oh, you really move.
00:53:49You know, and I say, yeah.
00:53:51And then they go around and they move like that.
00:53:53And then you see the kids all moving like that.
00:53:55And then you come and you say, is that your conspiracy to make those kids move like that?
00:54:00Because with the moves that you showed those kids, they went out and killed somebody.
00:54:05It's like a guy come up to me once and he was freaking out on acid.
00:54:08And he said, oh, man, I'm going crazy.
00:54:10He said, everything is all fucked up, man.
00:54:11The world is all miserable.
00:54:13And I said, no, it ain't, brother, man.
00:54:14I said, everything's all right.
00:54:15Everything's in harmony, man.
00:54:16I said, everything's perfect.
00:54:18I said, can't you see perfection?
00:54:19Look at it in yourself.
00:54:20He says, it is?
00:54:22I said, yeah.
00:54:23I said, it's a nice day, man.
00:54:24Look at the sun's out and everybody's having a good day.
00:54:27I said, it's a wonderful day.
00:54:29I said, can't you appreciate that?
00:54:31He said, sure.
00:54:32I said, well, then relax your mind, man.
00:54:34You know, get all that negative vibration out of you and go on down the road and have a good
00:54:38day, man.
00:54:39So he came back two or three hours later and he said, I killed somebody.
00:54:43I said, why do you come and tell me?
00:54:45That puts me back in prison, man.
00:54:47I don't want to hear what you did, son.
00:54:50That's your life.
00:54:51Don't put your road over on mine.
00:54:53I'm doing something over here.
00:54:55Well, you said everything was all right.
00:54:57You said everything was perfect.
00:54:59I said, yeah, but I didn't tell you to go do something like that.
00:55:02Now you're trying to give me the responsibility that your mom and dad should have.
00:55:07That's your mom and dad's responsibility.
00:55:09That's not my responsibility.
00:55:11I'm not your mom and dad.
00:55:12Why am I convicted and thrown in a damn nut board for 15 years and tormented and tortured
00:55:17because the parents don't want to take responsibility for their own damn children?
00:55:21What kind of silly shit is that?
00:55:23And then the wedding ring starts falling down and everybody's divorcing everybody else
00:55:27and then you wonder why your system is falling apart.
00:55:29It's falling apart because you didn't give me my rights down in the courtroom.
00:55:33You didn't face the truth about your own children in the 60s.
00:55:36They weren't bad kids.
00:55:38Most of those kids were graduated from school.
00:55:41Mary's a history teacher.
00:55:42Blue's a marine biologist.
00:55:46Red's an English literature major.
00:55:49I got the librarian right out of Berkeley.
00:55:52She's not bad.
00:55:53She's skeez.
00:55:54She's a beautiful girl.
00:55:55There was nothing wrong with her.
00:55:57Her mama had her all up in some bunch of crazy things that didn't make any sense,
00:56:01but she was working her way out of that.
00:56:03There was nothing wrong with that woman, and she didn't do any wrong.
00:56:06This is who again?
00:56:07No, this is Mary.
00:56:08She's the one that got shot, and she had a shotgun out there on the street.
00:56:11She was shooting at the cop.
00:56:13That's where Patty Hearst covered that up with that Hawthorne gun robbery trip.
00:56:18Remember when Patty shot at the gun surplus store?
00:56:20Well, Mary and Gypsy had robbed the store to get some guns to try to get us out of the
00:56:25courtroom, see,
00:56:26because we were going to get out of the courtroom.
00:56:29I was very indignant.
00:56:30I was very upset.
00:56:32See, here, let me explain this to you.
00:56:34In jail, there is a reality.
00:56:38And the reality is, if you go rob a liquor store, and you know that you can get five years
00:56:44in the courtroom,
00:56:46and you get caught, and you get five years in the courtroom, you've got no gripe.
00:56:50You've got no gripe coming.
00:56:52Go do your five years.
00:56:53You took a chance.
00:56:55You gambled five years of your life, and you lost.
00:56:58So you've got no gripe coming.
00:57:00So when I was young, I would always be bitching about the system.
00:57:04I'd say, well, the lawyer did this, and the lawyer did that.
00:57:06And the old man would tell me, he'd say, boy, did you do it?
00:57:09And I'd say, yeah, but, he'd say, ain't no buts.
00:57:12If you did it, you did it, and that's all there is to it.
00:57:15Shut your mouth.
00:57:16Do your time.
00:57:17Quit sniveling.
00:57:18Why don't you be a man about what, you know, what you're doing?
00:57:20And I'd say, okay.
00:57:22So I lived with that philosophy.
00:57:24And when I stood in that courtroom down in Los Angeles,
00:57:27I could have explained this whole thing in 15 minutes.
00:57:30And I told the judge.
00:57:32I held my hands up to him, and I said, I got no blood on my hands, man.
00:57:36I got no responsibility for this thing that's going here.
00:57:39This is not my thought.
00:57:41It's not my world.
00:57:42It's not my projection.
00:57:44The only projection that I had into it was to get my brother out of jail, see.
00:57:50So when all that jumped off, had they gave me my rights, according to that book that I read called
00:58:00Constitution of America,
00:58:02where it says I had the right to prepare and defend myself with assistance of counsel.
00:58:07See, a lot of you people, young people, even though you go through college, you still don't understand that courtroom.
00:58:13That courtroom is the court of the kings and lords of the world.
00:58:18We as human beings came and broke the ground here called United States of America.
00:58:23And the reason our system has perpetuated in such a way is because all the powers of Europe and England
00:58:32and monarchies and all those big people,
00:58:36we have came over here and started another world to where each man in the United States has that power
00:58:43because he has that courtroom.
00:58:45That courtroom belongs to every human being in the United States.
00:58:50And if you take that courtroom away from one human being, you've taken that courtroom away from all human beings.
00:58:58Then what follows is you've got these kings and queens of yesterday.
00:59:04They're going to come and play croquet with your heads.
00:59:07They're going to take your courtrooms.
00:59:09They're going to take your money.
00:59:10They're going to take your country.
00:59:11They're going to take your resources.
00:59:13They're going to rip you off in every way you can think of because you didn't give your own children
00:59:17the benefit of the courtroom that your fathers fought in battles and died for.
00:59:23You know, it don't make sense.
00:59:24You send a whole wave of children over to die in Iwo Jima.
00:59:27You think what I'm saying?
00:59:28And they died.
00:59:29They gave their whole lives for this.
00:59:32And then you take and you cheat the next generation out of theirs.
00:59:38And you remember when the Vietnam veterans came back?
00:59:41What kind of country would try their own soldiers for fighting in a war that they taught them to fight
00:59:46in?
00:59:47Now, you make sense out of that.
00:59:49Or this one.
00:59:50A veteran comes over.
00:59:51He's been shot in the leg.
00:59:53He's on crutches.
00:59:54And a young kid comes up and spits in his face.
00:59:57He said, hey, son, I was over there fighting that war for you.
01:00:01No, you weren't fighting for me.
01:00:02He said, well, you still got the supermarket, don't you?
01:00:05You still speak in English, ain't you?
01:00:06You got your streets.
01:00:08You know, you got your...
01:00:09They asked me, they said, are you a Christian?
01:00:10I said, what else could I be?
01:00:12You know, like it or not.
01:00:13They said, what do you mean?
01:00:14I was born in a Christian hospital.
01:00:18I walk on Christian streets.
01:00:20We have Christian armies, Christian governments, Christian...
01:00:23Everything here in the United States is Christian.
01:00:25So how could I be anything else?
01:00:27It's free.
01:00:28This is the religious freedom.
01:00:30We earned the religious freedom.
01:00:32So when I see Barbara Rondas walking by or I'm a Shum Shums, I mean, I accept them.
01:00:38I don't throw fire on them.
01:00:42I got my rights.
01:00:43I got my rights.
01:00:44And if I ain't got them, then you have reason to fear the Manson.
01:00:49You have fear the snake because it's coming back at you.
01:00:53And it's going to bite.
01:00:54And it hasn't got anything to do with me personally.
01:00:57And they said, well, this is you doing this.
01:00:58How could I be doing this?
01:01:00Someone raises up Indiana and they kill eight or ten people.
01:01:03There's five or six people killed in Georgia.
01:01:05Two or three people was killed in Texas.
01:01:07And a couple more people killed over here.
01:01:09And then they say, you're doing all this.
01:01:10I'm doing all this because you didn't do right.
01:01:13Take it back to the DA.
01:01:14Ask the DA why he sold you all down the river.
01:01:17And he'll kick back in his big old $200,000, $300,000 automobile
01:01:21with his five, six hundred million dollar pad.
01:01:24And he'll kick back.
01:01:25And he's, you know, he's not a DA.
01:01:28He just used that as a stepping stone to go to bigger things and better things.
01:01:32You aren't saying that you feel that, you know, crimes in America, murders, what have you,
01:01:39in general, are being blamed on you.
01:01:42That people think that they're...
01:01:44Oh, certainly.
01:01:44Sure.
01:01:45They've got devil cults.
01:01:47And they've achieved all kinds of madness behind this.
01:01:51They've got all kinds of things going that are unreal.
01:01:55And I have big powers.
01:01:57I use my...
01:01:58I look at people and I say, I got power in my eyes.
01:02:01Unlock the door.
01:02:02You know, and they say, no.
01:02:02I say, well, you never can believe what you're reading in newspapers.
01:02:05You know, I'm supposed to be some kind of...
01:02:09Come on, man.
01:02:10That's a big act.
01:02:10God damn thing's a fucking act, man.
01:02:14What I said right then is a fucking act.
01:02:16Everything's an act.
01:02:17It's all an act.
01:02:18The only thing that's not an act, the only thing that makes reality is death.
01:02:22And then they hang it on a cross and kneel down and pray to it.
01:02:24That's the only reality they understand.
01:02:26If you kill eight or ten people and you throw blood all over them,
01:02:29you say, now you see what I'm saying.
01:02:30They say, oh, oh, we see what you're saying.
01:02:32And they still don't see what you're saying.
01:02:34You know.
01:02:35Can you imagine why we fought the Second World War?
01:02:38You know why?
01:02:39No, you don't.
01:02:40We still don't know why.
01:02:42But how many people died?
01:02:44We won the war.
01:02:46We lost the principle.
01:02:48The principle's still there.
01:02:49The problems are still there.
01:02:52You know.
01:02:54But then it falls back on me.
01:02:55And I, you know, I'm just one.
01:02:57I'm one ding ding.
01:02:59I ain't got no, I ain't got no bell.
01:03:01Or I got a bell, but I'm not going to ring it.
01:03:03At one time you mentioned Richard Nixon earlier.
01:03:06And he at one time had said that you were nothing more than a murderer
01:03:12who, you know, for all intents and purposes was a glamorous figure.
01:03:16Do you see yourself as a glamorous figure?
01:03:19I don't see myself as anything.
01:03:21I don't think I, I say it.
01:03:23I haven't opened this courtroom.
01:03:25I ain't got no judges on myself.
01:03:27I haven't, see, here's the thing, man.
01:03:29You got to realize.
01:03:29I was raised for one thing.
01:03:32Survive.
01:03:33Survive.
01:03:34That's all I know.
01:03:35That's all I've learned.
01:03:37I'm like odds, but it's just, I'm in the zoo looking at you.
01:03:41And if you come in my cage wrong, I will eat you.
01:03:44I will bite you.
01:03:45I will tell you to pieces.
01:03:47If you come in right, okay.
01:03:50If you come in wrong, then I got to do whatever I got to do.
01:03:53I am vicious.
01:03:55I am terrible.
01:03:56I am awful.
01:03:57If I'm invoked.
01:03:59And you can call that devil.
01:04:00You can call it Satan.
01:04:01You can call it God.
01:04:02You can call it anything you want.
01:04:04You know, but don't invoke me.
01:04:06Because if you invoke me, then you got another war.
01:04:09See, we just stopped one war.
01:04:11We don't need another war.
01:04:12If they're going to have another war, you did, I don't want to be no part of no war, man.
01:04:17You know, I don't want to be a part of hurting nobody.
01:04:19I don't like to get hurt.
01:04:21I don't want to hurt nobody.
01:04:22I don't want to die.
01:04:23Therefore, I don't want to kill nobody.
01:04:25You did.
01:04:25Even though in my own spiritual self, I know there's no such thing as die or, you know, it's a
01:04:31game.
01:04:32Life and death is one, you know, in the chambers that I live in.
01:04:36But I'm a little beyond time in the minds of a lot of people that haven't been in jail as
01:04:41long as I have.
01:04:42See, you've got to consider, 36 years in jail is a long time, guy.
01:04:46Some people can't survive a year in jail.
01:04:48They go crazy.
01:04:49You know, I have sat for 15 years looking at the wall with the cockroaches.
01:04:56I don't read books.
01:04:57I don't watch TV.
01:04:58I don't listen to radio.
01:05:00In fact, your station is the only station I listen to.
01:05:02It's okay if Sharon Kate's mother gets up and says, I wish someone would kill Charlie Mason.
01:05:08But what if I get up and I get two or three guys going home and I say, I hope
01:05:11someone
01:05:11kills Sharon Kate's mother.
01:05:13I think she would lose.
01:05:15If she wanted to play a battle like that, I think she would end up second best.
01:05:19But I don't want to do that.
01:05:22They say, well, what do we do?
01:05:24She said she hopes someone kills you.
01:05:26I said, well, tell her why don't she come?
01:05:28Why don't she come and do it?
01:05:29Why don't she come and do it?
01:05:30I never hurt her daughter.
01:05:32I never even thought about her daughter.
01:05:34Didn't care about her daughter.
01:05:35She lost her daughter in the Second World War.
01:05:39Had nothing to do with me.
01:05:41Let me ask you, how do you relate to other prisoners?
01:05:45Do you interact with other prisoners?
01:05:47Do you have friends here?
01:05:48I've got a lot of good brothers in here.
01:05:49I've got a lot of good brothers in jail.
01:05:51All my family's in jail.
01:05:52If I was raised up in prison, where's my family?
01:05:54If I've got a family, where's it at?
01:05:56If you come up and you say, all right, here's your family ticket.
01:05:59You're in charge of family.
01:06:01I said, okay.
01:06:02And they say, it's your family.
01:06:03I said, all right.
01:06:04Well, who raised me?
01:06:07Jail.
01:06:07Prison.
01:06:08A policeman raised me.
01:06:10Convicts raised me.
01:06:11Administrators raised me.
01:06:14So I'm an inside person.
01:06:17They even did a thing on Star Trek that really got me.
01:06:20They had a parallel universe.
01:06:21We had these two guys.
01:06:22They had to get one guy on the other side.
01:06:24Well, I'm like a parallel universe in a lot of ways.
01:06:26You know, because I don't fit in what you guys do.
01:06:30And I never try, even though I see over the air.
01:06:33I'm looking up over Universal Studios, and I see up over Malibu, you know, and I see all
01:06:38the way to Ireland.
01:06:40And I see the IRA and the Busquets Play and the Bum Pum Pum.
01:06:43And then I get on my bike, and I go back in the mountains, and I smoke a little grass
01:06:48and play a lot of music.
01:06:50And anybody comes, I say hi, and they say hi.
01:06:53I say hi.
01:06:54They say, how are you?
01:06:55I say, how are you?
01:06:55They say, I'm fine.
01:06:56I say, I'm fine.
01:06:57They say, I like you.
01:06:58I say, I like you.
01:07:00They say, I don't like you.
01:07:01I say, okay, I don't like you.
01:07:02You know, I just learned to reflect people back to themselves.
01:07:05Because, man, what are you going to tell somebody?
01:07:07You know, if you start informing people that are misinformed, you'd spend the rest of your
01:07:13life informing people that are misinformed.
01:07:17I would feel I'd achieve something if we could stop the mis-informed.
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