This weekend marked the 40th anniversary of one of the more unfortunate episodes in the annals of pop culture: the Tate-LaBianca murders, committed at the behest of Charles Manson by his family of followers. Manson was for a time an L.A. outsider, a fringe musician who befriended the Beach Boys' Dennis Wilson and thereby persuaded the band to record his song "Cease to Exist." Retitled "Never Learn Not to Love", the song proved passable at best, salvaged only by the hypnotic monotone hum of Bruce Johnston and Al Jardine's backing vox and the saintly corrupted visage of Dennis himself on the stoned lead.The murder of Sharon Tate and her friends and the LaBiancas tells us little about Manson himself but much about his Family, whose murderous members took years to develop genuine remorse for their actions. It is well to realize how readily some people will obey, whether the leader is Barack Obama, Sarah Palin, Charlie Manson or your figurehead of choice. We're largely a nation of followers, merely in search of someone to lead us on. May we learn to not be so easily led down paths that conflict with our own codes of conduct. It may be too late for Atkins, Van Houten and Krenwinkel to absorb this lesson, but not for the rest of us. Never learn not to trust your internal moral compass.
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