|
Author of "Manson: The Unholy Trail of Charlie and the Family"
Intro:
E.C.: I know you've written many books, but I mainly wanted to concentrate on your Manson book at this time. John Gilmore: (laughs) O.K. E.C.: The original title of the book (when it first came out in 1971) was and the title of the "The Garbage People" revised edition was "Manson: The Unholy Trail of Charlie and the Family". Why was there a title change? John Gilmore: I think because there was a little bit of new material and the publisher just wanted to give it a 'new life'. The original title was "The Garbage People", which sold quite well for two or three printings. And then they changed the title to "Manson: The Unholy Trail of Charlie and the Family". I guess they wanted to give it another life - because there is some new stuff in it, so it qualifies as a new edition. And looking for more sales, I suppose. (laughs) E.C.: Now did Ron Kenner (listed as co-author on "The Garbage People") have anything to do with the revised edition? John Gilmore: No, he had nothing to do with it. I have not seen him in…I couldn't begin to say how many years. He had very little to with the first one…what had happened originally with that book, I had gotten involved with the whole thing when Manson was still in Death Valley, in jail in Independence. They were still trying him on the damage of county property and all that. Whereas some of the girls and everybody had already been brought or were being charged with murder. His turn was coming up when I got originally involved in it. Through a fly-by-night movie guy I knew-he decided he wanted to make a movie out of it and that's how we got into it. One of his poker-playing partners was a couple of attorneys he knew, and we got together with a lawyer who was originally handling Charlie. And I spent maybe ten or eleven visits with Charlie in LA County Jail. My friend also went and visited him. He would come out and I wrote down everything that he discussed and gradually it just all came together. I spent a lot of time in it.
The original "Garbage People" didn't have all the stuff on Bobby Beausoleil and when the book came out Bobby Beausoleil had the girls get a hold of me and I went up and spent quite a bit of time with Bobby. He was still on death row at San Quentin. He wanted to make it very clear to me that he was not really a follower of Charlie - he had his own following. He wanted me to write a book on him, and I couldn't write a book just Bobby. But there was an awful lot of information on Bobby that didn't appear in the earlier version of the book at all.
In the early beginning, I got a little bummed out with the whole thing at one point. I told the agent, "why don't you get someone else and he'll run over some stuff with me and do some editing." I had already written the book. It's one of those things where on Tuesday you have a deal for like a 50-grand advance on a book and Thursday the whole things off. And that's what occurred and it really bummed me out. I had a choice of a couple of guys and I didn't know who Ron Kenner was, but I met him and he was very interested in doing it. So what he really did - he went through the thing and did an editing job and worked with me on that original version, acting as an editor. That was his only contribution. I gave him a co-credit on it…but he had nothing to do with the new version. E.C.: When did the new interviews with Bobby Beausoleil take place? John Gilmore: Probably late '71, early '72. E.C.: It's great to see Bobby's version of the story, because usually he is represented by the media as being just a mere minion of Charlie… John Gilmore: Yeah, right. They've always thought of him as that and almost a stooge. But he really wasn't, he had his own trip, his own thing going. He was really aggressive in a lot of ways. E.C.: Also, there were some accounts in your book that I haven't read of before. Like that Gary Hinman was promising, or at least Charlie thought, he was promising money for recording expenses. John Gilmore: Yeah, he was doing a con job on Hinman. Gary knew a lot of people and he wanted to get a little involved in a hipper scene than he was. He was very locked into that whole Buddhist scene. I think he was uncertain and drifting back and forth. And he had a lot of his own personal problems. From a couple of people that I knew that knew him - he was a pretty nice guy. But…terrible…I would hate to go through that.
E.C.: I've always found it curious that Bobby only committed one murder, yet he is STILL in prison. These days, normal murderers like that get out after only a few years. It seems like it is mainly his 'guilt by association' with Manson that keeps him there. John Gilmore: Well, they are all there, and they consider them all really kind of off-the-wall. They're all in prison and the only the only person that I know that has been desperately trying to get out - and for years, a friend of mine Larry - Lawrence Grobel, wrote a book called "Conversation with Capote" and "Conversation with Brando". This was years and years ago - Larry was teaching at a college in Hollywood and Larry was on the side helping Leslie Van Houten learning to write and things - learning to be a writer. Some kind of lessons via mail. And then in the early 1990's I was friendly with John Waters. And after the first Amok version of "The Garbage People" was coming out, John said, "Well, I can't see you and I can't really be a friend publicly because you don't think Leslie should get out. You are not in support of her getting out of prison." But John had been in contact with her for a long time because he wanted to stick her in one of his movies! He wanted to get Leslie out and get her in a movie. I don't know if he is still trying or whatever…
I can't gauge out…except they are all part of the "Manson gang" and I don't know that they'll ever get out. There are just too many people against all of them out there in the world. And Susan [Atkins], I must say, is as nutty as a fruitcake. E.C.: Every time there is a new documentary on the Manson family on TV, Susan is about the only one that doesn't grant any interviews… John Gilmore: Because she's just too weird! Her whole thing is that God has forgiven them and why can't society? She actually seriously gets into that whole side of that! Very bizarre. She looks bizarre and acts bizarre and gets off on these religious weird things…and…of course everybody's found god there. Everybody does find god on death row. God is always there for you…(laughs)…when you're in the cage. You don't go before hand, you always go down the last mile. I mean, they've all done pretty good considering. Bobby's done good, married and kids. When I saw him at San Quentin, my first meeting with him, he pulls up his shirt and he shows me all these tattoos he's got all over his chest. Weird, like one-eyed eagles and nazi swastikas all over him. That's when he told me that he was instrumental in the Aryan Brotherhood - that he was attempting to instigate in San Quentin. At that time he wasn't singing his 'innocent' song, he was pretty heavy duty. And he still…looks like a young Robert Taylor - a very pretty, wonderful look about him. It's amazing, he certainly could have been in movies or something…but he chose another very bizarre route. I don't know how much of all of that anyway that we've gotta lay on the drugs or the LSD.
Too bad you didn't read "Laid Bare" ["Laid Bare: A Memoir of Wrecked Lives and the Hollywood Death Trip"] - that details all my relationships with Janis Joplin and with Jim Morrison. I did a great deal of acid, I did about 3 months of acid and I never came down. I was up for the whole time. This was the original Owsley acid.
Jim got in touch with me because he wanted…number one he wanted to get some of the acid, too and I had a lot of it. But he wanted Jimmy Dean's bloody clothes that Dean had been wearing in the accident. I said, "there's no clothes, nobody has those clothes, they probably got thrown away." He [Jim Morrison} basically didn't believe that they had been thrown away, he thought I was hiding them or something. We did get together and spent some time together. I have never, I have never been with someone who would drink as much as he did. Like the whole bottle, it was incredible.
Finally, our last conversation, Jim put a towel over his eyes, so as we were talking he wouldn't be looking into my eyes. It was really bizarre. Jim was very strange in that sense, and he was totally obsessed with James Dean and owning the clothes that he died in. E.C.: And he thought that the clothes were still around and someone had them? John Gilmore: He thought that I had them. And I told him, "I was in New York when Jimmy was killed anyway." I'd gone to New York in late July and Jimmy was killed in September. I didn't come back or anything. He didn't believe me though. I said, "He really oughta cut down on the drinking. He's like blowing fuses in his head."
E.C.: So, Morrison was doing both the acid and the heavy drinking? John Gilmore: Oh, he was doing it right then. He was drinking at that time and got worse and worse. And Janis or course was always drinking. We had a little 'situation' between us in San Francisco. I met Janis when she was in the coffee shops in San Francisco in 1963, that's when I first met her. We were friends and I'd go and see her and she was really obsessed with Hank Williams. Anything to do with Hank Williams! The last time that I saw Janis in the San Francisco area - I had this picture of Hank and she really wanted it. So, I gave it to her. She stuck it down the front of her pants! Then in '69 I saw her and we had a brief little thing, a kind of brief little 'fling'.
But anyway, back to the Manson thing… Charlie was just an extremely odd human being. I think he gradually, slowly just went nuts. His background, his past, was just so painful. My whole basic thing about Charlie - I felt that society just kicked his ass his entire life and when he got out he decided he was gonna kick some ass back. E.C.: Well, it makes more sense than the 'Helter Skelter' motive… John Gilmore: Nah, that was all from the prosecution's point of view.
Charlie was very open and he was talkative and he'd suddenly been given this crown of fame and thought he was gonna milk it for all it was worth.
Charlie had a good…I liked his voice [his singing voice]. He almost sounded like Hank Williams at times, there was the same kinda little feeling there. I thought he had a good voice and I thought he was a very talented guy in a lot of ways. I don't know how much of what he does is an act. I think he probably now, over the last twenty years, seriously believes his own act. He just reiterates, goes in to his repertoire. I think he kind of programmed himself to just 'do it'. But he's the only person of any of that whole thing that has no interest in getting out. And no interest in being thought of that his soul was 'saved'. I mean I have to give the guy that, to stick by his guns…(laughs)…if you wanna look at it that way.
I've been around, over the years, with enough people I've dealt with - killers and all that shit. Not that they'll kill again [The Manson family], I don't think that any of those people would probably kill again….well, Susan Atkins? I don't know. E.C.: How important do you think that the music was to Charlie? His own music? John Gilmore: Oh, it was everything! E.C.: I've read a few of his interviews where he just dismissed it… John Gilmore: I think that that was everything to him. I talked to Alvin Karpis [who taught Charlie guitar] a couple of times in great length, and he was in Canada. He was interested in writing and getting a book done - and I never followed it up and he died!
Karpis said that Charlie conned him. Karpis said that music was everything to him [Charlie] and that he was just desperate, just totally desperate to learn as much as he could - and talked to Karpis a number of times about how, someday when he gets out, he's gonna rock them on their butts with his music. And he's gonna be as cool as The Beatles and as cool as anyone else that was going on. E.C.: When I finally located a copy of his LIE album, I was surprised at how tame it seemed. Almost like folk music… John Gilmore: That's it, you've got it. It's folk music. And that's what Terry Melcher was kind of saying, "Wow, I don't know man." Because it was like, "who needs this shit, this isn't rock. This isn't surfing music, it's just a fucking bunch of Native Americans, like "Indians" he said. He can't sell it and he can't do anything with it. But that's where Charlie was at. He was probably about 20 or 30 years ahead of his time in all that.
There is a folk quality to his music and he had an interesting voice. And he could have done something and it was important to him. He might not of course now…since he didn't become a star. E.C.: Sure, it's easy in hindsight… John Gilmore: Sure! He's "Charles Manson - the serial killer guy". I mean, its interesting, the legal aspects of it. Charlie never killed anyone in his life. E.C.: Did you ever notice firsthand, Charlie's influence on people? John Gilmore: (Tape cuts off first part of sentence)...this guy would go see Charlie, and I watched this guy from his kinda greedy cheapo producer, which he was...I watched him be eroding from the inside out from his dealings with Charlie. He was getting to the guy, he was able to reach inside of him. From talks in the LA County jail and Charlie was changing him. And I said, "what's the matter?" He said, "I dunno, I'm kinda really bummed out, kinda really depressed". The guy got out of the movie business soon, gradually moving into the insurance thing. Charlie was able, in some weird way to climb into him and change him. I thought that was absolutely fascinating. Because I was experiencing that and watching it on a first hand level. And I new this guy real well, this producer, I'd worked with him. As a matter of fact I tried to get Jack Nicholson, before he did Easy Rider - Jack wanted to be a writer and I took him over to get him on a contract with this guy, and it never worked out. But this guy was very aggressive and making movies, B-movies, he wanted to be like another Roger Corman. Charlie Manson somehow severed his gut contact with what the guy thought he wanted to do. E.C.: Well, Charlie had an ability to find weakness in a person... John Gilmore: You see, that's what you do in jail. That's the game you play in jail, manipulating others, manipulating people. Charlie had become after all these years, and he's a little shit, too - so he had to pull this game hard to survive. And he was somehow able to do it. E.C.: When you interviewed Charlie, did he try to pull that on you? John Gilmore: No, I don't think so. Unless it was on a subliminal level that he was trying. He's not doing it in a conscious way, he's doing it in a very subliminal way.
He was like conducting an orchestra, he conducted an orchestra with all these people and these situations. He decided he was just gonna get out there and kick some ass. He was able to make a name for himself. He's feared and revered by all the creepos and weirdos. He's made a big name for himself - he didn't do it through music, but he did it in other ways, (laughs) and he'll go down in history. E.C.: What about Charlie now? John Gilmore: I think he just parrots himself. Everybody goes there to see the "freak". He believes his myth and he gives you a show.
 |
October 2005 ISSUE
Right: John Gilmore (Photo by Helmut Newton)
Right: "Manson: The Unholy Trail of Charlie and the Family"
Right: John Gilmore at the time of his Manson interviews in 1969