The Musical Lives of Charles Manson - The Beatles, Beach Boys, Invention of Sixties or, No Sense Makes

Nicholas Tochka analyzes the role of rock music in the life of Charles Manson, the Family, and the August 1969 Tate-LaBianca killings, which also gives larger insight into Sixties counterculture. Failed singer-songwriter. Devious cult leader, a rock Pied Piper. The product of a sick society. Just another dime-a-dozen singing hippy mystic. Did the guitar-playing guru personify the violence that the rock counterculture had inflicted on American society? Or did his music diagnose the dehumanizing effects of that society''s broken institutions? For nearly five years, commentators debated the meaning of Charles Manson and the Tate-LaBianca killings. The key thread linking these narratives was rock music: from the acid-drenched singalongs at Spahn Ranch, to a bizarre theology centered on Beatles songs, to Manson''s own album, LIE: The Love and Terror Cult (1970). "They are afraid of it, because it tells the truth," Manson told an interviewer about his music. What truths did the Manson Family''s music tell? And how did stories about their music help Americans understand the true meaning of the Sixties?

Über den Autor / die Autorin

Nicholas Tochka is Associate Professor of Ethnomusicology at the University of Melbourne, Australia. He is the author of Audible States: Socialist Politics and Popular Music in Albania (2016), Rocking in the Free World: Popular Music and the Politics of Freedom in Postwar America (2023), and Ardit Gjebrea's Projekt Jon (2024). His work examines the politics of music-making in the postwar world.

Produktdetails

• Autoren: Nicholas Tochka
• Verlag: Bloomsbury Academic
• Sprache: Englisch
• Produktform: Fester Einband
• Erscheint: 25.09.2025
• EAN: 9781501384561
• ISBN: 978-1-5013-8456-1
• Seiten: 240
• Themen: Geisteswissenschaften, Kunst, Musik > Musik > Monografien; Rock and Roll, Rock, True Crime, Rock & Pop music, Individual composers & musicians, specific bands & groups, MUSIC / Individual Composer & Musician, RELIGION / Cults, TRUE CRIME / Murder / General, MUSIC / Genres & Styles / Rock, c 1960 to c 1970, Popular Music, c 1960 to c 1969, Musicians, singers, bands and groups, Composers and songwriters, Contemporary non-Christian & para-Christian cults & sects, True crime: serial killers and murderers