I am currently halfway through Tom O’Neill’s illuminating “CHAOS: Charles Manson, The C.I.A. & The Secret History of The Sixties,” which essentially asserts — through O’Neill’s exhaustive reporting — that everything Vince Bugliosi suggested in “Helter Skelter” was a big bowl of hickory-smoked crapola. If you’re a true crime buff, it’s a really great read. I’d slavishly enjoyed “Helter Skelter” when I first read it 15 or 16 years ago, which sent me on something of a Manson kick, for a while. Two more books on the subject later (neither of any great note -- one expounding on Bugliosi’s premise and the other looking at the murders’ tenuous ties to the Beatles’ White Album), I believe my wife was starting to get concerned. I moved onto other stuff after that, but I’ve always been fascinated by the grisly story and its accompanying fallout on the American pscyche, so leapt at this book when I spotted it.
It would have been something of a tremendous leap towards the trivial, given the otherwise scrupulous nature of the book, but I was hoping that O’Neill might have reached out to Trent Reznor, who famously (and, allegedly, unwittingly) rented the star-crossed Cielo Drive address in the early 90’s, but it doesn’t get a mention. Trent might have initially not known about the house’s infamous history, but he certainly capitalized on it when he got wind of it, rechristening his home-studio set-up there as “Le Pig” (a nod to the word painted on the front door in Sharon Tate’s blood). Trent later conceded that the bad karma and iffy appropriation of the Manson mythos was too much for him after Sharon Tate’s sister accused of him exploiting her sibling’s murder, but that didn’t stop him from taking that front door as a souvenir when he left (which later served as the entrance to his Nothing Records studio in New Orleans). Trent may sheepishly downplay the whole chapter, these days, but I dusted off this clip recently, and they’re really not making any secret of it (not least by also featuring a cameo from a pre-notoriety Marilyn Manson … something ELSE Trent sheepishly downplays, these days).
Shortly after Trent moved out (again, with that front door), the Cielo Drive house was razed.
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