Lie: The Love and Terror Cult

Background

In 1968, Phil Kaufman, who had met Manson in prison, moved in briefly with Manson and his "Family". Kaufman continually urged Manson to record some of his (Manson's) songs. Sometime in mid 1968, Manson attempted to construct an album with members of the Beach Boys. Carl and Brian Wilson co-produced about ten songs by Manson that he recorded at Brian's home studio. These tapes remain unreleased, though the songs themselves may overlap with the material present on Lie: The Love and Terror Cult.

While Manson was being held on the Tate-LaBianca charges, he told Kaufman "please put out my music". According to Kaufman, Manson phoned him five days a week, even though he was allowed only three phone calls per day. Manson was "very anxious for his music to be heard".

Recording

According to the album's original sleeve notes, Lie: The Love and Terror Cult was recorded primarily at Gold Star Studios on August 8, 1968, with track B3, "Sick City", recorded September 11, 1967 in an unspecified location. Overdubs were recorded on August 9, 1968 somewhere in Van Nuys, Los Angeles. 2 tracks from the album, "Look At Your Game, Girl" and "Eyes Of A Dreamer" were recorded in June 1967 at a demo session for Uni Records (a subsidiary of MCA.) These 2 songs appeared on a privately pressed 45 rpm single and credited to "Silverhawk". When Phil Kaufman was mastering the "Lie" LP, he had to take these 2 tracks from a copy of the 45, as the master tapes were already lost.

Release

After established record companies declined to become involved, Kaufman raised $3,000 and pressed 2,000 copies of an album entitled Lie: The Love and Terror Cult on March 6, 1970 through a record label called Awareness Records. It was distributed on the West Coast, by Trademark of Quality, the bootlegging group who released the first notable bootleg album, Great White Wonder, a collection of pirated Bob Dylan tapes. Consisting of the recordings made from 1967 to 1968, the album contained thirteen songs. These included "Cease to Exist", a song The Beach Boys had recorded in modified form as "Never Learn Not to Love". Its album cover is a copy of the December 19, 1969 Life front cover on which Manson had appeared, only with "Life" replaced with the word "Lie". Each of the original 2,000 copies came with a poster that was put out by "A Joint Venture" and that bore signatures of many prisoners and inmates, all supporting Manson and the Family. Only 300 sold. Having supposedly failed to recover his investment, Kaufman signed an agreement with New-York-based ESP-Disk to distribute the album nationally.

During the 1991 Ron Reagan Jr. interview with Charles Manson, Manson stated that "That particular album was made off a little old $7 tape recorder, and it was put together as a promotion angle, and the guy made six or seven hundred dollars for that. My music is not on tape."

Covers and sampling

"Cease to Exist" had been previously recorded by The Beach Boys under the name "Never Learn Not to Love, " and it appears both on their 1969 album, 20/20, and as the B-side of the single of "Bluebirds over the Mountain. " Manson was not given co-writing credit. The Beach Boys' version includes such significant changes as the inclusion of a bridge that was not part of Manson's version, and the change of the line "Cease to exist" to "Cease to resist, " which alters the meaning of the song.

Portions of the album have been sampled or covered by many other artists, such as Front Line Assembly. Many of the songs have also been re-recorded; a version of "Look at Your Game, Girl" appears as a hidden track on the Guns N' Roses cover album "The Spaghetti Incident?", while GG Allin covered "Garbage Dump" for his 1987 album You Give Love a Bad Name and Rob Zombie, Redd Kross and The Lemonheads have all covered "Cease To Exist. " The Lemonheads recorded two other songs from the album, a version of "Home is Where You're Happy" appeared on the 1988 album Creator and Evan Dando reappropriated some of the lyrics and melody of "Big Iron Door" into his song "Left For Dead, " which appears on the group's 1990 album, Lovey.

The Brian Jonestown Massacre does a reworked version of "Arkansas" (called "Arkansas Revisited") on their 1999 EP Bringing It All Back Home – Again. Frontman Anton Newcombe frequenctly cites Manson as an influence, even claiming to have recorded with Manson.

An acoustic version of the song "Sick City" was recorded by Marilyn Manson, but this has never been officially released. The Marilyn Manson song "My Monkey, " from the album Portrait of an American Family, contains samples of Charles Manson speaking, as well as lyrics from the track "Mechanical Man. "

Devendra Banhart does a version of "Home Is Where You're Happy".

Track listing

All tracks written by Charles Manson.

Reissues (counterfeit not listed)

All proceeds from one reissue of the album, released by Awareness Records, were donated to a California fund for victims of violent crime, as California law prohibited Manson himself from collecting any money or royalties for his work.

In 2006, the album was reissued by the revived ESP-Disk label. This version included twelve bonus tracks. A label employee confirmed that all artist royalties would go to the family of Wojciech Frykowski, whom the Manson Family was convicted of having murdered.

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Personnel