In spring 1969, Dennis Wilson, the only member of The Beach Boys who really surfed, had a chance run-in with two women who turned out to be members of Charles Manson‘s Family cult. The two became friends, with members of the Family moving into Dennis’ home and Manson hoped Dennis’ connections to the music business would help him launch his career. Manson did play some of his songs for Wilson’s brothers Brian Wilson and Carl Wilson, but none of those songs were released.
One of the songs Manson wrote was “Cease to Exist,” which he presented to Dennis. He reportedly gave up songwriting credit to Dennis in exchange for money to buy a motorcycle. When the Beach Boys recorded the song, many of the lyrics were changed and the structure was tweaked to better fit the group’s harmonies. The result was “Never Learn Not to Love,” a track released on the 20/20 album and as the B-side to “Bluebirds Over the Mountain.” The song was credited solely to Dennis and even performed on The Mike Douglas Show.
Videos by PopCulture.com
Today, the song would likely be forgotten were it not for the Manson connection. After the song was released in December 1968, Manson reportedly threatened to kill Dennis. Manson even brought a bullet to show him, according to musician Van Dyke Parks. Dennis realized Manson was becoming increasingly erratic and cut ties with him. Manson would later be responsible for nine murders in Los Angeles during the summer of 1969. In March 1970, he recorded “Cease to Exist” as he originally wrote it. Manson was convicted of murder charges in 1971 and died in prison on Nov. 19, 2017, at age 83.
The experience with Manson made up only a short time in the six-decade-plus history of the Beach Boys, but it weighed heavily on its members. In 2016, Dennis’ cousin Mike Love wrote about his own encounter with Manson in his book Good Vibrations. “My cousin’s interest in Manson now seems inexplicable… but in reality, Manson tapped into parts of Dennis that make it all too explainable,” Love wrote, reports PEOPLE. Love met Manson as well, recalling a moment when Mason confronted him in a shower with him to tell him he could not leave a gathering.
Al Jardine, a friend of the Wilson brothers and Love who co-founded the Beach Boys, told Goldmine in 2000 he was more irritated by Dennis’ connection to Manson. “It was just irritating ’cause they were always around and it was ‘Charlie this, Charlie that,’” Jardine recalled at the time. “And then he had this little thing that he and Charlie worked out. It was just a melody, a melody in ‘Never Learn Not To Love.’ Not the melody, but there was a mantra behind that. Then Dennis wanted to put it in everything. I thought, ‘Oh boy, this is getting to be too much.’”
The Manson experience weighed heavily on Dennis. He was scheduled to testify during Manson’s trial but did not take the stand. His abuse of drugs and alcohol continued to escalate through the last decade of his life. Dennis drowned in 1983, with a blood-alcohol level more than twice the legal limit. He was only 39. “Later, after the Tate/LaBianca murders, a shaken but grateful Wilson had this perspective,” Dylan Howard and Andy Tillett wrote in their 2019 book The Last Charles Manson Tapes: Evil Lives Beyond the Grave, notes Radar. “He would say he was one of the luckiest people to have come across the Family, because he only ended up losing money.”
