Gary Stromberg, the producer and co-founder of a PR firm who has overseen such acts as Elton John, Crosby Stills & Nash, Ray Charles, Pink Floyd and the Rolling Stones, recalls the time he learned he was on Charles Manson’s hit list.
In one episode Stones Touring Party podcast, hosted by former PEOPLE editor Jordan Runtagh, Stromberg said he met Manson when he visited his good friend Phil Kaufman — who was Manson’s cellmate — in prison.
“I’d go see Phil in prison and write to him, and he’d ask me if I could get him some acid, so I’d drop acid on the stationary drips and write them letters,” he said in an archived interview with journalist Robert Greenfield, who was on the tour. with the Rolling Stones in the summer of 1972 and conducted an interview with the band and their entourage.
He adds: “So they’d cut it into segments and he’d pass it around. Charlie [Manson] got his acid from me!”
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When Manson got out of prison, he dreamed of joining the music business, so Kaufman put him in touch with Stromberg, who was working for Universal at the time. One day, Manson showed up at a meeting.
“I call this guy Russ Reagan, who was the head of Uni Records — they just started a label. I said, ‘There’s a guy here, I think you should listen to him.’ He said, ‘Sure, bring him up,'” he recalls. “So I went into his office. Charlie sat down at his desk and started playing music. Russ was like, ‘What is this one?’ Out of shame he says: ‘I’ll give you money to make a demo.’ So we set up a demo.”
They went on to record five songs with Stromberg producing and saying “the music was terrible”. (The songs were later published in the 1970s The lie: love and terror. Manson also wrote the Beach Boys song “Never Learn Not to Love” with drummer Dennis Wilson.)
“I took it to Russ the next day. We listened to it and Russ said, ‘Just get rid of this, this is terrible.’ And I did. Charlie got really mad at me because I couldn’t help him,” he said of Manson, who went on to live with Wilson for a time. “He tried to talk me into trying other labels, and I said, ‘I’m sorry, this isn’t me. This isn’t what I do.’ And Charlie, we just parted on bad terms.”
After things didn’t work out with Stromberg, Manson found music producer Terry Melcher who also turned him down after recording. Coincidentally, on August 9, 1969, Manson directed his followers to visit 10050 Cielo Drive and kill everyone inside. Melcher lived there while they worked together.
“When all that s— is gone [Sharon] Tate and everyone else, he was arrested. Then the FBI came to me and informed me that when they arrested Charlie, they found a list of people he was going to kill – and that I was on that list,” he says. “That’s how I got him out of his mouth. city! I went to Europe and just hung up for a month or two and moved around. I was just afraid. I got a van and I drove all over Europe, I just feared for my life.”
He continues, “I knew there were other guys still on the street. They were still part of the Manson movement. I mean, I had known Charlie for a few months, so I knew a little bit about him, and [knew that] his arrest did not remove the threat. So I moved around Europe for a while until I felt it was safe to come back.”
Charles Manson in 1980.
Albert Foster/Mirrorpix/Getty
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The full episode, which also explores The Stones’ return to Los Angeles for a show at the Palladium, where “a reckless Satanist appears at the stage door, claiming to be the band’s dead guitarist Brian Jones,” is available to listen to here.
During a two-day rampage in August 1969, Manson and his followers were responsible for the murder of seven people, including 26-year-old actress Sharon Tate.
The murders were part of Manson’s plot to start a race war, which he called “Helter Skelter” after a Beatles song. They were particularly gruesome in nature: pregnant Tate, the wife of director Roman Polanski, was found stabbed 16 times, with an “X” carved into her stomach inside her secluded Los Angeles home in the canyons above Hollywood and Beverly Hills.
Also killed were coffee heiress Abigail Folger, writer Voytek Frykowski, hairdresser Jay Sebring and 18-year-old delivery boy Steven Parent. Their bodies were discovered the next day.
Manson died of natural causes at the age of 83 in November 2017.
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Source: HIS Education