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This episode is brought to you by White Claw Search Great podcast pick friend. No surprises there. After all, you're all about finding the tastiest flavors out there, just like White Claw Surge. And with big bold flavors to enjoy like blood orange, BlackBerry, cranberry and more, it's time to go all in on taste. Unleash the flavor. Unleash what? White Claw Surge. Please drink responsibly. Hard seltzer with flavors 8% alcohol by volume. White Claw Seltzer Works Chicago, Illinois this episode contains content that may be disturbing to some listeners. Please check the show notes for more information. Disgraceland is a production of Double Elvis. The stories about the Beach Boys, specifically about their drummer Dennis Wilson, are insane. He lit himself on fire, got into a fist fight with the singer and his band on stage in front of thousands, partied with Steve McQueen, and befriended and helped support, unbeknownst to him, one of the most notorious serial killers of all time. Dennis Wilson was the handsome, sunny California surf kid who Brian Wilson, his big brother, wrote all those Beach Boys songs about. But he was also consumed by drugs, alcohol, and darkness. Much of that darkness was due to his relationship with Charles Manson and his guilt over the brutal murders of Sharon Tate, Jay Sebring, and all who were felled by Manson's psychotic, homicidal rage. But Dennis Wilson made great music. That music you heard at the top of the show, that wasn't great music. That was a preset loop from my melotron called Monkey in a grind MK1. I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to end the year 2525 by Zager and Evans. And why would I play you that specific slice of Futuro Doom cheese? Could I afford it? Because that was the number one song in America on August 8, 1969. And that was the day Charles Manson's killers crept into the house of Dennis Wilson's friends to commit one of the most gruesome murders in American history. An act that had countless consequences. But for the Beach Boys, forever put to rest the notion of their sunny innocence, marking with authority the beginning of the end for one of the biggest bands on the planet. On this episode, Futuro Cheese. The Beach Boys, Dennis Wilson, Charles Manson and the End of Innocence. I'm Jake Brennan and this is Disgrace. Sam Cook had been dead for almost four years, but his cherry red Ferrari was very much alive. And at the moment, in 1968, its new owner, Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys, was using it to tear the ass off off of the two lane blacktop out on the pch. Dennis downshifted the Ferrari's powerful engine as soon as he saw them. Two hippie girls, one pregnant, both attractive, young with their thumbs outstretched on the side of the road, pacing backwards. Slowly cut off jeans, stems for days, bare feet, visible dirt on their skin, loose flower children, blouses, matted hair, sexy as fuck. Dennis slowed the car to the curb, popped open the passenger side door. Both girls hopped in. Dennis flashed that gazillion watt dumb beach bum smile. Hippie hearts melted. First gear, it's all right. Second gear, out of sight. Spinning tires, spitting sand, squealing rubber, and they were off. In no time they were pulling into his driveway. But it was well understood before the front door of Dennis Sunset Boulevard bachelor pad even opened, they were going to fuck. And so they did. And for Dennis, one of Hollywood's most notorious stunts. Dickman. The sex was revelatory. It tapped into something within him that he didn't know was there. Since splitting with his wife Carol. The sex Dennis had been having as of late, despite its randomness, despite its wildness, it had grown stale. Groupies, hitchhiking hippies, aspiring starlets, even bonafide stars Catherine Deneuve, Jane Seymour and Goldie Hawn among them. He had been having so much sex so often and with so many different partners that it all seemed to blend together. In 1968, sex for Dennis Wilson was more like masturbation. Ordinary, rote, functionary. But sex with these two filthy hippies was something else entirely. It was like they'd been trained by a master to serve, but not just to cater, to connect. Dennis was lost in the menage a trois, completely out of his head. To the unenlightened, his state during sex could be described as being unconscious, but as the enlightened, as the contrarian gurus, as the teachers and the seekers, the Maharishi and Gurdjieff and that fucking Blockhead cousin of his and singer in his band, Mike Love. As they would all agree, it wasn't unconsciousness, it was peak consciousness. It was more than sex. It was transcendent. When it was over, Dennis wiped himself off, threw on his jeans and T shirt and split for his brother Brian's studio. He had a recording session that night. He told the girls to hang tight at his pad. He'd be back for round two in a couple hours. In 1968, the Beach Boys were in a tenuous state. They had experienced near immediate chart topping success when they hit the scene in 1963. But by 68 all the vertigo of their ride to the top had finally hit and they were reeling. Inspired by Dennis, genuine embodiment of the Southern California surfer life, filtered through the musical genius of his older brother Brian, and guided to their initial recording contract by the Wilson brothers, overbearing and meddling father Murray, the Beach Boys had built a throne out of surf rock on the west coast of America, just as the Beatles were building their own parallel throne out of Brit pop on the west coast of England. And then, almost simultaneously, both bands transcended their pop roots, shed their skins and remade themselves as countercultural visionaries. Murray, the old man was out as manager. So were the skinny ties and candy striped matching suits. Brian's compositions grew more operatic and experimental. The 60s, or at least what we talk about when we talk about the 60s, had arrived. By mid decade, the mutual admiration society between the Beach Boys and the Beatles had produced several of the greatest records of all time. The Beatles Rubber Sole inspired the Beach Boys, Pet Sounds and Pet Sounds Inspired the Beatles. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Brian Wilson's artistic correspondence with the artists he considered his peers resulted in some of the greatest music of the 20th century. And not just his own. That is the very definition of cultural influence. The Beach Boys caught a wave and were sitting on top of the world. But the air gets thin when you're up that high. And Brian's constant need to defy gravity left him lighten it. He had always been a sensitive soul, but the demands of the throne of creative genius had led him from that transcendent high into something scarier, weirder, more paranoid. Extensive drug use, LSD experimentation and all the other rights of 60s rock royalty had unlocked greater volatility and vulnerability in Brian Wilson's fertile creative mind. When the result of that was Brian literally living in an indoor set sandbox. It was troubling, to say the least. But when the result was something like Good Vibrations, the Pure piece of pop synthesis intended as a prototype for the sound that Beach Boys would achieve on their next anticipated masterpiece album, Smile. Well, one Good Vibrations forgave a lot of indoor sandboxes. Brian called the song a teenage symphony to God. It was more tender loving care than three minute pop. More impressionist paint than assembly line product. It was born out of a library of individual sounds Brian had categorized by feeling. He used them as brushstrokes to recombine into a track that most likely made Paul McCartney seethe with jealousy. And yet Brian had become too anxious to perform live. As he dug in to record the full album, he became increasingly retired. He suffered outright delusions that his songs were causing terrible events out in the real world. The mind fuck was too much for him. The release of Smile was canceled, making it one of, if not the most notorious unreleased album in the history of pop. On a business level, it was moot. Brian Wilson was either having a nervous breakdown or he was such a sensitive soul that he was having a premonition of things like lurking out there in the darkness of the future While Brian Wilson spiraled, Dennis Wilson partied. The Beach Boys next three albums, Smiley Smile, Wild Honey and Friends, were received with disappointment, both critically and commercially. Each album had its moments, particularly Wild Honey, where the band seemed to remember what the Beatles never forgot. That at their core, stripped of all the hippie zeitgeist artifice, they were always just a good little rock and roll band. Perhaps it wasn't fully appreciated at the time, the fact that the band's creative turn south was due to Bryant's mental health. But regardless, their canceled performance at the Monterey pop festival in 1967 dealt an undeniable public blow to their reputation and relevance. Yet here Dennis Wilson was in 1968, trying, in his way anyway, to keep his and his brothers Brian and Carl Wilson's endless summer of love dream alive. Jamming that afternoon at Brian's, working on the next album with two dirty hippie sexpots waiting back home for him. Record sales were down, but so what? It was all good. Peace, love and lots of sex. And his brothers loved him for it. Most people loved him for it. Dennis was the type of guy who showed up and left work with a smile on his face. Charismatic isn't strong enough a word positive to his core. Back then, he seldom had a negative word to say about anyone. Except, of course, for Mike Love. The Beach Boys by this point were splitting into two camps. Camp One, the brothers Wilson, Brian, Carl, and their fierce defender and loyal brother Dennis and Everyone else, Mike, guitarist Al Jardine and Brian's road replacement Bruce Johnston. The latter camp endeavored to keep the wheels on and ensure the band remained a profitable, creatively satisfying endeavor worth everyone's time. The former camp had, well, less formal intentions and was clouded by a reservoir of alcohol and lsd. Beach Boys fans divide themselves amongst these camps as well, with those who consider themselves serious aficionados. Aligning with Team Wilson, they harbor real contempt for Mike Love and company. Brian, the sensitive, drugged out creative genius is viewed as the vulnerable mark for the straight as an arrow, Machiavellian Mike Loves, who throughout the history of the band is seen as being guilty for their greatest creative transgressions. Kokomo, anyone? Paging Mr. John Stamos. Uncle Jesse, you're late for the gig. But this is way too simple an explanation. The Beach Boys, pretty much since their inception were a total mess. Creatively, financially, personally, in every which way. And a large part of that mess was created and sustained by Brian, Carl and Dennis Wilson. Not that the Mike Love camp's hands were totally clean. But Mike Love is was more than a creative boogeyman, more than a necessary evil. Much more. He was a great singer, an astute lyricist and skilled songwriter who brought out some of the best in his cousin Brian Wilson. And in a lot of ways, Mike Love was the engine that motored the Beach Boys forward through blow after devastating blow. Without Mike Love and to a lesser degree, without Bruce Johnston, the Beach Boys would have ceased to exist a long time ago. Maybe that wouldn't have been such a bad thing. I get why people would think that way, but I don't. There'd be no wild honey either way. I digress. Back to Dennis Wilson and the hippie sexbots. The session was dragging. Brian was stuck and Dennis was bored. He bounced eagerly, headed home for what he hoped would be another round of mind bending sex with the two hitchhikers he'd left back at his place, the one that called herself no Joke Cinderella and the other one, Katie. Dennis pulled his car up the driveway at 14400 Sunset Boulevard, killed the engine and made his way up the stairs to his patio entrance. He felt the California night air shift. Suddenly there was a chill. And then he saw something ominous and stopped short on the stairs. There, a few feet in front of him, was a small, mean looking man, a long hair, standing in the light of his doorway. He was disheveled, dirty. The menace in his dilated pupils was immediately evident. In fact, his eyes seemed to roll around inside of his head. As he stood there near still but oddly somehow pulsating his body, his lips clenched, his cheekbones stretched themselves up the sides of his face and pressed his eyes into that insane rolling spell they were now casting. The short man's chest heaved slowly as he stood, moving ever so slightly, not bouncing, not rocking, not quite shifting, but definitely moving softly, almost, it seemed to Dennis, hovering. His aura was obvious. It was dark, compelling, witchy. Dennis spoke first. Are you going to hurt me? This short man spoke as if the option was definitely on the table. Do you want me to hurt you, brother? Dennis stood silent, his heart beating a rampant triple stroke roll. Total fear. It was clear that he didn't want the short man to hurt him. That is. The short man took a step toward Dennis. Dennis leaned back impulsively but otherwise remained still. His heartbeat quickened. More fear. And then the short man dropped to his knees and began kissing Dennis Wilson's feet. Dennis was still in shock when the man finally stood and looked up at him to say, welcome home brother. My name is Charlie.