Good Thing

Good Thing is a song by Paul Revere and the Raiders and one of Sharon Tate’s particular favorites. In the scene where it plays, the track ties the musical past of her Cielo Drive home to her own unguarded pop tastes and domestic routine: she listens, moves to its opening guitar riff, then returns to packing Roman Polanski’s suitcase.

The song and its connection to the house

Sharon has found a stack of cellophane-covered copies of the band’s album The Spirit of ’67 in the guest-room closet. Their presence reflects the house’s earlier musical associations. Terry Melcher, who had lived there before Sharon and Roman, shared it with Mark Lindsay, the Raiders’ lead singer, before actress Candice Bergen moved in with Melcher. The band’s creator and the album’s producer had also rented the house.

Rudi Altobelli, the owner who lives in the guesthouse behind the main house, tells Sharon that Lindsay and Melcher wrote Good Thing on the white piano in the living room. The song is thus connected not only to the records left behind, but to a specific place in the home where its former occupants made music.

Sharon’s taste and the listening scene

Sharon likes the catchy songs she hears on KHJ, including several bubble-gum pop hits, and particularly enjoys Paul Revere and the Raiders’ Kicks, Hungry, and Good Thing. Her enthusiasm sits apart from the taste of Roman and their hip friends: Roman dislikes what he regards as bubble-gum music, while Sharon neither argues with him nor shares his judgment. She privately prefers the Monkees to the Beatles, valuing the former’s humor and appeal over questions of musical authorship.

When Sharon places the needle on the first track of The Spirit of ’67, Good Thing’s opening guitar riff comes through the speakers. She immediately moves her shoulders and hips to the beat, then goes back to packing Roman’s suitcase for his departure to London the next day. The small movement makes her enjoyment physical and unceremonious; the song belongs both to the house’s history and to the ordinary present of her listening.