1968

1968 is the year the account places Terry Melcher’s sustained contact with Charles Manson and his Family at Dennis Wilson’s Hollywood home. The connection brought together a record producer with influence in popular music, Manson’s hopes of becoming a recording artist, and Debra Jo Hillhouse, a fifteen-year-old member of the Family whose personal ties to both Melcher and Wilson helped explain why they remained close to Manson’s circle.

Melcher and the recording business

Melcher was already established in the music industry: he produced records for The Byrds, had helped launch Paul Revere and the Raiders, and was a rising figure at Columbia Records. He did not consider Manson wholly without talent, but judged that his modest ability was not matched by the discipline needed to develop it. Manson’s folk-singer-songwriter ambitions also came at a poor moment for that market: established folk performers were moving toward amplified rock, while Melcher’s work had shifted toward Top 40 pop and catchy novelty records. Columbia already had Bob Dylan, and Melcher was seeking commercially appealing bands rather than another acoustic singer-songwriter. A stronger collection of songs might, in Melcher’s view, have led him to pass one of Manson’s compositions to Linda Ronstadt; it would not have persuaded him to produce a Manson album for Columbia.

Debra Jo Hillhouse at the center of the association

The account distinguishes Melcher’s and Wilson’s interest in Manson from their personal attraction to Debra Jo. Melcher’s time with the Family was not principally a search for musical promise: he was sexually involved with Debra Jo, as was Wilson. She had joined the Family at fifteen and was its youngest member at the time. Unlike the other young women described as joining after damaged relationships with their families, Debra Jo remained connected to her father. That difference made her route into Manson’s circle unusual and gave the Family’s chosen-family structure a more complicated personal history.

An earlier family link

During a conversation with Melcher at Wilson’s home, Debra Jo explained that she had first encountered Manson through her father: he had picked Manson up while Manson was hitchhiking about a year earlier. The detail places a family connection behind what might otherwise appear to be a purely countercultural association. In the account of 1968, Debra Jo was therefore not only the object of attention from two men in Wilson’s circle; she was also the link through whom a prior encounter between her father and Manson could be recalled.