Lie: The Love and Terror Cult

Lie: The Love and Terror Cult
Studio album by Charles Manson
Released	March 6, 1970[1]
Recorded	June 1967 September 11, 1967 August 8–9, 1968
Studio	Gold Star Studios, Los Angeles unknown studio in Van Nuys, LA
Genre	Folk rock soft rock[2] psychedelic folk
Length	31:53
Label	Awareness
Producer	Phil Kaufman
Charles Manson chronology
Lie: The Love and Terror Cult (1970) The Family Jams (1997)

Professional ratings
Review scores
Source	Rating
All About Jazz	(favorable)[3]
Mojo	(favorable)[4]
AllMusic	[2]

Lie: The Love and Terror Cult (stylized as LIE: The Love and Terror Cult) is the debut studio album by American convicted criminal and folk singer-songwriter Charles Manson. It was released on vinyl on March 6, 1970 by Phil Kaufman, through a record label branded Awareness Records. Although not a commercial success, the album has received critical praise by reviewers such as those in the All Music Guide, and it retains a following among Americans interested in the Manson case, with multiple covers and samples made by musicians from the album. Examples include artists such as GG Allin, Guns N' Roses and Marilyn Manson.^[2]

The cover is a parody of the December 19, 1969 Life magazine cover, which featured Manson along with the headline "The Love and Terror Cult". The two covers are identical; however the "F" in "LIFE" has been deleted and the line "The dark edge of hippie life" has been removed. The date and price are replaced with the Awareness Records logo.

Background

In 1968, Phil Kaufman, who had met Manson in prison, moved in briefly with Manson and his "Family". Kaufman continually urged Manson to record some of his (Manson's) songs.^[5] Sometime in mid 1968,^[6] Manson attempted to construct an album with members of the Beach Boys. Carl and Brian Wilson co-produced about ten songs by Manson that he recorded at Brian's home studio.^[7] These tapes remain unreleased, though the songs themselves may overlap with the material present on Lie: The Love and Terror Cult.^[8]

While Manson was being held on the Tate-LaBianca charges, he told Kaufman "please put out my music". According to Kaufman, Manson phoned him five days a week, even though he was allowed only three phone calls per day. Manson was "very anxious for his music to be heard".^[5]

Recording

According to the album's original sleeve notes, Lie: The Love and Terror Cult was recorded primarily at Gold Star Studios on August 8, 1968, with track B3, "Sick City", recorded September 11, 1967 in an unspecified location. Overdubs were recorded on August 9, 1968 somewhere in Van Nuys, Los Angeles.^[9] 2 tracks from the album, "Look At Your Game, Girl" and "Eyes Of A Dreamer" were recorded in June 1967 at a demo session for Uni Records (a subsidiary of MCA.) These 2 songs appeared on a privately pressed 45 rpm single and credited to "Silverhawk". When Phil Kaufman was mastering the "Lie" LP, he had to take these 2 tracks from a copy of the 45, as the master tapes were already lost.

Release

After established record companies declined to become involved, Kaufman raised $3,000 and pressed 2,000 copies of an album entitled Lie: The Love and Terror Cult on March 6, 1970^[5][10] through a record label called Awareness Records. It was distributed on the West Coast, by Trademark of Quality, the bootlegging group who released the first notable bootleg album, Great White Wonder, a collection of pirated Bob Dylan tapes.^[5] Consisting of the recordings made from 1967 to 1968, the album contained thirteen songs. These included "Cease to Exist", a song The Beach Boys had recorded in modified form as "Never Learn Not to Love".^[11] Its album cover is a copy of the December 19, 1969 Life front cover on which Manson had appeared, only with "Life" replaced with the word "Lie". Each of the original 2,000 copies came with a poster that was put out by "A Joint Venture" and that bore signatures of many prisoners and inmates, all supporting Manson and the Family. Only 300 sold.^[12] Having supposedly failed to recover his investment, Kaufman signed an agreement with New-York-based ESP-Disk to distribute the album nationally.^[5]

During the 1991 Ron Reagan Jr. interview with Charles Manson, Manson stated that "That particular album was made off a little old $7 tape recorder, and it was put together as a promotion angle, and the guy made six or seven hundred dollars for that. My music is not on tape."

Covers and sampling

"Cease to Exist" had been previously recorded by The Beach Boys under the name "Never Learn Not to Love, " and it appears both on their 1969 album, 20/20, and as the B-side of the single of "Bluebirds over the Mountain. " Manson was not given co-writing credit. The Beach Boys's version includes such significant changes as the inclusion of a bridge that was not part of Manson's version, and the change of the line "Cease to exist" to "Cease to resist, " which alters the meaning of the song.

Portions of the album have been sampled or covered by many other artists, such as Front Line Assembly. Many of the songs have also been re-recorded; a version of "Look at Your Game, Girl" appears as a hidden track on the Guns N' Roses cover album "The Spaghetti Incident?", while GG Allin covered "Garbage Dump" for his 1987 album You Give Love a Bad Name and Rob Zombie, Redd Kross and The Lemonheads have all covered "Cease To Exist. " The Lemonheads recorded two other songs from the album, a version of "Home is Where You're Happy" appeared on the 1988 album Creator and Evan Dando reappropriated some of the lyrics and melody of "Big Iron Door" into his song "Left For Dead, " which appears on the group's 1990 album, Lovey.

The Brian Jonestown Massacre does a reworked version of "Arkansas" (called "Arkansas Revisited") on their 1999 EP Bringing It All Back Home – Again. Frontman Anton Newcombe frequenctly cites Manson as an influence, even claiming to have recorded with Manson.^[13]

An acoustic version of the song "Sick City" was recorded by Marilyn Manson, but this has never been officially released. The Marilyn Manson song "My Monkey, " from the album Portrait of an American Family, contains samples of Charles Manson speaking, as well as lyrics from the track "Mechanical Man. "

Devendra Banhart does a version of "Home Is Where You're Happy".

Track listing

All songs written and composed by Charles Manson. 

Side A
No.	Title	Length
1.	"Look at Your Game, Girl"	2:03
2.	"Ego"	2:27
3.	"Mechanical Man"	3:18
4.	"People Say I'm No Good"	3:20
5.	"Home Is Where You're Happy"	1:29
6.	"Arkansas"	3:03
7.	"I'll Never Say Never to Always"	0:41

Side B
No.	Title	Length
1.	"Garbage Dump"	2:34
2.	"Don't Do Anything Illegal"	2:52
3.	"Sick City"	1:36
4.	"Cease to Exist"	2:12
5.	"Big Iron Door"	1:10
6.	"I Once Knew a Man"	2:33
7.	"Eyes of a Dreamer"	2:35

2006 ESP-Disk CD bonus tracks
No.	Title	Length
15.	"Devil Man"	3:15
16.	"The More You Love"	1:41
17.	"Two Pairs of Shoes"	1:56
18.	"Maiden with Green Eyes (Remember Me)"	1:24
19.	"Swamp Girl"	1:58
20.	"Bet You Think I Care"	2:12
21.	"Look At Your Game, Girl (Alternate Version)"	1:45
22.	"Interview"	3:17
23.	"Who to Blame"	2:26
24.	"True Love You Will Find"	2:52
25.	"My World"	1:45
26.	"Invisible Tears"	1:33

Reissues (counterfeit not listed)^[14]

All proceeds from one reissue of the album, released by Awareness Records, were donated to a California fund for victims of violent crime, as California law prohibited Manson himself from collecting any money or royalties for his work.

In 2006, the album was reissued by the revived ESP-Disk label.^[15] This version included twelve bonus tracks. A label employee confirmed that all artist royalties would go to the family of Wojciech Frykowski, whom the Manson Family was convicted of having murdered.

Year	Album details	Additional information
1970	LIE. The Love and Terror Cult Released: 1970, USA Label: Awareness Records Formats: LP	(official and first release, no. A-2144 & B-22145 (on disc labels))
1970	LIE. The Love and Terror Cult Released: 1970, USA Label: ESP-DISK Formats: LP	13 Songs Composed and Performed by Charles Manson Accompanied by the Family. ' (official release, no. ESP-2003 (on cover); ESP-2003 (2144) & ESP-2003 (2145) (on disc labels))
1970	LIE. The Love and Terror Cult Released: 1970, USA Label: ESP-DISK Formats: MC	13 Songs Composed and Performed by Charles Manson With Vocal & Instrumental Accompaniment by the Family. ' (official release, no. 2003-C)
1971	12 Canciones. Compuestas y Cantadas por Charles Manson Released: 1971, Spain Label: Movieplay Formats: LP	'12 Canciones. Compuestas y Cantadas por Charles Manson' (official, produced in license from ESP-DISK, no. M-24025).
1981	LIE Released: 1981, UK Label: Come Organisation Formats: MC	(semi-official rerelease, no. wdc883008 - two different cover releases)
1987	LIE. The Love and Terror Cult Released: 1987, USA Label: Awareness Records Formats: LP	(official, no. 08903-0156 (on cover) Aware 1 (on disk label)
1987	LIE. The Love and Terror Cult Released: 1987, USA Label: Awareness Records Formats: CD	(official, no. Aware1CD; 08903=0156)
1987	LIE. The Love and Terror Cult Released: 1987, USA Label: Awareness Records Formats: MC	(official, no. Aware1C; 08903=0156)
1993	Charles Manson Released: 1993, UK Label: Grey Matter Formats: CD	(official, no. GM05CD - also includes the songs from the album 'The Manson Family Sings the Songs of Charles Manson' recorded in 1970, originally released on LP in 1992 by Commodity.)
2006	Sings / LIE. The Love and Terror Cult Released: 2006, USA Label: ESP-DISK Formats: CD	This is the LIE album but released as 'Sings' on the back cover. The front cover is the traditional cover but with a red background behind the word LIE but the rest of the cover is the same with 'The Love and Terror Cult'(official release, no. ESP 2003)
2006	LIE: The 1967 LP Released: 2006, USA Label: White Devil Records Formats: CD-R	(official release, no number)
2008	Sings / LIE. The Love and Terror Cult Released: 2008, USA Label: ESP-DISK Formats: CD	(official release, new version of the 2006 edition by ESP-DISK issued as a digipack - 26 tracks). This is the LIE album but released as 'Sings' on the back cover. The front cover is the traditional cover but with a red background behind the word LIE but the rest of the cover is the same with 'The Love and Terror Cult'

Personnel

• Charles Manson – vocals, guitar, bass guitar

References

1. "What's in It for Charlie Manson?". Rolling Stone (Straight Arrow Publishers, Inc.) (55): 18. April 2, 1970.
2. Henderson, Alex. "LIE: The Love & Terror Cult". AllMusic. Retrieved June 28, 2013.
3. "All About Jazz review". Allaboutjazz.com. 2008-09-28. Retrieved 2012-08-18.
4. "Mojo review". Tower.com. 1993-12-15. Retrieved 2012-08-18.
5. Jahn, Mike. "Tales of the Ancient Rocker – Hustling Charles Manson". geocities.com/theancientrocker. Archived from the original on October 27, 2009. Retrieved April 24, 2013.
6. Doe, Andrew Grayham. "Tours & Sessions 1968". Bellagio 10452. Endless Summer Quarterly.
7. Manson 1994, p. 167.
8. Doe, Andrew Grayham. "Unreleased Albums". Bellagio 10452. Endless Summer Quarterly. Retrieved July 13, 2014.
9. Schreck, Nikolas (2011). The Manson File: Myth and Reality of an Outlaw Shaman (updated ed.). p. 130.
10. Sanders 2002, p. 336.
11. Sanders 2002, pp. 64–65.
12. Rolling Stone. June 1970. Missing or empty |title= (help)
13. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOJa_AhcVKY
14. 'The Complete Charles Manson Discography' compiled by Arvid Dittmann, featured as pages 935-988, 2011 updated edition, The Manson File: Myth and Reality of an Outlaw Shaman by Nikolas Schreck. The counterfeit releases are all listed in the book.
15. "ESP-Disk CD description". Discogs.com. Retrieved 2012-08-18.

Sources

• Manson, Charles (1994). Manson in His Own Words. Grove/Atlantic, Incorporated. ISBN 978-0-8021-3024-2.
• Sanders, Ed (2002). The Family. New York: Thunder's Mouth Press. ISBN 1-56025-396-7.

External links

• Lie: The Love and Terror Cult at Discogs (list of releases)