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The Beach Boys‘ “Kokomo” was critically reviled, but it’s been a summer classic for decades. Lana Del Rey even mentioned it in a song. However, that song could be seen as disrespectful toward “Kokomo.” Here’s a look at some fascinatingly ambiguous lyrics in one of Del Rey’s ballads.

1 Lana Del Rey song mentions The Beach Boys’ ‘Kokomo’ and David Bowie’s ‘Life on Mars?’

One of the pleasures of Del Rey’s discography is how she carefully weaves references to classic rock songs throughout her work. Her tunes name-drop great tracks like the Plastic Ono Band’s “Give Peace a Chance,” Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer,” The Beatles’ “Tomorrow Never Knows,” Elvis Presley’s “Blue Suede Shoes,” and Tommy James and the Shondells’ “Crimson and Cover.” Del Rey’s ballad “The Greatest” stays true to form.

“The Greatest” alludes to Kanye West, David Bowie’s “Life on Mars?...

The Beach Boys and The Monkees will forever be remembered as two of the best pop bands ever — even if they constantly get compared to The Beatles. During their peak era, The Beach Boys and The Monkees had the same number of chart-topping singles. One band managed to have another chart-topper years later.

The Beach Boys and The Monkees both evolved from bubblegum to psychedelia

The Beach Boys did very well for themselves in the 1960s. The Billboard Book of Number 1 Hits says they had three No. 1 singles during that decade. They were “I Get Around,” “Help Me, Rhonda,” and “Good Vibrations.” Those songs encapsulate the band’s pea period pretty well. The first two show off the band’s bubblegum/doo-wop side, while “Good Vibrations” is one of their prime psychedelic experimentations.

During the same decade, The Monkees also had three No. 1 hits. They were “Last Train to Clarksville,...

Tl;Dr:

The Beach Boys’ “Kokomo” was hated by critics because it was considered too sugary. It isn’t as experimental as some of the classic tracks The Beach Boys released in the 1960s. Despite this, the song fills a void in the world of popular music. The Beach Boys | Michael Ochs Archives / Stringer

The Beach Boys‘ “Kokomo” garnered a hostile reception among music critics. They’re wrong. Here’s a look at why “Kokomo” is hated and why it is so much better than its reputation suggests.

A drummer said critics hated The Beach Boys’ ‘Kokomo’ and tried to kill it with their words

Jim Keltner is a studio drummer who worked on “Kokomo.” During a 2004 interview with Entertainment Weekly, he said critics loathed the song “because it’s just sooo syrupy pop.” Of course, the reviews only mattered so much. “But while the critics killed it with their words,...

Rolling Stone‘s interview series King for a Day features long-form conversations between senior writer Andy Greene and singers who had the difficult job of fronting major rock bands after the departure of an iconic vocalist. Some of them stayed in their bands for years, while others lasted just a few months. In the end, however, they all found out that replacement singers can themselves be replaced. This edition features former Fleetwood Mac singer Billy Burnette.

Billy Burnette has been creating music on a professional level for so long that...

Pumpkin spice is in the air and on TikTok, the hygge aesthetic is building to a fever pitch. Videos of spooky still lifes and boots crunching through leaves have been circulating since July, and lately home-decor videos have a distinctly fall aesthetic to them. Candles burn in the twilight, and mugs of coffee beckon beside artfully positioned throw blankets. Accompanying a growing number of these interior-design videos is a scratchy demo of an acoustic folk song that goes, “Home is where you’re happy, it’s not where you’re not free.

If you’re a film nerd putting together a late summer reading list, look no further. There are a number of books here that could qualify as “beach reads,” chief among them a new novel from Quentin Tarantino. Others might be a tad heavy to lug to the beach, but they will be just as enticing at home. So let’s go swimming in a deep roundup of new books on filmmaking.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood by Quentin Tarantino (Harper Perennial)

Only Quentin Tarantino could return to a film just two years later and radically change the order of things, remove numerous noteworthy scenes while expanding others, devote a shocking number of pages to Lancer plot summaries, embark on a headline-grabbing press tour, and still emerge with a book as successful as Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. As with any creation from Tarantino, there are moments of real reader discomfort here,...

It’s been almost two years since Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” opened in theaters and ignited a global controversy around his depiction of Bruce Lee. Bruce’s daughter, Shannon Lee, condemned Tarantino for his “irresponsible” portrayal of the martial arts icon and said the film created lasting negative views about her father. The scene, in which actor Mike Moh stars as Bruce Lee, is reportedly the reason China refused to release “Hollywood” in theaters unless it was removed. Tarantino refused. The director also defended his portrayal, saying Lee was “an arrogant guy” in real life.

The Bruce Lee discussion as it relates to “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” resurfaced this week during Tarantino’s appearance on “The Joe Rogan Experience” to promote the just-released “Hollywood” novelization. While the filmmaker can sympathize with Shannon Lee for being upset with the “Hollywood” version of Bruce Lee,...

Late last week, Variety broke the news that a sequel to the 1989 cult classic Troop Beverly Hills was in the works with Israeli director Oran Zegman. For those not familiar with the original, it’s about a wealthy Beverly Hills mother (Shelley Long) who leads her daughter’s Wilderness Girl troop after her husband leaves her for another woman. The cast is packed with future stars like Jenny Lewis, Tori Spelling, Carla Gugino, and Kellie Martin.

The film begins with an animated sequence set to “Make It Big” by the Beach Boys,...

Midway through Lethal Weapon 2, there’s a scene where Detective Martin Riggs (Mel Gibson) brings Rika van den Haas (Patsy Kensit) to his beachside trailer for a date, even though she’s the secretary of an evil apartheid-era South African government official that’s determined to kill him along with much of the Lapd. Before long, he’ll be fishing her lifeless body out of the ocean and vowing to avenge her death, but prior to that unpleasantness they enjoy a few beers and listen to the new Beach...

There were more Charles Manson moments shot for Once Upon a Time in...Hollywood — and now they are coming to light thanks to Tuesday's Blu-ray release, which includes a number of deleted scenes from the Quentin Tarantino film.

One of those scenes is an elongated introduction to Charles Manson, played by Damon Herriman in the Sony film.

In the theatrical release, Manson goes to the Hollywood Hills home where Sharon Tate and husband Roman Polanski live, looking for the former resident, music producer Terry Melcher, and his friend, Beach Boys member Dennis Wilson. He is told by Jay ...

There were more Charles Manson moments shot for Once Upon a Time in...Hollywood — and now they are coming to light thanks to Tuesday's Blu-ray release, which includes a number of deleted scenes from the Quentin Tarantino film.

One of those scenes is an elongated introduction to Charles Manson, played by Damon Herriman in the Sony film.

In the theatrical release, Manson goes to the Hollywood Hills home where Sharon Tate and husband Roman Polanski live, looking for the former resident, music producer Terry Melcher, and his friend, Beach Boys member Dennis Wilson. He is told by Jay ...

While on the Oscar campaign trail for “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” Quentin Tarantino found time to woo Grammy voters at a special event for the soundtrack of his new film. The Q&a, moderated by music writer David Wild, took place recently at the Grammy Museum in downtown La, and featured a special performance by Paul Revere and the Raiders lead vocalist Mark Lindsay, who sang three of his own classic songs featured in the movie.

Though he’s won Oscars for writing “Pulp Fiction” and “Django Unchained,” Tarantino has yet to win a Grammy, despite receiving nominations for both “Kill Bill” films, “Inglourious Basterds” and “Django” in the Best Visual Media Compilation category. But unfortunately, he lamented, “that category didn’t exist the year of ‘Pulp Fiction,'” which featured one of the most iconic soundtracks in recent movie history. “So every time I get nominated, there...

From the stark contrast “Stuck In The Middle With You” provided for Mr. Blonde torturing a cop in “Reservior Dogs” to Mia Wallace and Vincent Vega’s iconic dance to Chuck Berry’s “You Never Can Tell” in “Pulp Fiction,” Quentin Tarantino is a proven master in choosing just the right song, and the extensive track list in “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” is no exception.

Tarantino discussed the music of his latest film during a 90-minute event at the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles this week alongside guests who included Mark Lindsay of Paul Revere & the Raiders, a band that contributed three pieces of sonic ’60s history to the movie.

Here are five things we learned from the event.

For the opening credits, the song made the sequence

The director said he had two songs in mind for the opening-credit sequence, which involves scenes of Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie...

It’s the dog days of summer, but there are changes in the wind. The first festival to allow legal cannabis sales takes places this weekend; the biggest music company in the world is contemplating selling off a piece; the two biggest performing rights societies are trying to get the rules under which they are governed changed; and music on FM radio may soon go away, at least according to one prominent analysis.

All that and the biggest song of the last 12 months, Lady Gaga’s Shallow, is being accused in a lawsuit of being derived from another tune.

This week in music:

House Of The Rising Star: Audius, a blockchain music streaming service, is offering up a Laurel Canyon pad for free to select artists and collectives who need space to create put on a show, podcast or whatever. Forrest Browning, co-founder and Cpo of Audius, said Laurel Canyon...

Actress Sharon Tate was only 26 years old when her life and career were tragically cut short in one of the most brutal murders in Hollywood history. On Aug. 8, 1969, the stunning Valley of the Dolls star - who was married to film director Roman Polanski and eight and a half months pregnant with their son - was spending time with friends at 10050 Cielo Drive, the secluded home she and Roman shared in La's Benedict Canyon. Roman was off in London filming The Day of the Dolphin, so he asked their close pals Wojciech Frykowski and Folger's Coffee heiress Abigail Folger to stay at the house with his pregnant wife until he flew back to La on Aug. 12. The trio had dinner at Sharon's favorite restaurant, El Coyote, along with celebrity hairstylist Jay Sebring. They returned to the house around 10:30 p.m.

Shortly after midnight on Aug. 9, the house was broken...

It’s been 50 years since that terrifying night in August 1969, when four members of the Manson Family broke into the house at 10050 Cielo Drive and killed five people: 18-year-old Steven Parent, who wast there to try to sell a clock radio to an acquaintance in the property’s guesthouse; Wojiciech Frykowski, an aspiring screenwriter and friend of director Roman Polanski; Abigail Folger, Frykowski’s girlfriend and the heiress to the Folger coffee fortune; celebrity hairstylist Jay Sebring; and actress Sharon Tate, Polanski’s wife, who was eight months pregnant at...

(Spoiler alert: Do not read on if you haven’t seen Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood.”)

Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood,” which takes place around the time of the Manson Family murders of Sharon Tate and her friends, shows Charles Manson himself dropping by her house on Cielo Drive before the killings.

Did it really happen? Or is another example of Tarantino taking artistic license? The answer is, there’s truth to this part of “Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood,” even if it isn’t exactly true.

The film shows Manson (Damon Herriman) getting out of a small ice-cream truck and walking up to the gate of 10050 Cielo Drive, the house Tate and Roman Polanski shared. Tate is home with friend Jay Sebring, who was among those murdered on that infamous night. They see a man walking up to the door,...

(Warning: This column contains major spoilers about the ending of “Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood.” Read at your own risk.)

I want to talk about the ending of “Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood,” starting around the moment the Manson family shows up on Cielo Drive, and…well, okay, we’ll get into it in a bit. So if you don’t want to know what happens during the last half hour of Quentin Tarantino’s new movie, stop reading now or forever hold your troll. This column hinges on some major spoilers, but my desire isn’t to tread on anyone’s pleasure of discovery. It’s to look at a sequence that needs to be looked at, because it’s one of the defining movie sequences of the year.

Before I deal with the ending, though, I want to talk about the first two hours of “Once Upon a Time…...

According to Mary Ramos, Quentin Tarantino’s longtime music supervisor, the process for selecting songs for one of his films starts in a record store—which happens to be in his Hollywood home. What Ramos describes as Tarantino’s “record room” looks like a vinyl boutique, with LPs separated into bins labeled by genres like soul and soundtracks. “In the past, when we’ve started preparation,” she says, “he invites me over and I madly scribble as he’s talking a mile a minute and pausing to put the needle down on records.

Anyone who has followed Quentin Tarantino‘s film career as a writer-director know that he is as much about music selection as he is about searing profanity-laced monologues. Can anyone hear “Stuck in the Middle With You” by Stealers Wheel without thinking of Michael Madsen‘s Mr. Blonde as he cuts the ear off of a cop who’s tied up in a chair in “Resevoir Dogs”? Or who among us can’t help but to flashback to the sight of John Travolta‘s Vincent Vega and Uma Thurman‘s Mia Wallace dancing if they hear Chuck Berry’s “You Never Can Tell.”

As usual, Tarantino’s latest opus, the just-opened “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” has several memorable music-related scenes. Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt, together for the first time ever on the big screen while acting as a kind of middle-age male dynamite, is an event to celebrate in and of itself.

Quentin Tarantino doesn't need an introduction - he's the auteur who brought us gratuitously gory films such as Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill, and Django Unchained. Now, he's onto his ninth film with Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, a $100 million project that convinced even Leonardo DiCaprio to take a hefty pay cut. Since Tarantino only plans to make 10 movies, this is certainly going to be a treat, boasting a cast of the fine actors to prove it. In the movie, the writer-director crafts a narrative that touches upon one of the most disturbing murders in Hollywood history - that of celebrity Sharon Tate under the orders of Charles Manson.

Fictional Elements

The Manson murders won't be the main focus of the plot, which is still being kept under wraps. But we'll certainly see everyone involved in the case, including Tate (Margot Robbie), Manson (Damon Herriman), Manson's followers, and a handful of '60s celebrities.

David Crow Jul 25, 2019

We examine the shocking ending of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and what it means for the film's era and Quentin Tarantino.

This article contains major Once Upon a Time in Hollywood spoilers.

Joan Didion famously wrote in her 1979 collection of essays, The White Album, about the night Sharon Tate died.

“Many people I know in Los Angeles believe the Sixties ended abruptly on August 9, 1969,” wrote Didion. “Ended at the exact moment when word of the murders on Cielo Drive traveled like brushfire through the community, and in a sense this is true. The tension broke that day. The paranoia was fulfilled.”

This is often the conventional wisdom about the era: Charles Manson’s so called Family brought an end to the Summer of Love, which also just happened to occur around the same time that the old Hollywood studio system finally collapsed, buried by its massive flops like Hello,...

It’s hard to explain Tom O’Neill’s new book Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA and the Secret History of the Sixties without sounding like a conspiracy theorist down a rabbit hole — you try telling your friends that a reporter spent two decades researching the links between one of America’s most notorious criminals and the government’s super-secretive mind-control program Mkultra without getting a few snickers.

Of course, imagine being the journalist writing it, and you find yourself in an even more uncomfortable position; that’s exactly why...

Tony Sokol May 14, 2019

Hollywood's iconic girl next door was TV's first single mom and an animal rights pioneer.

"Que será, sera," Doris Day sang her iconic, underplayed ode to fortune, "whatever will be, will be." The Hollywood icon died of pneumonia on Monday, May 14, at the age of 97, according to The Doris Day Animal Foundation, via Variety. The singer and actress who defined the girl next door died early at her home in Carmel Valley, California.

Day made over thirty films, including Tea for Two, On Moonlight Bay, By the Light of the Silvery Moon, David Butler’s 1953 film Calamity Jane and The Pajama Game, and over 600 recordings. Alfred Hitchcock used Day's recognizable voice to send a distress signal to her kidnapped son in The Man Who Knew Too Much. The song which held the message, “Que Sera Sera,” won the 1956 Academy Award for Best Original Song with the alternative title "Whatever Will Be,...

Yes, Doris Day, who died on May 13 at age 97 after a bout with pneumonia, was the all-American girl next door — but she was so much more. The funny, sunny blonde with the perky disposition, a sprinkle of freckles and a dazzling smile started off as a big band singer whose first hit was 1945’s “Sentimental Journey” with Les Brown & his Band of Renown. She would record more than 650 songs from 1947 to 1967, making her one of the biggest-selling recording artists of the 20th century, and was honored with a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 20008.

But the former Doris Mary Ann von Kappelhoff would make an even bigger splash as a star on the silver screen in a series of romantic comedies opposite Rock Hudson — who would become a lifelong friend — starting with 1959’s “Pillow Talk,” the source of her only Oscar nomination, along with 1961’s “Lover Come Back” and 1964’s “Send Me No Flowers.

Doris Day was content in the last few months of her life before she died on Monday at the age of 97.

Her business manager and close friend Bob Bashara tells People Day “was fine at her birthday party” which she celebrated in April.

“For her birthday event, she was in good spirits,” says Bashara. Shortly after, Day “developed a cough and it turned into bronchitis and she was briefly hospitalized,” he says.

“When she came home, she began to decline and was given hospice care,” he says.

“[When she died] there were some very close friends and loved ones who were with her,...

Doris Day may have singlehandedly saved her son from death at the hands of one of America’s most notorious serial killers, according to a bombshell book.

The Hollywood icon — who died on Monday at the age of 97 — made her only child, the late record producer Terry Melcher, vacate his rental home in Benedict Canyon, California, not long before Manson’s “family” committed the Tate murders there in 1969, Beach Boys frontman Mike Love wrote in his 2016 memoir.

Love detailed friend Melcher’s connection to Manson in Good Vibrations: My Life as a Beach Boy.

According to Love, bandmate Dennis Wilson...

Doris Day may have died with a reputation of being Hollywood’s most scrubbed-clean and wholesome girl-next-door type. But she made it to the big screen courtesy her warmly simmering and easily quavering vocal tones. Before films beckoned, she was a featured vocalist with big band-era kings such as Bob Crosby (Bing’s brother) and Les Brown and His Band of Renown, the latter of which recorded Day sunnily crooning “Sentimental Journey” and “My Dreams Are Getting Better All the Time.”

While both ballads made her the toast of radio fans and World War II vets coming home from the battlefront in 1945, Day had so much more to offer during her sadly abbreviated singing career — which included one album released in the 21st century, “My Heart,” and a host of previously unreleased songs she recorded with her composer-producer son, the late Terry Melcher.

Here are some signature smashes and cool surprises from Doris Day.

Sad news out of Hollywood on this Monday morning. 

Doris Day, an esteemed singer and actress has died. 

She was 97. 

The Doris Day Animal Foundation revealed the sad news that Day died early Monday at her Carmel Valley, Calif., home. The foundation confirmed that she was surrounded by close friends.

"Day had been in excellent physical health for her age, until recently contracting a serious case of pneumonia, resulting in her death," the foundation said in a statement, via Los Angeles Times.

Doris was originally a singer, before transitioning into the world of acting, and becoming one of the biggest female stars of all time. 

She was born Mary Ann Von Kappelhoff in April 1992. By age 15, she was a singer, and her song "Sentimental Journey" became a huge hit. 

She recorded the song in 1945 as a vocalist for Les Brown and His Band of Renown. 

It elevated Day to worldwide stardom.

Legendary film and TV actress, singer and animal welfare activist Doris Day died on Monday after contracting pneumonia. She was 97.

Famed for her wholesome onscreen persona, Day starred in popular 1950s and ’60s movies such as “Pillow Talk,” Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Man Who Knew Too Much” and “Move Over, Darling.”

The Doris Day Animal Foundation confirmed that its founder had died Monday at her Carmel Valley, California, home. The foundation said she was surrounded by close friends.

Also Read: Peggy Lipton of 'Mod Squad' and 'Twin Peaks' Dies at 72

According to the foundation press statement, nearly 300 fans gathered in Carmel last month to celebrate Day’s birthday on April 3. The actress had been in excellent physical health for her age, until recently contracting a serious case of pneumonia.

Born Mary Ann Von Kappelhoff in Cincinnati, Ohio, she began her singing career at age 15 and soon...

Doris Day, one of the biggest movie stars in the '50s and '60s who became a fierce proponent of animal rights, is dead. The Doris Day Animal Foundation confirmed her death. She died at her home in Carmel Valley, CA, surrounded by close friends. The Foundation said Day "had been in excellent physical health for her age, until recently contracting a serious case of pneumonia." Doris became a star in 1956, when she appeared...

Doris Day, the beautiful blonde whose sunny screen presence and silken singing voice guaranteed box-office and record-chart hits in the ’40s, ’50s and ’60s, has died, her rep confirms to People. She was 97.

Day died at 1:00 A.M. on Monday at her home in California, the rep says.

The Associated Press was first to report the news, which comes nearly two months after the actress celebrated her birthday and shared a recent photo with People.

Although in 2012 she released a CD of songs she recorded years ago, since the early ’80s, the world’s favorite “girl next door” kept...

"Everything was to teach me something." That's what Linda Kasabian told Joan Didion, a confidante during her first few years after being arrested for helping Susan Atkins, Charles "Tex" Watson, Leslie Van Houten, and Patricia Krenwinkel commit murder at the behest of Charles Manson. Didion, like any number of writers, was fascinated by the idea that something like the Manson Murders could just rip a hole in the fabric of time and space. California's crimes had been kept well-hidden from the rich and comfortable and suddenly Manson's snarling face was all over newspapers, and all because they didn't accept him as one of “them.” He wanted to be a singer so badly and no one would give him a record deal, so he sent his followers out to kill the producer Terry Melcher who refused to sign him. By that logic any one famous enough could be next if some...

Over the years, I’ve consumed my share of movies — documentaries, dramatizations, deconstructive punk curios — that play off the Manson murders. The quality of this genre (and by now it is a genre) is hit-or-miss, yet I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Manson film that wasn’t on some level trying for something, for a new shade of insight into that uniquely horrific and resonant chapter of the American dream-turned-nightmare.

But now, I’m afraid, the track record is broken. “The Haunting of Sharon Tate” may be the first “serious” Manson drama that represents a case of pure, unadulterated cheeseball exploitation. The film has nothing of remote fascination to add to the Manson dialogue that some of us have been carrying on for decades. It doesn’t bring you closer to the events; if anything, it seals you outside of them. But the movie’s petty folly...

Rock photographer Guy Webster, whose images adorn dozens of classic album covers, has died at the age of 79.

Webster’s biographer Harvey Kubernik confirmed the photographer’s February 5th death to Rolling Stone, adding that Webster had been suffering from diabetes and liver cancer. Variety first reported Webster’s death.

“Guy Webster established his reputation as a photographer capable not only of capturing the emotional nuance of the era, but also of helping to define it, with shots of hundreds of personalities before they were legends—including Simon & Garfunkel, Jack Nicholson,...

It would be easy to believe that Fox’s new two-hour, Liev Schreiber-narrated special, Inside the Manson Cult: The Lost Tapes, would simply re-trod old territory. With so much already out there on the man, his followers and their infamous two-day murder spree in Los Angeles in August 1969, does this documentary show anything new, or is it the latest attempt to capitalize on our continued fascination with Manson and the true crime genre?

In some ways, yes, it falls into this pattern. Sure, it tells the usual Manson narrative:...

“Many people I know in Los Angeles believe that the ’60s ended abruptly on Aug. 9, 1969.” This famous quote, from Joan Didion’s essay “The White Album,” refers to the date of the murders of Sharon Tate and four others by members of Charles Manson’s self-dubbed “Family.” And in coolly definitive white-text-on-black, it opens Mary Harron’s “Charlie Says,” which tells the story of the sluggish moral reawakening of three of Manson’s murderous acolytes, in the years after the killings, when they were incarcerated in the California Institution for Women.

As scintillating and influential as Didion’s work is, it is not without its detractors — those who find her memoirist’s approach to the journalistic essay form too colored with the personal to earn the sweeping certainty of her generalizations. But “Charlie Says” could use a little of that forceful, opinionated clarity — even at the potential risk of giving offense — because without it,...

Doris Day may now be 96 (and still taking her annual birthday photo!), but for many, the singer and actress remains timeless.

In honor of the 70th anniversary of Day’s very first time onscreen — in the 1948 musical comedy Romance on the High Seas — Getty Images’ Foto has unearthed rare images of the actress earlier in her career and in her private life.

Day, who was born in Cincinnati and now resides in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California, has been retired since 1973. Currently single, she was married twice and raised one son, Terry Melcher, who was a successful music producer that was credited with...

[[tmz:video id="0_qpaz0wis"]] The Beach Boys singer Mike Love has nothing but bad feelings about Charles Manson, but he says something about the deceased murderer that is truly shocking. We got Mike in NYC Monday signing autographs, and he told our photog if Manson had a music career maybe his victims would have been spared. In case you didin't know ... Manson actually wrote a song The Beach Boys recorded -- "Never Learn Not to Love" -- but when...

Sharon Tate was 26 in 1969 and about to begin a new chapter of her life: The successful actress was married to director Roman Polanski and eight-and-a-half months pregnant with their first child.

But that was all cut short when Sharon was killed — along with Jay Sebring, Abigail Folger, Wojciech Frykowski and Steven Parent — in a horrific stabbing at her Los Angeles-area home by followers of cult leader Charles Manson.

Manson, whose name became synonymous with evil after his arrest in connection with the 1969 murders of Tate and eight others, died of natural causes on Sunday night. He was 83 and serving a...

Charles Manson died at the age of 83 on Nov. 19. According to authorities, the murderous cult leader passed away at a hospital in Kern County, CA from natural causes. He was one of the most infamous figures in criminal history, ordering one of the most horrifying murders in Hollywood: that of actress Sharon Tate. He was the leader of one of the world's most infamous cults. And he was recently factored into American Horror Story: Cult. With Charles Manson's recent resurgence as a person of interest in the public eye, it's entirely possible that a lot of people in the present day don't know his story. After all, he committed his most prolific crimes in the late 1960s. Here's a primer on who he is, what he did, and where he was before his death. He had a tumultuous early family life. Charles Manson was born on Nov. 12, 1934, in Cincinnati,...

Before Charles Manson — who died on Sunday at age 83 — and his murderous “family” of followers embarked on a plan to kill famous people in the ’60s, the group sought out celebrities as friends, roommates and professional connections.

Manson was drawn to the famous and glamorous, biographer Jeff Guinn explains to People: “Manson fully intended to become the most famous rock ’n’ roll star in history” — and he worked to connect with those who he believed could aid his career.

The time period is also important, Guinn says: From the mid- to late-‘60s, many celebrities embraced an egalitarian idea that...

Charles Manson, whose name became synonymous with evil after his arrest in connection with the 1969 murders of actress Sharon Tate and eight other people, has died of natural causes.

He was 83 and serving nine life sentences in California’s Corcoran State Prison at the time of his death, which was confirmed by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

“I said a prayer for his soul,” Sharon Tate’s sister Debra tells People of the moment after she received a call from a prison official informing her Manson died on Sunday night.

Adds Anthony Dimaria, the nephew of Manson victim...

In the summer of 1969, a group of young people led by Charles Manson sent a wave of terror through the hills of the Los Angeles area, leaving a trail of bodies behind them.

Nearly 50 years later, here’s what you need to know about the cult’s violence, its victims and where the killers are now.

The ‘Family’ Forms

Manson began attracting followers after he was released from prison in March 1967. But before he and his murderous group embarked on a plan to kill famous people, they sought out celebrities as friends, roommates and professional connections.

As Dianne Lake, the...

Doris Day is celebrating her 95th birthday on Monday — and not her 93rd birthday, as she had originally thought! The legendary songstress and film star is known for living a quiet life outside of the spotlight, but in 2011 in a rare interview, Doris sat down with People to discuss her love, friendship and career. Read the profile below:

Living out of the spotlight for more than 20 years in Carmel, Calif., Doris Day was quite surprised to get a certain call last January. It was Colin Firth, wanting to confess his schoolboy crush. “He told me when he was a kid,...

The Beach Boys' Dennis Wilson inadvertently puts Charles Manson on a path to Helter Skelter in this two-minute excerpt from the two-hour documentary Truth and Lies: The Family Manson, which airs Friday night on ABC.

The clip focuses on how Wilson, an associate of Manson's, took one of Manson's songs ("Cease to Exist") and turned it into the Beach Boys composition "Never Learn Not to Love," with Wilson giving himself full songwriting credit for the track.

"We actually recorded that song," the Beach Boys' Mike Love says in the excerpt.

Beach Boy Mike Love's new memoir, Good Vibrations, marries his recall of the group's rise to success with detours into the 1960s Southern California counterculture that thrived as the band emerged and climbed the musical charts. One of the darkest twists in that story is Love's brush with the "family" of Charles Manson, who is still serving time in prison along with his followers for a Los Angeles killing spree in August 1969. Among Love's connections to Manson: One of his "girls" babysat Love's kids, Love writes in Vibrations. Love, now 75, writes in an exclusive memoir excerpt in this week's issue of People,...

Doris Day may have singlehandedly saved her son from death at the hands of one of America's most notorious serial killers, according to a new book. The now-92-year-old actress made her only child, the late record producer Terry Melcher, vacate his rental home in Benedict Canyon, California, not long before Manson's "family" committed the Tate murders there in 1969, Beach Boys frontman Mike Love writes in his upcoming memoir. Love details friend Melcher's connection to Manson in Good Vibrations, which is excerpted exclusively in this week's issue of People, on newsstands Friday. According to Love, bandmate Dennis Wilson's "inexplicable...

Doris Day may have singlehandedly saved her son from death at the hands of one of America's most notorious serial killers, according to a new book. The now-92-year-old actress made her only child, the late record producer Terry Melcher, vacate his rental home in Benedict Canyon, California, not long before Manson's "family" committed the Tate murders there in 1969, Beach Boys frontman Mike Love writes in his upcoming memoir. Love details friend Melcher's connection to Manson in Good Vibrations, which is excerpted exclusively in this week's issue of People, on newsstands Friday. According to Love, bandmate Dennis Wilson's "inexplicable...

Doris Day is celebrating her 92nd birthday on Sunday. The legendary songstress and film star is known for living a quiet life outside of the spotlight, but in 2011, Doris sat down with People to discuss her love, friendship and career. Read the profile below:Living out of the spotlight for more than 20 years in Carmel, Calif., Doris Day was quite surprised to get a certain call last January. It was Colin Firth, wanting to confess his schoolboy crush. "He told me when he was a kid, he fell in love with me and wanted to meet someone like me," says Day,...