Квентин Тарантино - Once Upon a Time in Hollywood - The First Novel By Quentin Tarantino

But if Charlie Manson did have anything to offer, it was that of a folkie singer-songwriter type. And in that plentiful congregation, Charlie couldn’t hold a flickering birthday next to Neil Young, Phil Ochs, Dave Van Ronk, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Mickey Newbury, Lee Dresser, Sammy Walker, or frankly any of the known folk names of the time. Also, the folk scene, as it existed only a few short years earlier, was dead. By that time, all the folkies who had made a name for themselves were plugging into amps and trying to be rock stars.

And since Terry Melcher represented Columbia Records and they already had Bob Dylan, they didn’t need Charlie Manson. Besides, Melcher wasn’t in the acoustic singer-songwriter business anymore ( as if he ever was). Paul Revere and the Raiders had made him one of the kings of Top 40 radio pop. He wasn’t raiding the Vanguard Records label, trying to poach talent for Columbia. He was looking for the next gimmicky band of cute shaggy-haired boys who could produce catchy novelty records, play on American Bandstand and all the other local-TV-station rock shows ( Groovy , Boss City , The Real Don Steele Show , Where the Action Is , It’s Happening ), and vie for space inside the pages of Sixteen and Tiger Beat magazines. That might have been Bobby Beausoleil, but it sure wasn’t Charles Manson.

It wasn’t that Charlie didn’t have talent —he had a little talent. But what he didn’t have was the discipline to nurture the talent that he did have. If Charlie had a stronger songbook, it wouldn’t have persuaded Terry to record a Manson album for Columbia. But it might have resulted in Melcher bringing one of Charlie’s songs to Linda Ronstadt to record.

Terry did think Charlie was one interesting far-out cat. But even in those regards, Terry wasn’t as fascinated with him as his other friends (Dennis Wilson and Greg Jakobson) were. The real reason Terry Melcher spent so much time with Charlie and “the Family” when they were encamped at Dennis Wilson’s pad wasn’t due to any potential that the record producer saw in Manson in a business sense. It was due to the fact that Terry loved fucking a fifteen-year-old dark-haired angel named Debra Jo Hillhouse, who had taken up with “the Family.” When Terry first met her, she still went by her real name, Debra Jo. But shortly afterward she only answered to her “Family” name, “Pussycat.”

Debra Jo had joined Charlie’s Family when she was fifteen, at the time the youngest of the bunch, and she was undoubtedly the beauty of the bunch. Only statuesque Leslie Van Houten gave her any competition. And Terry Melcher wasn’t the only one—Dennis Wilson loved fucking Debra Jo too. In fact, the only serious connections Manson ever made in the Los Angeles music scene weren’t due to Charlie’s music but due to the allure of Debra Jo Hillhouse’s pubescent pussy. Debra Jo held a special place in the heart of Terry Melcher. (If Debra Jo could sing, she’s the one who would have gotten a record deal.)

And bear in mind all this was occurring during the time that Terry Melcher was living with sixties-era zeitgeist beauty Candice Bergen.

But even with beautiful blond Candy Bergen at home, Terry couldn’t pass up Pussycat encounters. At one point his affection got so brazen that he tried to hire Debra Jo as a house girl and move her into his Cielo Drive home with Candy and himself. (Candice Bergen might’ve been oblivious about a lot of things, but she knew enough to squash that idea.)

Debra Jo Hillhouse had an unaffected little kitten quality (that’s why Charlie named her Pussycat) that left many older men smitten. Including a few members of the Straight Satans, the motorcycle gang that hung out with Charlie and the Family when they lived at Spahn Ranch.

Something that made Debra Jo unique from all the other girls that Charlie collected was, Debra Jo still had a relationship with her father, and her father had a relationship with Charlie. All the other girls, to one degree or another, joined Charlie’s Family in response to their damaged relationship with their family. Disowning your parents, divorcing your real family, becoming a member of your new Family, with Charlie as your daddy , that was all part of Manson’s spiel. But in Debra Jo Hillhouse’s case, it was through her father that she first met Charlie a year earlier.

One afternoon after having sex in Dennis Wilson’s billiard room, while they shared a joint and drank ice-cold bottles of Mexican beer, Terry Melcher quizzed Debra Jo about how she came to first be acquainted with Charles Manson.

Debra Jo told him. “My dad picked him up hitchhiking.”

“Wait a minute,” a surprised Terry said, “you met Charlie through your dad?”

She nodded her bushy brunette head yes. “Charlie was hitching,” she repeated. “Dad picked him up, they started talking. They grooved. So Dad brought him home for dinner. That’s when we first met.”

Terry took a big hit off the joint and passed it to Debra Jo. While holding the reefer smoke in his lungs, he asked her, “How long after that did you go off with Charlie?”

“That night,” she told him. “I snuck out of the house and we balled in Dad’s car. Then I got the car keys and we took the car and drove off together.”

Holy shit , Terry thought. How the fuck does a little runt like Charlie pull that off? I mean, some of those ugly hippie sluts like Mary Brunner or Patty Krenwinkel, okay. But a little hot piece of ass like Debra Jo?

Then Debra Jo told him the whole wild tale of Manson and the Hillhouses. Ending with her father asking Charlie if he could join “the Family.“

To which Terry exclaimed, “You gotta be fuckin’ kidding me!”

Debra Jo smiled and shook her head no. But then added, “But even Charlie thought that was too weird.”

Jesus-fucking-Christ , Terry thought, he couldn’t even get Candy Bergen to agree to a female hippie maid, while Charlie apparently had no problem influencing everybody he met to do whatever he needed them to do. Whatever charm Charlie possessed might be lost on Terry, but it was obvious to even Melcher that he had something. In his day he’d seen rock stars manipulate hippie girls to do some pretty outrageous shit. But their fathers? That was a whole other level of influence. Terry doubted even Mick Jagger could pull that shit off.

Debra Jo, knees visibly shaking, slowly approaches the Hirshberg house. She crosses the dew-covered front lawn. She feels the wetness of the grass against the soles of her huge bare feet, and the slight chill is invigorating. When she steps off the lawn onto the concrete pathway that leads toward the backyard gate, she leaves a trail of wet footprints behind her.

She reaches her hand over the wooden gate door and, quietly as she can, lifts the rusty metal hinge on the other side, pushes the door open, and enters the backyard. Her friends watching from the sidewalk slowly disappear from view.

Now Pussycat is by herself on the Hirshbergs’ private property. She scans the surroundings. There’s a kidney-shaped pool. Green grass. A big tree. A couple of picnic tables. And a couple of heavily-played-with children’s Big Wheels. But other than the Big Wheels, the backyard is as nice and neat and manicured as the front of the house.

Then the voice of Charlie whispers in her ear, How’s your heart?

She quietly answers the voice in her head out loud: “Beating like a jackhammer.”

Calm it down, Pussycat , he purrs. Them jungle drums will wake up the whole damn block. Get a hold of it , he instructs, and get a hold of yourself. Take in your surroundings.