Displaying items by tag: Charles Manson

In the mid-sixties, the world saw the birth of hippies. A counterculture which questioned so much about society, and was not afraid to suggest an alternative lifestyle to the norm. A spectacular movement, with colourful clothes, magnificent music in the guise of The Grateful Dead, Jimi Hendrix and many more, with mind-bending drugs and free love. An ethos that went way beyond being a bored teenager and got the entire world thinking.

Some days I find myself genuinely shocked by the music press. Since May, I've noticed a complete lack of excitement regarding the Black Sabbath remasters. How can you ignore the Sabbath? Do critics begrudge them for pissing on and killing the hippy dream? I think they might. After all, the band introduced working-class anger, stoner sludge grooves and witchy horror-rock to flower power. Black Sabbath confronted the empty platitudes of the 1960s and, along with Altamont and Charles Manson, almost certainly helped kill off the hippy counterculture.

Forty years ago this month, the world awoke to news of one of the most bizarre series of murders ever committed. In Los Angeles on August 9th 1969, actress Sharon Tate and four of her house guests were found butchered with such ferocity their bodies were barely recognisable. Written in Tate's blood on the door of her Hollywood residence was the inscription, "Pig".

As the haunting drums start to beat and the camera zooms away  from the beautiful eyes of Catherine Deneuve, the start of Repulsion is; sinister exquisiteness.

Made in 1965, filmed in West London and shot in black and white, by a then relatively unknown young film director Roman Polanski, this being his second feature and first English speaking film. 

In the mid sixties, the world saw the birth of hippies. A counter culture, which questioned so much about society, and was not afraid to suggest an alternative lifestyle to the norm. A spectacular movement, with colourful clothes, magnificent music in the guise of The Grateful Dead, Jimi Hendrix and many more, with mind-bending drugs and free love. An ethos that went way beyond being a bored teenager, and got the whole world thinking.