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Bobby Beausoleil (born Robert Kenneth Beausoleil, November 6, 1947) is an American musician and multi-disciplined artist serving a life sentence in the California state prison system. Beausoleil was convicted of first-degree murder for killing music teacher Gary Hinman, a friend of Beausoleil's and an associate of Charles Manson and members of his communal "Manson family", on July 27, 1969. During his incarceration, Beausoleil has recorded and released music along with working on visual art, instrument design and media technology.^[1][2]

Beausoleil was found suitable for parole and recommended for release from prison by the California Parole Board on January 3, 2019. However, as of February 2019, he remains incarcerated.^[3]

Early life

Beausoleil was born on November 6, 1947, in Santa Barbara, California, to working-class parents. He was the first-born child in a large Catholic family and has four siblings. When he was 15, Beausoleil was sent to Los Prietos Boys Camp for ten months for running away from home and a series of juvenile pranks.^[4] After he was released, Beausoleil moved to the Los Angeles area and drifted between there and San Francisco, gravitating towards the emerging counterculture music scene and acting. He became a member of several rock bands beginning about 1965, including The Orkustra, The Milky Way and Love.^[5] In 1967, he met Kenneth Anger and secured a part in Anger's film Lucifer Rising. In 1968, Beausoleil was living with Gary Hinman in Topanga Canyon when he met Charles Manson and became associated with him and the communal group known as the Manson Family.^[6]

Murder of Gary Hinman

According to Vincent Bugliosi, in his book Helter Skelter, Gary Hinman was killed over money and property that Manson believed Hinman owed to the Family. The slaying became the first in a series of murders committed by the family to start "Helter Skelter", a "war" that Manson had preached to his Family would happen in the near future in America.^[7] Accompanying Beausoleil that night were Susan Atkins and Mary Brunner. Atkins subsequently became involved in the infamous Tate-LaBianca murders and other crimes perpetrated by Manson and his family. Notably, Beausoleil was already incarcerated when these crimes occurred.^[8]

More than a decade later, Beausoleil would assert he had unknowingly supplied members of the Straight Satans motorcycle gang with a batch of bad mescaline, sold to him by Hinman. When the bikers demanded their money back, Atkins and Brunner rode along with Beausoleil to get their money at Hinman's house, where Beausoleil had been living. Hinman is said to have refused to pay, telling them, "I don't have any money to give you." When Beausoleil called Manson at Spahn Ranch and told him no money was forthcoming, Beausoleil was instructed by Manson hold Hinman captive at the residence and convince him to get the money before Manson arrived.

When Manson, driven by Bruce Davis, got to the Topanga Canyon home, he proceeded to slice off a part of Hinman's ear with a sword during a confrontation. Atkins and Brunner stitched the ear up with dental floss. Manson told Beausoleil to kill Hinman and to make it look as if the crime had been committed by Black revolutionaries, as part of his ideology that a race war was imminent and part of what he called "Helter Skelter". Beausoleil stabbed Hinman to death while Hinman repeated a Buddhist chant. After he killed Hinman, Beausoleil wrote the words "Political piggy" on a wall in Hinman's blood, in an attempt to lead police to believe the murder was done by a group of radicals. He then dipped his hand in Hinman's blood and left a paw print, attempting to symbolize The Black Panthers as a way to mislead the investigators in regard to Hinman's murder. Beausoleil was arrested on August 6, 1969, after falling asleep in Hinman's broken down Fiat alongside the highway at Cuesta Grade, a steep segment of U.S. Route 101 between San Luis Obispo and Atascadero.

At Beausoleil's two trials for the murder, the defense mentioned nothing about the murder being the result of a drug transaction gone wrong. His first intimation of this came in 1981, 12 years after the murders, in an interview published in Oui magazine.^[9] In that interview, he also denied that Manson had come to the Hinman residence during the event that led to the murder, although he later reversed himself about that aspect. This^[which?] is the version that Beausoleil currently maintains as truth.^[10] Also, conspirator Susan Atkins had stated before her death that she never heard any mention by Beausoleil indicating that the reason they went to Hinman's residence had anything to do with a drug transaction.^[11]

Imprisonment and parole hearings

On April 18, 1970, a Superior Court jury in Los Angeles found the 22 year old Beausoleil guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced him to death. His sentence was commuted to life imprisonment when the California Supreme Court ruled the then-prevailing death penalty statutes unconstitutional in 1972.

Beausoleil's initial parole suitability hearing was held on August 15, 1978. Up through 2016, he has had 18 subsequent suitability hearings with each ending in the parole board finding him unsuitable for parole.^[12][13][14]

On January 3, 2019, a California parole board recommended Robert Beausoleil be freed after serving nearly 50 years in prison. In granting parole, the hearing Commissioner cited Beausoleil's youthful offender status as being in mitigation to the severity of the crime and stated that during his nearly half-century of incarceration he had devoted himself to creativity and pro-social growth, gradually maturing into, at this present age of 71, a person exhibiting compassion and empathy. The hearing decisions will undergo an automatic review by the state's board of paroles and governor's office before becoming final.

Film roles

Beausoleil was to star in Kenneth Anger's 1967 version of the film Lucifer Rising, but little was shot before Beausoleil and Anger had a falling out and the project was abandoned.^[15] Some of the footage later appeared in Invocation of My Demon Brother (and again in the resurrected Lucifer Rising film). He appeared in a softcore porn film titled The Ramrodder (a.k.a. Savage Passion), which also featured his friend Catherine Share, who went on to become a full-fledged member of the Manson Family. This film was shot at a small ranch in Topanga Canyon.^[16]

Beausoleil had a brief appearance as Cupid in the 1967 film Mondo Hollywood, a documentary about the social, political, and cultural climate of Los Angeles featuring a wide cast of Hollywood figures, including hair stylist Jay Sebring, who was also murdered by the Family.^[17]

In 1979, after five years of intense work by himself and his prison band The Freedom Orchestra, Beausoleil finally completed his soundtrack for Kenneth Anger's Lucifer Rising. The film debuted in New York in 1980 to favorable reviews.^[18]

Music career

Bobby Beausoleil has produced a significant body of musical recordings, visual art, and writings hinting at an indomitable creative spirit despite his having been held behind bars nearly all of his adult life.^[19] Among his most notable works is the soundtrack for the indie-underground film Lucifer Rising by filmmaker Kenneth Anger. Recorded in prison in the 1970s, this opus stands on its own as a prog-rock symphony of intense passion describing a fallen angel's mythical journey.^[20] Since then Beausoleil has composed and recorded a number of additional albums of deep and evocative music, often correlated to his visual drawings and paintings. His most recent musical release is the epic concept album Voodoo Shivaya, a double-length album showcasing Beausoleil's instrumental and vocal skills and extending his compelling compositional legacy.^[21]

In 1965, Beausoleil was a member of Arthur Lee's band the Grass Roots, not to be confused with the successful recording band of the same name. To avoid confusion, the band later changed its name to Love. Beausoleil claims that Lee told him he named his band Love in reference to one of his nicknames – "Cupid". In early 1966, Beausoleil formed a band called The Orkustra; bandmate violinist David LaFlamme subsequently went on to greater success with It's a Beautiful Day.^[22] Following the period he performed with The Orkustra, Beausoleil put together the band he called The Magick Powerhouse of Oz, for the expressed purpose of performing his score for the Lucifer Rising film project.^[23][24]

In the late 1970s, with the permission of the prison, he composed and recorded the soundtrack for Kenneth Anger's film Lucifer Rising. The official Beausoleil soundtrack was originally released on LP by Lethal Records in 1980, and later on CD (along with archival material from The Orkustra and The Magick Powerhouse of Oz) on the Arcanum label in 2004.^[25][26] Between the years 1996 and 2003, while incarcerated at Oregon State Penitentiary, Beausoleil composed and recorded four albums of instrumental music, and released them on CD: Orb, Mantra, 7, and Running With The White Wolf.^{[27][28][29][30]}

In 2005, a selection of his artwork was exhibited in Clair Obscur Gallery, Los Angeles. Just before the exhibition, the gallery announced that an exhibit of photos of Sharon Tate was scheduled for the next gallery event, following the Beausoleil exhibition.^[31] The parole board, in denying parole in 2005, stated that the juxtaposition of this display with of Beausoleil's artwork was exploitative of the victims and that trusting such an unscrupulous curator showed a lapse of judgment by Beausoleil.

In 2013, The Lucifer Rising Suite was rereleased as a 4-disk boxed set in vinyl LP format. This anthology documents the Lucifer Rising soundtrack project from its earliest beginnings in 1967 to its ultimate completion and delivery to the filmmaker in 1979. In addition to the actual soundtrack, some alternate themes, musical and soundscape experiments, and live performances are contained in the boxed set. All of those recordings were acquired from the original reel-to-reel tapes and meticulously restored and mastered for vinyl by Robert Ferbrache. In 2014, a CD version of the boxed set was released. This album package has all of the features of the LP version scaled down to compact disc size.^[32]

In 2014, a compilation titled Whispers Through The Black Veil was released on the Wyrd War label containing the song "The Wailing On Witch Mountain," recorded in 2012, which was composed, performed and recorded by Beausoleil.^[33]

In 2018, with The Ajna Offensive, Bobby Beausoleil released his 2-disk concept album, Voodooo Shivaya, featuring vocal and instrumental tracks about his journey toward spiritual understanding. Among the vocal tracks performed by Beausoleil are both covers and original songs. Guest performances include Annabel Lee Moynihan, Michael Moynihan, Robert Ferbrache, and Mike Behrenhausen, all members of the dark folk band Blood Axis. The triple gatefold LP and CD packaging integrates Nicholas Syracuse's photography with calligraphy by Timo Ketola. The album was recorded over a seven year period at Oregon State Penitentiary, with the approval of the prison administration,^[34] between 2008 and 2015.^[35][36]

Interviews

Truman Capote interviewed Beausoleil in 1972, while the latter was imprisoned in San Quentin State Prison. Capote then published the interview in the form of a short story "Then It All Came Down",^[37] included in his 1980 book Music for Chameleons. According to his biographers, Capote believed his memory to be infallible and did not keep notes.^[38][39] Following the publication of the book, Beausoleil has said that Capote took gross literary license in his reporting of the interview from eight years earlier.^[40][41]

Filmography

• 1967: Mondo Hollywood
  


• 1969: The Ramrodder
  


• 1969: Invocation of My Demon Brother
  


• 1972: Lucifer Rising (released 1980) – soundtrack composer^[42]


• 2014: Ask Professor Proponderus^[43]


• 2018: Nature Boy Video by Shazzula^[44]

Discography

Studio albums

• 1981: Lucifer Rising (reissued in 2005 and 2016)^[45]


• 1997: Running with the White Wolf
  


• 1998: Mantra: Soundscapes for Meditation
  


• 2001: Orb
  


• 2002: 7
  


• 2009: The Orkustra: Experiments in Electric Orchestra from the San Francisco Psychedelic Underground, 1966-67^[46]


• 2013: Dancing Hearts Afire EU LP (reissued on CD in 2016)^[47]


• 2014: Orb EU LP
  


• 2018: Voodoo Shivaya LP and CD^[36][48]

Compilations

• 2007: Dreamways of the Mystic, Vol. 1
  


• 2007: Dreamways of the Mystic, Vol. 2
  


• 2009: The Lucifer Rising Suite (4-LP Boxed Set) Reissued in 2013.


• 2014: The Lucifer Rising Suite CD boxed set^[49]

Singles

• 2013: "Red House"


• 2014: "OM's Law"


• 2014: "Angel"


• 2014: "Who Do You Love"


• 2015: "Ghost Highway"

References

External links

• Official website


• Official Music Store of Bobby Beausoleil


• Official Gallery Store of Bobby Beausoleil


• 
  Lessley Anderson (November 17, 2004). "Lucifer, Arisen". San Francisco Weekly.
  


• Exposés Review of The Lucifer Rising Suite CD


• 
  Bobby Beausoleil on IMDb


• Plethoramag.com


• It's Psychedelic Baby Magazine Interview with Bobby BeauSoleil


• Bobby BeauSoleil: Lucifer Rising for Bardo Methodology


• Bobby BeauSoleil Interview for Bardo Methodology


• Manifesto of an Artist in Prison


• Bobby BeauSoleil on Spotify