The Fraternal Beach Boys Song Dennis Wilson “Wrote” with Charles Manson, “Never Learn Not to Love”

In 1968, Dennis Wilson first met Charles Manson after picking up two female hitchhikers on the Sunset Strip and invited them back to his home. When Wilson brought his involvement with the Maharishi and transcendental meditation, the women said they also had their own spiritual leader: Charlie.

By ’68, Wilson was divorced from his first wife, Carol Freedman, and living it up in his spacious house in Pacific Palisades, California, along with his ravenous appetite for drugs and sex. Soon after meeting Manson, Wilson was captivated by the cult leader, who incited the murder of seven people a year later, including the actress Sharon Tate, and even referred to him as “the Wizard.” At one point, Wilson was living with 17 women, provided to him by Manson.

“It’s just an unfortunate episode that happened because of one of our group members, one of our family members unknowingly invited Satan into our midst,” said Mike Love of Manson’s interaction with Wilson and the rest of the Beach Boys by the late ’60s, adding that it was “the worst thing that could possibly happen” to the band.

Manson was so keen on the inner workings of the band that he even wrote a song for the Beach Boys. Originally titled “Cease to Exist,” Manson’s lyrics centered on tensions he noticed between Dennis and his brothers Brian and Carl.

Dennis later reworked the lyrics and retitled the song “Never Learn Not to Love.” He also changed the opening cease to exist to cease to resist, which infuriated Manson, who didn’t care if the music was changed, but didn’t want his lyrics touched.

Though Manson had already given away his writing credit for the song in exchange for a BSA motorcycle and money, given to him by Wilson, he still threatened to murder Wilson, who later moved out of his home, according to the 2002 Ed Sanders book The Family, which documents the Manson Family.

Cease to resist, come on say you love me

Give up your world, come on and be with me

I’m your kind, I’m your kind, and I see

Come on come on, ooo I love you pretty girl

My life is yours, and you can have my world

I’m your kind, I’m your kind, and I see

Never had a lesson I ever learned

I know I could never learn not to love you

Come in now closer

Come in closer closer closer

Submission is a gift given to another

Love and understanding is for one another

I’m your kind, I’m your kind, and I see

“Never Learn Not to Love” was released on the Beach Boys’ fifteenth album 20/20 in 1969. In April 1969, the Beach Boys performed the song on The Mike Douglas Show.

When the song was released in December 1968, Wilson had already tried to distance himself from Manson, who continued sending him threats, including leaving a bullet at his home, according to Jeff Guinn’s book Manson: The Life and Times of Charles Manson. By that point, members of the Manson community had destroyed the band’s cars and stolen most of Wilson’s belongings from his home.

Less than a year after the release of the single, the Manson-led murders of Tate and six other people in 1969, Wilson, who died in 1983 at the age of 39, felt immense guilt for his association with the cult leader. In his 2016 memoir Good Vibrations, Love recalled Wilson telling him that he witnessed Manson shoot a black man “in half” with an M-16 rifle and dispose of his body in a well and regretted not informing the authorities.

“For my cousin, our group member to be involved with that and to have the guilt associated with that,” said Love, “[it] had to be a tough burden for him to carry for the rest of his life.”

Photo: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images