Guns N’ Roses And Beach Boys Songs Played At Charles Manson's Funeral

The Associated Press reports that cult leader Charles Manson was cremated on Saturday after private funeral four months after his death. 

The memorial happened at a funeral home in the Californian city of Porterville, according to Mark Pitcher, pastor of the Church of the Nazarene, who presided over the ceremony.

Pitcher told The Associated Press that 20 to 25 people were in attendance, among them Manson’s grandson, Jason Freeman.

The Manson Family, as Manson’s followers were called, killed five people on August 9 1969, at actress Sharon Tate’s home. They included the actress who was 8 ½-months-pregnant, coffee heiress Abigail Folger, celebrity hairdresser Jay Sebring, Polish movie director Voityck Frykowski and Steven Parent, a friend of the estate’s caretaker.

The next night, a grocer and his wife, Leno and Rosemary LaBianca, were stabbed to death in their home across town.

Manson ordered the killings to launch a race war he believed was prophesied by Helter Skelter, a Beatles song about a fairground ride.

The Porterville Recorder newspaper reported that Manson follower Sandra Good was also in attendence at the memorial. Although she was not involved in 1969 killings, she served 10 years in prison for sending hundreds of threatening letters to corporate executives. Also there, the newspaper said, was Afton Elaine Burton, who Manson took out a license to marry in 2014 when he was 80 and she was 26. The couple never got round to the wedding.

Reports say during the memorial attendees sung songs by Manson, the Beach Boys and Guns ’N Roses. One imagines the Beach Boys and Guns 'N Roses songs they sung were those bands' respective versions of songs Manson wrote when he was trying to make it as a folk singer. 

Manson wrote a song called Cease To Exist that the Beach Boys' Dennis Wilson reworked into Never Learn not To Love and recorded with the Beach Boys on their 1969 20/20 album:

And Guns N' Roses recorded Look At Your Game, Girl for their 1993 covers album, The Spaghetti Incident:

TMZ have a picture of his open casket if you're into looking at that kind of thing.