The Road To Heaven

 Back when I was researching something related to all this, I stole this image from Cielodrive. 

The photograph immediately intrigued me. The intrigue had nothing to do with that guy on the ladder reaching for the phone wires and wearing a short sleaved white business shirt like my father used to wear in the sixties. It also wasn’t because of the wall where Atkins, Krenwinkel and probably Kasabian hid while Watson murdered Steven Parent. It is behind the uniformed officer. It wasn’t the really nice striped pants on the guy pointing at the camera or even the question why one guy showed up in a tee shirt. It wasn’t the cat, either. It was the wagon in the junk pile. Why was there a wagon at Cielo Drive? 

A Bit About JF Watkins

 

We all know Michele Morgan (Simone Renée Roussel) built the house. Well, it is actually more accurate to say she had it built and then bought it but that’s a technicality. She bought the house from “M.M. Landon”. That would be Minnie M. Landon. Minnie had been married to Arthur Landon who was a contractor. He bought the lot several years before. He passed away sometime in the 1930s. They had a daughter named Opal who married a guy named John F. Watkins. He’s the guy who built the house.

 

Far from being a small-time operator, the J. F. Wadkins Company appears repeatedly in real estate advertisements in the LA Times in the late 1930’s and early 1940’s. Several have him advertising multi-home subdivisions. In fact, in 1942 he got in trouble for violating the regulations that limited production at the start of World War II by starting a 36-home subdivision without authorization. 

Wadkins passed away in 1943 after a horseback riding accident. Ed Sanders might add an oo-ee-oo, here: horses…Wadkins…Spahn Ranch. I was not able to find the location where Wadkins was injured. It obviously was not at Spahn Ranch.

 

 

The Michele Morgan Ghost Story

I don’t think Michele Morgan actually sold the home because of the creepy factor as she claimed in her autobiography. That story can be found, here. 

 

https://www.mansonblog.com/2013/08/jeepers-original-cielo-owner-was-scared.html

 

Later in her autobiography, she seems to contradict her own claim. She says that she sold 10050 Cielo Drive because her new husband, William Marshall, refused to live in a home owned by his wife. Obviously, Mr. Marshall was a modern, open minded and progressive male. Ok, he wasn't. However, apparently, he wasn’t above using the money from the sale of his wife's home to buy a home in his name. A home he was awarded in their divorce.

 

Bill Marshall never lived at Cielo Drive. However, Michele Morgan’s good friend, Madeleine LeBeau, was her roommate at Cielo for a time before Michele married. You might recognize her. She had a small role in the film, Casablanca. 

 

Morgan was supposed to get the role of Ilsa Lund in Casablanca, but RKO, her studio, wouldn't release her for the amount of money Warner Bros. was offering and Ingrid Bergman was cast instead. That is a bit of a shame because Morgan’s flight from occupied France is straight out of the movie. She escaped occupied France (Normandy) and first crossed Vichy France to Spain. She crossed Spain and left Europe from Lisbon, Portugal. 

 

Rudolfh Altobelli bought the house in 1963. There are several deeds changing ownership in the 1950's. But the various deeds all involve a guy named Louis Clyde Griffith (“LC”). Griffith was a theater tycoon in Oklahoma in the 1930’s and 1940’s and from what I could tell he was a pioneer of drive-in movie theaters. Everyone on the deeds from 1949 to 1963 (and there are several) are either business associates of Griffith, his attorney, or his stepson. I believe the transfers are related to a debilitating stroke he suffered in 1946 which led to him relocating to LA in 1949. Eventually the house landed with LC and LC Griffith sold it to Altobelli. The deed is dated October 17, 1963.

 

Despite the various deeds LC Griffith lived in the home throughout the 1950s. The available Los Angeles city directories consistently show LC Griffith as the occupant of Cielo Drive during this time period. The 1950 census places him at Cielo Drive with a nurse. 

______

The Tenants

Here, in order, is everyone I could confirm rented Cielo Drive or the guest house after Altobelli purchased the home until Terry Melcher and Mark Lindsay. 

 

Henry Fonda rented the guest house for a couple of months in 1964.

______

 

"One of the houses I sublet and lived in with Shirlee for a couple of months was on Benedict Canyon in Bel Air," Fonda says. "Does that street name ring a bell? Remember the place where Sharon Tate and her friends were massacred? Remember the guest house? That's where we stayed during the summer of sixty-four. It was a pleasant place. I did a lot of painting there. I had to drive in and park in the area where those violent people parked that night. I'd walk down the same path below the main house to the guest house. That's where the young guy was murdered when he made an exit at the wrong time.”

"My God, timing is everything, even outside the theater."

 

My Life by Henry Fonda and Howard Teichmann, Book Club Assoc., page 295, 1982.

______

 

For two years after Henry Fonda George Chakiris rented first the guest house and then the main house. 

 

"By now [1964]I was renting a charming guest house at the end of a pretty little tree-lined cul-de-sac off of Benedict Canyon in Beverly Hills. The guest house and the main house, which I eventually moved into, were owned by a talent manager named Rudi Altobelli. One of his clients, Henry Fonda, had preceded me in the guest house. Henry Fonda was a talented artist, and a painting he’d been working on was still there on an easel.

******

 

I didn’t want to leave Paris. No one ever wants to leave Paris. But I had some packing and moving to take care of back in L.A. The lease was up on the Rudi Altobelli house I was renting off of Benedict Canyon. I’d lived in the two-thousand-square-foot guest house for a year, and then in the thirty-two-hundred-square-foot main house for another year. I’d loved it there. It was quiet and just secluded enough, very French Country, on three acres, with a pool, lots of pine and cherry trees, and a private driveway. I knew I’d miss it, but it was way more space than I needed, and I had too much traveling ahead to justify staying there anyway. Sadly, I’d see that house again, a few years later, on the news. So would the rest of the world.

******

 

Some time after the horror on Cielo Drive, I mustered up the courage to finally visit Rudi Altobelli, who’d cleaned up the house and the grounds and moved back in with a couple of guard dogs. It was eerie and uncomfortable. I didn’t stay long, and I never went back again. I’ve been told that Rudi finally sold the property, the structures there were demolished and replaced by a 12,000-square-foot mansion, and the street address has been changed to discourage the nonstop stream of trespassers, tour buses, and curiosity seekers. Some part of me likes knowing that nothing that was there in August of 1969 is there anymore, not even a single brick or stick of wood or blade of grass.

******

 

I also became socially acquainted with the extraordinary film actress Michèle Morgan. She has too many acting credentials to even try to list them here, including a Best Actress award at the Cannes Film Festival, and she was utterly charming. One night Michèle told the story of how she moved to Hollywood during World War II. She designed a French Country-style home to be built there, fairly private and only a short distance away from the heart of Beverly Hills where most other movie stars were living. But in time she was frightened to live there because she kept hearing what she described as “sinister noises,” and she eventually sold the property. 

 

The house Michèle Morgan built, the house full of “sinister noises” that frightened her, was 10050 Cielo Drive, my former residence and, of course, the house where the murders occurred. What are the odds that I would just happen to become acquainted with her, through a chance encounter with a Greek singer at an Athens I?"

 

Chakiris, George. My West Side Story (p. 118, 133, 149 and 151). Lyons Press. Kindle Edition.

______

 

I believe Samantha Eggar was next. That’s her on the cover of the April 2, 1966, edition of Hola magazine near the pool.  Here’s a couple more blurry images from that magazine. 

 

By the way, that’s Samantha Eggar in the top right photo, not Candice Bergen as most online sources claim. 

This is Candice Bergen and the source claims that it was taken at Cielo Drive.

 

I left out Cary Grant. I don’t think he ever lived at Cielo Drive. The source of the ‘Cary Grant had a bad acid trip while renting Cielo Drive’ story, as far as I can tell, originates from this gossip column I pulled from the Miami Herald (September 1, 1969). It cites Dyan Cannon as the source. 

I have five Cary Grant biographies. I am kind of a fan. Now you listen to me, I’m an advertising man, not a red herring. I’ve got a job, a secretary, a mother, two ex-wives and several bartenders that depend upon me, and I don’t intend to disappoint them all by getting myself “slightly” killed.

One of the biographies places Grant at Cielo Drive in 1940. That, of course, is not possible. The rest do not mention Cielo Drive. They mention the murders either in connection with Grant hiring a full time bodyguard for his daughter after the murders or to mention Grant being on Manson’s Hollywood Hit List.  

 

Dyan Cannon says this. Again, no mention of Cielo Drive.

"And so, Cary left for Tokyo, and I was left with the task of finding us a house to live in as fast as possible. I spent weeks looking at houses with Cary’s real estate agent. I airmailed photos to Tokyo for Cary to see. We wound up renting a home off Benedict Canyon recently vacated by the Beatles."

 

Cannon, Dyan. Dear Cary (pp. 225-226). It Books. Kindle Edition.

______

 

The Beatles House is located at 2850 Benedict Canyon. When it is listed for sale the Beatles and Grant are usually mentioned. The Beatles rented the house in August 1965. George Chakiris was renting Cielo Drive during that time-frame. 

The Newlywed Murder-Suicide 

The Melcher-Lindsay period gives us the murder-suicide myth. I am sure everyone has read this. 

______

 

"Rudy said that one of the first couples to occupy the house had been newlyweds, and on their wedding night the bride somehow learned that the groom had cheated on her in the recent past. Supposedly after the marriage was consummated and he was asleep, the new lady of the house took a large knife from the kitchen and stabbed him to death in bed. She then put a bullet in her brain using the small "lady's pistol" that he had given her for protection as one of her wedding gifts.

 

Rudy told us the whole affair had been hushed up and was never talked about because it would reflect negatively on the real estate value. He said that although the femme fatale's spirit still lingered, she probably wouldn't bother two guys -- although he warned that she didn't seem to tolerate beautiful women very well. "As long as you don't let your girlfriends stay over too long, you should be okay," he warned. And then he went back to his residence, leaving us to ponder."

 

https://www.mansonblog.com/2020/10/a-little-something-for-halloween.html

 

______

 

It never happened. No newlyweds ever lived in the home and there were only three owners prior to Altobelli. All three lived in the house and/or the guesthouse the whole time they owned the home. 

The Wagon

I am sure most of you know most of the above information. This post is about that wagon but if I had not added the other stuff the post would be really short which would be out of keeping with my post history. 

And that brings us back to Doctor Hartley Dewey and his wife, Louise. Hartley was this guy’s cousin. 

 

The Deweys bought the house from Michele Morgan in June 1943. They had three sons all of whom served in World War II. One, a bomber pilot over Europe, was missing in action for several months. 

The Deweys came to LA from Yosemite National Park. 

"Doctor Hartley G. Dewey opened the new W. B. Lewis Memorial Hospital during Christmas week 1929. The services to Yosemite rendered in this fine hospital were much needed as the increase in visitors, as well as permanent and seasonal employees, had doubled during the past decade. Dr. Dewey needed additional help so another doctor and more nurses were added to the staff. A permanent Dentist Office was also established for full time work, with Doctor Raleigh Davies in charge.

Doctor Avery Sturm joined Doctor Dewey at the Lewis Memorial Hospital in 1935. This team practiced until 1942 when Doctor Sturm entered Military Service during World War 2. Doctor Dewey’s contract was up in April 1943, so he, too, left the Park."

https://www.yosemite.ca.us/library/guardians_of_the_yosemite/hospital.html

After they purchased Cielo Drive, the Deweys converted the barbeque pavilion into the guest house. They added a dressing room for the pool off the back of the house and redecorated the home. 

Their friend, Walt Disney, hand rendered images of Mickey Mouse on the walls of the bar. I don’t know if the drawings were still there in 1969. I couldn't find anything about them after the Deweys. I find that sort of surreal if they were there in August 1969.

 

The Deweys make multiple appearances on the society pages of the LA Times in the 1940s. I believe Louise was good friends with Lucille Lambert who wrote the column Confidentially. Here is an example. 

 

Ms. Lambert even wrote an article about the remodel for the Times. 

 

Lillian Gish rented the main house from the Deweys in 1945. 

She later sued the Deweys for over $11,000 for violating the wartime rent restrictions. She won. 

 

The Deweys moved to Carmel in 1949 and sold the house to Henry Griffing. Griffing worked for LC Griffith at the time. Later he attempted to launch what we would now call cable (pay) TV. In theory you could drop coins in a box on the TV and watch movies that had recently been in the theater. It didn’t catch on. Griffing died in a plane crash in 1960. 

I periodically stop at antique malls looking to replace the vinyl I sold to fund one of my obsessions when I was in college. I later married her, but I digress. 

On one such trip I wandered into a stall filled, in part, with sixties memorabilia. They wanted too much money for the 1964 GI Joe and they didn’t have any Moby Grape albums. 

 

They had a whole section of magazines dating back to the 1920s including the Manson Life magazine. I already have that one. They had several Look and Life magazines from the sixties including the walk on the moon, the assassination of Robert Kennedy and even the Mets 1969 World Series win. 

My eye, however, was drawn to another magazine less prominently displayed and sort of tossed aside with some other obscure pre-sixties titles. 

 

Here was the August 1945 edition of American Home. There on the cover, in full color, stood Louise Dewey. She was standing in front of the garage at 10050 Cielo Drive and there in the background of that photo.... was the wagon. 

 

August 1945. Ed Sanders might add an oo-ee-oo here too. Here is the whole American Home article. The text on the last page is not about Cielo Drive. In fact, aside from the image captions, there is no text.  Louise took the photographs. I also included the LA Times article about the remodel which mentions the Disney characters and, oddly, a garage 'at the foot of the hill'.  

 

https://wvw.mansonblog.com/pdf/American_Home.pdf

______

 

One more thing. 

I think most people have seen this image. It originally appeared in the November 15, 1969, edition of Paris Match magazine. 

 

The photograph was likely taken in October 1969. The photographer was standing off the north end of the porch, to the right of the walk, just about in front of the window Watson entered that night. Kasabian would have been standing about five feet to his left that night according to the trial exhibit. This is as close as we will ever get to seeing what she saw that night. How many still think she saw the pool from here? 

______

 

Pax Vobiscum

 

Dreath

 

 

 

A Little Something for Halloween

This is a post from Mark Lindsay's (Paul Revere and the Raiders) fan page. I am not the Deb in the first part of the story!  All the pictures were taken at Cielo.  Happy Halloween

THE HOUSE ON CIELO DRIVE – A GHOST STORY

Do I believe in ghosts? Well, if you're talking about spiritual manifestations in the physical world that remain after the body is dead and buried, the answer is yes.

In the 1990s, we were living in Maui but the bi-weekly commute to the east coast to do gigs was time-consuming and expensive, so my wife Deb and I decided on a second residence. We found a grand old (circa 1830) Federal in upstate New York.

The house had a great deal of character, and we soon found out that at least one of the earlier householders was still in residence, so to speak. On many occasions when we were in the dining room or kitchen, we would hear what sounded like footsteps coming from above us on the second story. I'd fling open the door to the second story servants' quarters and dash up the steep, winding staircase, but as soon as I got to the top landing, the sounds would cease.

Several times I saw the legs – just the legs – of a woman dressed in heavy skirts moving swiftly ahead of me up the stairs. This was quite a shock the first time I observed her, and Deb and I soon came to the realization that our new old house might be haunted, but the spirit or whatever was benign and seemed to pose no threat. And after we assured a electrician working on our renovation who had also seen her that she was friendly, we all peacefully co-existed with our “guest” until we sold the place several years later. 

This experience was in stark contrast to the first haunted house where I lived for two years, in 1966 and 1967, at 10050 Cielo Drive. Yes, the place that would soon be known as the infamous "Manson Murder House."

Terry Melcher was a staff producer at CBS Records in Hollywood. His mother, Doris Day, had been a staple at CBS for years, but the new era of rock and roll was exploding and Paul Revere and the Raiders was signed to the label as its first rock act. It seemed natural that Terry, as the youngest producer and the same age as me, should be assigned to produce my group.

Terry and I soon became friends, and he told me he had just leased a house in Benedict Canyon. When he asked if I wanted to move in, share the rent, and write songs together, I jumped at the chance.

The house had a million dollar view, a pool, and peaceful, well-sculpted grounds with a rose garden. The interior at first seemed ideal. There was plenty of room with a master and guest bedroom, as well as a spacious living room with a grand piano and a loft. Across a small entry hall was the kitchen, dining room, and a maid's quarters.

But a couple of weeks after I moved in, I began to sense two areas in this idyllic setting that seemed, well, not quite right. The two bedrooms were in the back of the house and although there was a door from the master to the pool, I always took the long way to the pool, out the front door and around to the back.

The master bedroom just felt "wrong" to me somehow. Although it was much larger than my room, it always seemed cold and a little creepy. I know Terry had a hard time feeling comfortable in his room, and took sleeping pills nightly.

The other area in the house that felt weird to me was the entry hall. It always seemed several degrees colder than the main part of the house, even in the summer's heat, and no one ever lingered there.

A month or so after moving in, I learned that there was perhaps a reason for my odd feelings. Rudy Altobelli owned the property and lived in the guest house that was slightly down the hill. He dropped by one afternoon to visit with Terry and me.

After we'd had a glass or two of wine, Rudy asked if we were superstitious, and we both responded, "No." And then he proceeded to tell us the history of the house. It seemed that several Hollywood luminaries had lived there over the years, but the story of some of the early residents really got our attention.

Rudy said that one of the first couples to occupy the house had been newlyweds, and on their wedding night the bride somehow learned that the groom had cheated on her in the recent past. Supposedly after the marriage was consummated and he was asleep, the new lady of the house took a large knife from the kitchen and stabbed him to death in bed. She then put a bullet in her brain using the small "lady's pistol" that he had given her for protection as one of her wedding gifts.

Rudy told us the whole affair had been hushed up and was never talked about because it would reflect negatively on the real estate value. He said that although the femme fatale's spirit still lingered, she probably wouldn't bother two guys -- although he warned that she didn't seem to tolerate beautiful women very well. "As long as you don't let your girlfriends stay over too long, you should be okay," he warned. And then he went back to his residence, leaving us to ponder.

Over the next few months, I began to believe that Rudy was telling the truth, and that the bride was not only still with us, but quite angry, because strange things began to happen.

Except for the odd feeling in Terry's bedroom and the unexplained temperature drop in the front entry, the house seemed fairly neutral most of the time. However, unless we were writing at the piano or listening to music (which we played at ear-splitting levels), Terry and I felt most comfortable hanging out in the rose garden, which was on the opposite side of the house from the master bedroom.

More and more often, I noticed that Terry was taking downers, Valium and Tuinals, during the day and not just to sleep. The 44 magnum I usually kept in a suitcase in my closet, I now slept with under my pillow. I couldn't put my finger on it, but in the back of my mind I felt like I might need protection.

When I had moved into the house, I brought my studio sound system, including Mcintosh amps and JBL monitor speakers, which I installed in the loft. I also brought my telescope, mounted on a tripod, which we placed in the front entryway. The idea was that if we opened one of the front Dutch doors, we could then use the telescope to check out the view of Beverly Hills and the Pacific Ocean in the distance. I think we did this once, and then the scope just became a fixture in the entrance.

One day, about a month after I'd moved in, Terry and I were both seated on the piano bench, working on a tune. We were kicking some lyrics around when, all of a sudden, there was a loud crash from the vicinity of the front door. We both jumped up and found that the telescope had been knocked over.

The tripod was still open and locked in place, no one else was in the house, we had no pets at the time, and the door was shut tight. We talked about it and agreed there was no way it could have fallen over by itself, but somehow it had!

A few weeks later, when I was sound asleep, the stereo system came on at full volume in the middle of the night. I jumped out of bed and ran into the living room to tell Terry to turn it down, but no one was in the room. I shut it off and went to bed.

The next morning, Terry was upset. It seemed he had picked up one of the go-go girls at The Whiskey, and was at a "critical point in the relationship" when the stereo suddenly started blasting at full volume. I told him I thought he had turned it on, but he vehemently denied it, so we were left with another mystery.

This "stereo in the night thing" happened at least two other times that I remember, and since I was on tour about half the time, I might have missed more of the unwelcome events.

One hot summer day at the end of a series of tour dates, I returned to the house when there was a meeting going on in the living room. Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys was there, and he, Terry, and a prominent attorney were discussing some kind of deal. 

So as not to interrupt, I went into the kitchen to get a cold drink. There was a guy I didn't recognize squatting on the slate floor, leaning against the refrigerator. He was dressed in a blue work shirt and jeans and did not seem too happy.

I tried to open the refrigerator door but the guy wouldn't budge. "Excuse me," I said, but he totally ignored me. I tried again. “Sorry, man, but I'm trying to get in the frig!” He didn't move or even look at me. I walked into the living room and asked, "What's with the weird guy in the kitchen?" 

Dennis said, "Oh, that's just Charlie...he's okay." But he didn't seem very "okay" to me at the time.

This of course turned out to be Charlie Manson, and he was at the house on at least one other occasion. When I was driving up to the house a couple of weeks later, he was just getting into a limo, which then left. Charlie didn't look like the kind of guy who could or would hire a limousine, so I figured Terry or Dennis must have sent one for him.

When I walked into the house, the vibes were not good, so I figured that particular meeting must not have one well. Supposedly, Manson was at least at one other meeting at Cielo, but these are the only two times I saw him there. As I came and went from my trips, I would never know who I might encounter when I returned. I met Hendrix there, Mama Cass, John and Michelle, and a lot of "folkies" and blues musicians.

On one return trip, I walked into the house to discover Terry and Candice Bergen making out on the couch like a couple of teenagers. As time went on, I would find Candy there more and more often. It became obvious that this was becoming somewhat serious and I began to feel like the odd man out in my own house.

The lease was up for renewal in a couple of months, so I told Terry that I would feel more comfortable renting my own place, leaving Candy free to move in. In retrospect, this might not have been such a great idea for their relationship. As soon as I moved out and Miss Bergen moved in, she and Terry began having more and more disagreements and fights, which ultimately culminated in Candy moving out.

This left Terry alone in the house, which I don't think he liked very much. Shortly thereafter he sublet the property to Roman Polanski, and moved to his mom's beach house in Malibu.

Did the spirit who Rudy had said didn't like pretty women stir up the tension to evict Candy?

And did that same spirit inspire Susan Atkins or Tex Watson to take a large knife from the kitchen and brutally stab Sharon Tate?

I guess we'll never know for sure, but I can testify to the fact that strange, unexplained events occurred when I was living there. And at it times, I did sense an undeniable foreboding and a feeling of pervasive darkness emanating from the house at 10050 Cielo Drive.

How Quentin Tarantino got the '60s sound for ‘Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood'

Mark Lindsay of Paul Revere & the Raiders, left,
Quentin Tarantino and David Wild in conversation
at the Grammy Museum on Wed., Oct. 2.(Rebecca Sapp / Getty Images)

Mark Lindsay of Paul Revere & the Raiders, left, Quentin Tarantino and David Wild in conversation at the Grammy Museum on Wed., Oct. 2.(Rebecca Sapp / Getty Images)

By AUGUST BROWNSTAFF WRITER
OCT. 3, 2019 2:05 PM

For a brief moment in his then-young rock career, Mark Lindsay lived in a gorgeous home at the top of Benedict Canyon. The singer-songwriter, co-founder of the group Paul Revere & the Raiders, moved there with his buddy, record producer Terry Melcher, in the late '60s. He wrote some of his band's best work there, including the single "Good Thing," which he penned on a piano in the living room.

Lindsay left the house when Melcher wanted to live with his girlfriend, actress Candice Bergen. They soon rented the place to director Roman Polanski and his wife, Sharon Tate.

What happened next in that living room inaugurated one of the darkest weeks in L.A. history. But Lindsay still remembers the place fondly, even if he did once bump into Charles Manson at a party there.

"Those two years were my golden years," Lindsay said onstage at the Grammy Museum on Wednesday night in conversation with director Quentin Tarantino. "I remember drinking rosè in the garden with Terry outside in that liquid sunshine and saying, ‘it doesn't get better than this' and thinking it'll never get worse. It didn't until 1969."

For director and L.A. native Tarantino, however, the coincidence is a thread that ties his whole film "Once Upon a Time ... In Hollywood" together. All of his obsessions — vintage rock and roll, movie-business lore, darkly comic idylls cut through with horrific violence — wound through that property at the top of Cielo Drive (it's now demolished, of course). He and Lindsay talked about evoking that golden era of L.A. rock radio in "Once Upon a Time ..." and how it set the tone for the nightmare to come.

"Paul Revere & the Raiders was exactly the kind of band that would have rocked my little socks off," Tarantino said of Lindsay's pre-fab conceptual, velvety-voiced act. "And the reason Manson knew of Terry Melcher was because of Paul Revere & the Raiders."

"Once Upon a Time ..." was the rare original summer flick to best $100 million at the box office this year. The star-packed throwback follows a TV actor (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his loyal stuntman sidekick (Brad Pitt) through the wane of their careers in late-'60s L.A., all while something evil kindles in the canyons over the hill.

Throughout the film, Lindsay's songs help set the hyper-specific tone of the era's music — less the raw psychedelia of the tastemaking historians and more the amber hues of the innocence that Manson would soon shatter. Though Margot Robbie's Sharon Tate pokes fun at the band in the script ("Don't tell Jim Morrison you're dancing to the Raiders!"), their slinky, creepy song "Hungry" plays as she meets her eventual killer for the first time in the driveway.

"The room where Abigail Folger slept was my room," Lindsay said. "It's just like I'm back again."

On Wednesday, even Tarantino's conversation was peppered with such callbacks. Onstage, moderator David Wild, a rock journalist and Grammy scriptwriter, got a text from another favorite Tarantino soundtrack source, Neil Diamond, suggesting the director sync a few more tunes in his next project. Tarantino's movies have always mined vintage rock for unexpected revelations and new contexts, ever since his impeccable use of Dick Dale's "Misirlou" in Pulp Fiction.

"I want to be known for my discography as much as my filmography," Tarantino said. When he's picking soundtrack cuts, he joked that he imagines that "every director I know is in there going ‘Oh god, now I have to get out of the business'."

"Once Upon a Time ..." was a chance to marinate ever deeper in the era's AM radio (especially the old L.A. station KHJ). Tarantino and music supervisor Mary Ramos unearthed around a full daytime block's worth of recordings from the era for research — ad jingles, DJ patter and all. Drive-time radio wasn't just a historical reference point in the film, he said, but a way to set the ambience in the eternal, doomed summer of '60s L.A. at the margins of the movie business.

"There's an L.A. quality to Brad Pitt's character where he works in Hollywood but doesn't live there," Tarantino said. "He's given his life to the entertainment business but doesn't have anything to show for it. He drives home to Panorama City, and in that time you hear four songs, which gives you an idea of how long it takes to drive there."

For Lindsay, the return to the stage has indeed been a long drive through a career that, if he hadn't lived it, could have been scripted by Tarantino. It wasn't all L.A. classic rock; Lindsay performed the synth score for the 1980 Japanese action flick "Shogun Assassin," a favorite sample source for the Wu-Tang Clan and other rappers.

But on this night, he did his best to invoke the mood of "Once Upon a Time," performing three songs from the movie with a choral ensemble from Orange County's Tesoro High School.

Lindsay's voice still had that velvety touch that made long, aimless drives through the Hollywood flatlands so moody back then. Tarantino almost always makes stars of his deep-cut soundtrack picks, but this was something else: an ever-rarer chance to hear the actual voice ringing through that house on Cielo Drive, back before everything went dark.