: Cease to Exist

Background
"Cease to Exist" was written by Charles Manson in the late 1960s during the period when he and members of his communal group were in California and cultivating connections within the Los Angeles music scene. Manson pursued songwriting as a possible path to recognition and befriended several musicians, most notably Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys, to whom he offered material and demos. The composition is one of the handful of songs that linked Manson to mainstream recording artists before his crimes made his name infamous.
The song emerged from a milieu of folk-tinged rock and personal exhortation common in that era, and it circulated first as a rudimentary demo performed by Manson. Its later reworking by professional musicians and the ensuing disputes over authorship and lyrical changes ensured that "Cease to Exist" would attract attention beyond the music itself.

Composition and lyrics
Musically, "Cease to Exist" is spare and direct, built around a repeating chord structure that supports plain-spoken vocal lines. The arrangement in Manson's versions leans toward folk-rock with occasional gospel inflections; the melody is simple, aiming to underscore the lyrics rather than to showcase elaborate instrumentation. The song's mood is alternately beseeching and accusatory, a quality that helped it stand out among contemporaneous songwriter sketches.
Lyrically, the song addresses another person in blunt, imperative language, at times urging transformation and at other moments asserting control. Themes of change, surrender, and rebirth recur across the lines, and the titular phrase functions as both a command and a motif. The directness of the words and the repetitive framing give the song a ritualized feel, which listeners and commentators have read in different ways, as intimate pleading, as manipulative rhetoric, or simply as a piece of enigmatic songwriting.

Recording and controversy
The most widely circulated mainstream version of the song was retitled and recorded by the Beach Boys as "Never Learn Not to Love." That recorded version features altered lyrics, a reshaped arrangement, and credits that did not initially list Manson as the composer. Dennis Wilson's involvement facilitated the song's passage into the studio, but the changes and the omission of Manson's name provoked resentment from Manson and contributed to tensions between him and some of his associates.
After the murders committed by Manson and his followers, the song acquired a morbid notoriety. The Beach Boys' release and the story of the song's evolution became part of broader discussions linking the California music scene of the late 1960s to darker undercurrents. Legal claims and personal disputes over credit were never fully resolved in public view, and the episode remains a prominent example of how artistic collaboration and personal relationships can become entangled with criminal history.

Legacy
"Cease to Exist" endures chiefly as a historical curiosity and as one of Charles Manson's best-known songwriting credits. Bootleg recordings, later compilations, and music histories have kept both the original demos and the Beach Boys' adaptation in circulation, and the song is frequently cited in examinations of cultural appropriation, authorship disputes, and the unsettling crossover between popular music and real-world violence.
Musically modest but culturally resonant, the composition invites analysis less for its innovations than for the story that surrounds it: an aspiring songwriter's work taken up by established artists, altered and credited differently, then indelibly marked by events that shifted public perception of everything associated with its creator.