What was Charles Manson’s definition of ‘Helter Skelter’?
Maybe it’s all Pete Townshend’s fault. He’s the one who bragged in the press about ‘I Can See For Miles’ being “the raunchiest, loudest, most ridiculous rock ‘n’ roll record you’ve ever heard” and thus, inspired Paul McCartney to take that as a challenge.
Feeling like he was being provoked into creativity, McCartney set about writing a song specifically to match The Who’s psychedelic proto-punk jam, which was the heaviest song recorded. Credit where it’s due, that’s exactly what The Beatles did. For better and for worse.
The history of ‘Helter Skelter’ is an incredibly tough read, which is a crying shame because it’s not just one of the best songs from The White Album but one of The Beatles’ best songs, period. Still shockingly heavy nearly six decades on, it is still bursting with hooks and featuring one of the best guitar riffs of the decade in the chorus.
It shows the Fabs at their creative peak and Macca himself as his most creatively daring. An aspect of his word which doesn’t get nearly enough credit due to Lennon tartly deriding his music with The Beatles as “granny music shit” later in life. The song also remains a sign of how strangely parochial The Beatles could be. No matter how culturally ubiquitous they were, they were an English band.
When they started devoting their records to their own songwriting and not the American rock ‘n’ roll standards they cut their teeth with in Hamburg, they weren’t afraid to show it. ‘Penny Lane’ and ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ and their fond remembrance of their childhood haunts. Lennon’s molasses thick scouse accent on ‘Polythene Pam’ (“She’s the kind of a GERHL / that makes the news of the WERHLD”). None of them would have thought twice about naming a song after a fairground slide because who could have known what came next?
How did The Beatles inspire the Manson Family?
By the release of The White Album in 1968, Charles Manson had established a “family” of around 20 people, mainly young women, in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco. Manson, who wasn’t a Beatles fan but envied the hold they had over young women, latched onto The White Album upon its release in November of that year.
He began preaching to his family and to everyone who’d listened that The Beatles were part of his family. Speaking to him and him in particular about, for lack of a better term, the apocalypse. It would be genuinely hilarious if it wasn’t so desperately sad. ‘Piggies’ became an anthem for killing cops. ‘I Will’ is a message to Manson in particular to spread his message and have “his song fill the air.”
The major one, though, was the song he took the name of and gave to his vision of an apocalyptic race war. This would become one of Charlie Manson’s favourite phrases. “Helter Skelter is coming down, man. The Beatles are telling it like it is.” I cannot stress enough how much ‘Helter Skelter’ is a song about going down a slide. However, when it comes to art, people hear what they want to hear.
More often than not this is harmless fun that can be a little annoying to the artist themselves, ask anyone who thought ‘Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds’ was about LSD for proof. Manson, though, was different. Whether he genuinely believed what he was saying or just knew that perverting the work of the biggest act in pop culture would get people listening to his half-baked, racist doggrel, ‘Helter Skelter’ was for decades associated with one of the darkest acts of the whole 1960s.
In a way, I think it’s part of the reason it’s become such a key part of Paul McCartney’s live set in the 21st century. To this day, one of the loudest reactions Macca receives when he performs live is that startling, descending guitar riff signalling that things are about to get very loud indeed. The first time Paul performed at the Grammy Awards, he performed this song.
Maybe it’s simply because it’s one of the best songs Paul ever wrote, but Macca is nothing if not profoundly aware of his legacy. So, to paraphrase a wise man, I also think he knows that Manson stole one of his greatest achievements. So he stole it back.
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