If Charles Manson was miles off with ‘Helter Skelter’, then what is the song actually about?
“They would do an atrocious murder with stabbing, killing, cutting bodies to pieces, smearing blood on the walls, writing ‘pigs’ on the walls … in the victims’ own blood.” – Charles Manson.
Ever heard a song and thought that it was trying to send you a secret message? There are certainly songs out there that seem to coincidentally align with exact feelings that you might be having at any given moment, whether those are about love, heartbreak or your general disposition on life. Very, and I mean very rarely, are songs giving you the signal that a race war is on the verge of breaking out and destroying the fabric of society.
However, the opening quote, attributed to convicted serial killer and cult leader Charles Manson, was the message he claimed to have been receiving through hearing The Beatles’ ‘Helter Skelter’, believing that it was raising the alarm for a cataclysmic conflict to erupt between black and white people in America. These are, very obviously, the ramblings of a man who was fragile and lacking a real grasp on reality, but it does beg two questions – why did Manson think that this was the message the band were trying to convey, and what is ‘Helter Skelter’ actually about?
The only logical reason would have been that the song was loud and aggressive, which could equal a sign of violence being on the cards. There’s very little in the lyrical content of the song that could possibly suggest otherwise, although the testimony of former Manson family member Catherine Share suggests that he was actually hearing the band covertly vindicate the thoughts and feelings that he had been ruminating on.
“He was quite certain that the Beatles had tapped into his spirit,” she stated in a 2009 interview. “Everything was gonna come down and the black man was going to rise. It wasn’t that Charlie listened to the White Album and started following what he thought the Beatles were saying. It was the other way around. He thought that the Beatles were talking about what he had been expounding for years.”
As far as Manson was concerned, The Beatles were akin to the four horsemen of the apocalypse, or perhaps even the four apostles prophetically warning us of things to come. Either way, it was the Liverpudlian quartet who had guided Manson to believe that he had been right all along, and that they were ultimately responsible for the heinous crimes that he ended up committing.
However, what Paul McCartney actually wanted to do with ‘Helter Skelter’ was make something that rivalled the intensity of what The Who had produced in 1967, after Pete Townshend had proclaimed that ‘I Can See For Miles’ was “the most raucous” song that they had released up until that point. Noting how raw the track was, McCartney suggested that ‘Helter Skelter’ was the kind of song that they could dial up the maniacal aspects of and turn into a proto-metal masterpiece.
Of course, The Beatles themselves wanted nothing more than to distance themselves from Manson’s actions and beliefs, although John Lennon did choose to break his silence on the matter in 1971, two years after the Tate-LaBianca murders that Manson would be convicted of orchestrating. While he nervously joked to Rolling Stone about how extreme fandom can lead to people doing the strangest things, he also admitted that he had little idea of what McCartney was talking about.
“I don’t know what ‘Helter Skelter’ has to do with knifing somebody,” he claimed. “I’ve never listened to the words properly, it was just a noise.”
And the lyrics? They’re about a theme park ride, and it’s pretty evident that getting to the bottom and going back to the top of the slide is about as literal as things can be. A large amount of the songs on The White Album do have deeper meaning, such as ‘Piggies’ being a scathing critique of the upper classes, but at the same time, ‘Why Don’t We Do It In The Road?’ is literally a two-line song about, well, exactly what you think it’s about. ‘Helter Skelter’ is no different to this, and while it may have a strange connection to Manson’s murderous activities, the two couldn’t have more opposing motives.
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