Paul McCartney Stopped Playing This Legendary Beatles Song For Years After This Tragedy

In 1968, The Beatles were working on one of their most groundbreaking records, their self-titled album, better known as the White Album. They were coming off a psychedelic trend with Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, Magical Mystery Tour, and the White Album was a sharp turn back to rock 'n' roll. But of course, The Beatles were no ordinary band, and even when they were going back to basics, they still made history. One of the greatest songs included on this extensive double album is "Helter Skelter." This song was initiated by Paul McCartney, inspired by his competitive spirit, and ended up changing rock music forever. Sadly, shortly after the song was released, a tragedy overshadowed it and darkened the memory of the song for McCartney for years.

When The Beatles were recording the White Album, Paul McCartney read something that inspired him to push boundaries. It's no secret that all contemporary rock bands were competing with each other at the time. It wasn't about animosity; it was about healthy competition and being inspired by each other. The Beatles talked a lot about how they tried to compete with The Beach Boys and The Rolling Stones, and in 1968, McCartney read an interview with The Who's Pete Townshend. It was about a song the band had released the previous year, "I Can See for Miles."

"Pete Townshend had been talking in the music press about how The Who had just recorded the loudest, the dirtiest, the rockiest thing ever," McCartney shared in his book, The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present. His response to Townshend's claim was the song "Helter Skelter."

"I came into the studio and said to the guys, 'Let's just see how loud we can get and how raucous. Let's try to make the meter peak.'"

They certainly achieved that. The song contains a lot of distortion and overlapping guitar solos, and McCartney screams through most of the lyrics. By the end, the music seems to fade out, only to return unexpectedly at full volume. They made good on their promise to play as loudly and as intensely as possible. So much so that, at the end of the song, Ringo Starr can be heard screaming, "I've got blisters on my fingers!" after a recording process that McCartney described as "endless" and "a feat of endurance." It served its purpose, though. "Helter Skelter" soon dethroned all of its predecessors as the loudest, dirtiest song of its time, and it's considered the song that originated Heavy Metal as a subgenre of rock 'n' roll. Sadly, while the story behind its conception is one of creativity and inspiration, things soon took a dark turn.

Charles Manson's Disturbing Interpretation of the Song

In 1969, cult leader Charles Manson decided to, in McCartney's words, "hijack" the song. "He thought The Beatles were the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse," he lamented in his book. Manson and his followers wrote the words "Helter Skelter" in blood when they committed the infamous Tate–LaBianca murders. He was telling his followers that The Beatles had written coded messages of white supremacy in the White Album, especially in this one song, and used it to fuel his heinous crimes. For McCartney, it was devastating to have his song in any way connected with the tragedy, and it took him a long time to get over that. For years after the murders took place, he avoided playing the song live, as it felt too dark.

“Well, that put me off doing it forever. I thought, I’m not doing [‘Helter Skelter’], you know, because it was too close to that event, and immediately it would have seemed like I was, either I didn’t care about all the carnage that had gone on or whatever, so I kept away from it for a long time."

But eventually, he realized that just because Manson had made those insane associations with the song, it didn't mean he had to validate his interpretations. McCartney had written that song with the best creative intentions, and it's objectively a great song. "In the end, I thought, you know, that’d be good on stage, that’d be a nice one to do, so we brought it out of the bag and tried it and it works. It’s a good one to rock with, you know." Nowadays, that song has a spot on the setlist of most Paul McCartney concerts. And yes, it's still a great one to rock with.