Helter Skelter is arguably the most controversial
Beatles song, mostly due to a series of tragic events that had nothing to do with the
band. But beyond that tragedy, the song has also been polarizing for its unusual style. Whether
you love it or hate it, you might not be aware that Helter Skelter is loaded with wild anomalies,
and even a mystery that fans still debate over 50 years later. I'm going to explore some of these
anomalies in the context of the song's recording history. And as a fair warning: once I point them
out, you can't unhear this. Helter Skelter appears on the latter half of the Beatles' monumental
self-titled double album better known as The White Album. Like many songs on The White Album, Helter
Skelter is an exploration of a specific style falling somewhere in between pastiche and parody,
in this case of a psychedelic hard rock freakout with scorching performances mixed with
a cacophony of unexpected sounds all assembled in a loose structure that eventually collapses into
madness, climaxing with Ringo's famous resignation to the occupational hazards of a brutal recording
session: "I got blisters on my fingers!!" There's a lot more buried in the chaos, too, which we'll get into
later in the episode. Helter Skelter was written by Paul McCartney in early to mid 1968 during the
creative explosion the band experienced following their extended trip to India. An early snippet
of the song was serendipitously captured by a film crew that had stopped by EMI during Paul's
recording session for Blackbird on June 11th. It wasn't until a month later, however, that
the band attempted a recording. On July 18th 1968 in EMI Studio 2, the four Beatles worked for a bit
on John's new song, Cry Baby Cry and then turned their attention to Paul's new composition,
rehearsing and jamming until 3:30 the next morning. Among this session's recordings is a legendary
27-minute long jam, a Holy Grail among some fans that is reportedly the longest Beetle studio
recording ever. It remains unreleased even on bootlegs. A different shorter take from that night,
however, has been officially released released on a few compilations over the years. Take Two of
Helter Skelter is quite different from the final version. Here the song is performed in a haunting
minor key, and features a slow pulsating rhythm and multiple meandering guitar
solos. While there were some promising ideas here, it seemed that the band was still experimenting
and hadn't settled on a satisfying direction yet. After the late night July session, the band set
the track aside, continuing to work on a slew of other songs that would eventually wind
up on the White Album almost 2 months later. They finally returned to Helter Skelter on the
9th of September assembling for a wild evening session at EMI. The band recorded a series of
new takes with the help of engineer Ken Scott and producer Chris Thomas, two young eager EMI
personnel who had been assigned to cover for the band's usual producer, George Martin, while
he was on holiday. Like a grade school class when a substitute teacher steps in, The Beatles
took full advantage of Martin's absence, during a session that was described by witnesses as
total madness and hysterics. For instance while Paul was recording his vocals, George Harrison
was apparently parading around the studio with a flaming ashtray on his head, channeling
the flamboyant psychedelic artist Arthur Brown. It turns out the undersupervised, chaotic
atmosphere was just what the song needed. At some some point between July and September, Paul
decided that he wanted Helter Skelter to one-up contemporaries like The Who, Jimi Hendrix, Blue Cheer, Cream and others that were pushing the boundaries of sonic mayhem in rock. As the inveterate creative
sponges that the Beatles were, they absorbed these influences and rung out a fresh interpretation
that tried to push the boundaries even further. From the layers of distorted electric guitars, to the scorching vocals, to the aggressive bass, and Ringo's blistering percussion...literally.
Pleased with this new direction, the band selected the final take from the September
9th session as a suitable backing track and then spent the next day September 10th adding
numerous finishing touches. Conveniently, EMI had recently set up at the band's request a
new eight track recorder, which they had used for the very first time a few days earlier
on George's new song, While My Guitar Gently Weeps. For Helter Skelter, the new
machine allowed the band to easily add more vocal harmonies, more guitar parts, a brief
piano part, and even trumpet and saxophone, played quite unconventionally by
John Lennon and Beatles Roadie Mal Evans. But that's not all. If you listen very closely,
you may detect a bunch of other bizarre spoken snippets through throughout the track. Some of these lines are buried so deeply among the other sounds, that it isn't
clear what's being said unless the tracks are isolated. Perhaps most bizarre is an entire bit
of Paul's studio chatter left in: hey come here son, I saw you do that, you little bugger, put your
bloody hands on your head. All of these snippets simply add to the song's viscerally unsettling
atmosphere. With all of these diverse pieces spread across eight tracks, the recording was
complete. But the weirdness continued even into the mixes. For a little context The White
Album would be the last Beatles album to get an official release in mono. The mono format had been
fading in popularity by the late 1960s in favor of two channel stereo, which has remained the most
commonly used format for recorded music since. Ironically, the white album's mono and stereo
mixes are some of the most divergent of their entire catalog, and Helter Skelter is probably
the most noticeable example. The final mono version of Helter Skelter which, was mixed first
on September 17th, has major differences from the later stereo mix, including more prominent harmony
vocals, a different drum sound. But most of all, the mono mix is an entire minute shorter, fading out long
before Ringo's famous exclamation. Therefore it can only be heard on the stereo version. But within
the performance itself, an even more interesting anomaly has sparked a heated debate among some
fans. Who played the bass? As most fans know, Paul McCartney played bass guitar on
the vast majority of Beatles songs dating back to their earliest hits. But in the September
1968 issue of The Beatles monthly fan magazine, Beatles roadie, confidant and casual archivist Mal Evans
casually mentions an unnamed 24-minute right old jam session. He's referring to the slow July version
of Helter Skelter. He notes that John Lennon played bass guitar 'just for a change. In the October 1968
issue, an entry references the nameless song again reiterating John on bass, Paul using Epiphone guitar,
and George on his new Gibson. Finally, in the November issue, which includes summaries of a
bunch of new White album songs, Helter Skelter is finally mentioned by name with a final note
that 'John plays bass, which is unusual.' And it was unusual. Before The White Album sessions, there
aren't any confirmed instances of John playing the final bass part on any Beatle song, and as
Ringo put it: John was not going to play bass. Following Mal's account, most sources, including
the official White Album deluxe edition booklet, and even the The Beatles Rock Band video game,
assume Paul and George on guitar and John on the fender VI bass, a unique six string instrument with
a distinctive tone, used occasionally during The White Album sessions and later on during the Get Back sessions by John or George, typically while Paul was on another instrument. In 2018, however, a
new piece of evidence surfaced that has led some fans to argue that this might be incorrect. On disc
five of The White Album deluxe edition, an outtake of Helter Skelter was released that allegedly
proves that Paul, not John, is playing bass on the final version. The debate springs out of Take
17 recorded on September 9th, shortly before the final take that was chosen for
the song Take 21. Since this is a live take and we can hear two electric guitars and a bass guitar,
that means that John Paul and George were playing one instrument each. Let's listen to the chatter
before take 17 begins: "have extra on the first one...". According to the new Paul theory, he's
demonstrating how he wants extra emphasis on the first beat of that opening riff. To help
explain it, he's demonstrating using his bass guitar. Next, Paul gives another instruction,
again using the bass to help explain. Later on, it sounds like
Paul's asking the EMI engineers to end the song creatively with a tape rewinding sound instead
of a normal fade out. PAUL: "At the end, if it's gone well, at the end do that winding back the tape
thing." He then demonstrates the timing on bass. These
snippets of dialogue, when taken together with performance that immediately follows, have
fueled a debate across message boards, YouTube comments and Reddit posts. Fans have even dug
up further evidence, such as Ringo describing Helter Skelter as "a track we did in total madness
and hysterics in the studio. sometimes you had to shake out the jams and with that song Paul's bass line - and my drums - Paul started screaming and shouting and made it up on the spot." As far as
I'm aware, there aren't any documented photographs from this specific session and neither Paul nor
John George Ken Scott or Chris Thomas have ever commented about the bass part here in the decades
of interviews since. So Ringo's kind of vague later recollection, Mal's newsletter notes and the
audio are all we have. So who's right? There are a few aspects of the actual recording to review
for clues. First, the sound of the bass itself. The John argument claims that helter Skelter's bass
sounds like the distinctive tone of the Fender VI, often described as being in between
a normal bass and a regular guitar. But here's the Fender VI on another White Album track, Honey
Pie, as played by George while Paul was on piano To my ears, it's not
the same sound as on Helter Skelter. Helter Skelter's bass sound
does closely resemble a few other songs in the Beatles catalog, all of which were
recorded around the same time and all of which were documented as being played by
Paul. 'Yer Blues,' recorded a month earlier. 'Why don't we do it in the road?'
a month later. Or Glass Onion, recorded
the very next day after Helter Skelter. Why does this bass sound so different
from earlier Beatle songs? Around this time Paul had acquired a new Fender Jazz Bass guitar
and he was clearly enamored with its meaty sound, hence its regular appearance on the White Album,
including possibly here, too, on Helter Skelter. Next, let's turn to the performance. The John on
bass theory claims that Helter Skelter's bass part is too aggressive and too sloppy to have
been played by Paul, normally a quite meticulous bass player. Then again, Paul's goal here was
to record 'the dirtiest the loudest the most out of control, the wackiest thing we've ever
done." So the style fits. Furthermore, during the middle bridge section on Take 17, it sounds like
Paul is basically singing along to the bass part. Considering this sounds like a spontaneous
ad lib on a live take, it seems very likely that's him singing and playing. What about the other
guitars on the backing track? If Paul were on bass guitar, as the new theory suggests, then
that means that John and George were handling their usual roles on guitar. And I find this lineup
plausible. After all, the distorted opening riff sounds strikingly similar to Jon's opening riff
on the single version of Revolution, released just weeks earlier. We also learned from
Take 17 that the rest of the guitar parts on the backing track are only playing basic chords throughout.
The only instrument that plays the famous descending scale at this point
is the bass guitar. In my view it seems unlikely that Paul would give such a critical
part of his own song to someone else to play especially John, who really didn't like to play
bass. Beyond Take 17, another intriguing piece of auditory evidence from that day surfaced on the
2018 White Album Deluxe Edition. In between takes, the band jumped into an ab libbed run through of
the Elvis classic, You're So Square, Baby I Don't Care To my ears, the spontaneous yet very
tight jam sounds like the work of a confident bass player like Paul and a confident
rhythm guitarist like John or George. Because the band basically rolls into
Helter Skelter, we can assume it's the same instrument lineup on both songs. Clearly
there's a lot of intriguing clues in the tape archives that point to a fairly convincing case
for Paul on bass. But what about Mal's account the original source of this long-standing bass
credit to John? Mal, who was ever-present at Beatle sessions, was likely correct about John playing the
very simple bass part on the slow July rehearsal session while Paul was still working out the
direction for the song. As for the September session, perhaps Mal or the newsletter editor just
mixed it up. I contacted Kenneth Womack, author of a fantastic new Mal Evans biography Living The
Beatles Legend. He reviewed Mal's diaries for these session dates and confirmed that Mal only
mentions the Helter Skelter instrument lineup with John on bass in a diary entry from July. Mal's diary
also mentions the September remix, but there's no mention of the lineup, and no mention of John
on bass, so those later newsletter reports might simply have repeated the July details by mistake.
With dozens of new songs to report on and limited ways to corroborate details, a minor oversight like
that could easily go unnoticed and eventually seep into the official narrative - that is, until recently.
As with a lot of these debates, the most intriguing aspect to me isn't the answer, but rather that
there could even be a question in in the first place. These organic little anomalies of the
analog era, especially during this period of wild studio experimentation, are part of why the Beatles
catalog remains so endearing, so fascinating and so alive all these decades later. As a song Helter
Skelter is a fitting reflection of the band's creative state during this period: unrestrained,
unflinching and defying all expectations. Coming off the roller coaster experience of 1967
and their subsequent jaunt in India in early 1968, The Beatles as a cohesive creative unit was
fracturing and ideas that might not have passed muster under the former Lenin McCartney regime
were suddenly let loose. Much like the sprawling diverse and polarizing album on which it appears,
Helter Skelter must have seemed startling in 1968. And that was intentional. As the loudest and
raunchiest song they had released up to that point, Helter Skelter repudiated expectations of
what a Beatles song should sound like, especially one written by Paul McCartney who had developed
a reputation for being the clean-cut, pop oriented songwriter of the group. In reality Paul had
consistently pushed the others to embrace the avant garde and had been the impetus behind some
of their most daring works to date. Helter Skelter though was perhaps the first time that this side
of Paul was so prominently on display. Funnily enough, one early
reviewer of The White Album even mistook Helter Skelter as a John Lennon composition, calling it
'exhaustingly marvelous' and 'a brilliant feat of invention.' Even today opinions of Helter Skelter
are mixed. Some fans consider it overindulgent tedious and even irritating, while others adore
it for its hypnotic power and capturing a moment when the full band seems to be having a great
time together. I think everyone can agree though that it marks a fascinating waypoint in their
long and winding road from Love Me Do barely 6 years earlier. As with many pivotal moments during
their career, The Beatles were both absorbing and contributing to emerging sounds, in this case heavy
psychedelic-tinged hard rock, moments ahead of a mainstream explosion from mega groups like Led
Zeppelin and Black Sabbath. Speaking of Led Zeppelin, there's a fantastic fan created mashup of Helter
Skelter with Led Zeppelin's Whole Lotta Love Definitely worth checking out. Sadly, soon after its release, Helter Skelter would
be negatively linked to a horrific tragedy involving Charles Manson and his cult of
followers, who claimed to have heard encoded messages in songs on The White Album including
Helter Skelter, which also became the title of the bestselling book recounting the saga. Despite
having nothing to do with the Beatles themselves, the unfortunate association of the song with
the Manson murders made Helter Skelter more notorious than notable, and the original meaning of
the song's title - a reference to a type of slide in British amusement parks, mirroring the descending
main riff - has been almost entirely obscured along the way. Eventually the song's virtues began to
overshadow the Manson stigma, and have allowed for much-deserved reappraisal. Further help has
come from the numerous covers of Helter Skelter released over the years, by artists including
Pat Benatar, Siouxie and the Banshees, Motley Crue, Oasis, Aerosmith and U2. After an understandable
absence, the song has even made its way onto Paul McCartney set lists on recent tours,
where by the way, he always plays the bass part. So what do you think about Helter Skelter?
Let me know in the comments. I hope you enjoyed this episode, and as always,
thanks for listening and for subscribing.
