December 13, 2023 • 23 mins
Season 1 of “McCartney: A Life in Lyrics” concludes with a band in flux. The Beatles had evolved significantly by 1968 from when they first released “Love Me Do.” Back then, they were only competing with the likes of Andy Williams, Little Stevie Wonder, and Peter Paul and Mary. But by the recording of the “White Album" The Beatles were up against acts on the charts with a more hard driving sound like Cream, The Who, and Sly and the Family Stone. Paul McCartney sensed an opportunity to jump into the fray himself and wrote a song that many consider to be the genesis of the hard rock and metal genres.
“McCartney: A Life in Lyrics” is a co-production between iHeart Media, MPL and Pushkin Industries.
The series was produced by Pejk Malinovski and Sara McCrea; written by Sara McCrea; edited by Dan O’Donnell and Sophie Crane; mastered by Jason Gambrell with sound design by Pejk Malinovski. The series is executive produced by Leital Molad, Justin Richmond, Lee Eastman and Scott Rodger.
Thanks to Lee Eastman, Richard Ewbank, Scott Rodger, Aoife Corbett and Steve Ithell.
Special thanks to Leah Rose, Alexandra Garreton, Martin Birket-Smith, Brittani Brown, Owen Miller, Daniella Lakhan, Jordyn McMillin, Kyra Posey, Eric Sandler, Heather Fain, Gretta Cohn, Christina Sullivan, Jon Schnaars and Jacob Weisberg of Pushkin Industries. And also Winslow Bright and Nora Nalepka from Premier Music.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
Pushkin. I was inspired by something I read where it
was Pete Townsend talking about we have just recorded the loudest, dirtiest,
rockiest thing ever. And I love that description. I just thought, Wow,
(00:43):
what a great idea. So what we've got to do?
Something loud and raucous and dirty. I know you've deceived
me now years is.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
I know that you have because there's magic in my.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
Life I can see. So I came into the stereo
sets of guys. Yeah, I just read about Pete saying
this and think it's really a great idea. Let's just
see how loud you can get and how raw was
some Just let's just try and really make them meet
(01:22):
us peak.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
I'm Paul won't do. And I've been fortunate to spend
time with one of the greatest songwriters of our era.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
And will you look at me? I'm going to I'm
actually a performer.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
That is Sir Paul McCartney. We worked together on a
book looking at the lyrics of more than one hundred
and fifty of songs, and we recorded many hours of
our conversations.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
Actually a songwriter, My god, well that that crept up
on me.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
This is McCartney. A life in lyrics, a masterclass, a memoir,
and an improvised journey with one of the most iconic
figures in popular music. In this episode, we'll trace the
story of one of the wildest Beatles songs, which some
consider to represent the beginning of heavy metal. Today, more
(02:47):
people probably think of Helter Skelter as that raucous Beatle
song with a strange title, rather than what it refers to,
an innocent funfair ride.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
Not people in America don't know what a helter skelter is.
I do you think it's a rollercoaster, but as you know,
it's a sort of conical thing. Will slide around the
outside of it. We used to go on those loads
of times as kids. You'd you walk up in the
(03:20):
stairs inside it, and then you'd slide down, and then
you'd walk up again, and it was fun, you know.
So I just used that. I was thought of symbol
of life. I got up to the top, I stopped,
and I turned and I come down to bon't I
so you again? So I was really thinking of moods.
(03:41):
You know, you're up, you get knocked down, you you're
feeling euphoric and you're feeling miserable, such as the nature
of life. We get to the don and I get
back to the top of the stop.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
The the image of a child sliding down a cylindrical
tower is in sharp contrast to what the song would become,
and especially to how it would later be misinterpreted. But
the funfair ride is a great metaphor for the sense
of play the Beatles brought to the studio, as we
(04:29):
can hear in this early version of Helter Skelter, when
I get the lying of the hill where I stop
and I tuned.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
And I gave a new grill.
Speaker 2 (04:53):
In nineteen sixty eight, when the Beatles recorded and released
Helter Skelter, there was a new kind of rock and
roll in the air. It was loud, distorted, heavy.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
Kass.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
There was of course the ho and there was the
King of the electric guitar, so let's say once again
the Jimi Hendrix experience. Things got heavier throughout the late sixties,
(05:47):
setting the stage for Black Sabbath, who would released their
first record in nineteen seventy. Throughout the late sixties, when
(06:13):
the Beatles were at their peak, rock groups saw the
rise of technological innovations in the studio, new signs, new
production methods by the time Helter Skelter was released, most
record companies had abandoned Mono had moved on to stereo recording.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
Well. I remember walking into the studio and there being
two speakers, one on the left, one on the right,
whereas it's always just been one in the middle, and
we were, oh, you know, we were highly observant two speakers,
(06:53):
So we immediately as were very thrilled because we assumed
that many it would be twice as loud, and George
(07:17):
Martin patiently explained to us, nosy's hystereopholic. Then, because it
was there, it was available, we got into it. It
was like a new toy, but we thought it in
a different way than you do now. Now you just
think it makes it more realistic, like listening to a
(07:37):
band and you get a surround feeling when you listen
to it. We thought, no, there's two speakers, we can
have a thing wandering from one speaker to another.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
The Beatles White Album, which included Helter Skelter, was the
last the band would record in mono. For their next album,
Abbey Road, the stereo mix would become crucial to their
creative vision. Individual instruments would start to move from one
(08:15):
speaker to another.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
So a lot of our things in the mix is
just go for walkies and decides to go over there
for a while.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
Yeah, how active role did you yourself?
Speaker 1 (08:38):
Yourself or your the other Beatles playing in the sand
by then quite a love. Yes, well, we always used
to say, you know, the the lunatics were taken over
the soul. We got control of pretty much everything, you know.
(09:01):
Being a bit of a perfectionist, I would would sort
of work out the song and then I'd say run
up into the control room and listen to the drum
sound and sort of say to the engineer, if you
made this a bit hard, and I'd fuss and plush
till it was like for health scalp till it was
kind of quite raucous, you know, and really just try
(09:25):
and coach the engineers and then you could leave them.
They were brilliant and they would multiply what you suggested
and sorted out make it, make it better.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
At that time, most of the sound engineers would have
had classical production training with certain rules about arranging instruments
and volume levels and preventing distortion. But as the Beatles
drifted away from the sweet sound of their early pop hits.
They realized that most rules exist to be broken.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
I remember Nowhere Man. Charl had brought this song in
from Weybridge where he was feeling like I know where man,
and we wanted the opening guitars to be really spiky
and very trebling, super trebling, and they are if you
(10:27):
listen to them there it's like a like a razor
blade or something. You know, it's quite amazing.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
He's a real no man sitting in his now land
making a now.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
Plans for So we said to the engineer, okay, so
make it as treble as you can. So he put
all the treble in. I said, can you make it more?
He said, no, that's it. I'm sort of run out,
you know, this is all that high made and treble,
(11:07):
and that's all I can do. I said, well, could
he put it through another lot of EQ So he did.
He sent it through the next channel, and of course
then this is like the game. Could you put even more? Yeah?
So we had him going through I don't know, quite
(11:29):
a few channels. Jesus Jesse. One wants to.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
See no man, can you see. As McCartney and the
rest of the band learned to break the rules, of production.
They were also playing with the rules of language, drawing
(11:58):
on the literary tradition of nonsense poetry in.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
The verses that's sort of Alice in Wonderland, Will you
won't you? Do? You don't? Let's lose cow Asuddy John
and I both related to We like that lotten use
(12:27):
things from.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
That, Things like the lobster quadrille from Alice in Wonderland
here performed by Gene Wilder.
Speaker 1 (12:36):
See how eagerly the lobsters and the turtles all advance.
They are waiting on the shingle. Will you come and
join the dance dance? Will you won't you? Will you?
Speaker 2 (12:49):
Won't you join the dance dance? Many Beatles lyrics included
playful phrases like this. Some of these phrases coined by
the band have even crept into the common vernacular phrases
such as a hard day's night, eight days a week,
(13:10):
or for that matter, helter skelter. Most of the nonsense
lyrics weren't meant to be interpreted. They were meant to
be felt in keeping with the playful energy. However, some
(13:31):
of the lyrics nodded toward that which couldn't be played
over BBC waves.
Speaker 1 (13:47):
Don't let Me break you. Yes, it's just sort of,
you know, something to hang a song of desperation, little
sexual she's coming coming down fast, and perhaps a little
drug which I want to throw it all in.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
Helter Skelter wasn't the only song to which the Beatles
added clever euphemisms and hidden messages. As the band's music developed,
they inserted a few easter eggs that fans began to
crack open, including phrases that could only be heard when
played backwards.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
See people thinking, actually there is a whole set it
up with a few little clues kind of things, you know,
we did. We put little things in. Well, those things
they were for our own amusement, you know, it was
it was it was an effort to not be bored.
(14:47):
So when we heard the beach boys singing, we thought
that'd be great, to which on the session became Ti
tit and we sniggered like school boards, you know, and
really were happy. Jesus. The kind of girls down with
bend and in Penny Lane for of fish and finger
(15:15):
pied finger Pie was rude sexual reference. But we knew
that people in Liverpool would get it, but no one
else would. They would just think it was like a
(15:35):
chef spire. So I think once people thought there's hidden references,
they started they were looking for them, and I saw
them in everything, you know, even stuff that wasn't really there.
Speaker 2 (15:59):
Sometimes interpretation can open up a song, reveale layers of
meaning that weren't discernible on the first listen. Tribute to
a song by listening to it, and sometimes we add
significance of which even the lyricist wasn't conscious. Misinterpretations are
(16:37):
mostly harmless, like when some fans took lyrics as evidence
for the bizarre urban legend that Paul McCartney died in
nineteen sixty six and was replaced by a doubleganger.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
So Paul is dead came out of the fact that
I wasn't wearing shoes on the Abbey Road crossing. Wait,
that's a stretch in anybody's language, you know. And then
there was a Volkswagen Beetle car in that which said
two eight one F, which was translated he would have
(17:12):
been twenty eight if he'd have lived.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
Okay, But when the wrong person looks too closely for
something that's not there, the meaning can be corrupted, like
when Charles Manson claimed Helter Skelter referred to a coming
apocalypse and read into the song a justification for his
(17:35):
heenous crimes.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
I didn't do it for years because of that. You know,
when it was contemporary, I wouldn't have even thought of
doing it, because that's the sort of horror show, you know.
When we suddenly realized, I mean, we knew that there
were sort of daft Americans who read way too much
(17:58):
into everything we did. That's okay them, But when Manson
did it, when when the Manson association with the murders,
then that was, oh, okay, this is no longer funny
this guy, because he really thought we were the four
horsemen of the apocalypse. And we were horrified to learn that,
(18:23):
you know that his song was Helter Skelter, because of course,
you know, it was just sparked by this translated quote
that I've read, this idea of you know, just loudest,
let's go in now, you know, let's go on and
just make it the loudest.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
When I get to the bat and I get back
to the tap of the stopt.
Speaker 1 (18:57):
So we're not going to turn our guitars town. And
the tournament was a loud you know, I'm going to
ask the engineer to be loud and it's dirty and
give us distortion, the kind of thing that we eventually
got on Revolution. You know, that was the epitome of
the distortion thing. It's at the heart of the matter, really,
isn't it. You know it's I mean, we liked, we
(19:19):
liked that, we liked it's it's very much part of
rock and roll, you know. It's whereas.
Speaker 3 (19:29):
Orchestral music or dance and music will be trying to
be pretty gentle and romantic, rock and roll was kicking that.
You know, we're kicking out of.
Speaker 2 (19:56):
H The studio sessions for Helter Skelter became quite physically demanding,
(20:20):
gone with the cut school boys serenading their fans with
lovely Doo and eight days a week this music, shredded, clashed, roared.
The Beatles recorded several takes of Helter Skelter, including an
unreleased version that ran at twenty seven minutes, not eleven seconds.
(20:40):
It's no wonder then at the end of the song,
Ringo's Star would cry out.
Speaker 1 (20:50):
It was that kind of thing where you had played
the hell out of it, And it was sometimes credited
by people as being in the start of heavy metal. Yes,
I've read that's I don't know whether that's true, but
you know it's pre heavy metal, so you know, you
think it might have inspired someone in the same way
(21:11):
as the twsit quote expired me.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
McCartney doesn't remember which song from the Who towns End
was referring to. It may have been I can see
for miles. But it only took the idea of cranking
up the volume and rocking as hard as possible to
inspire Helter Skelter, a song which in turn would inspire
(21:34):
the next generation of heavy metal bands, like the band
Motley Crewe, who regularly performed their own cover of the
song Helter Skelter from the Beatles nineteen sixty eight self
(22:17):
titled record also known as the White Album. This concludes
the first season of our podcast We'll be back soon
(22:40):
with more episodes drawn from this treasure drove of lyrics,
including McCartney's own favorite McCartney song.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
Leader Metal.
Speaker 3 (22:52):
My Nema.
Speaker 2 (22:58):
Yeah, statuned and subscribed to McCartney A Life in Lyrics,
Changing the wave of no McCartney. A Life in Lyrics
(23:23):
is a co production between iHeartMedia, n p L and
Pushkin Industries.
Pushkin. I was inspired by something I read where it
was Pete Townsend talking about we have just recorded the loudest, dirtiest,
rockiest thing ever. And I love that description. I just thought, Wow,
(00:43):
what a great idea. So what we've got to do?
Something loud and raucous and dirty. I know you've deceived
me now years is.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
I know that you have because there's magic in my.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
Life I can see. So I came into the stereo
sets of guys. Yeah, I just read about Pete saying
this and think it's really a great idea. Let's just
see how loud you can get and how raw was
some Just let's just try and really make them meet
(01:22):
us peak.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
I'm Paul won't do. And I've been fortunate to spend
time with one of the greatest songwriters of our era.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
And will you look at me? I'm going to I'm
actually a performer.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
That is Sir Paul McCartney. We worked together on a
book looking at the lyrics of more than one hundred
and fifty of songs, and we recorded many hours of
our conversations.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
Actually a songwriter, My god, well that that crept up
on me.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
This is McCartney. A life in lyrics, a masterclass, a memoir,
and an improvised journey with one of the most iconic
figures in popular music. In this episode, we'll trace the
story of one of the wildest Beatles songs, which some
consider to represent the beginning of heavy metal. Today, more
(02:47):
people probably think of Helter Skelter as that raucous Beatle
song with a strange title, rather than what it refers to,
an innocent funfair ride.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
Not people in America don't know what a helter skelter is.
I do you think it's a rollercoaster, but as you know,
it's a sort of conical thing. Will slide around the
outside of it. We used to go on those loads
of times as kids. You'd you walk up in the
(03:20):
stairs inside it, and then you'd slide down, and then
you'd walk up again, and it was fun, you know.
So I just used that. I was thought of symbol
of life. I got up to the top, I stopped,
and I turned and I come down to bon't I
so you again? So I was really thinking of moods.
(03:41):
You know, you're up, you get knocked down, you you're
feeling euphoric and you're feeling miserable, such as the nature
of life. We get to the don and I get
back to the top of the stop.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
The the image of a child sliding down a cylindrical
tower is in sharp contrast to what the song would become,
and especially to how it would later be misinterpreted. But
the funfair ride is a great metaphor for the sense
of play the Beatles brought to the studio, as we
(04:29):
can hear in this early version of Helter Skelter, when
I get the lying of the hill where I stop
and I tuned.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
And I gave a new grill.
Speaker 2 (04:53):
In nineteen sixty eight, when the Beatles recorded and released
Helter Skelter, there was a new kind of rock and
roll in the air. It was loud, distorted, heavy.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
Kass.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
There was of course the ho and there was the
King of the electric guitar, so let's say once again
the Jimi Hendrix experience. Things got heavier throughout the late sixties,
(05:47):
setting the stage for Black Sabbath, who would released their
first record in nineteen seventy. Throughout the late sixties, when
(06:13):
the Beatles were at their peak, rock groups saw the
rise of technological innovations in the studio, new signs, new
production methods by the time Helter Skelter was released, most
record companies had abandoned Mono had moved on to stereo recording.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
Well. I remember walking into the studio and there being
two speakers, one on the left, one on the right,
whereas it's always just been one in the middle, and
we were, oh, you know, we were highly observant two speakers,
(06:53):
So we immediately as were very thrilled because we assumed
that many it would be twice as loud, and George
(07:17):
Martin patiently explained to us, nosy's hystereopholic. Then, because it
was there, it was available, we got into it. It
was like a new toy, but we thought it in
a different way than you do now. Now you just
think it makes it more realistic, like listening to a
(07:37):
band and you get a surround feeling when you listen
to it. We thought, no, there's two speakers, we can
have a thing wandering from one speaker to another.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
The Beatles White Album, which included Helter Skelter, was the
last the band would record in mono. For their next album,
Abbey Road, the stereo mix would become crucial to their
creative vision. Individual instruments would start to move from one
(08:15):
speaker to another.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
So a lot of our things in the mix is
just go for walkies and decides to go over there
for a while.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
Yeah, how active role did you yourself?
Speaker 1 (08:38):
Yourself or your the other Beatles playing in the sand
by then quite a love. Yes, well, we always used
to say, you know, the the lunatics were taken over
the soul. We got control of pretty much everything, you know.
(09:01):
Being a bit of a perfectionist, I would would sort
of work out the song and then I'd say run
up into the control room and listen to the drum
sound and sort of say to the engineer, if you
made this a bit hard, and I'd fuss and plush
till it was like for health scalp till it was
kind of quite raucous, you know, and really just try
(09:25):
and coach the engineers and then you could leave them.
They were brilliant and they would multiply what you suggested
and sorted out make it, make it better.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
At that time, most of the sound engineers would have
had classical production training with certain rules about arranging instruments
and volume levels and preventing distortion. But as the Beatles
drifted away from the sweet sound of their early pop hits.
They realized that most rules exist to be broken.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
I remember Nowhere Man. Charl had brought this song in
from Weybridge where he was feeling like I know where man,
and we wanted the opening guitars to be really spiky
and very trebling, super trebling, and they are if you
(10:27):
listen to them there it's like a like a razor
blade or something. You know, it's quite amazing.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
He's a real no man sitting in his now land
making a now.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
Plans for So we said to the engineer, okay, so
make it as treble as you can. So he put
all the treble in. I said, can you make it more?
He said, no, that's it. I'm sort of run out,
you know, this is all that high made and treble,
(11:07):
and that's all I can do. I said, well, could
he put it through another lot of EQ So he did.
He sent it through the next channel, and of course
then this is like the game. Could you put even more? Yeah?
So we had him going through I don't know, quite
(11:29):
a few channels. Jesus Jesse. One wants to.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
See no man, can you see. As McCartney and the
rest of the band learned to break the rules, of production.
They were also playing with the rules of language, drawing
(11:58):
on the literary tradition of nonsense poetry in.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
The verses that's sort of Alice in Wonderland, Will you
won't you? Do? You don't? Let's lose cow Asuddy John
and I both related to We like that lotten use
(12:27):
things from.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
That, Things like the lobster quadrille from Alice in Wonderland
here performed by Gene Wilder.
Speaker 1 (12:36):
See how eagerly the lobsters and the turtles all advance.
They are waiting on the shingle. Will you come and
join the dance dance? Will you won't you? Will you?
Speaker 2 (12:49):
Won't you join the dance dance? Many Beatles lyrics included
playful phrases like this. Some of these phrases coined by
the band have even crept into the common vernacular phrases
such as a hard day's night, eight days a week,
(13:10):
or for that matter, helter skelter. Most of the nonsense
lyrics weren't meant to be interpreted. They were meant to
be felt in keeping with the playful energy. However, some
(13:31):
of the lyrics nodded toward that which couldn't be played
over BBC waves.
Speaker 1 (13:47):
Don't let Me break you. Yes, it's just sort of,
you know, something to hang a song of desperation, little
sexual she's coming coming down fast, and perhaps a little
drug which I want to throw it all in.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
Helter Skelter wasn't the only song to which the Beatles
added clever euphemisms and hidden messages. As the band's music developed,
they inserted a few easter eggs that fans began to
crack open, including phrases that could only be heard when
played backwards.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
See people thinking, actually there is a whole set it
up with a few little clues kind of things, you know,
we did. We put little things in. Well, those things
they were for our own amusement, you know, it was
it was it was an effort to not be bored.
(14:47):
So when we heard the beach boys singing, we thought
that'd be great, to which on the session became Ti
tit and we sniggered like school boards, you know, and
really were happy. Jesus. The kind of girls down with
bend and in Penny Lane for of fish and finger
(15:15):
pied finger Pie was rude sexual reference. But we knew
that people in Liverpool would get it, but no one
else would. They would just think it was like a
(15:35):
chef spire. So I think once people thought there's hidden references,
they started they were looking for them, and I saw
them in everything, you know, even stuff that wasn't really there.
Speaker 2 (15:59):
Sometimes interpretation can open up a song, reveale layers of
meaning that weren't discernible on the first listen. Tribute to
a song by listening to it, and sometimes we add
significance of which even the lyricist wasn't conscious. Misinterpretations are
(16:37):
mostly harmless, like when some fans took lyrics as evidence
for the bizarre urban legend that Paul McCartney died in
nineteen sixty six and was replaced by a doubleganger.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
So Paul is dead came out of the fact that
I wasn't wearing shoes on the Abbey Road crossing. Wait,
that's a stretch in anybody's language, you know. And then
there was a Volkswagen Beetle car in that which said
two eight one F, which was translated he would have
(17:12):
been twenty eight if he'd have lived.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
Okay, But when the wrong person looks too closely for
something that's not there, the meaning can be corrupted, like
when Charles Manson claimed Helter Skelter referred to a coming
apocalypse and read into the song a justification for his
(17:35):
heenous crimes.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
I didn't do it for years because of that. You know,
when it was contemporary, I wouldn't have even thought of
doing it, because that's the sort of horror show, you know.
When we suddenly realized, I mean, we knew that there
were sort of daft Americans who read way too much
(17:58):
into everything we did. That's okay them, But when Manson
did it, when when the Manson association with the murders,
then that was, oh, okay, this is no longer funny
this guy, because he really thought we were the four
horsemen of the apocalypse. And we were horrified to learn that,
(18:23):
you know that his song was Helter Skelter, because of course,
you know, it was just sparked by this translated quote
that I've read, this idea of you know, just loudest,
let's go in now, you know, let's go on and
just make it the loudest.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
When I get to the bat and I get back
to the tap of the stopt.
Speaker 1 (18:57):
So we're not going to turn our guitars town. And
the tournament was a loud you know, I'm going to
ask the engineer to be loud and it's dirty and
give us distortion, the kind of thing that we eventually
got on Revolution. You know, that was the epitome of
the distortion thing. It's at the heart of the matter, really,
isn't it. You know it's I mean, we liked, we
(19:19):
liked that, we liked it's it's very much part of
rock and roll, you know. It's whereas.
Speaker 3 (19:29):
Orchestral music or dance and music will be trying to
be pretty gentle and romantic, rock and roll was kicking that.
You know, we're kicking out of.
Speaker 2 (19:56):
H The studio sessions for Helter Skelter became quite physically demanding,
(20:20):
gone with the cut school boys serenading their fans with
lovely Doo and eight days a week this music, shredded, clashed, roared.
The Beatles recorded several takes of Helter Skelter, including an
unreleased version that ran at twenty seven minutes, not eleven seconds.
(20:40):
It's no wonder then at the end of the song,
Ringo's Star would cry out.
Speaker 1 (20:50):
It was that kind of thing where you had played
the hell out of it, And it was sometimes credited
by people as being in the start of heavy metal. Yes,
I've read that's I don't know whether that's true, but
you know it's pre heavy metal, so you know, you
think it might have inspired someone in the same way
(21:11):
as the twsit quote expired me.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
McCartney doesn't remember which song from the Who towns End
was referring to. It may have been I can see
for miles. But it only took the idea of cranking
up the volume and rocking as hard as possible to
inspire Helter Skelter, a song which in turn would inspire
(21:34):
the next generation of heavy metal bands, like the band
Motley Crewe, who regularly performed their own cover of the
song Helter Skelter from the Beatles nineteen sixty eight self
(22:17):
titled record also known as the White Album. This concludes
the first season of our podcast We'll be back soon
(22:40):
with more episodes drawn from this treasure drove of lyrics,
including McCartney's own favorite McCartney song.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
Leader Metal.
Speaker 3 (22:52):
My Nema.
Speaker 2 (22:58):
Yeah, statuned and subscribed to McCartney A Life in Lyrics,
Changing the wave of no McCartney. A Life in Lyrics
(23:23):
is a co production between iHeartMedia, n p L and
Pushkin Industries.
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