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, Scott Rodger and Paul McCartney.
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.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
Pushkin.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
I was inspired by something I read where it was
Pete Townsend talking about We've 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 urchy. I know you've deceived
me our years are.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
I know that you had, because there's magic.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
In my 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 get and how rowcus and
just let's just try and really make them meet us peak.
Speaker 4 (01:42):
I'm Paul will do And I've been fortunate to spend
time with one of the greatest songwriters of our era.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
And will you look at me? I'm going on to
I'm actually a performer.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
That is sir Paul McCartney. We work together on a
book looking at the lyrics of more than one hundred
and fifty of his songs, and we recorded many hours
of our conversations.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
Oh she'm a songwriter? My god, Well that that crypta homy.
Speaker 1 (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 Beatle songs, which some
consider to represent the beginning of heavy metal. Today, more
(02:47):
people probably think of Helter Skelter as that raucous Beatles
song with a strange title, rather than what it refers to,
an innocent funfair ride.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
Not people in a marc 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. We'll
slide around the outside of it. We used to go
on those loads of times as kids. You'd you walk
(03:19):
up in the 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 go up to the top,
I stopped, and I turned and I come down to
Moon't I see you again? So I was really thinking
(03:40):
of moods. You know, you're up, you get knocked down,
you're feeling euphoric and you're feeling miserable. Such as the
nature of life.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
When I get to the bottom, I got back to
the top of the stop.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
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
doing a lot.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
Of lying up doing the hill where I stopped and
I jumped and I did a little trill.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
In nineteen sixty eight, when the Beatles recorded and released
Helter Skelter, there was a new kind of rock and
roll in the air.
Speaker 5 (05:02):
It was loud, distorted, heavy, jes kass.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
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 2 (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 were very thrilled because we assumed that
many it would be twice as loud, and George Martin
(07:18):
patiently explained to us, no, Draxy's hystereophonics. Because it was there,
it was available, We got into it. It was like a
new toy, but we thought of it in a different
way than you do now. Now you just think it
makes it more realistic, like listening to a band and
you get a surround feeling when you listen to it.
(07:42):
We thought, no, it's two speakers. We can have a
thing wandering from one speaker to another.
Speaker 1 (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 2 (08:26):
So a lot of all things in the mix is
just go for walkers and decides to go over there
for a while.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
Yeah, how active role did you yourself?
Speaker 5 (08:38):
Yourself or your the other Beatles playing in the sand.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
By then quite a love Yes. Well, we always used
to say, you know, the the lunatics were taken over
the asylum, we got control of pretty much everything, you know.
Being a bit of a perfectionist, I would would sort
of work out the song and then I'd say run
(09:09):
up into the control room and listen to the drum
sound and sort of stay to the engineer if you
make this a bit hard, and I'd fuss and pushed
till it was like for health scalp, till it was
kind of quite raucous, you know, and really just try
and coach the engineers and then you could leave them.
They were brilliant and they would multiply what you suggested
(09:34):
and sorted out make it, make it better.
Speaker 1 (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 2 (10:02):
I remember Nowhere Man Child had brought this song in
from Weybridge where he was feeling like I know where
man and.
Speaker 6 (10:14):
We wanted the opening guitars to be really spiky and
very trebling, super trebling, and they are if you listen
to them there it's like a.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
Razor blade or something. You know, it's quite amazing.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
He's a real no man sitting.
Speaker 7 (10:40):
In his now land making all now.
Speaker 2 (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 and 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, and that's all I can do. I said, well,
(11:11):
could he put it through not a lot of EQ
So he did.
Speaker 8 (11:15):
He sent it through the next channel, and of course
then this was like the game could you put even more? Yeah,
So we had him going through I don't know, quite
a few channels.
Speaker 7 (11:30):
Jesus Jessee, no can Yus.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
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 on the literary tradition of
nonsense poetry.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
In the verses that's sort of Alice in Wonderland? Will
you won't you?
Speaker 7 (12:09):
Do?
Speaker 2 (12:09):
You don't? Let's lose Carol abisonly John and I both
related to we like that lotten use things.
Speaker 1 (12:28):
From that, Things like the lobster quadrille from Alice in
Wonderland here performed by Gene Wilder.
Speaker 2 (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 5 (12:49):
Won't you join the dance dance?
Speaker 1 (12:54):
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, or for that matter, helter skelter.
Most of the nonsense lyrics weren't meant to be interpreted.
(13:18):
They were meant to be felt in keeping with the
playful energy. However, some of the lyrics nodded toward that
which couldn't be played over BBC waves.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
Don't let Me Break you. Yes, it's just sort of,
you know, something to hang a song of desperation, of
little sexual she's coming coming down fast, and perhaps a
little drug component which I'll throw it all in.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
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 2 (14:26):
See people thinking. Actually there was 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 La La,
we thought that'd be great, to which on the session
became Ti tit and we sniggered like school boys, you know,
and really were happy.
Speaker 7 (15:03):
Jesus kind of girl with wind.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
And in Penny Lane for of fish and finger pied
finger pive is rude sexual reference. But we knew that
the people in Liverpool would get it, but no one
(15:32):
else would they would just think it was like a chefspie.
So I think once people thought there's hidden references, they
started they weren't looking for them, and I saw them
in everything, you know, even stuff that wasn't really there.
Speaker 1 (15:59):
Sometimes interpretation can open up a song, reveale layers of
meaning that weren't discernible on the first listen. We could
tribute to a song by listening to it, and sometimes
we add significance of which even the lyricist wasn't conscious.
(16:35):
Misinterpretations are 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 2 (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 1 (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 2 (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 something realized. I mean, we knew that there were
sort of daft Americans who read way too much into
(17:59):
everything we did. It's okay, but when Manson did it,
when when the Manson association.
Speaker 9 (18:06):
With the murders, then that was, oh, okay, this is
no longer funny this guy, because you really thought we
were the four horseman of the apocalypse, and we.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
Were horrified to learn that, you know, that his song
was helter Skelter, because of course, you know, it was
just sparked by this translated quote that I'd read, this
idea of you know, just loudest let's going now, you know,
let's go on and just make it the loudest.
Speaker 3 (18:42):
We're not get to the da and I get back
to the tap of the stadt.
Speaker 2 (18:57):
So we're not going to turn our guitars down. And
the turnament was a loud you know, I'm going to
ask the engineer to.
Speaker 10 (19:01):
Be loud and it's dirty and give us distortion, the
kind of thing that we eventually got on Revolution, and
you know that was the epitome of the distortion.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
That it's at the heart of the matter, really, isn't it.
Speaker 2 (19:17):
You know, it's I mean, we liked, we liked that,
we liked it's it's very much part of rock and roll,
you know. It's.
Speaker 11 (19:26):
Whereas orchestral music or dance and music will be trying
to be pretty gentle and romantic, rock and roll was
kicking that, you know, kicking out.
Speaker 4 (19:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:14):
The studio sessions for Helter Skelter became quite physically demanding,
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
(20:35):
unreleased version that ran at twenty seven minutes eleven seconds.
It's no wonder then at the end of the song,
Ringo's star would cry out.
Speaker 2 (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.
Speaker 12 (20:59):
Yes, I've read that's I don't know whether that's true,
but you know it's pretty heavy metal, so you know,
you think it might have inspired someone in the same
way as the Tansend quote expired me.
Speaker 1 (21:14):
McCartney doesn't remember which song from the who Townsend 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 the next generation
(21:36):
of heavy metal bands, like the band Motley Crewe, who
regularly performed their own cover of the song Helter Skelter
(22:14):
from the beatles nineteen sixty eight self titled record also
known as the White Album. This concludes the first season
(22:37):
of our podcast. We'll be back soon with more episodes
drawn from this treasure trove of lyrics, including McCartney's own
favorite McCartney song.
Speaker 6 (22:49):
Beat.
Speaker 2 (22:52):
My Name.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
Yeah, statuned and subscribed to McCartney A Life in Lyrics,
Changing the wave of McCartney. A Life in Lyrics is
(23:23):
a co production between iHeartMedia, n p L and Pushkin Industries.
Pushkin.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
I was inspired by something I read where it was
Pete Townsend talking about We've 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 urchy. I know you've deceived
me our years are.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
I know that you had, because there's magic.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
In my 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 get and how rowcus and
just let's just try and really make them meet us peak.
Speaker 4 (01:42):
I'm Paul will do And I've been fortunate to spend
time with one of the greatest songwriters of our era.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
And will you look at me? I'm going on to
I'm actually a performer.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
That is sir Paul McCartney. We work together on a
book looking at the lyrics of more than one hundred
and fifty of his songs, and we recorded many hours
of our conversations.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
Oh she'm a songwriter? My god, Well that that crypta homy.
Speaker 1 (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 Beatle songs, which some
consider to represent the beginning of heavy metal. Today, more
(02:47):
people probably think of Helter Skelter as that raucous Beatles
song with a strange title, rather than what it refers to,
an innocent funfair ride.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
Not people in a marc 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. We'll
slide around the outside of it. We used to go
on those loads of times as kids. You'd you walk
(03:19):
up in the 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 go up to the top,
I stopped, and I turned and I come down to
Moon't I see you again? So I was really thinking
(03:40):
of moods. You know, you're up, you get knocked down,
you're feeling euphoric and you're feeling miserable. Such as the
nature of life.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
When I get to the bottom, I got back to
the top of the stop.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
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
doing a lot.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
Of lying up doing the hill where I stopped and
I jumped and I did a little trill.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
In nineteen sixty eight, when the Beatles recorded and released
Helter Skelter, there was a new kind of rock and
roll in the air.
Speaker 5 (05:02):
It was loud, distorted, heavy, jes kass.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
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 2 (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 were very thrilled because we assumed that
many it would be twice as loud, and George Martin
(07:18):
patiently explained to us, no, Draxy's hystereophonics. Because it was there,
it was available, We got into it. It was like a
new toy, but we thought of it in a different
way than you do now. Now you just think it
makes it more realistic, like listening to a band and
you get a surround feeling when you listen to it.
(07:42):
We thought, no, it's two speakers. We can have a
thing wandering from one speaker to another.
Speaker 1 (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 2 (08:26):
So a lot of all things in the mix is
just go for walkers and decides to go over there
for a while.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
Yeah, how active role did you yourself?
Speaker 5 (08:38):
Yourself or your the other Beatles playing in the sand.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
By then quite a love Yes. Well, we always used
to say, you know, the the lunatics were taken over
the asylum, we got control of pretty much everything, you know.
Being a bit of a perfectionist, I would would sort
of work out the song and then I'd say run
(09:09):
up into the control room and listen to the drum
sound and sort of stay to the engineer if you
make this a bit hard, and I'd fuss and pushed
till it was like for health scalp, till it was
kind of quite raucous, you know, and really just try
and coach the engineers and then you could leave them.
They were brilliant and they would multiply what you suggested
(09:34):
and sorted out make it, make it better.
Speaker 1 (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 2 (10:02):
I remember Nowhere Man Child had brought this song in
from Weybridge where he was feeling like I know where
man and.
Speaker 6 (10:14):
We wanted the opening guitars to be really spiky and
very trebling, super trebling, and they are if you listen
to them there it's like a.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
Razor blade or something. You know, it's quite amazing.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
He's a real no man sitting.
Speaker 7 (10:40):
In his now land making all now.
Speaker 2 (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 and 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, and that's all I can do. I said, well,
(11:11):
could he put it through not a lot of EQ
So he did.
Speaker 8 (11:15):
He sent it through the next channel, and of course
then this was like the game could you put even more? Yeah,
So we had him going through I don't know, quite
a few channels.
Speaker 7 (11:30):
Jesus Jessee, no can Yus.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
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 on the literary tradition of
nonsense poetry.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
In the verses that's sort of Alice in Wonderland? Will
you won't you?
Speaker 7 (12:09):
Do?
Speaker 2 (12:09):
You don't? Let's lose Carol abisonly John and I both
related to we like that lotten use things.
Speaker 1 (12:28):
From that, Things like the lobster quadrille from Alice in
Wonderland here performed by Gene Wilder.
Speaker 2 (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 5 (12:49):
Won't you join the dance dance?
Speaker 1 (12:54):
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, or for that matter, helter skelter.
Most of the nonsense lyrics weren't meant to be interpreted.
(13:18):
They were meant to be felt in keeping with the
playful energy. However, some of the lyrics nodded toward that
which couldn't be played over BBC waves.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
Don't let Me Break you. Yes, it's just sort of,
you know, something to hang a song of desperation, of
little sexual she's coming coming down fast, and perhaps a
little drug component which I'll throw it all in.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
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 2 (14:26):
See people thinking. Actually there was 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 La La,
we thought that'd be great, to which on the session
became Ti tit and we sniggered like school boys, you know,
and really were happy.
Speaker 7 (15:03):
Jesus kind of girl with wind.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
And in Penny Lane for of fish and finger pied
finger pive is rude sexual reference. But we knew that
the people in Liverpool would get it, but no one
(15:32):
else would they would just think it was like a chefspie.
So I think once people thought there's hidden references, they
started they weren't looking for them, and I saw them
in everything, you know, even stuff that wasn't really there.
Speaker 1 (15:59):
Sometimes interpretation can open up a song, reveale layers of
meaning that weren't discernible on the first listen. We could
tribute to a song by listening to it, and sometimes
we add significance of which even the lyricist wasn't conscious.
(16:35):
Misinterpretations are 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 2 (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 1 (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 2 (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 something realized. I mean, we knew that there were
sort of daft Americans who read way too much into
(17:59):
everything we did. It's okay, but when Manson did it,
when when the Manson association.
Speaker 9 (18:06):
With the murders, then that was, oh, okay, this is
no longer funny this guy, because you really thought we
were the four horseman of the apocalypse, and we.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
Were horrified to learn that, you know, that his song
was helter Skelter, because of course, you know, it was
just sparked by this translated quote that I'd read, this
idea of you know, just loudest let's going now, you know,
let's go on and just make it the loudest.
Speaker 3 (18:42):
We're not get to the da and I get back
to the tap of the stadt.
Speaker 2 (18:57):
So we're not going to turn our guitars down. And
the turnament was a loud you know, I'm going to
ask the engineer to.
Speaker 10 (19:01):
Be loud and it's dirty and give us distortion, the
kind of thing that we eventually got on Revolution, and
you know that was the epitome of the distortion.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
That it's at the heart of the matter, really, isn't it.
Speaker 2 (19:17):
You know, it's I mean, we liked, we liked that,
we liked it's it's very much part of rock and roll,
you know. It's.
Speaker 11 (19:26):
Whereas orchestral music or dance and music will be trying
to be pretty gentle and romantic, rock and roll was
kicking that, you know, kicking out.
Speaker 4 (19:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:14):
The studio sessions for Helter Skelter became quite physically demanding,
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
(20:35):
unreleased version that ran at twenty seven minutes eleven seconds.
It's no wonder then at the end of the song,
Ringo's star would cry out.
Speaker 2 (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.
Speaker 12 (20:59):
Yes, I've read that's I don't know whether that's true,
but you know it's pretty heavy metal, so you know,
you think it might have inspired someone in the same
way as the Tansend quote expired me.
Speaker 1 (21:14):
McCartney doesn't remember which song from the who Townsend 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 the next generation
(21:36):
of heavy metal bands, like the band Motley Crewe, who
regularly performed their own cover of the song Helter Skelter
(22:14):
from the beatles nineteen sixty eight self titled record also
known as the White Album. This concludes the first season
(22:37):
of our podcast. We'll be back soon with more episodes
drawn from this treasure trove of lyrics, including McCartney's own
favorite McCartney song.
Speaker 6 (22:49):
Beat.
Speaker 2 (22:52):
My Name.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
Yeah, statuned and subscribed to McCartney A Life in Lyrics,
Changing the wave of McCartney. A Life in Lyrics is
(23:23):
a co production between iHeartMedia, n p L and Pushkin Industries.
Host
Paul McCartney
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