Video Classics: 'Helter Skelter'

To honor WNEW's legendary Firecracker 500, every day we are highlighting the music that populated the 1991 and 1996 lists, with classic videos, live performances and little-known facts about the songs and how they came to be...

Perhaps only the Beatles could mint a song (Helter Skelter) that could climb from out of the blue, not placing on the 1991 Firecracker 500 list but climbing to a Top 100 #92 for the 1996 list ... more than a quarter-century after the song was recorded. Part of the reason, of course, is the multiple cover versions of the song in the intervening period (including Aerosmith's, released in 1991 and Phish's 1994 live cover).

Written in 1968 by Paul McCartney, Helter Skelter was actually McCartney's attempt to create a song with the 'heaviest, loudest, dirtiest' sound possible, a conscious attempt to top the Who's I Can See for Miles, which had been written the year before and received wide praise. What came out of this effort was a proto-metal piece with raucous vocals, roaring guitars and booming drums. It is a wild departure from McCartney's usual offerings, and is often pointed to by the musician when critics accuse him of only writing ballads. When it was suggested that this stylistic deviation might be due to John Lennon's more experiemental influence, Lennon responded "Helter Skelter" is "Paul's completely ... It has nothing to do with anything, and least of all to do with me."

The title comes from an English term meaning not only heedless confusion, but is also the name of a spiraling amusement park slide. Today, however, it also has more sinister overtones than when the song was written. Convicted murderer Charles Manson became associated with the term when he read into the Beatles' song prophecies of an apocalyptic race war. Prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi used the term as the title of his book about the Manson murders, and Helter Skelter now carries unfortunate associations with violence, insanity and the macabre.

By the time Helter Skelter was recorded, the band was beginning to pull apart due to internal tensions, and like most of the songs from their album The Beatles (aka 'The White Album'), it did not have an official promotional film made for it. The video below overlays the song with images taken from the time of the song's recording and footage of the band in session while preparing the album.

Have memories of this song or the Firecracker 500? Add your thoughts to the comments below or take a look at Video Classics past...