Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: I was inspired by something I read where it was
Speaker 2: Pete Townsend talking about We've just recorded the loudest, dirtiest,
Speaker 2: rockiest thing ever. And I love that description. I just thought, Wow,
Speaker 2: what a great idea. So what we've got to do?
Speaker 2: Something loud and raucous and urchy. I know you've deceived
Speaker 2: me our years are.
Speaker 3: I know that you had, because there's magic.
Speaker 2: In my I can see. So I came into the
Speaker 2: stereo sets of guys. Yeah, I just read about Pete
Speaker 2: saying this and think it's really a great idea. Let's
Speaker 2: just see how loud you get and how rowcus and
Speaker 2: just let's just try and really make them meet us peak.
Speaker 4: I'm Paul will do And I've been fortunate to spend
Speaker 4: time with one of the greatest songwriters of our era.
Speaker 2: And will you look at me? I'm going on to
Speaker 2: I'm actually a performer.
Speaker 1: That is sir Paul McCartney. We work together on a
Speaker 1: book looking at the lyrics of more than one hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty of his songs, and we recorded many hours
Speaker 1: of our conversations.
Speaker 2: Oh she'm a songwriter? My god, Well that that crypta homy.
Speaker 1: This is McCartney. A life in lyrics, a masterclass, a memoir,
Speaker 1: and an improvised journey with one of the most iconic
Speaker 1: figures in popular music. In this episode, we'll trace the
Speaker 1: story of one of the wildest Beatle songs, which some
Speaker 1: consider to represent the beginning of heavy metal. Today, more
Speaker 1: people probably think of Helter Skelter as that raucous Beatles
Speaker 1: song with a strange title, rather than what it refers to,
Speaker 1: an innocent funfair ride.
Speaker 2: Not people in a marc don't know what a helter
Speaker 2: skelter is. I do. You think it's a rollercoaster, But
Speaker 2: as you know, it's a sort of conical thing. We'll
Speaker 2: slide around the outside of it. We used to go
Speaker 2: on those loads of times as kids. You'd you walk
Speaker 2: up in the stairs inside it, and then you'd slide down,
Speaker 2: and then you'd walk up again, and it was fun,
Speaker 2: you know. So I just used that. I was thought
Speaker 2: of symbol of life. I go up to the top,
Speaker 2: I stopped, and I turned and I come down to
Speaker 2: Moon't I see you again? So I was really thinking
Speaker 2: of moods. You know, you're up, you get knocked down,
Speaker 2: you're feeling euphoric and you're feeling miserable. Such as the
Speaker 2: nature of life.
Speaker 3: When I get to the bottom, I got back to
Speaker 3: the top of the stop.
Speaker 1: The image of a child sliding down a cylindrical tower
Speaker 1: is in sharp contrast to what the song would become,
Speaker 1: and especially to how it would later be misinterpreted. But
Speaker 1: the funfair ride is a great metaphor for the sense
Speaker 1: of play the Beatles brought to the studio, as we
Speaker 1: can hear in this early version of Helter Skelter when
Speaker 1: doing a lot.
Speaker 3: Of lying up doing the hill where I stopped and
Speaker 3: I jumped and I did a little trill.
Speaker 1: In nineteen sixty eight, when the Beatles recorded and released
Speaker 1: Helter Skelter, there was a new kind of rock and
Speaker 1: roll in the air.
Speaker 5: It was loud, distorted, heavy, jes kass.
Speaker 1: There was of course the ho and there was the
Speaker 1: King of the electric guitar, so let's say once again
Speaker 1: the Jimi Hendrix experience. Things got heavier throughout the late sixties,
Speaker 1: setting the stage for Black Sabbath, who would released their
Speaker 1: first record in nineteen seventy. Throughout the late sixties, when
Speaker 1: the Beatles were at their peak, rock groups saw the
Speaker 1: rise of technological innovations in the studio. New signs new
Speaker 1: production methods. By the time Helter Skelter was released, most
Speaker 1: record companies had abandoned Mono had moved on to stereo recording.
Speaker 2: Well. I remember walking into the studio and there being
Speaker 2: two speakers, one on the left, one on the right,
Speaker 2: whereas it's always just been one in the middle. And
Speaker 2: we were, oh, you know, we were highly observant two speakers,
Speaker 2: so we immediately were very thrilled because we assumed that
Speaker 2: many it would be twice as loud, and George Martin
Speaker 2: patiently explained to us, no, Draxy's hystereophonics. Because it was there,
Speaker 2: it was available, We got into it. It was like a
Speaker 2: new toy, but we thought of it in a different
Speaker 2: way than you do now. Now you just think it
Speaker 2: makes it more realistic, like listening to a band and
Speaker 2: you get a surround feeling when you listen to it.
Speaker 2: We thought, no, it's two speakers. We can have a
Speaker 2: thing wandering from one speaker to another.
Speaker 1: The Beatles White Album, which included Helter Skelter, was the
Speaker 1: last the band would record in mono. For their next album,
Speaker 1: Abbey Road, the stereo mix would become crucial to their
Speaker 1: creative vision. Individual instruments would start to move from one
Speaker 1: speaker to another.
Speaker 2: So a lot of all things in the mix is
Speaker 2: just go for walkers and decides to go over there
Speaker 2: for a while.
Speaker 1: Yeah, how active role did you yourself?
Speaker 5: Yourself or your the other Beatles playing in the sand.
Speaker 2: By then quite a love Yes. Well, we always used
Speaker 2: to say, you know, the the lunatics were taken over
Speaker 2: the asylum, we got control of pretty much everything, you know.
Speaker 2: Being a bit of a perfectionist, I would would sort
Speaker 2: of work out the song and then I'd say run
Speaker 2: up into the control room and listen to the drum
Speaker 2: sound and sort of stay to the engineer if you
Speaker 2: make this a bit hard, and I'd fuss and pushed
Speaker 2: till it was like for health scalp, till it was
Speaker 2: kind of quite raucous, you know, and really just try
Speaker 2: and coach the engineers and then you could leave them.
Speaker 2: They were brilliant and they would multiply what you suggested
Speaker 2: and sorted out make it, make it better.
Speaker 1: At that time, most of the sound engineers would have
Speaker 1: had classical production training with certain rules about arranging instruments
Speaker 1: and volume levels and preventing distortion. But as the Beatles
Speaker 1: drifted away from the sweet sound of their early pop hits,
Speaker 1: they realized that most rules exist to be broken.
Speaker 2: I remember Nowhere Man Child had brought this song in
Speaker 2: from Weybridge where he was feeling like I know where
Speaker 2: man and.
Speaker 6: We wanted the opening guitars to be really spiky and
Speaker 6: very trebling, super trebling, and they are if you listen
Speaker 6: to them there it's like a.
Speaker 2: Razor blade or something. You know, it's quite amazing.
Speaker 1: He's a real no man sitting.
Speaker 7: In his now land making all now.
Speaker 2: Plans for So we said to the engineer, okay, so
Speaker 2: make it as treble as you can. So he put
Speaker 2: all the treble in and I said, can you make
Speaker 2: it more? He said, no, that's it. I'm sort of
Speaker 2: run out, you know, this is all that high made
Speaker 2: and treble, and that's all I can do. I said, well,
Speaker 2: could he put it through not a lot of EQ
Speaker 2: So he did.
Speaker 8: He sent it through the next channel, and of course
Speaker 8: then this was like the game could you put even more? Yeah,
Speaker 8: So we had him going through I don't know, quite
Speaker 8: a few channels.
Speaker 7: Jesus Jessee, no can Yus.
Speaker 1: As McCartney and the rest of the band learned to
Speaker 1: break the rules of production They were also playing with
Speaker 1: the rules of language, drawing on the literary tradition of
Speaker 1: nonsense poetry.
Speaker 2: In the verses that's sort of Alice in Wonderland? Will
Speaker 2: you won't you?
Speaker 7: Do?
Speaker 2: You don't? Let's lose Carol abisonly John and I both
Speaker 2: related to we like that lotten use things.
Speaker 1: From that, Things like the lobster quadrille from Alice in
Speaker 1: Wonderland here performed by Gene Wilder.
Speaker 2: See how eagerly the lobsters and the turtles all advance.
Speaker 2: They are waiting on the shingle. Will you come and
Speaker 2: join the dance dance? Will you won't you? Will you?
Speaker 5: Won't you join the dance dance?
Speaker 1: Many Beatles lyrics included playful phrases like this. Some of
Speaker 1: these phrases coined by the band have even crept into
Speaker 1: the common vernacular phrases such as a hard day's night,
Speaker 1: eight days a week, or for that matter, helter skelter.
Speaker 1: Most of the nonsense lyrics weren't meant to be interpreted.
Speaker 1: They were meant to be felt in keeping with the
Speaker 1: playful energy. However, some of the lyrics nodded toward that
Speaker 1: which couldn't be played over BBC waves.
Speaker 2: Don't let Me Break you. Yes, it's just sort of,
Speaker 2: you know, something to hang a song of desperation, of
Speaker 2: little sexual she's coming coming down fast, and perhaps a
Speaker 2: little drug component which I'll throw it all in.
Speaker 1: Helter Skelter wasn't the only song to which the Beatles
Speaker 1: added clever euphemisms and hidden messages. As the band's music developed,
Speaker 1: they inserted a few easter eggs that fans began to
Speaker 1: crack open, including phrases that could only be heard when
Speaker 1: played backwards.
Speaker 2: See people thinking. Actually there was a whole set it
Speaker 2: up with a few little clues kind of things, you know,
Speaker 2: we did. We put little things in. Well, those things
Speaker 2: they were for our own amusement, you know, it was
Speaker 2: it was. It was an effort to not be bored.
Speaker 2: So when we heard the beach boys singing La La,
Speaker 2: we thought that'd be great, to which on the session
Speaker 2: became Ti tit and we sniggered like school boys, you know,
Speaker 2: and really were happy.
Speaker 7: Jesus kind of girl with wind.
Speaker 2: And in Penny Lane for of fish and finger pied
Speaker 2: finger pive is rude sexual reference. But we knew that
Speaker 2: the people in Liverpool would get it, but no one
Speaker 2: else would they would just think it was like a chefspie.
Speaker 2: So I think once people thought there's hidden references, they
Speaker 2: started they weren't looking for them, and I saw them
Speaker 2: in everything, you know, even stuff that wasn't really there.
Speaker 1: Sometimes interpretation can open up a song, reveale layers of
Speaker 1: meaning that weren't discernible on the first listen. We could
Speaker 1: tribute to a song by listening to it, and sometimes
Speaker 1: we add significance of which even the lyricist wasn't conscious.
Speaker 1: Misinterpretations are mostly harmless, like when some fans took lyrics
Speaker 1: as evidence for the bizarre urban legend that Paul McCartney
Speaker 1: died in nineteen sixty six and was replaced by a doubleganger.
Speaker 2: So Paul is dead came out of the fact that
Speaker 2: I wasn't wearing shoes on the Abbey Road crossing. Wait,
Speaker 2: that's a stretch in anybody's language, you know. And then
Speaker 2: there was a Volkswagen Beetle car in that which said
Speaker 2: two eight one F, which was translated he would have
Speaker 2: been twenty eight if he'd have lived.
Speaker 1: Okay, But when the wrong person looks too closely for
Speaker 1: something that's not there, the meaning can be corrupted, like
Speaker 1: when Charles Manson claimed Helter Skelter referred to a coming
Speaker 1: apocalypse and read into the song a justification for his
Speaker 1: heenous crimes.
Speaker 2: I didn't do it for years because of that. You know,
Speaker 2: when it was contemporary, I wouldn't have even thought of
Speaker 2: doing it, because that's the sort of horror show, you know,
Speaker 2: when something realized. I mean, we knew that there were
Speaker 2: sort of daft Americans who read way too much into
Speaker 2: everything we did. It's okay, but when Manson did it,
Speaker 2: when when the Manson association.
Speaker 9: With the murders, then that was, oh, okay, this is
Speaker 9: no longer funny this guy, because you really thought we
Speaker 9: were the four horseman of the apocalypse, and we.
Speaker 2: Were horrified to learn that, you know, that his song
Speaker 2: was helter Skelter, because of course, you know, it was
Speaker 2: just sparked by this translated quote that I'd read, this
Speaker 2: idea of you know, just loudest let's going now, you know,
Speaker 2: let's go on and just make it the loudest.
Speaker 3: We're not get to the da and I get back
Speaker 3: to the tap of the stadt.
Speaker 2: So we're not going to turn our guitars down. And
Speaker 2: the turnament was a loud you know, I'm going to
Speaker 2: ask the engineer to.
Speaker 10: Be loud and it's dirty and give us distortion, the
Speaker 10: kind of thing that we eventually got on Revolution, and
Speaker 10: you know that was the epitome of the distortion.
Speaker 1: That it's at the heart of the matter, really, isn't it.
Speaker 2: You know, it's I mean, we liked, we liked that,
Speaker 2: we liked it's it's very much part of rock and roll,
Speaker 2: you know. It's.
Speaker 11: Whereas orchestral music or dance and music will be trying
Speaker 11: to be pretty gentle and romantic, rock and roll was
Speaker 11: kicking that, you know, kicking out.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: The studio sessions for Helter Skelter became quite physically demanding,
Speaker 1: gone with the cut school boys serenading their fans with
Speaker 1: lovely Doo and eight days a week this music shredded, clashed, roared.
Speaker 1: The Beatles recorded several takes of Helter Skelter, including an
Speaker 1: unreleased version that ran at twenty seven minutes eleven seconds.
Speaker 1: It's no wonder then at the end of the song,
Speaker 1: Ringo's star would cry out.
Speaker 2: It was that kind of thing where you had played
Speaker 2: the hell out of it, and it was sometimes credited
Speaker 2: by people as being in the start of heavy metal.
Speaker 12: Yes, I've read that's I don't know whether that's true,
Speaker 12: but you know it's pretty heavy metal, so you know,
Speaker 12: you think it might have inspired someone in the same
Speaker 12: way as the Tansend quote expired me.
Speaker 1: McCartney doesn't remember which song from the who Townsend was
Speaker 1: referring to. It may have been I can see for miles.
Speaker 1: But it only took the idea of cranking up the
Speaker 1: volume and rocking as hard as possible to inspire Helter Skelter,
Speaker 1: a song which in turn would inspire the next generation
Speaker 1: of heavy metal bands, like the band Motley Crewe, who
Speaker 1: regularly performed their own cover of the song Helter Skelter
Speaker 1: from the beatles nineteen sixty eight self titled record also
Speaker 1: known as the White Album. This concludes the first season
Speaker 1: of our podcast. We'll be back soon with more episodes
Speaker 1: drawn from this treasure trove of lyrics, including McCartney's own
Speaker 1: favorite McCartney song.
Speaker 6: Beat.
Speaker 2: My Name.
Speaker 1: Yeah, statuned and subscribed to McCartney A Life in Lyrics,
Speaker 1: Changing the wave of McCartney. A Life in Lyrics is
Speaker 1: a co production between iHeartMedia, n p L and Pushkin Industries.