In an interview for Ultimate Classic Rock magazine, Sir Paul McCartney was asked about how does he feel about the song “Helter Skelter” and all the controversy with Charles Manson. Heavy Metal was also brought into light during the conversation. Check it out:
About Charles Manson and avoiding the song
“Well, that put me off doing it forever,” McCartney said. “I thought, I’m not doing [‘Helter Skelter’], you know, because it was too close to that event, and immediately it would have seemed like I was, either I didn’t care about all the carnage that had gone on or whatever, so I kept away from it for a long time.” He continued: “But then in the end I thought, you know, that’d be good on stage, that’d be a nice one to do, so we brought it out of the bag and tried it and it works. It’s a good one to rock with, you know.”
About “Helter Skelter” being the first Metal song ever
“No! I’ve never claimed it, you know. People said it, but, if you think about it, it was near the start of heavy metal, and it was us trying to be heavy. I’d heard Pete Towshend saying they’d done the dirtiest, filthiest record ever, so we were trying to out-filth the Who. So if that communicated itself, there might have been some little guy living up in Rotherham thinking, Aye, we’ll have a group, we’ll just do that.”
