How Charles Manson Permanently Changed the Legacy of a Beatles Song

One of the many strange and disturbing things about the 1969 Tate-LaBianca murders – in which members of the Manson Family cult tragically murdered model and actress Sharon Tate and supermarket executive Leno LaBianca, among several others – was the graffiti they left behind inside their respective Los Angeles residences. 

Written with towels soaked in the victims’ blood were phrases like “Death to Pigs” and “Healter Skelter.” These messages turned out to be references to songs from The Beatles’ White Album, released a year prior. Cult leader Charles Manson believed the band’s music foretold the coming of an apocalyptic race war – one he had hoped the Tate-LaBianca murders would unleash. 

MISINTERPRETED LYRICS

According to Rolling Stone, Manson listened to the White Album the year it was released and was convinced that each song contained a call to action. He thought “Revolution 9” referred to the Book of Revelation, the part of the Bible's New Testament that describes the end times, and that “Blackbird” was “programming the Black people to get it up,” as former cult member Paul Watkins recalled.

“Death to Pigs” referenced the song “Piggies,” which Manson took to advocate violent rebellion against the elites. Helter Skelter – spelled “Healter Skelter” at LaBianca’s home – became a kind of shorthand for his entire, ill-formed manifesto. “It doesn’t mean any war with anyone,” he explained when brought to trial for the murders in 1970, but rather that “confusion is coming down around you fast.” 

Although he later denied ever believing it, he told the court he was simply doing what The Beatles had told him. And at the time, he thought he wouldn’t be the only one to do so. “Kids listen to this music and pick up the message,” he said. “It’s subliminal.” Refusing an insanity plea, Manson was found guilty of murder and sentenced to death, only to live out the remainder of his life in prison, dying in 2017 at the age of 83. 

THE BEATLES' REPLY

Unsurprisingly, the members of The Beatles were greatly disturbed by Manson’s interpretation of their music and the crimes it attempted to justify. “It was frightening,” Paul McCartney wrote in The Beatles Anthology, “because you don’t write songs for those reasons.” He added that he had never read the Book of Revelation.

“It has nothing to do with me,” John Lennon said in a 1980 interview with Playboy, comparing Manson to people who believed the urban legend that the real McCartney had died in a 1966 car crash and was replaced by a lookalike, or that their song “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” was a reference to LSD. 

Today, “Helter Skelter” and other songs from the White Album remain beloved despite their association with the Manson Family. In a cover of “Helter Skelter” with his band U2, Bono has talked of “stealing it back” from Manson. Aerosmith, Bon Jovi, and others have also covered the song over the years.

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