Coverocktober Song #20: "Helter Skelter" by Mötley Crüe

We've reached the end of Rocktober, but be sure to tune in Monday for Crowvember, a daily look at nature's most misunderstood avian animal.

But before then, we have one more Coverocktober song for you.  It's Hair Band Friday, so our final selection will be Mötley Crüe's cover of The Beatles' "Helter Skelter."

"Helter Skelter" is one of my favorite Beatles songs, off of my favorite Beatles album, their self-titled 1968 four-sided masterpiece we know as The White Album.

As rock lore goes, Paul McCartney wrote "Helter Skelter" after hearing an interview with Pete Townshend, who described "I Can See For Miles" as the loudest and rawest song The Who had ever recorded.  Being a Beatle, Paul thought "challenge accepted," so wrote a blistering (literally, if you believe Ringo's outburst at the end) rock song that is considered one of the first heavy metal songs.

A helter skelter is a British term for a large amusement park slide that spirals along a tower.  So why is a cover of the song being included in Coverocktober on Halloween week -- and Halloween itself, at that?  Well you see, there was this guy one time who thought this song about a slide (that even specifically refers to a slide) and a couple other songs on the White Album were actually coded songs that predicted an international race war.  That guy's name was Charles Manson.  "Helter Skelter" was part of his motivation for the Manson Family's horrific Tate-LaBianca murders in the LA area in 1969, and it ended up being the name of the best-selling book written by Vincent Bugliosi (the prosecutor in the Manson murder trial) about the murders and the subsequent trials (a chilling but worthwhile read), as well as the name of a 1976 made-for-TV movie based on the book.  After Manson Family members murdered the LaBiancas, Patricia Krenwinkel wrote the misspelled "Healter Skelter" in all caps on the LaBiancas' refrigerator door in Rosemary LaBianca's blood.  Cults, am I right?

Mötley Crüe's version was the last track on the first side of their epic 1983 album Shout at the Devil.  It was the perfect cover song for an album that drew the ire of parents and the PMRC, alongside songs with "devil," "kill," "dead," "beast," and "danger" in the titles.  Their version is an even more hard-rocking, but generally true-to-the-original, version of the song.  Happy Halloween, piggies!