Along with other tracks from the White Album, "Helter Skelter" was interpreted by cult leader Charles Manson as a message predicting inter-racial war in the US.

Siouxsie and the Banshees, Mötley Crüe, Aerosmith, U2, Oasis and Pat Benatar are among the artists who have covered the track, and McCartney has frequently performed it in concert.

Paul McCartney was inspired to write "Helter Skelter" after reading an interview with the Who's Pete Townshend in which he described their September 1967 single, "I Can See for Miles", as the loudest, rawest, dirtiest song the Who had ever recorded.

[9]In British English, a helter skelter is a fairground attraction consisting of a tall spiral slide winding around a tower; however, the phrase can also mean chaos and disorder.

"[19] In author Jonathan Gould's description, "The song turns the colloquialism for a fairground ride into a metaphor for the sort of frenzied, operatic sex that adolescent boys of all ages like to fantasize about.

[2] He recalled the session was especially spirited: "While Paul was doing his vocal, George Harrison had set fire to an ashtray and was running around the studio with it above his head, doing an Arthur Brown.

[28][nb 4] On 10 September, the band added overdubs which included a lead guitar part by Harrison, trumpet played by Mal Evans, piano, further drums, and "mouth sax" created by Lennon blowing through a saxophone mouthpiece.

[30] In Everett's view, rather than the Who's contemporaneous music, the song "sounds more like an answer to [Yoko Ono]", the Japanese performance artist who, as Lennon's new romantic partner, was a constant presence at the White Album sessions and a source of tension within the band.

[33][34] The segue from "Sexy Sadie" was a rare example of a gap (or "rill") being used to separate the album's tracks, and the brief silence served to heighten the song's abrupt arrival.

[7][37] In his contemporary review for International Times, Barry Miles described "Helter Skelter" as "probably the heaviest rocker on plastic today",[38] while the NME's Alan Smith found it "low on melody but high on atmosphere" and "frenetically sexual", adding that its pace was "so fast they all only just about keep up with themselves".

[39] Record Mirror's reviewer said the track contained "screaming pained vocals, ear splitting buzz guitar and general instrumental confusion, but [a] rather typical pattern", and concluded: "Ends sounding like five thousand large electric flies out for a good time.

[42] Although he misidentified it as a Lennon song, William Mann of The Times said "Helter Skelter" was "exhaustingly marvellous, a revival that is willed by creativity ... into resurrection, a physical but essentially musical thrust into the loins".

[44] In 2012, "Helter Skelter" appeared on the iTunes compilation album Tomorrow Never Knows, which the band's website described as a collection of "the Beatles' most influential rock songs".

[49][50][51] Upon the war's conclusion, after black militants had killed off the few whites that had survived, Manson and his "Family" of followers would emerge from an underground city in which they would have escaped the conflict.

[53][54] In his interpretation, the lyrics of the Beatles' "Helter Skelter" described the moment when he and the Family would emerge from their hiding place – a disused mine shaft in the desert outside Los Angeles.

As a result, Capitol planned to issue "Helter Skelter" as the A-side of the single from Rock 'n' Roll Music but relented, realising that to exploit its association with Manson would be in poor taste.

[44] In the final interview he gave before his murder in December 1980, Lennon dismissed Manson as "just an extreme version" of the type of listener who read false messages in the Beatles' lyrics, such as those behind the 1969 "Paul is dead" rumour.

"[1] In her 1979 essay collection, titled The White Album, Joan Didion wrote that many people in Los Angeles cite the moment that news arrived of the Manson Family's killing spree in August 1969 as having marked the end of the decade.

[63] According to author Doyle Greene, the Beatles' "Helter Skelter" effectively captured the "crises of 1968", which contrasted sharply with the previous year's Summer of Love ethos.

[67] Coinciding with the 50th anniversary of the album's release, Jacob Stolworthy of The Independent listed the same three songs as its best tracks, with "Helter Skelter" ranked at number 3.

[70] Ian MacDonald dismissed "Helter Skelter" as "ridiculous, [with] McCartney shrieking weedily against a massively tape-echoed backdrop of out-of-tune thrashing", and said that in their efforts to embrace heavy rock, the Beatles "comically overreached themselves, reproducing the requisite bulldozer design but on a Dinky Toy scale".

'"[72] David Quantick, in his book Revolution: The Making of the Beatles' White Album, describes the song as "Neither loud enough to bludgeon the listener into being impressed nor inspired enough to be exciting".

[80] Siouxsie and the Banshees included a cover of "Helter Skelter" at live shows from mid 1977,[81] and recorded it as a Peel Session in 1978,[82] before releasing a version later that year, produced by Steve Lillywhite, on their debut album The Scream.

[83][84] Fortnam cites the band's choice as reflective of how the song's "macabre association with Charles Manson ... only served to accentuate its enduring appeal in certain quarters".

[73][nb 6] In an article about the legacy of the song, Financial Times further commented the Banshees' version, saying: "The abrupt ending on 'stop' also leaves the listener mentally stuck at the top of the slide with no way down".

Nikki Sixx, the band's bassist, recalled that "Helter Skelter" appealed to them through its guitars and lyrics, but also because of the Manson murders and the song's standing as a "real symbol of darkness and evil".

[94] Shock rock artists Rob Zombie and Marilyn Manson collaborated on a cover of "Helter Skelter", which was released in 2018 to promote their co-headlining "Twins of Evil: The Second Coming Tour".

McCartney played the song on his One on One Tour at Fenway Park on 17 July 2016 accompanied by the Grateful Dead's Bob Weir and New England Patriots football player Rob Gronkowski.

[102] On 13 July 2019, the final date of his Freshen Up tour,[103] McCartney performed "Helter Skelter" at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles with Starr playing drums.