Charles Manson first heard the album not long after it was released. Manson may have found hidden meanings in songs from earlier Beatles albums, but, according to Vincent Bugliosi in The Beatles, Manson allegedly interpreted prophetic significance in several of the songs, including "Blackbird", "Piggies" (particularly the line "what they need's a damn good whacking"), "Helter Skelter", "Revolution 1" and "Revolution 9", and interpreted the lyrics as a sign of imminent violence or war.
He and other members and associates of the Manson family repeatedly listened to it, and he allegedly told them that it was an apocalyptic message predicting an uprising of oppressed races, drawing parallels with chapter 9 of the Book of Revelation.
Manson would often talk about the Beatles, including their eponymous 1968 album.
According to Los Angeles County District Attorney, Vincent Bugliosi, Manson felt guided by his interpretation of the Beatles' lyrics and adopted the term "Helter Skelter" to describe an impending apocalyptic race war.
During his trial, Bugliosi argued that Manson had intended to start a race war, although Manson and others disputed this.
Contemporary interviews and trial witness testimony insisted that the Tate–LaBianca murders were copycat crimes intended to exonerate Manson's friend Bobby Beausoleil.
Manson himself denied having instructed anyone to murder anyone.
The Manson Family developed into a doomsday cult when Manson became fixated on the idea of an imminent apocalyptic race war between America's Black population and the larger White population.
A white supremacist, Manson told some of the Manson Family that Black people in America would rise up and kill all white people except for Manson and his "Family", but that they were not intelligent enough to survive on their own; they would need a white man to lead them, and so they would serve Manson as their "master".
According to Vincent Bugliosi, in late 1968, Manson adopted the term "Helter Skelter", taken from a song on the Beatles' recently released White Album, to refer to this upcoming war.
Gypsy says:
When the Beatles' White Album came out, Charlie listened to it over and over and over and over again.
He was quite certain that the Beatles had tapped in to his spirit, the truth—that everything was gonna come down and the black man was going to rise.
It wasn't that Charlie listened to the White Album and started following what he thought the Beatles were saying. It was the other way around. He thought that the Beatles were talking about what he had been expounding for years.
Every single song on the White Album, he felt that they were singing about us. T
he song 'Helter Skelter'—he was interpreting that to mean the blacks were gonna go up and the whites were gonna go down.
