Beatles songs, as interpreted in the Manson vision

 

• "Honey Pie"

  Lyric: Oh, honey pie, my position is tragic / Come and show me the magic / Of your Hollywood song

  Meaning: The Beatles know Jesus Christ has returned to Earth and is in Los Angeles.They want Manson to create his "song", that is, his album that will set off Helter Skelter.

  Lyric: Oh, honey pie, you are driving me frantic / Sail across the Atlantic / To be where you belong

  Meaning: The Beatles want Jesus Christ to come to England.

  Consequence: In early 1969, states Bugliosi in Helter Skelter, Manson and his female followers attempt to contact the Beatles by letter, telegram, and telephone; they are struggling to make clear to the Beatles that it is they, the Beatles, who are to come across the Atlantic, to join the family in Death Valley.

• "I Will", "Yer Blues", "Don't Pass Me By" and "Blue Jay Way" were all interpreted as the Beatles are calling for Jesus Christ.

  "Blue Jay Way" appeared on Magical Mystery Tour, the album that preceded the "White Album". The Family had come to call its journey from San Francisco, to Los Angeles, the "Magical Mystery Tour".

Lyric (I Will): And when at last I find you / Your song will fill the air / Sing it loud so I can hear you / Make it easy to be near you ...

Meaning: The Beatles want Manson to make an album.

• "Sexy Sadie"

  Significance: Manson had renamed Family member Susan Atkins "Sadie Mae Glutz" long before the release of the "White Album". This served to reinforce the mental connection Manson felt he had with the Beatles.

  In San Francisco, where she met Manson, Atkins had been a topless dancer. Paul Watkins wrote that Atkins "thrived on sex", and he even seemed to suggest she had the nickname Sexy Sadie before the Family heard the song. Similarly, Tex Watson wrote that the words of "Sexy Sadie" fit Atkins so well "that it made us all sure [the Beatles] had to be singing directly to us." Watson specifically noted that the song's title character "came along to turn on everyone", "broke the rules", and "laid it down for all to see". Atkins, he said, "had broken all the rules, sexually, and liked to talk about her experience and lack of inhibitions".

• "Rocky Raccoon"

  Significance: Rocky Raccoon means "coon", a racial epithet for a black man.

  Of all the Beatles songs known to have been associated with Helter Skelter, this is the only one that mentions the Bible.

  So one day [Rocky Raccoon] walked into town / Booked himself a room in the local saloon / Rocky Raccoon / Checked into his room / Only to find Gideon's Bible ... Now Rocky Raccoon / He fell back in his room / Only to find Gideon's Bible / Gideon checked out / And he left it no doubt / To help with good Rocky's revival.

  Before his trial, Manson was visited at the Los Angeles County Jail by David Dalton and David Felton, who were preparing a Rolling Stone story.An article in the magazine's issue of June 25, 1970, included a passage in which Manson was quoted about "Rocky Raccoon":

  "Coon," said Charlie. "You know that's a word they use for black people. You know the line, 'Gideon checked out / And left no doubt / To help good Rocky's revival.' Rocky's revival—re-vival. It means coming back to life. The black man is going to come into power again. 'Gideon checks out' means that it's all written out there in the New Testament, in the Book of Revelations 

• "Happiness Is a Warm Gun"

  Significance: The Beatles are advising blacks to get guns and fight whites.

  Sample lyric: When I hold you in my arms / And I feel my finger on your trigger / I know no one can do me no harm / Because happiness is a warm gun / (Bang bang, shoot shoot)

• "Blackbird"

  Lyric: Blackbird singing in the dead of night / Take these broken wings and learn to fly / All your life / You were only waiting for this moment to arise.

  Meaning: The black man is going to arise and overthrow the white man. The Beatles are programming blacks to rise.

  Tex Watson wrote: "[The white Establishment] would slaughter thousands of blacks, but actually only manage to eliminate all the Uncle Toms, since the true black race would have hidden, waiting for their moment".

• "Helter Skelter"

  Lyric: When I get to the bottom I go back to the top of the slide / Where I stop and I turn and I go for a ride

  Significance: A reference to the Family's emergence from "the Bottomless Pit", the underground Death Valley hideaway where the group will escape the violence of Helter Skelter.

  Lyric: Look out ... Helter Skelter ... She's coming down fast ... Yes she is.

  Meaning: The upcoming explosion of race-based violence is imminent.

• "Piggies"

  Lyric: What they need's a damn good whacking

  Significance: Blacks are going to give "the piggies"—i.e., the establishment—a damned good whacking.

  Lyric: Everywhere there's lots of piggies / Living piggy lives / You can see them out for dinner / With their piggy wives / Clutching forks and knives / To eat their bacon.

  Bugliosi noted that Leno LaBianca was left with a knife in his throat and a fork in his stomach, details that led Bugliosi to draw a further connection with George Harrison's song.

• "Revolution 1"

  Lyric: You say you want a revolution / Well you know / We all want to change the world ... / But when you talk about destruction / Don't you know that you can count me out (in)

  Significance: The singing of "in" after the word "out", even though "in" does not appear in the lyrics as they were presented on the printed sheet enclosed with the album, indicates that the Beatles had been undecided but now favor revolution. The Beatles, as Tex Watson relates Manson's view, are no longer on a "peace-and-love trip", but they cannot admit as much to the establishment.

  Lyric: You say you got a real solution / Well you know / We'd all love to see the plan

  Meaning: The Beatles want Manson to tell them how to escape the horrors of Helter Skelter. According to Watson and as told to Bugliosi: the Beatles are ready for violence and want Manson to create an album that will tell them what to do.

• "Revolution 9"

  According to Tex Watson this is the White Album piece Manson spoke about the most  the one he deemed most significant.In his 1970 conversation with Dalton, Manson said that "Revolution 9" was the track that "turned me on" to the message of Revelations chapter 9, which "predicts the overthrow of the Establishment. The pit will be opened, and that's when it will all come down. A third of all mankind will die."

Significance: The machine-gun fire, the oinking of pigs, and the word "Rise". The piece is audio representation of the coming conflict; the repeated utterance "Number 9" is reference to Chapter 9 of the Book of Revelation. In his Rolling Stone interview, Manson identified the pig sounds followed by machine-gun fire as significant details that "predict the violent overthrow of the White man". When asked whether the Beatles intended such a message, Manson replied: "I don't know whether they did or not. But it's there. It's an association in the subconscious. This music is bringing on the revolution, the unorganized overthrow of the Establishment. The Beatles know in the sense that the subconscious knows."

"Rise," Gregg Jakobson tells Bugliosi, is "one of [Manson's] big words"; the black man is going to "rise" up against the white man. According to Ed Sanders while Manson played "Revolution 9", he [screamed] "Rise! Rise! Rise!

Sanders also writes that Manson heard the Beatles whispering: "Charlie, Charlie, send us a telegram."

Years later Tex Watson tied the prophecy to one more White Album song, "Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey", though he changed monkey to monkeys. While on LSD at a party in late March 1969, Watson states in his autobiography, he and two Manson girls realized they themselves were "the monkeys ... just bright-eyed, free little animals, totally uninhibited," as they started "bouncing around the apartment, throwing food against the walls, and laughing hysterically".