Origins of "Heavy" Rock

"Helter Skelter" may be the "heaviest" song the Beatles ever recorded. Below, former Beatle Paul McCartney and his band recreate it at the 2006 Grammys:



The song first appeared on the Beatles' "White Album" in 1968 — now almost 40 years old.

In England, A helter skelter is an amusement park ride with a slide built in a spiral around a high tower. Users climb the tower and slide down, usually on a mat. It is a precursor to the water slide.

Paul is well known for taking something ordinary, like an amusement park ride, and making it the starting point of a song. He did the same with the sights and sounds of "Penny Lane," in the Liverpool of his childhood.

McCartney was inspired to write "Helter Skelter" after reading an interview with the Who's Pete Townsend where Townsend described their latest single, "I Can See for Miles," as the loudest, rawest, dirtiest song the Who had ever recorded. The reviewer said that "I Can See for Miles" was the "heaviest" song he'd ever heard. Then McCartney, who had not actually heard the song, wrote "Helter Skelter" in an attempt to make an even "heavier" song than that one, which is presented below:



In 1968 the word "heavy" was just beginning to be applied to rock music. Loud, raw, dirty — those were its synonyms. Not that "heavy" rock had to be dirty in the sense of appealing directly to one's prurient interests or talking overtly about sex. The sound was amplified and recorded in a way that overdrove the electronics, so that it came out messy and possibly full of feedback — and that could be taken by those in the know as representing "dirty" in the other sense.

Before the mid-'60s, amplifiers and recording equipment were not powerful or flexible enough to do this sort of thing at the musician's beck and call. The first intentional use of feedback on a rock record, for example, came in 1964 on the Beatles' "I Feel Fine," written by John Lennon:



The Beatles' first recording to use an overdriven guitar amp may have been Paul's "What You're Doing" in that same year of 1964 (sorry, no video of an actual performance of "What You're Doing" seems to be available):



The Beatles' use of overdriving, distortion, feedback, and other "heavy" recording techniques was influenced by their starting to use recreational drugs at about the same time. Other pioneers of the "heavy" sound — possibly also influenced by drugs — included the Kinks, with "You Really Got Me" in 1964:



It was during this period that the name "rock 'n' roll," which had been used for the genre since its beginnings in the early '50s, got shortened to just "rock." Not all rock was "heavy," but all popular music that was "heavy, man" was "rock." It wouldn't be long before "heavy," as in "heavy metal," was a dominant form of rock. Even '70s punk rock borrowed from the "heavy" sound of the '60s.