It’s worth noting that anybody who bought the mono version of “The White Album” didn’t hear Ringo shouting about his blisters. Ringo later spoke of that “Helter Skelter” session, calling it “a track we did in total madness and hysterics in the studio.” In his 1994 memoir, Many Years From Now, Paul remembered: “We got the engineers and to hike up the drum sound and really get it as loud and horrible as it could and we played it and said, ‘No, it still sounds too safe, it’s got to get louder and dirtier.’ We tried everything we could to dirty it up and in the end you can hear Ringo say, ‘I’ve got blisters on my fingers!’ That wasn’t a joke put-on: his hands were actually bleeding at the end of the take, he’d been drumming so ferociously. To add to the cacophony, John adds squealing saxophone and piano towards the end, while roadie Mal Evans pitches in on trumpet. The Beatles returned to “Helter Skelter” at Abbey Road on September 9 and 10, and turned everything up, pushing their guitars and drums to the limit to create a frenzy of sound, over which Paul’s screaming vocal is supported by John and George. However, none of these quite captured the volume or energy Paul was after. And I had this song called ‘Helter Skelter’, which is just ridiculous song, so we did it like that ’cause I like noise.” So I thought, Ah, well, we’ll do one like that then. And then I heard their record and it was quite straight, and it was very sort of sophisticated and wasn’t rough and screaming and tape echo at all. It must be great, a really screaming record. In an interview with Radio Luxembourg in November 1968, he talked about the song’s origins: “I’d read a review of a record, which said ‘and this group…’ it was about some group, I can’t even remember, saying, ‘This group really goes wild and they just stuck echo on everything, they’re screaming their heads off,’ and I just remember thinking, Oh, it would be great to do one like that, it’s a pity they’ve done it. “Helter Skelter” went through a number of incarnations as Paul sought to create the heaviest Beatles track yet.
Preparing to record “Blackbird” at Abbey Road Studio Two one evening, Paul McCartney warmed up with an early version of “Helter Skelter.” A light yet funky acoustic piece with a falsetto vocal, this nascent version sat at the opposite end of the spectrum to the screaming rocker that would eventually grace side three of The Beatles’ “White Album”.
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