Electric Wizards JR Moores · Reaktion, 2021

INTRODUCTION

Introduction

‘Helter Skelter’, and heaviness invented by accident

8 works, in the order the book names them

  • 001/Album

    White Album

    The Beatles

    Having achieved all that and more, it was then time for McCartney to forge a new kind of tonality: heaviness, which he did with The Beatles’ (aka the White Album’s) ‘Helter Skelter’ in 1968.
    Open in YouTube ↗

  • 002/Album

    Yellow Submarine

    The Beatles

    Although the public didn’t get to hear this Yellow Submarine track until after they’d been introduced to the White Album, it had been recorded earlier, in the spring of 1967.
    Open in YouTube ↗

  • 003/Album

    Rattle and Hum

    U2

    Released in 1988, U2’s Rattle and Hum opens with a live rendition of ‘Helter Skelter’.
    Open in YouTube ↗

  • 004/Book

    Helter Skelter

    Vincent Bugliosi & Curt Gentry

    The Beatles–Manson association would become even more pronounced after the 1974 publication of Vincent Bugliosi and Curt Gentry’s book on the murders, appropriately titled Helter Skelter.
    Open in Goodreads ↗

  • 005/Album

    Tweez

    Slint

    What’s more, Ringo’s yelp of ‘I got blisters on my fingers!’ anticipates the snippets of in-studio chitchat that, in the late 1980s, heavy engineer extraordinaire Steve Albini would include in the gaps between tracks on records such as Slint’s Tweez and Pixies’ debut album Surfer Rosa.
    Open in YouTube ↗

  • 006/Album/1988

    Surfer Rosa

    Pixies

    What’s more, Ringo’s yelp of ‘I got blisters on my fingers!’ anticipates the snippets of in-studio chitchat that, in the late 1980s, heavy engineer extraordinaire Steve Albini would include in the gaps between tracks on records such as Slint’s Tweez and Pixies’ debut album Surfer Rosa.
    Open in YouTube ↗

  • 007/Album/2003

    St Anger

    Metallica

    Thrash metal millionaires Metallica may have been searching for something similar when, in one of their regular bouts of identity crisis, they recorded 2003’s St Anger.
    Open in YouTube ↗

  • 008/Album

    Reckless

    Bryan Adams

    Check out Kerrang!’s ‘100 Greatest Heavy Metal Albums of All Time’, printed in 1989, and gasp at its inclusion of Reckless by Bryan Adams.
    Open in YouTube ↗