Story 1:  The Lucky Quarter

 

Chapter 1 – The Beginning

 

As much as I hate to say it, it was a dark and stormy night.  I've always hated that opening to a story; it's so overused it's now cliché.  What's worse, it's redundant.  Unless you live in the part of Norway or Alaska where 'day' can last for six months, dark at night is pretty much a given.  If you happen upon a 'bright and sunny night' in say, downtown Seattle, chances are you are heading for your local place of worship to prepare for the impending Apocalypse.  But I digress... let's just say the time was late evening, the weather was crappy, and I was very, very late.

 

Late is a relative term.  For some people being late means one second after the time they had promised to arrive.  I don't understand those people. To me late has always been a more dynamic concept, depending heavily on what you are suppose to be there for, how many minutes have passed since you were supposed to be there, who will notice your arrival, and how many of your stock excuses for being late said individuals have already heard.

 

In this particular case, I was supposed to be at my girlfriend's apartment for her birthday.  I was supposed to be there when she got off work at 8 p.m.; the time was 10:30.  At this point in our relationship, Sharon had heard every conceivable (and some inconceivable) excuse for my habitual tardiness.  I think by any definition, I had kissed ordinary run-of-the-mill late bye-bye about an hour ago.

 

The other thing I had kissed bye-bye an hour ago was my patience.  I definitely was not in the mood to get caught behind Mrs. Hershfelder at the entrance to my girlfriend's apartment complex.  Mrs. Hershfelder was a five-foot, eighty-pound lady who was somewhere in the neighborhood of two hundred years old.  Her floral print dresses hung very loosely off her bony frame, and she made the Walter Matthau character from 'Grumpy Old Men' seem like Mary Poppins by comparison.  The rain had made her current dress, a particularly gaudy pitch-black number with bright yellow flowers, stick awkwardly in places.  Coupled with the black plastic garbage bag she had draped over her head to protect her precious auburn-dyed hair from the rain, I got the vague impression of a flamboyantly-gay, midget Grim Reaper.  At that moment, she was carrying two separate oversized bags of groceries, one in each arm, while awkwardly trying to place her key in the lock to the door at the front of the apartment complex.

 

"Let me help you with your bags, Mrs. Hershfelder."  I offered as politely as I could manage, trying to take one bag from her arm.

 

"Keep your damn hands to yourself!"  Mrs. Hershfelder responded defiantly, shaking off my helping hand.  "I didn't need your help to raise 3 kids, and I certainly don't need your help to get in my own building."

 

As fate would have it, she next proceeded to drop her keys, now slippery from the rain, onto the ground in front of the door.  When she bent over to grab the keys, a gust of wind took hold of the garbage bag on her head and blew it directly into my face.  She made a few vain attempts at picking up the keys, still holding her groceries as if to prove a point. 

 

"For the love of God!" I muttered to myself, throwing off the plastic bag in disgust.  My small modicum of patience now exhausted, I unceremoniously grabbed her keys from the ground as she continued to fumble about.  In one deft motion I stepped in front of her, unlocked the door, and flippantly tossed her keys over my shoulder without looking.  I quickly opened the door partway, slid through the opening, and allowed the door to slam shut behind me, leaving Mrs. Hershfelder outside the building.  She didn't want any help...

 

As I bounded up the staircase to Sharon's apartment two steps at a time, I wracked my brain for a new excuse for being late.  I was pretty sure that beating my roommate Tommy in NHL 93 on Sega for the 15^th straight game (my personal record) wouldn't fly very well.  Realistically, I had only one shot:  She was a nurse, and she was always getting stuck at work four or five hours past her scheduled shift.  With a little luck, she was caught up in the emergency room, and would never know how badly I had screwed up.

 

Reaching the top of the stairs, I pulled out my lucky quarter out of my jean pocket, gave it a kiss for luck, and screwed up my courage to knock on the door.  Good old lucky quarter - you've never failed me.

 

Midway between my first and second knock, the door briefly opened three inches.  I caught a quick glimpse of my very angry girlfriend, and then the door was vehemently slammed shut in my face.

 

"Wonderful…" I muttered ironically to myself, quickly turning around to whip my lucky quarter down the stairwell as hard as I could.

 

I believe I caught the first glimpse of what would soon change my life in the middle of my throwing motion, soon enough to realize what I was about to accidentally do, but too late to stop it…

 

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Chapter 2 – The Middle

 

Mrs. Hershfelder had finally made it up to the landing to her apartment down the stairs from my girlfriend, still valiantly struggling with her two bags of groceries.  Quickly taking into consideration the very narrow stairwell, I immediately realized the likelihood of my hitting Mrs. Hershfelder with the quarter based on my current point of aim was unacceptably high.  As Mrs. Hershfelder was already unlikely to be politely predisposed towards me for leaving her out in the rain, I had serious doubts about her ability to take a quarter hard off the chest philosophically.  In order to avoid the impeding disaster, I desperately tried to change my point of aim at the last second to the ceiling above her head.

 

I remember my baseball coach, in a fit of pique over me walking three straight batters one inning, once angrily declaring "The safest place to be when you're pitching is wherever you're aiming!" I suppose a logical corollary to that statement is "The worst place to be when I'm throwing something is wherever I'm trying to avoid."  By raising my point of aim, I had successfully avoided hitting Mrs. Hershfelder in the chest, only to viciously bounce the quarter right off of her temple.

 

The next sequence of events happened like it was in slow motion.  Stunned by the quarter to the temple, Mrs. Hershfelder staggered backwards, coming dangerously close to the precipice of the first stair leading down from her stairwell landing.  In a last ditch effort to help, I frantically bounded down the stairs towards her three steps at a time.  Yet again, my almost mythical lack of physical coordination was working against me.  By my third downwards stride, I lost my balance, and started hurtling out of control down the stairway.

 

Mrs. Hershfelder regained her own composure to avoid falling down the stairs, only to have my sprawling body give her a shoulder check that would have made Bob Probert proud.  She was knocked off her feet into the air (I weigh 220 pounds on a good day), and thudded into the wall face first with her arms and legs spread wide.  In the process the grocery bags were dislodged violently from her grasp, sending cans of Campbell's Tomato soup everywhere, making a horrible racket in the process.

 

My momentum carried me down the second flight of stairs leading from Mrs. Hershfelder's apartment landing, and I arrived at the bottom of those stairs in a facedown heap.  I briefly heard the sound of someone tumbling down the stairs behind me, and distinctly heard the horrible crackling sound of bone breaking.  As I lay there prone on the ground something landed on top of me, knocking the air completely out of me.  Oh dear God, please don't let that be what I think it is! 

 

Mrs. Hershfelder's groan, coming from within a few inches of my ear, confirmed my worst fears.  How in the world could this get any worse?  As if to answer my silent query, I heard the sound of footsteps treading ominously down the stairs to the scene of the debacle. 

 

"JONATHAN JACOB – WHAT IN THE HELL ARE YOU DOING!?!?"  I heard in the unmistakable sound of my girlfriend's normally dulcet voice.  Apparently Sharon had heard the veritable explosion of loud random noises coming from outside her apartment, and had reconsidered her decision to stay behind closed doors.  At that moment, I couldn't help but notice that my lucky quarter had landed heads up roughly a foot from my rather precarious predicament.  Worst damned Lucky Quarter EVER!

 

"John, you'd better have a good explanation for…" my girlfriend's voice trailed off into a stunned silence.  Ah, that pause can only mean she just rounded the corner to look down the second set of stairs.  Core meltdown in three… two… one…

 

 "OH MY GOD!"  Her voice must have gone up two full octaves in pitch.  Ah, there it is!  Then, with a note of deliberate calm, "Mrs. Hershfelder, are you alright?"  Oh crap, Sharon just went into nurse mode instead of losing it - Mrs. Hershfelder must look pretty bad.

 

Under normal circumstances, Mrs. Hershfelder has a grating nasal voice that can be heard from the neighboring apartment building.  On this occasion, her voice was barely more than a weak whisper in response:

 

"I… I… can't feel my legs!"

 

Immediately after speaking, I could feel Mrs. Hershfelder's body go completely limp.  My stomach dipped suddenly to the left and then attempted some sort of a barrel roll.

 

"It'll be alright," I attempted to calm myself.  "Sharon's a nurse; she'll take care of everything."

The next thing I knew I was looking into Sharon's adorable blue-green eyes.  She had dropped down to the ground to look me dead in the face.

 

"John, I don't have time to yell at you right now," She started in the almost patronizingly matter-of-fact voice of the professional nurse.  "Mrs. Hershfelder is unconscious on your back, and may have a spinal cord injury.  I'm going to run upstairs to call 911.  Listen to me very carefully, this is very important… UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES are you to move AT ALL!"

 

I had been dating Sharon long enough to know that when she used that tone of voice, there was no arguing with her.  Unfortunately, in the process of beating Tommy at Sega hockey, I had finished a 7-11 Super Big Gulp.  I don't know the size of the average bladder, but I'm pretty sure it pales in comparison to the sixty-four ounces of caffeine goodness that is the Super Big Gulp.  What's worse, Mrs. Hershfelder's weight was pushing the floor directly into my bladder.  The strain was already beginning to be unbearable.

 

"But Sharon…"  I began lamely.

 

Sharon cut me off before I could get out a second word.

 

"Damn it John, if you move you could paralyze her permanently!"

 

Properly chagrined, I decided that under the circumstance I would have to wet myself if worse came to worst.

 

While Sharon hurriedly made her way up the stairs back to her apartment to call 911, the cell-phone in my pocket began to happily beep-out a digitized version of the theme song to TV's 'The Jeffersons'.  As my right index finger was already touching the button to turn on the speaker-phone option through my corduroys, I decided to risk the small movement of pressing it on.

 

"John!" a tinny version of Tommy's excited voice began.

 

"Yes?"  I replied in a defeated tone, letting out a sigh in the process.

 

"Dude, John, you would not believe the day I'm having!"

 

"Oh really?" I replied sardonically. "Try me…"

 

Story 2:  The Infamous Bee Stories

In my life, I have had three highly improbable, flying-insect with stinger related, traumatic events.  Any one of them I could forgive, but now I'm pissed.  All stinging insects should be exterminated.... completely wiped off the face of the planet.

I know what you're going to say... bees polinate flowers, which in turn convert carbon dioxide to oxygen.  If we got rid of all bees, we'd eventually screw the ecosystem and destroy life as we know it.  Cry me a river, liberal.  Bees die when they sting us, and we'll never defeat them until we adopt the same mentality.  Once you read my 3 bee stories, you'll understand my point of view.

Bee story #1

I believe I was 5-ish years old.  I was in the backyard behind my parents house.  I had to go to the bathroom, but was feeling too lazy to walk across the full-acre backyard to the house.  I decided the haystack behind the barn would be a good place to take a piss (pardon the rather vulgar wording). 

I admit, I noticed a yellow jacket flying around...  but I didn't pay any attention to it.  I hadn't learned they were the enemy yet.

I unzipped my pants, and started to take a leak, when the yellow jacket decided to land directly on my penis.  I repeat... the yellow jacket landed directly on my penis.

I've heard the true measure of a man can only be taken in situations of dire stress... war, family members dying, etc.  That's wussy stuff... you don't truly find out who you are until you've had a yellow jacket land on your penis.

Incidentally, it turns out that I'm a very stupid man when measured.

I looked down my penis and stared at the yellow jacket.  His eyes met mine... I swear to God the little S.O.B. grinned.  I think a tumbleweed might have fluttered by in the distance.

Apparently my knee-jerk reaction to noticing an insect on my body is to hit that part of the body as hard as I can.

That's right, I hit myself in the penis as hard as I could.

I missed... the damn thing had already stung me... and flew away.  I'm pretty sure he was laughing his ass off.  Not only did he sting me, he conned me into punching myself in the gonads. 

Like any good 5 year old, I ran back into the house crying.  My mother and brother were sitting in the kitchen.  Between sobs I let them know a bee had stung me.  My mother asked where I was stung... she could rub some salve on it to ease the pain.  I said I was stung in my "special place". 

My Mom, ever sympathetic, choked out "Are You Serious!?!?!".  Then she nearly fell over laughing.

My brother, laughing so hard he could barely breathe, quipped "So Mom, are you still going to rub salve on it?"

I ran away embarrassed, crying to myself.  Thus my deathly fear of all flying insects that sting began.  To this day I claim I had an allergic reaction to the sting, permanently causing the affected area to grow to tremendous size ;).

Bee Story 2:

(Note this story has one bee-stress related moment of stupidity, and one moment of stupidity that I can only claim as my own)

Fast forward about 18 years later.  I had been playing alot of basketball, and had torn my meniscus.  I had to get arthroscopic surgery.

The surgery went well, and I was sitting in my room recovering.  They had given me an epidural for the surgery, numbing me from the waste down.  They had also given me a number of sedatives to calm me down.

I was still groggy from the surgery when the doctor said I could go home as long as I demonstrated I could go to the bathroom.  Through my drug induced haze, that sounded pretty easy.  I tried to locate the hole in my boxers so I could pull "Mr. Happy" out and urinate.

I had no idea how much finding the hole in your boxers depended on not being numb from the waste down.  Normally, your boxers bulge near the hole, and you simply pull apart the bulge to reveal the hole.  You can tell the difference between the bulge near the hole and the bulge created by "your manhood" by feel.  Until you are given an epidural.

I spent about 15 minutes trying to pull my penis apart through the fabric until I realized it was the wrong bulge.  This was my own fault---  I was still wasted from the sedatives... and believe me I paid for my mistake once the painkillers wore off.

Eventually I did go to the bathroom, and they let me leave the hospital.  As I just had surgery on my knee, they wheeled me out to the car in a wheelchair.  As fate would have it, a bee landed on my leg.

I freaked... I shot out of my chair like a bullet and sprinted across the parking lot.  Surprisingly, you're not supposed to start sprinting within an hour or so of knee surgery.

I had to get another knee surgery.  At this point, I was starting to develop a very healthy dislike for all flying insects.

Bee Story 3:

 

I was on the freeway, in stop-and-go traffic.  I was in the "stop" portion of the program when I noticed a bee had landed on my windshield.  Now thoroughly biased against bees, I quite happily turned on my wipers to give it a smack.  The wipers hit it, and pinned that bad boy directly against my hood.

 

Ten minutes later, traffic had cleared up.  I was cruising down the highway going around 70 when I noticed a strange buzzing coming from the air vent in the dash.  I remember thinking to myself – no way in hell man, no way in hell.

 

One minute later the bee I had pinned against the hood with the wipers was struggling to come out of the air vent in my dash.  Yet again I freaked.  I started smacking the air vent as hard as I could.  All the desperate banging on the vent did was dislodge the bee, and he started flying around my car. 

 

It didn't occur to me until I saw red and blue flashing in my mirror that I had completely stopped paying attention to my driving.  Trying to calm myself, I stopped swinging at the bee, slowed the car down and pulled over.  The bee promptly stung me.

 

At least I figured I had a hell of an excuse for erratic driving.

 

Again I was wrong…

 

Apparently, if you are a cop, you hear this story twice a day.  It's one of the oldest excuses in the book for speeding.  People even go so far as to keep a dead bee on their dash to give the story more credibility.  The cops eventually notice the dust that has accumulated on the bee after laying on the dash for four months.

 

Needless to say, I got the ticket.

 

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These are 3 fluke occurrences… they are so statistically unlikely in their totality that I have to believe the bees are organized and deliberately targeting me.  

 

 

 

Song 1:  The Beatles – Helter Skelter

 

 

Edited from Wikipedia and Other Sources:

 

"Helter Skelter" is a song written by Paul McCartney, credited to Lennon/McCartney, and recorded by The Beatles on The White Album.  A product of McCartney's deliberate effort to create a sound as loud and dirty as possible, the clangorous piece has been noted for both a "proto-metal roar" and "unique textures."  It was one of several White Album compositions taken by Charles Manson as elaborate prophecy of a war to arise from tension over racial relations between blacks and whites.

 

McCartney was inspired to write the song after reading an interview of the Who's Pete Townsend where he described their latest single, "I Can See for Miles," as the loudest, rawest, dirtiest song the Who had ever recorded.  McCartney then "wrote 'Helter Skelter' to be the most raucous vocal, the loudest drums, etcetera" and said he was "using the symbol of a helter skelter as a ride from the top to the bottom—the rise and fall of the Roman Empire—and this was the fall, the demise."  "Helter Skelter" is a British term for an amusement park slide.  McCartney has used this song as a response to critics who accuse him of only writing ballads.

 

The lyrics support this rather innocent interpretation of the song:

 

When I get to the bottom
I go back to the top of the slide
Where I stop and turn
and I go for a ride
Till I get to the bottom and I see you again
Yeah, yeah, yeah
Do you don't you want me to love you
I'm coming down fast but I'm miles above you
Tell me tell me come on tell me the answer
and you may be a lover but you ain't no dancer

Go helter skelter
helter skelter
helter skelter
Yeah, hu, hu
I will you won't you want me to make you
I'm coming down fast but don't let me break you
Tell me tell me tell me the answer
You may be a lover but you ain't no dancer

Look out
Helter skelter
helter skelter
helter skelter
Yeah, hu, hu
Look out cause here she comes

When I get to the bottom
I go back to the top of the slide
Where I stop and turn
and I go for a ride
Till I get to the bottom and I see you again
Yeah, yeah, yeah

Well will you won't you want me to make you
I'm coming down fast but don't let me break you
Tell me tell me tell me the answer
You may be a lover but you ain't no dancer

Look out
Helter skelter
helter skelter
helter skelter
Yeah, hu,

Helter Skelter
She's coming down fast
Yes she is
Yes she is
coming down fast

The Beatles recorded the song multiple times during the The White Album sessions.  During the 18 July 1968 sessions, a version of the song lasting 27 minutes and 11 seconds was recorded, although this version is rather slow and hypnotic, differing greatly from the volume and rawness of the album version.  Another recording from the same day was edited down to 4:37 for Anthology 3.  On September 9, eighteen takes of approximately five minutes each were recorded, and the last one is featured on the original LP.  After the eighteenth take, Ringo Starr flung his sticks across the studio and screamed, "I've got blisters on my fingers!"  The Beatles included Starr's shout on the stereo mix of the song (available on CD); the song completely fades out around 3:40, then gradually fades back in, fades back out partially, and quickly fades back in with three cymbal crashes and Ringo's scream (some sources erroneously credit the "blisters" line to Lennon).  The mono version (on LP only) ends on the first fadeout without Ringo's outburst.  The mono version was not initially available in the US as mono albums had already been phased out there.  The mono version was later released in the American version of the Rarities album.

According to Chris Thomas, who was present,  the 18 July session was especially spirited.  "While Paul was doing his vocal, George Harrison had set fire to an ashtray and was running around the studio with it above his head, doing an Arthur Brown."  Starr's recollection is less detailed, but agrees in spirit: "'Helter Skelter' was a track we did in total madness and hysterics in the studio.  Sometimes you just had to shake out the jams."

The murders perpetrated by Charles Manson and members of his Family were inspired in part by Manson's prediction of Helter Skelter, an apocalyptic war he believed would arise from tension over racial relations between blacks and whites.  The prediction involved reference to music of The Beatles and to the New Testament's Book of Revelation.

Manson had been predicting racial war for some time before he used the term Helter Skelter.  His first use of the term was at a gathering of the Family on New Year's Eve 1968.  This took place at the Family's base at Myers Ranch, near California's Death Valley.

In its final form, which was reached by mid-February 1969, the scenario had Manson as not only the war's ultimate beneficiary but its musical cause.  He and the Family would create an album with songs whose predictions and instructions concerning the war would be as subtle as those he had heard in songs of The Beatles.   More than merely foretell the conflict, this would trigger it; for, in instructing "the young love," America's white youth, to join the Family, it would draw the young, white female hippies out of San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury.  Black men, thus deprived of the white women whom the political changes of the 1960s had made sexually available to them, would be without an outlet for their frustrations and would lash out in violent crimes against whites.  After a resultant murderous rampage against blacks by frightened whites would be exploited by the Black Muslims to provoke a war of mutual near-extermination between racist and non-racist whites over the treatment of blacks, the Black Muslims would arise to finish off sneakily the few whites they would know to have survived; indeed, they would kill off all nonblacks.

In this holocaust, the members of the enlarged Family would have little to fear; they would wait out the war in a secret city that was underneath Death Valley and that they would reach through a hole in the ground.  As the actual remaining whites upon the war's true conclusion, they would emerge from underground to rule the now-satisfied blacks, who, as the vision went, would be incapable of running the world; Manson "would scratch [the black man's] fuzzy head and kick him in the butt and tell him to go pick the cotton and go be a good nigger." (My apologies for including this rather divisive term…  I only included it for the sake of accuracy in quoting Manson).

Manson took the term Helter Skelter from the song of that name by The Beatles.  This was on The White Album, which Manson first heard December 1, 1968, not long after its American release.  For Manson, almost every song on that album had a meaning connected with the war he and, in his view, The Beatles were foreseeing.  Because these meanings were coded, Manson had to lay them out for his followers.

White Album songs specifically known to have been connected with the prophecy are:

1. I Will
2. Honey Pie
3. Glass Onion
4. Don't Pass Me By
5. Yer Blues
6. Sexy Sadie
7. Rocky Raccoon
8. Happiness Is a Warm Gun
9. Blackbird
10. Helter Skelter
11. Piggies
12. Revolution 1
13. Revolution 9

Beatle songs that are not on The White Album but are also known to have a connection to Helter Skelter are "Blue Jay Way," "Fool on the Hill," and "Yellow Submarine."

In the months before the murders were conceived, Manson and his followers began preparing for Helter Skelter, which they thought inevitable.  In addition to working on songs for the hoped-for album, which would set off everything, they prepared vehicles and other items for their escape from the Los Angeles area (their home territory) to Death Valley when the days of violence would arrive.  They pored over maps to plot a route that would bypass highways and get them to the desert safely.  Indeed, Manson was convinced that "Helter Skelter," the song, contained a coded statement of the route they should follow.

Manson had said the war would start in the summer of 1969.  In late June of that year, months after he'd been frustrated in his efforts to get the album made, he told a male Family member that Helter Skelter was "ready to happen."  "[B]lackie never did anything without whitey showin’ him how," he said. "[I]t looks like we’re gonna have to show blackie how to do it."

On August 8, 1969, the day Manson instructed his followers to carry out the first of two sets of notorious murders, he told the Family, "Now is the time for Helter Skelter."  When the murderers returned to Spahn Ranch, the Family's Los Angeles area headquarters, after the crime, Manson asked Charles "Tex" Watson, the sole man among them, whether it had been Helter Skelter.  "Yeah, it was sure Helter Skelter," Watson replied.

At the conclusion of the second set of murders, the following night (August 9-10), one of the killers wrote "Healter [sic] Skelter" on the refrigerator of the house in which the murders took place.  That, along with other references to Beatles songs, was written in blood.

Beatle lyrics, as interpreted by Manson

• I Will
  • Lyric:  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 are looking for Jesus Christ, who is Manson.

• 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, 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.)

·          

• Lyric:  I'm in love, but I'm lazy.
• Meaning:  The Beatles love Jesus Christ but are too lazy to go looking for him.

• Glass Onion
  • Lyric:  I told you 'bout the fool on the hill/ I tell you, man, he's living there still.
  • Meaning:  The reason the Beatles are too lazy to go looking for Jesus Christ is that they have exhausted themselves in a pilgrimage to India, where they have concluded the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi is a false prophet.
  • This connects the prophecy with a song from outside The White Album. "Fool on the hill," construed by Manson as a reference to the Maharishi, is, at the very least, the Beatles' reference to an earlier song of theirs of that title.  The song appeared on Magical Mystery Tour, the 1967 album that preceded The White Album and that had influenced Manson itself.  The Family had come to call its roundabout journey from its place of origin, San Francisco, to its place of settlement, the Los Angeles area, the "Magical Mystery Tour."

• Don't Pass Me By
  • Lyric:  I Listen for your footsteps coming up the drive/ Listen for your footsteps, but they don't arrive/ Waiting for your knock dear on my old front door/ I don't hear it; does it mean you don't love me any more?/ I Hear the clock a-ticking on the mantel shelf/ See the hands a-moving, but I'm by myself/ I wonder where you are tonight and why I'm by myself/ I don't see you; does it mean you don't love me any more?
  • Meaning:  The Beatles are calling for Jesus Christ, who is Manson.

• Yer Blues
  • Meaning:  The Beatles are calling for Jesus Christ, who is Manson.
  • (Sample lyric: Yes, I'm lonely; wanna die/ Yes, I'm lonely; wanna die/ If I ain't dead already/ Girl, you know the reason why).

• Blue Jay Way
  • Meaning:  The Beatles are calling for Jesus Christ, who is Manson.  This song, too, draws Magical Mystery Tour into the prophecy; that is the album on which it appears.
  • Sample lyric:  There's a fog upon L.A./ And my friends have lost their way/ They'll be over soon they said/ Now they've lost themselves instead/ Please don't be long/ Please don't you be very long/ Or I may be asleep.
  • The primary sources of information on Helter Skelter do not detail Manson's interpretation of the lyrics of this song.  If the "friends" are imagined to be the Beatles, looking for Manson in Los Angeles, the lyrics retain their ordinary sense, in which someone is trying to get to a place in L.A., not out of it. If, on the other hand, the "friends" are the Family, who, because of the "fog upon L.A.," have "lost their way" to the Beatles in England, the interpretation is consistent with Manson's view that the lyrics are a call to him ("Please don't you be very long") and that the Beatles want him to "sail across the Atlantic." (See Honey Pie, above.)
  • As is noted in the Wikipedia article about the "Blue Jay Way," the title is the name of an actual Los Angeles street; the primary sources of information about Helter Skelter do not indicate whether Manson knew that.  According to the Wikipedia article, George Harrison was staying at a house on that street when he wrote the song.

• Sexy Sadie
  • Significance:  Manson had renamed Family member Susan Atkins "Sadie Mae Glutz" long before the release of The White Album. The mental connection between Manson and The Beatles is obvious.
  • 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.

• Rocky Raccoon
  • Significance:  Rocky Raccoon means "coon," vulgar term for a black man.
  • Note:  This song mentions the Bible, although the primary sources of information about Helter Skelter do not indicate whether Manson noted that.  A play on the Gideons International practice of leaving Bibles in hotel rooms, the references are to a Bible left in the room of the title character by a "Gideon":

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.

• Happiness Is a Warm Gun
  • Significance:  The Beatles are telling 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).

While in Death Valley after the New Year's Eve gathering at which Manson announced Helter Skelter, the Family played over and over The White Album's five following songs:

• 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.

• 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 Bottomless Pit," the underground Death Valley hideaway where the Family 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. These are the "last few months, weeks, perhaps days, of the old order."

• Piggies
  • Lyric:  What they need's a damned good whacking .
  • Significance:  Blacks are going to give "the piggies" -- i.e. the establishment -- a damned good whacking^.  This phrase Manson particularly liked.

·          

• Piggies also contains the following: 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.  In Helter Skelter -- The True Story of the Manson Murders, which he wrote with Curt Gentry, Vincent Bugliosi, who prosecuted Manson and the others accused of the Tate-LaBianca murders, draws attention to this.  He notes that Leno LaBianca was left with a knife in his throat and a fork in his stomach. (Bugliosi has to make the point somewhat indirectly. George Harrison, who wrote the song, refused the authors permission to quote the lyrics.)

• 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" doesn't 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.  Though they are no longer on a "peace-and-love trip," they can't 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.  They are ready for the violence; they want Manson to create his album that will tell them what to do.  Its songs will be "the plan," whose subtle messages will be aimed at the various parts of society that will be involved in Helter Skelter.

• Revolution 9
  • This is the White Album piece Manson spoke about the most, the one he deemed most significant.  An audio collage, it has no lyrics.
  • Significance: Manson hears 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. Revolution 9 is prophecy, paralleling Revelation 9. "Revolution 9" = Revelation 9.
  • Manson also hears the Beatles whispering: "Charlie, Charlie, send us a telegram." (See Honey Pie, above.)

In 1987, the rock band U2 recorded the song in concert for their Rattle and Hum movie and album which was released the following year.  Bono's introduction to the song was, "This is a song Charles Manson stole from The Beatles.  We're stealing it back."  Also noteworthy of this cover is that Bono reworked McCartney's original line "You may be a lover but you ain't no dancer" and sung it as [in a kind of double-negative] "you ain't no lover but you ain't no dancer" (this occurs throughout the performance so one assumes that, while he was "stealing it back," Bono's reworking of the lyric was intentional and not simply a live flub).

On a personal note, years later, the alternative group Limp Bizkit did a raucous cover of George Michael’s rather melodic ‘Faith’.  Being an occasional Karaoke fan, I would often sing George Michael's ‘Faith’, introducing the song in my best Bono imitation:

“This is a song Limp Bizkit stole from George Michael.  I’d like to steal it back!”

First of all, my apologies for being absent from the stream the last little bit.  I’m hitting a heavy work load in the homestretch to finish up my doctorate, so I’m unable to post as regularly.

 

For Memorial Day weekend’s ‘Stories behind the Music’, I’ve decided to tell the surprising story of John Fogerty, who had the unique distinction of being sued for plagiarizing... HIS OWN MUSIC!

 

Now, if you don’t know the story about Fogerty’s solo album Centerfield, you should learn it. He was sued shortly after it came out, because of three songs: “Mr. Greed,” “Zanz Can’t Danz,” and “The Old Man Down The Road.” Saul Zaenz, president of Fantasy records, sued Fogerty for libel for the first two—and rightly so. But Fantasy Records sued