Townshend (I Can See For Miles) inspired the writing of Helter Skelter

Pinball Wizard? A Quick One? The Tommy Overture?

 

I'm Free? Magic Bus?

who knows . . .

 

Are we sure Townshend didn't mean "stinkiest"? Maybe he was talking about Odorono!

 

A very superior, densely produced tour de force, but yes...

 

Yep. And we don't know what the track was.

 

In the book, Paul specifically says Townshend was referring to the release of I Can See For Miles.

 

I also recall reading somewhere that it was a record review that Paul had read - describing some song as the dirtiest loudest etc etc

 

I don't think he wanted to "write" a heavy song, he wanted to make the heaviest recording possible. As you can hear in the original rehearsals (Anthology 3), "Helter Skelter" wasn't really conceived as such a heavy piece necessarily. My guess is that he just ended up using it (probably didn't know what else to do with it) as a vehicle to meet this idea, which he got after reading Townshend's description.

And although I have heard that Pete's statement was about "I Can See For Miles" before, I'm not totally sure we'll ever know what track he was talking about, unless we can trace the exact interview McCartney was talking about and see if there are any more clues, or if he was even talking about an exact track. Or if he just said something and Paul took it that way. You know how inspiration works... someone says something, someone else interprets it in their own way, goes off and does something else, remembers it as they way they interpreted it, even though their own interpretation has already changed and it doesn't even resemble what the original person meant...

 

1967 Guitar Player magazine. Pete Townshend interview. See wikipedia. The "some song" is I Can See For Miles.

 

did you first hear the song in 1966?

 

Did I not make it clear that I first heard it when I was a teenager in the mid '70's?

More to the point, I'm not knocking the song or casting aspersion on anyone who heard it in '66 and said, "Whoa, man, that's HEAVY, man. Far out!" It's just a funny story of the vagaries of retrospection. I also didn't think Hendrix was all that "heavy" when I first heard him, but I'd heard all manner of his musical progeny first, most of whom were operating with a much different philosophy and technology.

 

Can you give us the exact quotation where he mentions "I Can See For Miles" by name?

Here's what he said in a 1968 interview:
"Umm, that came about just 'cuz I'd read a review of a record which said, 'And this group really got us wild, there's echo on everything, they're screaming their heads off.' And I just remember thinking, 'Oh, it'd be great to do one. Pity they've done it. Must be great-- really screaming record.' And then I heard their record and it was quite straight, and it was very sort of sophisticated. It wasn't rough and screaming and tape echo at all. So I thought, 'Oh well, we'll do one like that, then.' And I had this song called 'Helter Skelter' which is just a ridiculous song. So we did it like that, 'cuz I like noise."

And here's what he said in the Anthology in 1995:
"I was in Scotland and I read in Melody Maker that Pete Townshend had said: 'We've just made the raunchiest, loudest, most ridiculous rock 'n' roll record you've ever heard.' I never actually found out what track it was that The Who had made, but that got me going; just hearing him talk about it. So I said to the guys, 'I think we should do a song like that; something really wild.' And I wrote Helter Skelter."

I'm skeptical he would have identified the song by name in Many Years from Now when just a couple years earlier he was saying the song title was not mentioned in this supposed Townshend interview and that he didn't know what song it was.

My guess is that the earlier version of the story is more accurate, since it's closer to the actual events. But in that version, he doesn't even mention the Who, and it's a record review that he is reading. Given how much his memory has shifted over the years, it seems quite possible that it could have been a song by someone other than the Who, and that his memory later filled in the blanks and made it into the Who, just as it changed from being a record review to a Townshend interview.

Even if it is the Who, why would Melody Maker be printing a review of "I Can See For Miles" in Spring of 1968 when it had been released as a single some six months earlier?

 

Unsurpringly, wiki gives no source for that claim, and it contradicts McCartney's earliest version of the story.

 

I'm pretty sure this is mentioned in one of the older Beatle biographies, either Lewisohn's or Hunter Davies', both of which pre-date the Anthology by years. Whichever one it was, "I Can See For Miles" had been hyped for its heaviness and when McCartney heard it on the radio he thought it sounded like angry bees and thought he could do better.

Or my memory could be failing me. It's been too long since I read those books, I could just be pulling it all from my nether regions.

 

I'm pretty sure this is a case where speculation has been elevated to fact through sheer repetition.

 

True. If someone has a copy of Guitar Player or Melody Maker maybe this could be cleared up!

 

Well I just checked, Miles and McCartney collabed on that book. Miles stated that it was I Can See For Miles and then McCartney commented on the idea to write the song. I don't think McCartney would've allowed that in the book if it were not true.

 

Your experience is a good example of music not being heard in the context of its time. I remember thinking how heavy, snarly and acid Alice Cooper was in the early 70's. Of course years later he sounds like good old fashioned hard rock. But at the time...so heavy, man.

 

At this point McCartney clearly does not recall for certain what the exact truth is, since just a couple years before the Miles book he was saying that he didn't know which song it was, and that the song title wasn't even mentioned in the interview he'd read.

The Miles book also reports it was a Townshend interview, and that's almost certainly not true, since it contradicts what McCartney said in 1968.

Given the level of scrutiny applied to all things Beatle related, I'm suprised that no one has located the issue of Melody Maker (or Guitar Player, or whatever magazine it was) and settled this question once and for all.

 

As with the alleged social commentary of "Nowhere Man"...

 

About 12 minutes into this Macca says he read about it in the Melody Maker. He can't remember which song it was

 

The McCartney Interview LP dates from 1980, right? Interesting that the story on there is pretty much identical to the 1995 Anthology version of the story. But it contradicts the 1968 interview in significant ways, and I think the 1968 interview is likely the most accurate, since it was given closest to when the actual events happened. It would be interesting to compile all the versions of the Helter Skelter story he's told over the years, and chart how it evolved. I wonder at what point it changed from being a record review to being a Townshend interview that he read?

 

Far from it, that song is heavy, raw, loud... during the recording sessions Ringo screamed, "I got blisters on my fingers!".
"I Can See For Miles" is just a pop song, HS is another stuff.

 

Right, like that time Pete said that Moonie wasn't even the best drummer in The Who. Or something like that.


Dan

 

Melody Maker had a couple of reviews on The Who in 1966 but the actual interviews are 1967 and 1968. Both by the same guy -- Chris Welch.

Dec. 1967: "The Who: Who Needs To Take Pop Seriously? Asks Pete Townshend" ("Pete Townshend is as unpredictable as a badly made Roman Candle...")

and then

May 1968: "Would You Let Your Daughter Marry a Venusion?" ("Typical Who sound blasted in stereo from a battery of speakers...")

I googled Melody Maker archives and then found the rockbackpages site. To actually view the issues requires a paid subscription.