Is The Beatles’ Helter Skelter a Heavy Metal song?
Not really, IMHO. I regard it as more of a straight ahead rock number. Heavy Metal conjures up different musical styles in my mind.
Nah. Not heavy enough or Metal.
Fagjunk Theology: Not just for sodomite propagandists anymore.
But it is amazing how many genres the Beatles worked in.
Techno: “Tomorrow Never Knows”
Punk rock: “Helter Skelter”
Rockabilly: “One After 909”
Rhythm & blues: “Got to Get You Into My Life”
Folk: “You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away”
Little Richard: “I’m Down”
Chuck Berry/Beach: “Back in the USSR.”
Vaudeville: “When I’m Sixty-four”
Art rock: “Eleanor Rigby”
Chanson: “Michelle”
Lullaby: “Good Night”
Love song: “Julia”
Comedy: “You Know My Name (Look Up My Number)”
Psychedelia: “I Am the Walrus”
Blues: “Oh! Darling”
Children’s: “Yellow Submarine”
Avant garde: “Revolution 9”
I don’t really see a point to classifying music to this extreme level of detail - the Beatles played rock n’ roll music. “Heavy Metal,” a basically outdated term, is the last label you would apply to the Beatles. I think the term “Heavy Metal” was mainly an eighties term used to define bands that are now known as “Hair Bands.”
Not really…
Heavy metal as a music genre originated in the late 1960s, and was first called by that name in the rock magazine Creem in 1971.
Nah. It is what it is, which is another facet of the Beatles’ genius.
hrh
Helter Skelter…punk?
From what strange alternative bearded-Spock universe did that come from?
It always sounded more like a demo than anything else.
Nah… Hair Bands were groups like Ratt, Poison, Def Leppard, White Lion, and Skid Row…
Heavy Metal bands were bands like Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath, and Motley Crue…
Although in many cases the lines between the two styles were blurred, there are distinct differences.
Certainly at the time (the 80s) bands like Ratt and Def Lepp and such were called ‘Heavy Metal’. But so were the Crue and Priest etc.
But Motley Crue was a hair band! Maybe not at first, but definitely at “the end” (“Same Old Situation” on Dr. Feelgood . . . I still like it, but that’s a hair band you’re listening to . . .)
Priest was never confused for as hair band though… Not by anyone who;d actually listened to them… Heavy Metal tended to rely more on the three note power chord… Hair bands tended to have a little more melody and complex leads… Some hair bands had harder stuff, but almost every hair band album had the obligatory Power Ballad as well. Thats something that true metal bands tended to shy away from a bit.
Why do I call “Helter Skelter” punk? The unmelodic melody, raw vocals, harsh guitar work, anarchy suggested by title.* Siouxsie and The Banshees punked it out even more in their recording.
There’s a goth-punk club in L.A. named Helter Skelter.
- yes, I know that literally a Helter Skelter is a type of amusement park slide
I suggest that you go back and listen again to Shout at the Devil. Which even has their cover of gasp Helter Skelter
Yes, in their later years, particularly post partum with lead singer Vince Neil, they did tend to head more towards Hair than Metal… I seem to recall reading that the breakup was in fact due to the fact that Neil wanted to be more hard and the rest of the band did not…
. . . And because “Helter Skelter” has all of three chords.
Well, hell. If THAT’s your definition then most of rock and roll is ‘punk’. Most of Chuck Berry, John Denver, et al rely on the I-IV-V chord progression.
And I’d say Motley Crue crossed the line when they posed in teddies for the picture sleeve for the 45 of ‘Smokin’ in the Boys Room’.
Though I never recall the phrase ‘Hair Metal’ until the late 80s. I think at the time (80-84) Ratt and the Crue and Quiet Riot and such were just considered the new generation of Heavy Metal.
I’m paraphrasing Paul as saying “We wanted to make the raunchiest song ever- and we came up with Helter Skelter”.
I wouldn’t call it hard rock or punk. Just raunchy, messy rock.
And I’d have to say that Paul’s led a sheltered life if he thinks that’s ‘The raunchiest song ever’.
Amatuerish, maybe…but not raunchiest. There was stuff out on blues labels 20 years before that apparently would have made his head explode.
Rhythm & blues: “Got to Get You Into My Life”
No way. Not to me, anyway. This song comes off as straight pop to me.