Not only was "Helter Skelter" a huge influence in the development of what we now call heavy metal, it was also the first to be linked as the inspiration for a major crime. (Which is pretty much a prerequisite for any metal song to gain mainstream notoriety nowadays.) When Charles Manson heard The White Album, he thought several of the Beatles' songs were trying to warn him about an impending race war. To Manson, the Fab Four weren't just a talented group of musicians, they were the angels referenced in the Book of Revelation. And "Helter Skelter" was the medium through which they proclaimed the future of mankind. And that future evidently required Manson to start the race war by brutally murdering a number of white victims and attempting to pin these murders on the Black Panthers. This was intended to somehow trigger the apocalypse, a scenario that Manson lovingly termed "Helter Skelter." Members of the Manson Family even scrawled that phrase, in blood (albeit misspelled), at the scene of a killing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLWSQRNnGY8 In response to this twisted crime spree and his band's song being associated with it, John Lennon told Rolling Stone that Manson was misreading mysticism into it. "I don't know what 'Helter Skelter' has to do with knifing somebody. I've never listened to the words, properly, it was just a noise."