A Better Helter Skelter

Lyrics

She was jolted by joy, surprised by serenity
She was secretly pleased how easy salvation can be
New truths for old, come in from the cold
Her mother’s in the kitchen when the door slammed
And a daughter’s gone missing, gone looking for shelter
She’ll find it at the foot of a better, a better
A better helter skelter

A stretch outside, a seer needs to travel in style
Now stretch right out and help him help you tune in your dial
He’s holding out hope, a ticket to utope
You need to get your energy unjammed
The spirit is a river, we’re living on the delta
And someone’s getting soaked on a better, a better
A better helter skelter

One of those days when everything falls away
And you go looking for a system or a sign to help slow the decay
There’s always a friend who got it on oath
About a man in a role talking personal growth
Do you take up his chant, or look underneath
Is he whispering a mantra, or lying through his teeth

It’s the primitive scream of a family that’s tearing apart
Maybe it’s never that good but home’s still the home of the heart
She’ll be seeing you again, but don’t go in the den
Because Renées in there getting deprogrammed
She should have looked harder at the hand he dealt her
Broken at the foot of a better, a better
A better helter skelter

Song Description

Charles Manson called his plan to kill the rich of California after a song by the Beatles; ‘Helter Skelter’, because he thought the lyrics fitted his theory. Manson, a petty criminal, attracted a group of followers, many of whom were very young women with troubled emotional lives who were rebelling against their parents and society in general. He battered down their inhibitions and questioned the validity of their notions of good and evil with the use of drugs. The core of his ‘philosophy’ was a kind of Armageddon. He preached that the black man was going to rise up and start killing the whites and turn the cities in to an inferno of racial revenge. The black man would win this war, but wouldn’t be able to hang onto the power he seized because of innate inferiority. Charlie the Prophet had already forecast that the murders would start in the summer of 1969, but as the summer went on, it looked as though the “prophet” was wrong. And for no other reason Manson and his followers killed a group of celebrities, including Sharon Tate, in cold blood.

Everywhere gurus are trying to rob people of their money and sense.

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