“HELTER SKELTER”

The Beatles

THE HARDESTROCKING SONG in the Beatles’ illustrious catalog, this proto-metal classic was written by Paul McCartney and features the gifted multi-instrumentalist playing rhythm and lead guitar, with John Lennon filling in for him on bass and George Harrison contributing some slippery slide licks during the song’s outro.

McCartney kicks things off with a trebly, aggressive riff that may be described as “the rock guitar equivalent of ‘Chopsticks’.” In order to give the steady 16th notes in bars 1-4 a uniformly intense and pummelling quality, the guitarist strummed the two-note chords with consecutive downstrokes, which is a technically demanding thing to do, if you’re not accustomed to that kind of fast, repetitive “jabbing” movement.

If you can make it to bar 5, you’ll catch a welcomed breather, as the rhythm shifts to mostly eighth notes at that point, and the occasional pairs of 16th notes that are played during the verse section that follows may be strummed down-up with no noticeable loss of intensity, as the full G5 and E chords roar and ring. Incidentally, notice the momentary and psychedelic “sharpening” of the open low E string in bars 6-11, as McCartney slams it with a super-aggressive downstroke attack.

McCartney employs downpicked 16th notes again in the song’s chorus, beginning at bar 15, this time with single notes and in shorter bursts, first with a descending melodic

C#, run based on the A Mixolydian mode (A, B,

F#,

D, E, G) which he then transposes down a

F#, G#, C#, perfect 4th to E Mixolydian (E, A, B, D) in the following bar. In bar 18, McCartney repeatedly jabs the E note on the B string’s 5th fret with consecutive downstrokes while gradually bending the note up one and one half steps to G. These licks, while more involved for the fret hand than the intro figure, are a little easier on the pick, as they’re single notes. If necessary, you could “cheat” here and switch to down-up-down-up alternate picking without compromising the intensity of the notes, as the attack of an upstroke is much less noticeable on a single note as it is on a chord.