The strange message Charles Manson found in The Beatles song ‘Honey Pie’

(Credits: Far Out / Mubi)

Music Tue 29th Aug 2023 17.30 BST

Charles Manson and The Beatles will always be linked. This is primarily down to the crazed cult leader taking the fairly innocuous meaning of the band’s White Album classic ‘Helter Skelter’ and interpreting it to fit into his apocalyptic and racist prophecy, which resulted in multiple murders at his hands.

There were several songs from 1968’s White Album that Manson read into. One of these was ‘Honey Pie’. Manson and his ‘family’ believed that there were references to their home in California in the song. As expected, Manson’s reading couldn’t have been further from the truth, with the songwriter Paul McCartney later clarifying what the track was really written about. 

Los Angeles Deputy District Attorney Vincent Bugliosi led the prosecution of Manson and four of his Family following the Tate-LaBianca murders and named his 1974 book about the killings Helter Skelter. According to the book, Manson believed that ‘Honey Pie’ was about The Beatles’ desire to join the Manson Family in California. 

This was because, in the song, McCartney discusses sailing across the Atlantic Ocean and references Hollywood. He sings: “Oh honey pie, you are driving me frantic / Sail across the Atlantic / To be where you belong” and “Oh honey pie, my position is tragic / Come and show me the magic / Of your Hollywood song”. Accordingly, Manson hoped that the Fab Four would indeed sail across the Atlantic and link up with his cult in Death Valley.

According to Bugliosi, another line in ‘Honey Pie’ also bewitched Charles Manson. In the track, McCartney sings, “I’m in love, but I’m lazy”. As is well known, the failed musician Manson believed himself to be Jesus and felt that The Beatles did indeed love Jesus thanks to Lennon’s comment: “I don’t profess to be a practising Christian, and Christ was what he was, and anything anybody says great about him I believe. I’m not a practising Christian, but I don’t have any unchristian thoughts.” However, the cult leader thought the English band were too lazy to search for Jesus, or should we say, for him. 

Manson tried to personally reach The Beatles to make his dream convergence happen. Reportedly, he and members of the cult attempted to call the quartet on at least three occasions and sent them a multitude of telegrams and letters. They never made contact with the rock band. 

Even in October 1970, when Manson’s defence announced they would call on John Lennon for his testimony following the misspelt phrase ‘HEALTER SKELTER’ being found written in blood at the scene of the LaBianca murders, they failed to come into contact with The Beatles. Lennon maintained that his comments were useless to the trial as he didn’t write ‘Helter Skelter’.

In 1997’s Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now, the ‘Honey Pie’ songwriter clarified what the song was actually about. “Both John and I had a great love for music hall, what the Americans call ‘vaudeville,’” he said. “I’d heard a lot of that kind of music growing up with the Billy Cotton Band Show and all of that on the radio. I was also an admirer of people like Fred Astaire; one of my favourites of his was ‘Cheek to Cheek’ from a film called Top Hat that I used to have on an old 78.”

“I very much liked that old crooner style, the strange fruity voice that they used, so ‘Honey Pie’ was me writing one of them to an imaginary woman, across the ocean, on the silver screen, who was called Honey Pie,” he continued. “It’s another of my fantasy songs. We put a sound on my voice to make it sound like a scratchy old record. So it’s not a parody, it’s a nod to the vaudeville tradition that I was raised on.”

Listen to ‘Honey Pie’ below.

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