A Summer of Chaos
The first three lines of the fourth verse depict the chaos that took place in the summer heat at the end of the 1960s. The summer of 1967 was the self-proclaimed “summer of love” as youth culture hippies from all over the country headed to San Francisco’s Haight Ashbury district where they lived out the counterculture’s refrains of drug-induced transcendence and brotherly love. However, the calm waters were soon disturbed by several events that challenged the flower power existence of the hippies.
Three soldiers stand amid the rubble of a burned building in Washington, D.C. Riots and looting occurred in many U.S. cities after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Violent Oakland anti-draft protests took place during this time, as well as the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy. Additional significant imbalance included the riots across the nation following the assassination of Martin Luther King, as well as those at Columbia University and the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
Using the phrase “ Helter Skelter ” McLean references the Celtic events of this period and also the song of the same name by The Beatles. Another musical reference in this verse is “ Eight Miles High ” by The Byrds, released in 1966 and focusing on the drug culture of the period and the anarchy that was about to erupt in America. Both of the songs cater to the idea of falling fast, which in retrospect is a metaphor for the falling of the old world and the advent of a new one.