Paul McCartney has revealed why he refused to play this Beatles hit live

For years, the 76-year-old music legend couldn't bear to include the track from band's acclaimed 1968 'White Album' in his sets because Manson - who died in prison last November at the age of 83 - named his prophecy of a race war between Caucasians and African-Americans after the track.

After listening to the LP repeatedly, Manson believed that the band had tapped into his spirit and had foreseen the same oncoming racial violence that he had and that he intended to spark with the actions of the Manson Family and their own music album.

In August 1969, the cult were responsible for the murder of Sharon Tate and four others at the Los Angeles home she shared with Roman Polanski in August 1969.

One of the killers wrote "Healter (sic) Skelter" in blood on the refrigerator of the house in which the murders took place and numerous references to other Beatles songs, in particular 'Piggies' from the 'White Album', were also scrawled in blood at the scene.

McCartney was asked if he was unhappy that Quentin Tarantino's film 'Once Upon a Time In Hollywood' and documentary 'Inside The Manson Cult: The Lost Tapes' would be bringing up the horrific incident again and he admitted he found it hard to disassociate the song from the tragedy for a long time.

In an interview with NME, he said: "Well, that put me off doing it forever.

"I thought, I'm not doing ['Helter Skelter'], you know, because it was too close to that event, and immediately it would have seemed like I was, either I didn't care about all the carnage that had gone on or whatever, so I kept away from it for a long time."

However, McCartney decided to add it back into his sets on occasions because  of the way crowd react to the heavy rock song.

The 'Come On to Me' singer said: "But then in the end I thought, 'You know, that'd be good on stage, that'd be a nice one to do,' so we brought it out of the bag and tried it and it works. It's a good one to rock with, you know."

This article was first published on Bang Showbiz and is reproduced here with permission.