Paul Watkins (Manson Family) - War Foretold

War Foretold

On New Year’s Eve, 1968, Watkins was around the Family campfire at Myers Ranch when Manson delivered the Helter Skelter prophecy. For some time, Manson had been predicting blacks would rise up in rebellion in America's cities. Now, he explained that The Beatles, too, were making that prediction, on their then-new White Album. More than that, the musical group wanted Manson and the Family to create an album of their own, to trigger the predicted events:

Are you hip to what the Beatles are saying?… Dig it, they’re telling it like it is. They know what’s happening in the city; blackie is getting ready. They put the revolution to music… it’s ‘Helter-Skelter.’ Helter-Skelter is coming down. Hey, their album is getting the young love ready, man, building up steam. Our album is going to pop the cork right out of the bottle.

Before long, Manson had moved the Family to a Canoga Park house where they undertook preparations for Helter Skelter, the prophesied conflict whose name Manson had taken from a White Album song. They worked on music for their intended album and began preparing dune buggies and other vehicles for their escape to Death Valley, where, according to the complete version of the prophecy, they would survive the America-ravaging war.

Watkins took the prophecy seriously enough. One day, as he looked out a window of the Canoga Park house, he wondered to himself whether the violence of Helter Skelter would reach the Family. Indeed, it was apparently his fear that the Family was lingering too long in the soon-to-be-war-torn Los Angeles area that prompted him, in late June 1969, to ask Manson when the group would be leaving for the desert. Manson assured him Helter Skelter was "ready to happen." "t’s gotta happen soon," Manson said, adding, with a wink, that the Family might have "to show blackie how to do it."