The evangelicals raised such a fuss that Iron Maiden deliberately put a backward bit of nonsense between songs on one of their albums.
The evangelicals raised such a fuss that Iron Maiden deliberately put a backward bit of nonsense between songs on one of their albums.
I don't like country music, but I don't mean to denigrate those who do. And for the people who like country music, denigrate means 'put down.'- Bob Newhart
The real hoot is that people were stupid enough to think that something heard backwards could cause people to alter their behavior. That people are robots waiting for programming, and could subconsciously decode something heard, not read, backwards. It's what happens when you're more comfortable with believing than reasoning.
Originally Posted by Vic2012
After all, I remember hearing that Cher had some ribs removed too, but I never heard that the reason was so that she could, well, you know...I remember hearing that when I was a teenager, and looking back it almost certainly had to be false. But like you said, he probably got a kick out of it.
Saw him setting up "the octopus" at our local fair.
Still alive and well...
One that I remember was Black Dog. There's a bit in the intro, where Robert PLant is singing acapella, where if you flipped it over, it sounded like he was saying "I am Satan". That's just what it sounds like, because humans have this thing of trying to "make sense out of nonsense". Same reason we stare at the sky and say "That cloud looks like...".
Anyway, as it happens, at the time, I was on the A/V Team at school (does that surprise you?) and as such I got mess around with one of the computers at school (this was back in the late 80's/early 90's, when that was still a relative novelty). WE had a microphone, and a program ont he computer that could, among other things, reverse audio. So, I sang (or tried to sing, I couldn't remember all the words) of the stanza into the computer. We had the program reverse the recording, and sure enough, in the middle of all this gibberish, you suddenly heard, "I AM SATAN!".
But I somehow doubt it very much that Robert Plant was trying to create such an effect when he came up with those words.
I remember seeing these nutjobs on TV, and they'd play records backwards. EVeryone remembers Stairway To Heaven, but I also remember Running With THe Devil was another one that supposedly had a backwards message, there was also a Styx song, and a couple others (these not counting records that actually do have backwards messages on them, like Fire On High by ELO, or Baby I'm A Star by Prince And The Revolution). Something that drove me crazy is, it never occurred to any of the hosts on these shows (and we're not talking 700 Club type programs, I'm talking daytime news/talk/entertainment program, that at least in theory didn't have an idiot agenda) to ask where the backwards message goes when the record is played normally. I mean, it can't just vanish, you have to hear an equivalent audio when you're playing the record normally. But I guess they didn't want break the awful truth to any of these cracker jacks.
Actually, they lost their minds over Number Of The Beast, first of all the album cover artwork, second of all the song itself, etc.The evangelicals raised such a fuss that Iron Maiden deliberately put a backward bit of nonsense between songs on one of their albums.
If I remember corredctly, the backwards message you're talking about is on the next album, Piece Of Mind, and as I recall, it's not just gibberish, it's someone (I think Nicko McBrain) saying something to the effect of "You shouldn't meddle in things you don't understand" in a fake Caribbean accent, or something like that.
(checking WIki) OK, here's what Wiki says the message is (it's the intro to Still Life, btw):
They also put a Biblical quote, from the book of Revelations on the back cover of Piece Of Mind, the "There shall be no pain" verse, I forget the exact wording, but they swapped out the word "pain" for "brain", so it read "there shall be no brain", and apparently that went right over everybody's heads.The backwards-message features McBrain mimicking actor John Bird's impression of Idi Amin,[8] uttering the following phrase "What ho said the t'ing with the three 'bonce', do not meddle with things you don't understand...", followed by a belch.
But I think my favorite Evangelical "anti-rock" thing was some turkey who gave his interpretation of Hotel California in his book (which was full of stupid reasons to hate rock music, up to and including citing the non-Christian religions of some of the musicians, including Townshend, Santana, etc). Anyhow, so this guy explains that the verse that goes:
I called the Captain
I said send me my wine
He said we haven't had that spirit here
Since 1969
Is a direct reference of the Church Of Satan. According to this guy, wine represents the spirit of Christ. And 1969 is when the Church Of Satan was founded. So apparently, according to him, the "Hotel California" is the Church Of Satan". Or something like that. I recall he also had an explanation for the "stabbing with their steely knives" stanza, but I forget what it was.
Oh, and did I mention he claims Anton LeVay is standing among the people inside the gatefold of the album cover? Yeah, that could be Anton LeVay. It could also be Herve Villecheze! Or Sid Haig! Or anyone with that kind of complexion, since the image is out of focus. Don Henley was asked about it once on MTV (though in that instance, it was said that it's supposedly the Devil standing there, showing you how good MTV's research department was/is) and Don said it was a woman! "The Devil herself!", he sarcastically added.
As Lemmy put it, "the streets should be choked with bodies" if heavy metal was causing kids to kill themselves, but they aren't, are they?
Well, the logic is that you can sneak stuff into programming, whether it's music, TV, whatever that's supposed to subliminally influence you. REputedly, movie distributors used to sneak in frames into movies when they played in theater, one frame at a time, which goes by so quickly you don't see it, that was meant to cause members of the audience to be hungry and/or thirsty, the logic being you'd stop at the snack bar on the way out of the theater and blow whatever cash you still had in your pocket on overpriced junk food.That people are robots waiting for programming, and could subconsciously decode something heard, not read, backwards. It's what happens when you're more comfortable with believing than reasoning.
There's also the idea that in a sequence of seemingly random, stream of consciousness words, you'd insert several words that are supposed to brainwash or influence the thinking of the viewer. I recall back when U2 were touring on the back of Achtung Baby, they were doing this thing where they displaed a string of words during one song. I forget the actual sequence of the words but among were the words "Japan", "Must" and "Pay", which some people apparently viewed as "Japan bashing" (which was apparently a popular thing at the time, I recall some politician getting in trouble for pointing out who dropped the A-bomb on whom), and being done in a subliminal fashion, so you wouldn't realized where you got these negative feelings about Japan or whatever.
Whether or not any of that dren actually works, is another thing. I don't think I ever visited the candy counter after the movie, but it's possible by the time I was going to movies, they had already stopped doing that (if they had ever done it in the first place), and/or my brother who usually took me to the movies kept me away from the candy counter. Who knows?
Meanwhile, I've listened to more than my share of rock music, heavy metal, etc and I'm not a Satanist, a drug addict, a murderer, etc, I've never attempted suicide (though I do struggle with depression a bit), nor have I done any of the other heinous things that heavy metal music is supposed to cause you to do. Sure, I've done some sick shit in my lifetime, but I know where to draw the line (to quote Steve Tyler...and that reminds me, I remember another turkey criticizing Aerosmith's version of Big Ten Inch Record, because, apparently like everyone else, this clown heard one of the lines as "Suck on my big ten inch...", yeah, becuase oral sex is like really really evil or whatever...for what it's worth, Tyler has always maintained it's "'cept on my big ten inch", "'cept" being a corruption of "except"...though if I'm not mistaken the whole song is kind of a allegory or whatever you want to say for having sex...just because he's talking about putting on a 78rpm big band record doesn't mean he's not really talking about getting down with the girl).
Exactly my thoughts. All "form," no substance.
Music isn't about chops, or even about talent - it's about sound and the way that sound communicates to people. Mike Keneally
Yeah, I'm familiar with subliminal advertising. It basically combines subterfuge with the power of suggestion. As you say, the efficacy probably depends on the subject. However, I would think there'd be a big difference between that and hearing something backwards, decoding it to intelligible language, and then having a causative effect on the listener, all in the space of a few seconds, before the mind is occupied with something else. There are so many points here where the scheme (w)could fall down. I'm not buying the decoding (unless you play the record backwards) and the logic of it goes downhill from there. What if after the "I am Satan" message, another series of words said "go hug kittens" when played backwards. The poor automaton-in-waiting wouldn't know whether he was supposed to go burn a church or adopt a pet.
Well, it is ridiculous. I still think what happened was that someone had read about The Beatles, Hendrix, etc using backwards recording (eg the backwards guitar on I'm Only Sleeping and Are You Experienced?, the backwards vocal on Rain, etc) and ya know that first verse of Take It On The Run goes, information gets passed from one person to the next and then to another and so on, with the info getting a little more distorted each time, so that at some point, some highly susceptible whackjob who claims to be a pastor hears about bands planting subliminal messages in a record with the intent of "leading youth astray". And because he's already made up his mind that he hates rock n roll music (or rock music, or as Reverend Lovejoy calls it, "Rock and/or roll"), he doesn't even consider the possibility that the whole thing is complete dren.
And then of course, as I said earlier, the human mind likes to try to make sense out of the nonsensical. So, even when presented with something that's complete gibberish, they'll try to suss out an actual meaning.
The weird thing is, there's certain things that really do sound the words in question. The "I am Satan" thing is most definitely there in the Black Dog intro. It was even there when I did my own version of it. Now, the question is whether or not I would have heard "I am Satan" if someone hadn't told me beforehand, I'm not sure I could answer. I remember tryingt o play Stairway To Heaven backwards, and not being able to find the supposed message there, but that might be because I tried reversing the entire song in that case, by taking apart a blank tape and flipping it ove,r instead of just the one little bit where the message supposedly occurs. I was also never able to find the message that apparently appears on side two of The Wall, probably for the same reason: I wasn't really sure when I was supposed to listening for it.
I was also never able to make out what the backwards message in Baby I'm A Star was (because it's mixed so low), though apparently other people did, as there's a transcription on Wikipedia.
Yeah, there were a bunch of them. "Turn me on, dead man" was one I remember. John Lennon, maybe?
Forgot about that one. That's another example of "making sense of chaos" things, and it's especially weird in light of the whole "Paul is dead" phenomenon. One wonders which came first: someone figuring out that "number nine" played backwards sounds like "Turn me on dead man", or the bizarre rumor that Paul McCartney was in fact dead and had been replaced by a look alike.
Somewhere there's a website, it might have been on Wikipedia, that listed all the "clues" about that thing. That was really weird that people found all these presumably unrelated things and just sort of tied them together into this ridiculous conspiracy theory.
Legend sayeth he cut his teeth on it.
I heard in more recent years, since I began working in the mental health field, Hotel California is actually about the California State Hospital.
I also remember Christian zealots protesting outside a Santana concert. Carlos was flabbergasted as to why, because he himself was a practicing Christian at the time. He had gone from keeping a photo of his guru on his amp to a photo of Jesus.
"Well my son, life is like a beanstalk, isn't it?"--Dalai Lama
I'm pretty sure the anti-rock zealot was Bob Larson.
Well, there was a bunch of them. I recall the local library had at least two books on "the evils of rock n roll", written by different people.
Probably people who thought he was still following Sri Chimnoy, no doubt.
I also remember Christian zealots protesting outside a Santana concert. Carlos was flabbergasted as to why, because he himself was a practicing Christian at the time. He had gone from keeping a photo of his guru on his amp to a photo of Jesus.
Well, he can always go back to playing the Tampa bars with the Genitorturers on weekends....
I've got vague memories of Rob Halford in court playing other LPs backwards and picking out what sounds like random words. Didn't he also say that, if they were going to put subliminal messages on their albums, they were unlikely to put anything that would kill off their fan base.
I love Marilyn Manson. Back in the 80's The Spooky Kids opened for my band once (at Flynn's on Miami Beach) and it was the only time we were truly and utterly blown off the stage. They were that good. We all just looked at ourselves and said: "we gotta play after that???!!!" I knew he was a star but it was his back up band - they were so tight it was amazing. So yeah, I'm a fan.
The Prog Corner
In fairness to Mr. Larson, he isn't or wasn't a total anti-rock zealot. In the early 80s, he was a Christian rock advocate. At the time most other ultra-conservative leaders condemned Christian rock, along with all other rock as "The Devil's Music." In one episode of his live call in show, Mr. Larson was discussing the evils of Punk and New Wave music. A caller read him some U2 lyrics, to which he asked "Aren't the members of U2 professing Christians?" He then defended U2 along with the caller.
I remember reading a Christian comic which sourced Wiccan to Christian convert John Todd. He claimed the beat in rock music originated from the Druids, who built Stonehenge in England, and the beat had some kind of magical power. I pointed out to my fellow Christians at the time that John Todd was also against speaking in tongues because witches spoke in tongues. Speaking in tongues is quite biblical, described in the Bible as one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit.
I also remember Christian zealots coining the acronym "Knights In Satan's Service" from the name KISS. I found that quite hilarious because both Gene and Paul are Jewish, Gene actually being from Israel. KISS later covered Russ Ballard's God Gave Rock'n'Roll To You during the Hair Metal era, a song also covered by Christian band Petra.
Last edited by progmatist; 09-26-2017 at 05:18 PM.
"Well my son, life is like a beanstalk, isn't it?"--Dalai Lama
For the record, 3/4's of U2 were/are "professing Christians". I believe I read that sometime int he band's early history, The Edge, Bono, and Larry Mullin Jr all "saw the light", leaving Adam Clayton as the sole "heathen" in the group.
Apparently, when U2 first toured the US, Adam got into a bit of stereotypical "touring rock musician" hi jinks, which in turn apparently upset some of the religious types around who the other three had surrounded themselves with. I guess there was a bit of strife, until the other three realized that Adam really wasn't doing anything that was affecting the band, and that it was therefore "other people's problem, not ours", so Bono once said.
In general, though, I never cared for "Christian rock music". A lot of it just sounds like a bunch of teenagers who are trying really really really hard to impress the hell out of their pastor, which I don't think necessarily goes hand in hand with "rock n roll".
Yeah, I know the first couple Petra albums are supposed to be really good, I've never heard them, but a lot of that just seemed a little aimed at pleasing the wrong crowd. God said to "Make a joyful noise" not "Make a boring noise".
And for the record, Bruce Kulick and Eric Singer are also Jewish. But what does that have to do with it? You could have a Jewish background and still be a Satanist, I imagine.I also remember Christian zealots coining the acronym "Knights In Satan's Service" from the name KISS. I found that quite hilarious because both Gene and Paul are Jewish, Gene actually being from Israel. KISS later covered Russ Ballard's God Gave Rock'n'Roll To You during the Hair Metal era, a song also covered by Christian band Petra.
But I always loved Paul STanley's response to that whole thing: "The idea that Kiss might be Satanic isn't what's scary. What's scary is that there are people who believe Kiss are Satanic". That was another one fo those "because we said so" things. You'd ask what evidence you had that Kiss were "Satanic", and the best you could get was "Well, my pastor said so". You never even got the kind of baloney you got when such accusations where leveled at Led Zeppelin, The Who, or The Beatles.
I actually always liked the idea that they were Nazis, again, simply because of the ethnicity of half the original lineup (plus the fact that Gene's mother is in fact a Holocaust survivor, as is Geddy Lee's mother, fwiw). Actually, I don't know that they were ever actually accused of being Nazis, but they had to come with an alternative logo for the German release of their albums, because the regular Kiss logo resembles the "SS" insignia.
The other one I remember hearing implied in various in one or two interviews was that apparently, some people thought Kiss were gay, for whatever reason. I wonder which annoyed Gene more: that people might think he was a Nazi or that he might be gay.
Actually, the best line I heard about Kiss when I was a kid was that Gene had once actually set someone on fire while doing the fire breathing thing onstage. It's actually kinda sorta true: Gene actually did set his own hair on fire at least a couple times, before he figured out it was his hairspray that was causing it to happen.
The other thing though, was that apparently, originally another gag was that he was to throw flash powder into a candelabra, producing the illusion that he was shooting sparks or flames from his hands. I believe he only did it once, at the New Year's Eve 73 show at the Academy Of Music (the night they opened for Blue Oyster Cult). The flames hit an audience member in the face, singeing his eyebrows and hair. I think it was Bill Aucoin who said he panicked obviously because he was worried the guy might want to sue the band or something. But apparently he wasn't really injured and according to Aucoin, when he talked to the guy later, he wasn't at all upset. Maybe he already knew he'd have a great story to tell: "Gene Simmons singed my eyebrows!"
Also, AC/DC supposedly meant "Anti-Christ Devil Child", in regards to the band formed by the younger brothers of one of the Easybeats. I remember seeing an interview with, I think, Malcolm Young, who said in the early days, he was riding in a cab, and he starts talking to the cabbie, about the band, etc, he says the name of the band is AC/DC, and the cabbie asked him if they were gay. Apparently, in some circles AC/DC is slang for bisexual. There again, you wonder which would offend the band members more, being accused of being Satanists, or being gay or bisexual.
Oh, and of course, lots of those guys liked to point out where the name Styx comes from (it's the mythical river that forms the border between the living world and Hell, in case you weren't paying attention in mythology class).
That was a common usage, especially in Britain. The Sweet had a song around that theme on the American version of Desolation Boulevard.
Slight correction: The Styx was between the land of the living and the underworld of the dead. The Greeks didn't have a concept of a cosmic torture chamber. I don't think that came along until Christianity.
I saw MM once at Ozzfest many years ago. I thought they had a pretty decent vibe, even though he's never been more than an Alice Cooper wannabee. I did think the band was sorely missing a lead guitar. Of course, I was there to see Sabbath.
I might suggest that his lack of continued success is more about an absence of depth and an over-reliance on gimmickry and shock. Or, perhaps, people got tired of him rubbing his microphone on his asshole and sticking it in his mouth (which I witnesses at Ozzfest).
"The White Zone is for loading and unloading only. If you got to load or unload go to the White Zone!"
Don't forget Rush - Rebels Under Satan's Hand. Anyway....
Back in High School I found, in the band room, a pamphlet from the Back In Control Training Program. I still have it and it's still as funny today as it was back then. How Punk and Heavy Metal were ruining kids and all that nonsense. The chick who headed the place back then was interviewed in The Decline of Western Civilization Pt. 2: The Metal Years doc and you can see in that she's clearly bonkers.
I wish I could scan the document for you all, it's really quite stupid, but I don't think it would come through as it's photocopied very faintly. Someday I might try because the idiocy in the doc is very amusing.
Carry On My Blood-Ejaculating Son - JKL2000
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