I have commented previously about how odd it is that the supposed backwards Satanic message in Stairway to Heaven seems to be something that the proponents of the Backmasking Scare just can’t seem to agree on. But I was, I admit, somewhat amazed to learn just how strange the attempt to find some commonalty would prove to be.
That’s odd. The author, writing in 1985, doesn’t feel the need to provide the “other lines.” But he suggests:
I will sing because I live with Satan,
He’s the one that makes me live
Oh, I almost forgot:
Along with other lines
I must say…Stairway to Heaven is heavy metal? For a heavy metal song, it sure has a lot of acoustic guitar, not to mention a notable contribution from a recorder. Nine? Why not list all nine? Still:
Here’s to my sweet Satan
Here’s to my sweet Satan
I sing because I live with Satan
My sweet Satan,
The one will be the sad one who makes me sad,
Whose power is Satan
Could there be even more?
There’s no escaping it, my sweet Satan.
The one will be the sad one who makes me sad,
Whose power is Satan.
You can’t escape the clutches of the Sweet One. Why is Satan sweet if he makes you said? That doesn’t seem very sweet! It seems rather…mean.
Wow! The Lord turned me off? And what a song is developing! And apparently, these Evangelists are not aware of the following…
Such a mindboggling bit of American theology. The Devil is the world’s greatest enemy of sex, although he has convinced the world that he really loves it! But he hates it and fights it! Dirty pictures? What about, pornographic cars? And who knew just how busty Flirty Fishers…Love Bombers…could be? Still, the Devil turns you off…just ask Suzie Flirty Fisherwoman. So where are now?
I sing because I live with Satan.
There’s no escapin’ it.
The Lord turned me off.
My sweet Satan.
There’s power in Satan.
It seems that we’re not sad anymore. Things are looking up! But it doesn’t end there. Moving right along…
My head is spinning worse than Regan MacNeill’s did! Now we have turns instead of turned. And finally…666! We can’t do without that! There’s no escaping it! Of course, 666 is the mark of the Beast, not Satan. Still…
I sing because I live with Satan.
The Lord turns me off.
There’s no escaping it.
Here’s to my sweet Satan.
Whose power is Satan.
He will give you 666.
I live for Satan.
You can, of course, mix and match, add or delete. And you can use contractions, or perhaps you prefer to make the message exquisitely grammatically correct. Perhaps we have…Satan the High School English Grammar teacher! You can take the nonsense just provided, or change it up. Suppose you don’t like the contraction…there’s, and you don’t like the word…whose…then you might get:
There is is there’s, and whose is there’s…and…
I am the Walrus…goo goo g’joob!
Such nonsensical English! Although it sounds pretty cool when John Lennon does it. Satan apparently lacks the necessary skills. I suppose if…
This old man, he sings bing…he sings bing bong in our song!
I suppose you should endeavor to teach children civics as early as possible. And you can make Led Zeppelin’s Satanic message grammatically correct and rather formal, or you can go ahead and do what ALL ROCK MUSICIANS DO…and use more informal, contraction-oriented, English. I have said elsewhere that the phrase…he will give you 666, is rather strange. If Robert Plant stuttered when he sang it, you get another permutation:
He will give you, give you, 666.
666 is of course…the mark of Satan…right? Wrong! It’s the mark of the Beast. They’re the same…right? Wrong! It’s probably just me…wait, given Satan’s insistence on formal English, I should say…It is probably just me, but! If you know enough to know about the Book of Revelation to know about 666, then one might think you would know that the Beast and his followers…are…DESTROYED! Ah…perhaps that’s why Satan makes you sad!
And I can’t help but wonder how after 1982, when providing information about the backwards messages, the phrase The Lord turned me off simply disappears. But you could, if you were insane, turn that into the notion of the Lord turning you on, which Sam Baker did in 1987 when he launched a campaign to accuse gospel singers of doing the same terrible things as Rock musicians:
What makes me want to get up and go is this stupidity. Lady Tramaine Hawkins…really?
Baker's a gospel singer? Could there be a tad bit of jealousy? Hawkins is a real gospel singer. It’s odd that you would embrace Satan just to have him make you sad. You don’t need the Devil if you want to feel sad, and it is a far less compelling recruitment argument than…you’ll score chicks…you’ll get laid…you’ll smoke the best dope…he’s the one who will give you power and riches. He will even give you 666, although you won’t have long to live. And, like the ridiculous stomach mutilation that supposedly was found on the body of Sylvia Likens, notice how grammatically correct this Satanic message is…who…whose. Maybe Hsataw is keen on good grammar, in addition to promising you sadness. Apparently, some people think that a nefarious element is lacking. Enter Cecil E Sullivan, pastor of the First Apostolic Church…
And if Hsataw hates sex, he nonetheless has no moral qualms with doing snorts! Kiss my sweet Satan? The pastor can kiss my sweet…
The Editorial Board was taken over by Satanic Prudes. I have yet to see another source that claims to have found these messages. And Pastor Sullivan gave a free advertisement for a seminar to be presented by the Reverend Nathan Byes:
Sullivan and Byes were not content to let other Christian Fanatics engage in Nazi-like burnings. So they had one of their own. And in the news report of their Fascist Display, we find out that the music of other recording artists had to be obliterated:
Why kiss Satan when you can watch him get struck? Wait..Buddy Holly? This guy?
I thought he was rock and roll. Kids 6 years old? What were they burning…John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt?
John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt, his name is my name too!
Wait, hold on…what? Are you sure? Can I tell them? Cool! Ok, so John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt is a children’s favorite tune. Apparently, if you put your finger on the first song, drag the record backwards, and count to ten in ancient Sumerian, you’ll uncover something dreadful; or so I was just told…
Don Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt…
Well, I’m sure the President would agree that
Oh, apparently not. Could they have been burning This Old Man Plays Bing Bong?
Here's where gets really diabolical...
Ok, I must draw the line and state that…I am onboard with this. This album should be banned! Burn it in the Envangelical Flames! Why? Because if you turn the cover inside-out, then outside-in, and finally…backwards, you’ll see something altogether diabolical:
Cookie Time, kiddies! Pazuzu like cookie!
Hey, boys and girls…Regan will share her cookies with you…
C Is For Cookie…abbreviated, is…CIFC. And if you listen very carefully, you’ll hear a Very Diabolical Subliminal Message:
C is for Crime! That’s good enough for me!
On the subject of actually playing a record backwards, which means to drag it backwards on the turntable…that has, I now admit, been done. If you listen to Rap music, then you will be familiar with this…
There is an element to be found in Rap/Hip-Hop called scratching. This involves moving the record back and forth on a turntable. If you listen to a track with scratching in it, you will not hear the music on the record playing backwards. You will hear a distinctive…well, scratching sound. That would sound all the worse if you simply dragged the record backwards in search of Satan’s voice. And I was very much surprised to learn that I have a new nemesis…
I’m gonna prove that Tektonikus is wrong!
And am I really supposed to believe that Buddy Holly and Willie Nelson are Satanic? But Reverend Byes, in something he said, caused me to see a very Satanic thing lurking behind the Radicalized Christian Extremists…let’s see if you can see it too:
I’m not aware of Rock bands putting symbols related to Judaism on their album covers. Instead, one might think that a serious faux pas was made here. What do you get when you combine Fascist Public Burnings, Attempted Fascist Control of popular culture, and objections to Judaism? We all know the answer to that. How in the world can you combine an attack against Satanic Rock music with hostility to Judaism? Hatred runs through all of this Evangelical Nonsense, so I’m not particularly surprised that hostility to Judaism would eventually emerge. Apart from the Star of David, I’m having a hard time visualizing other Symbols of Judaism. But I can say that I have seen that Jewish symbol in a context that disturbs me deeply…
Nazi thugs letting the German people which shops they better avoid.
That one is obvious. All decent people know where hatred will eventually lead. And if you object to Egyptian pyramids then you best steer clear of…
Egypt. And perhaps the Good Reverend should take his protest to the United States Treasury:
You have more than just a Diabolical Pyramid…you also have a variation of:
The Diabolical Eye of Horus!
But we still don’t have everything we need…
Yes…we need a little path. And…
Gotta have faith! And evil fools. But you can play around with path…
No other made a path…that’s a twist, and I like how the writer supplies to Heaven in parentheses. Oh, Robert Plant! How ever did you sing parentheses? I suppose it was an attempt to avoid it sounding like it sounds anyway…like gibberish. Clear as a bell? You must mean…
No…Hell’s Bells! And if you have an itch, maybe you have the Goonies. And stop dropping in weird movies from the 1960s and 1970s in order to achieve comic relief! It’s getting quite annoying. Or so the Editorial Board has told me. And I certainly don’t want to be a bad influence since…
1965! A very good year. I guess the Editorial Board shouldn’t have censored me! Wait a minute, I think I hear the phone ringing. Still, I don’t suppose the Devil is a big fan of faith, so you might hear something like:
Faith is out…and fake is in! And again…Robert Plant sings backwards parentheses, and you have to be a very good singer to be able sing punctuation. And who is…Sad Sat? Hey! If you're gonna quote the song, try quoting it right...
If there’s a bustle in your hedgerow, don’t be a law man…
Wow! Don’t be a law man! Now I figure, that Mr. Evangelist, sat and listened to Stairway to Heaven over and over again, listening to the lyrics. And that was a lot of work for nothing. If he pulled the record out of the cover, he would see this:
Those look a lot like words…English words, which if you string together, might be song lyrics…they might be the lyrics to…Stairway to Heaven. And if he looked real closely, he would have seen this:
Don’t be alarmed now…
Doesn’t that make a little more sense? Maybe? Perhaps the Devil has an issue with law enforcement. And yes, there was an assertion made during the Great Satanic Backmasking Scare that messages from the Devil appeared backwards in Rock songs without the bands actually being aware of it. As the Peters said…the Devil is sneaky sleuth! But, if you wanted, you could turn the Diabolical Message into a Diabolical Hymn:
And so this permutation gives us a hymn…
Glory, Glory, here’s to my sweet Satan
which only a Churchy Person who knows nothing about Rock music would even suggest. And why is it that Satan should get all the glory, glory in a Satanic message that simply won’t stop changing? I suppose it was inevitable that…
this guy would try to muscle in on the action:
That is from the Exorcist, well…sort of. But what do we have in the Exorcist?
Yes…a child! One with issues, true…but a child nonetheless. And so I think it would be a good idea to…
So we get new words…come on, little child
But let’s not stop there! We’ll forget about Beelzebub, and…sorry Regan…the little child. What would be cool would be a reference to the band itself in the backwards message!
Here’s to my sweet Satan, I wanna live it backwards like the Zep whose power is Satan;
He will give, give you, 666.
So we now have found a way to work the band into the backwards message, but there is the draw-back that we are stuttering again. But! There is one last thing missing…something that wasn’t missing in my earlier discussions of the Satanic Backwards message in Stairway to Heaven. What is that?
Toolshed…can’t forget the Little Toolshed of Satanic Suffering. But I suppose the Toolshed only gets us closer to completion. For actual completion, we need a full Backmasked Diabolical Song, and Jeff Milner gives us one:
Plaaaay backwards,
Hear why its sung here, oppositioner..
Allll on track, all arriving
They all sing, and they are one.
Shall I loathe you now, parishoner?
Oh hear Him, Christian within me.
It stirs my sin; the river,
Oh, she swells with our lousiness.
All my life will end for him?
We’re all out of signs,
I know I’m sorta shocked
To hear The Lord,
My God now will save me!
Oh I will n’er be saved,
Because I live with Satan..
One wish today;
That you’ll all pray for
Three who will make it here late.
Pray now and you’ll see..
The ‘Lord’ turned me on,
But, oh, I was the shaggy fool..
Clothed in agony,
Lost at a height.
There’s no escaping it,
Nor his woes..
So here’s to my Sweet Satan.
The other’s little path
Would make me sad,
Whose power is faith.
He’ll give those with him 666.
And all the evil fools,
they know he made
us suffer sadly.
Ohohohoh…
“Family won’t get loose,
They’re offered me.”
Always soothes the worker.
Always will be as we know now
“I see ruins,” said he,
“the world they offered me?
Who wished the Lord’s fall?”
If we lose feather,
Say you’ll save me!
Now we’re complete! Wait…where’s the Toolshed of Suffering?
Putting things in context is always an essential thing to do. And for those who are not Rock music fans, or who like Rock music but are not Led Zeppelin fans, or just Evangelicals who really know nothing about any of this…it is vital. The song Stairway to Heaven has always been at the center of the Satanic backmasking hysteria. In fact, the list of Led Zeppelin songs basically starts, and basically ends, there. The song is on the album with no name…most call it Led Zeppelin IV, some call it Sticks. Now I have seen this accusation about music on Led Zeppelin’s fifth album, called…Houses of the Holy:
Butt-naked? You know, once you grow up, and are a big boy, you might just talk like a big boy. And he doesn’t name the songs on Houses of the Holy in which he supposedly heard Satanic messages. And one of the nuttiest Evangelists to wade into the backmasking mucky pond, may well have felt that the lack of any other Led Zeppelin song being accused of containing Satanic messages undermines the accusations made against Stairway to Heaven. So, he found another song on the same album, although…
Here yet again! The song he intends is on the same album as Stairway to Heaven. If you were to take the record sleeve, the same one that, had you looked at, you would have found the words to Stairway to Heaven, instantly deducing that there is no reference to a law man, you could flip it around. If you did, you’d see this:
The song in question is The Battle of Evermore, so yet again, we have guys who have no idea about what they’re talking about, and can’t even get the name of the songs right. And can you really believe that the song has a backwards message that says:
I am the Bible. Please spit on me.
So the singer is masquerading as a Bible? I am the Bible? And despite the fact that it would be a terrible thing to do, Crazy Guy maintains that the very polite…please…begins the second sentence. If you’re going to be that diabolical, then you can drop the good manners. Just ask Regan...
You’re in big trouble, young lady!
The simple fact of the matter is that any Crazy Person can make whatever claims about whatever Led Zeppelin song they want, but the only allegations that found resonance were made against Stairway to Heaven. And just how far Crazy Evangelicals are willing to go in their craziness can be made clear in one more quote, which I touched on earlier when discussing the ludicrous claims against Black Oak Arkansas. Backmasking is accomplished by recording vocals, playing them backwards and recording them, then inserting them somewhere in a song. Rock singers can not actually sing backwards. Or can they?
They have their own alphabet, and do things backwards. They speak backwards and write backwards. Hey! Sdrawkcab etirw tonnac I! And as far as talking backwards goes, we all know where he is getting that from…
Karras tapes Regan’s vocalizations. And we know that Karras had two tapes, one that Chris MacNeill gave him with Regan’s voice on it, and the tape he made in the shot above. So Karras had two tapes to mess with, and then a sound tech tells him that Regan is speaking backwards English.
The above shot leads me into a Sort-Of-Digression. No one would deny that backmasking allegations do involve…word games. My did the guys who made the Exorcist like word games! And I caught them playing a very interesting word game. How many different languages can you find in the Exorcist? That is an interesting question! English (not backwards), Latin, Greek, French, German and…
Ok, that is English…forwards. This shot occurs at 3:34:31 in the movie. The proceeding scene features Karras in his room playing around with the tape. The scene before that is the backwards English scene. Now!
Oh come on! Surely you see it! Just under the clock, which shows that is 7:56 pm. On the banner, you see the symbol:
I think that symbol is Japanese; I think that symbol is: Yo, in hiragana. The English “A” that is showing may be the final letter in hiragana, meaning that somebody is learning how to write in hiragana. Why is that important? Look at the middle of the scene! We see Karras occupying center-stage. Now look at the banner over his head:
Those are English letters. But I think they are English letters that are a transliteration of Japanese. Why? Because tasukete! means something very interesting in Japanese:
Help me!
And how clever is that! Regan needs help…and Karras needs help:
I would like to make another point about the accusation directed against Stairway to Heaven. The following is a collage of Led Zeppelin’s studio albums:
And add one live album:
In all, Led Zeppelin recorded 87 songs. And only 1 of those songs, only 1 of 87 songs, was the target of serious allegations of backmasking. Now Satanists, and by which I will exclude the Church of Satan and use a term that I think the Evangelicals would prefer, and I know the Church of Satan would prefer…Devil worshippers…are very religious people. How many casual Devil worshippers are there? How many part-time Devil worshippers are there? It, if it exists beyond demented cranks, would seem to be rather intense, suggesting that there would be no casual followers or part-timers. And to decide that you wish to serve your master the Devil by seducing young people into a life of Devil-worship, but then only put secret backwards messages in 1 song…beggars the mind. And then, in that one song, you only put a couple of backwards lyrics? Backwards lyrics that have a multitude of conflicting versions? So, what about the other 86 songs? What about the rest of Stairway to Heaven? Did they say…Satan only wants us to put a couple of backwards lyrics in this one song, but to leave it at that? To those who don’t know, Led Zeppelin fans do not listen to just one song. They do not listen to just one album. And for many Led Zeppelin fans, Stairway to Heaven is not their favorite song. In fact, if you ask someone what their favorite Led Zeppelin song is, and they say…Stairway to Heaven, try asking them to name five more songs, and see what happens. Stairway to Heaven is the clear favorite for people who don’t know much else about Led Zeppelin. Everyone knows the song Stairway to Heaven. I have been a Led Zeppelin fan for over 30 years. The following are my favorite Led Zeppelin songs:
1. Kashmir
2. Ten Years Gone
3. In the Light
4. The Song Remains the Same
5. Trampled Under Foot
6. Over the Hills and Far Away
7. The Rain Song
I will stop at seven. Don’t get me wrong, I love Stairway to Heaven. But I have listened to Kashmir many more times than Stairway to Heaven. A friend of mine from high school really liked Down by the Seaside. To those who really don’t know how Rock music works, or how Rock music fans choose their favorite songs…especially Led Zeppelin fans, it probably comes as quite a shock to suddenly learn that Led Zeppelin fans don’t sit around listening to Stairway to Heaven, over and over again. Even taking Led Zeppelin IV into account, Going to California and The Battle of Evermore are two songs I would listen to before listening to Stairway to Heaven, and it would be a draw between Stairway to Heaven and When the Levee Breaks. I have never met a real Led Zeppelin fan who ever said that Stairway to Heaven was Led Zeppelin’s best song. I know that it is the only song by Led Zeppelin that most Evangelicals know about. That may owe much to the fact that it is a cross-over song, meaning that it is a song that many adults, from the perspective of the 1970s, would say they like, at least to some degree. Probably none knew anything about Kashmir or Ten Years Gone. Listening to classic rock stations, I’ll bet you’ll hear Whole Lotta Love far more often than Stairway to Heaven, which gets far less radio play than the more harder-edged Zeppelin songs. So…if Led Zeppelin were trying to seduce young people into Devil-worship, then why did they seek to do this with a couple of backwards lyrics in 1 of 86 songs? And 1 song among many extraordinary songs on nine albums, knowing full well that other albums would be sitting on turntables more often than just Led Zeppelin IV. In other words…this is so incredibly diluted that it is only credible to Evangelicals who want it to be true. I’m sure most of these crusaders knew it wasn’t true, perhaps a couple were just too stupid to see what was happening. The Evangelical War against youth culture was to be fought against Rock music…a war they could never win, and one that most parents would like to avoid altogether. And therein lies the answer. The Evangelicals knew that if they squared off against youth culture, they would lose. They needed someone else to do the dirty-work. Yes, they picked the parents. But therein lies a problem. Parents who had kids who listened to Rock music…think about it! If you herded them into a church for one of your Satanic Conspiracy Seminars, being sure to hock your books and your own records before you left, and then pointed out objectionable Rock album covers, parents who were really parents of kids who listened to Rock music would tell that you were telling them what they already knew. They had seen the albums. And they didn’t like what they saw. But the only reason they were sitting there listening to your lying seminar is because, despite their dislike of the album covers, they had not undertaken the bloody battle with their kids to ban the music. It wasn’t enough. You can then present the lyrics. But if their kids were listening to this music, then chances are that the parents had heard enough to know that they don’t approve of what Rock musicians sing about. In many instances, the lyrics appear on the back cover, or on an inner sleeve, and when mom went into the kid’s room to get his dirty clothes, the albums were probably being strewn across the floor. It would have been easy enough to read lyrics that she decided that she didn’t like. She could show them to dad, who wouldn’t like them either. But mom and dad are listening to you because album covers and lyrics weren’t enough to set off a Familial Thermo-Nuclear war. So, if you were deceptively trying to get parents to carry out that war on your behalf, then you’d have to give them something else. Rock musicians do drugs! Really? We know that…it’s not enough. They encourage rebellion! Really? We know that quite well…it’s not enough. You need an ace in the hole…something the parents don’t know…something they will find deeply disturbing. Secret backwards Satanic messages might give you that ace in the hole! And then, you combine it with crack-pot pseudo-scientific theories about the subconscious mind instinctively reversing every vocal pattern you hear, or that there is a little valve at the base of the brain which Rock musicians can turn on and off to control the flow of the secret messages to ensure they get to where they need to go. That is the Evangelicals’ best shot at getting you to fight their unwinnable war for them. But they aren’t very smart. Most Christian parents aren’t religious extremists…they are mainstream. If you are stupid enough to also carry out mass public burnings, something we have all seen in documentaries about Nazi Germany, or you smash records to bits and throw them around the inside of your church, or maybe even end up tossing pornography and marijuana onto one of Christ’s altars…well, some people never get it right. So, it’s little wonder they, despite your lame scare tactics, leave your seminar still believing that fighting your war simply isn’t worth it. The Evangelists are liars, to whom the ends always justify the means. Supreme Liars who, in their crusade to undermine youth culture…a youth culture they aren’t reigning over as Cultural Theocrats, sought to treat a nation full of parents as the most stupid people in the world. The vast majority of parents were not, and are not, stupid. Their concerns about their children made them, and make them, easy to manipulate…manipulated by liars who pass themselves off as followers of Christ. In other words…Satan tries to pass himself off as an angel light. And if that’s true, then you best make sure that you are not entertaining demons unaware.
Robert Plant described Stairway to Heaven as a song of hope. Perhaps another reason for the sustained attacks of the Evangelists is their belief that Led Zeppelin was claiming to be the ones who could lead young people to heaven, thereby setting themselves up as rivals to the Cultural Theocrats. In truth, Led Zeppelin made no such claim. In my interpretation, the Stairway to Heaven lies within every person. It cannot be established from without. And if you find that you are on the wrong path…perhaps you find that you are climbing the wrong stairway, there’s always time to change the road you’re on. And that is a message of hope. Not all stairways are the same. The stairway visible from Regan MacNeil’s window was a stairway leading to death. Surely a Stairway to Heaven leads to a very different place. And you don’t know what you will find at the top until you’re there. Of course, this is all just a matter of interpretation. Or maybe it’s just a spring clean for the May Queen.
