Turn Me ON Dead Man
In the late 70’s, the fear of pop music as a carrier wave for satan once again reared its ugly head in the form of back masking allegations.
Seems like TV preachers and touring circus ministers always needed some gimmick to demonize the music ever since rock and roll crawled from the primal ooze in the 50’s. Even then, some DJs refused to play that Devil Music, even calling people like Elvis evil. I wonder what happened to those people when they saw the heavy metal mayhem of the 70’s and 80’s which co-opted Satan, 666 and the upside down cross for their fiery stage shows.
In the early 80’s, then a new teacher, I had several students come to my classes worried and traumatized by a traveling revival minister that preached on the dangers of rock music and its hidden Satanic messages. He played the crowd clip after clip of songs from the Betakes, Led Zeppelin, Styx, Ozzy and Electric Light Orchestra and then reversed the song in his proof of the great satanic conspiracy to steal the souls of the young through rock music.
He also sold tapes. A lot of tapes. Not only did this minister spread his word through the Love offerings given by the crowds each night, but his soul saving cassette tapes loaded with audio proof of the demonic messages made their way from his daring hands to their s, each eager for evidence of the great conspiracy.
Many of these kids were upset. Some told me that the very evening following the sermon, their parents went home, confiscated their Led Zeppelin LPs and destroyed them. Styx went in to the trash. ELO, Black Sabbath and Judas priest followed. Once again, a fever as great as that in 1965 when John Lennon uttered the words to a reporter that he thought a friend, “We’re more popular than Christ.” Lennon’s words jumped up and bit him on the ass a s radio stations in our country, and teamed with hell and brimstone preachers to organize Beatle record burnings and marches to protest Lennon’s smart ass remark outside the concerts.
That was the comment that led my Dad to tell me “Don’t buy any Beatle albums.” I did. Secretly. And funny enough, a few years later, the great fervor forgotten, my own dad remarked after walking into my room, Beatle LP playing, “At least I can understand what they’re saying.”
A girl, who would one day become my wife, loaned me the tape she had bought at the revival. She didn’t believe in it, but wanted my opinion.
I listened to the tape. The minister would play an excerpt from an album, such as the Beatles “White Album,” then play a reversed section after telling the audience what they were about to hear. He suggested to them before their hearing that a message was in that snippet.
To me, it was sort of like this… say someone yells at you from afar and you can’t really hear what they say. The person standing next to you says, ”Oh, they want you to give them a call.” Then suddenly, that collection of unintelligible sounds does make sense. It’s one of those things our minds do, fill in the blanks with the familiar, or, in this case, the suggested.
Number nine, Number nine, Number nine,” became “Turn me on dead man….”
Now, was there some smoke that this fire rose from? Yes.
Sometimes, the best lies actually have a few bits of truth attached to them. Just enough to make the lie something we can see attached to something we can believe.
Two things come to mind that made the revivalists and TV preachers plenty of money and screen time.
The “Paul is Dead conspiracy” paved the way for people to tear apart every tiny bit of music, lyrics and album covers looking for clues of secret messages and hidden facts.
After their 1966 tour, the Beatles left the road. They played their last show in San Francisco in August of ’66. In September, the LP “revolver” came out. Their whole world changed. The mop tops disappeared, replaced by older, more mature bearded Beatles. The next time the world saw them, they had completed and released “The Sgt. Pepper” LP and previewed the song clips “Strawberry Fields Forever” and “Penny lane” on American Bandstand to a gape mouthed clean-cut crowd.
In 1969, the Duke University paper broke a story that included clues that Paul was dead, and that was the true reason for their absence from the road. An imposter, surgically altered to look like Paul in his new hippie styles, had replaced him. They continued to release music, but even that was not the Beatle music of old.
The clues were everywhere, from the cover of the “Abby Road” LP to song lyrics and hidden messages. “I buried Paul” seemed to be heard t at the end of “Strawberry Fields Forever.” The freaky song “Revolution 9” was rumored to hold the entire night in question when Paul left angry from a recording session and had a fatal car wreck that took his life.
The hunt was on in earnest. It was helped by the fact that Lennon and George martin, famous Beatle producer had experimented in 1965 and ’66 with tape loops and backwards sections in the songs. "Rain" was the first song to feature a back masked message: "Sunshine … Rain … When the rain comes, they run and hide their heads"; the last line is the reversed first verse of the song. Lennon, in his eternal search for new sounds in the limited studios of the mid 60’s found he could splice out sections, reverese them and get different sounds for not only vocals but also guitars.
The race begins.
Soon, other bands also used the technique.
The idea that it was Satan masquerading as a rock musician probably just falls in line with what rock music has always been. It is a form of not only art, but of rebellion. The youth have their music and it is feared by the parents who don’t understand it. Parents take the comfortable music of their own youth with them, and as always, the parents view the things of their youth as something good, and the things of today as something with less value, and with the power to pervert their children from the narrow path.
There were court cases where Ozzy Osborne and Judas Priest were sued by families who insisted that the subliminal messages in the music forced their children into suicide. Tragic as that was, it was not the music. Other bands, such as Styx and ELO were attacked with the accusations that demonic messages were hidden backwards in their music. ELO’s “Eldorado” LP was supposed to hide demonic messages. From tthat, ELO and other bands struck back in parody. ELO’s 1975 release had intentional and obvious backwards messages including “Turn back, Turn Back, the music is reversible,” “thank you for listening” and “You’re playing me backwards.”
Pink Floyd added their 2 cents worth with the song “Empty Spaces.” In reverse, it said "Hello, hunters. Congratulations. You've just discovered the secret message. Please send your answer to Old Pink, care of the funny farm, Chalfont." Most people thought they were referring to original member Syd barrett.
Satyx went further and produced a concept album against the whole movement. “Kilroy was here” was based upon a religious movement that forced rock musicians to flee from society.. In 1981, Styx had been accused of putting the backwards message "Satan move through our voices" on the song "Snowblind." Side 2 of “Kilroy..” opens with a song “heavy Metal Poisoning” and contains this line in reverse. "Annuit Cœptis, Novus Ordo Seclorum" ("He approves (or has approved) [our] undertakings", "New Order of the Ages") The LP featured those famous words, “Domo Arrigato, Mr. Roboto!” The religious movement probably made Styx even more famous due to their response.
What happened to the back masking furor? It settled into a quiet murmur after the PMRC hearings. The parental Music resource Center movement led by Tipper Gore shed a less than favorable light on those attempting to censor the music. No doubt, there was some music out there that probably had little artistic merit or was offensive to much of the population, but the gearings of capitalism took care of most of that early in their careers. Bands like 2-live-crew and their “nasty As They Want To Be” LP faded as fast as their fame had come.
Some bands still use back masking. Tupac, the White Stripes, Weird Al and Linkin Park are just a few of the bands who have employed it to much less than Demonic purpose.
For the curious, there are mile sof files, pretty files of Back masking stories in Wikipedia, and it is a pretty complete job of reporting there. There are also a lot of YouTube videos, especially regarding the messages and “Paul Is Dead” conspiracy.
The challenge is this…. Listen to the backwards songs first without looking to see what it is supposed to be saying. Are you getting a message from Satan or the sudden urge to beat up sheep?
Domo Arrigato, Mr Roboto!
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