The death of backmasking

How do rock bands get their Satanic messages across in the digital age?

Turn me on, dead man.

During the summer of 1981,the youth of our tiny Pennsylvania country church were “strongly encouraged” (i.e. basically forced to) attend a special event on a sweltering Sunday evening. The topic? Backmasking: How rock and roll is encouraging our young people to worship Satan.

Even at age 12, I was a serious music fan. I kind of knew the difference between good rock and shit rock. And I had a lot of records, since I collected them instead of toys for as long as I could remember.

Overall musical tastes aside, I loved Styx in 1981. No, I really loved Styx. And since John Lennon had died the winter before, I was getting into the Beatles (akin in some ways, I suppose, to visiting a store for the first time during the week they’re going out of business). But hey, I was 12. We all had to start somewhere.

This was also the summer I scared myself shitless reading The Amityville Horror. And The Exorcist. I was terrified reading those books because in some way I wanted to be terrified. For similar reasons, I had KISS posters in my room (which, OK, I’d take down at night and put into a locked drawer—only to put them all back on the walls the next morning).

So I was already a lad on edge, and I was about as impressionable as a human could be. So this backmasking thing—well, I took it very seriously. Morbid fascination as well as its mandatory status led me to attend this presentation.

It was strange to be sitting in our church—which, may I add, was weirdly packed to the gills—that evening and hear “Stairway to Heaven” come over the crackling speakers. I’ll admit it, that night was the first time I’d heard that song, ever. And as its pretty acoustic chords rang out, I remember thinking “How is this Satanic?”

After a verse of “Stairway,” the master of this ceremony—a middle-aged, slick-haired, plaid-jacket-and-wide-tie wearing, sweaty “preacher” whose divinity credentials I’m certain came from a week-long class with other creepy converts who couldn’t hold down a full-time job either—lifted the needle, turned the knob on the record player to “Neutral” (a function between 33 and 45), and spun the disc in the other direction with his finger. Suddenly, something that REALLY sounded like the following rang throughout the sanctuary:

Oh here’s to my sweet Satan.
The one whose little path would make me sad, whose power is Satan.
He will give those with him 666.
There was a little tool shed where he made us suffer, sad Satan.

What. The. Hell. I was quite literally terrified at what I was hearing. My older cousin leaned over to me and whispered in my ear, “Shit! We have that record.” I was too frozen to respond. Sweet Satan?

Never mind the weird tool shed reference, because, as we know, if Satan’s sad, and he’s gonna make you suffer, there’s no better place to make it happen than in a tool shed. Just a little one will do—he apparently doesn’t need much room.

My mind was paralyzed with fear. And yet it got worse.

Now, I’d just been discovering the Beatles catalog in the summer of ‘81. And it didn’t take long for me to realize I much preferred the post-Rubber Soul stuff to anything they released before that period (the “Blue,” rather than the “Red” collection, in other words). I hadn’t quite gotten to the White Album yet.

But holy shit, what I was about to hear would make me afraid of that record for years (no, really, years).

The preacher played the beginning of “Revolution 9"—which made me uneasy to sit through even as it was played normally—and then took the turntable out of gear again. Oh shit, what now. Back came the greasy finger— to reveal:

Turn me on dead man. Turn me on dead man. Turn me on dead man. Turn me on…

Over and over and fucking OVER again.

I can honestly say that on only one, maybe two, previous occasions was I ever so freaked out than I was at hearing Turn me on dead man.

And Queen’s “Another One Bites the Dust?” The 45 I’d practically worn out the summer before? Played backward, it rather plainly says It’s fun to smoke marijuana.

Well, that one didn’t scare me so much. Still, drugs.

I learned that night that nothing was sacred. Nothing was even non-evil, let alone sacred. All the music that I liked was really trying to tell me something else—something fucked up—while I was listening to it! I was picking up on these subliminal signals, and just by casually listening to these songs, I’d end up evil, drugged-up, gay, and, eventually, in hell itself.

Oh, it went on. We looked at Black Sabbath album covers. And there was Ozzy’s Bark at the Moon. Goat’s Head Soup by the Stones. Some Judas Priest. Some Zeppelin. A shit ton of Iron Maiden. And before too long, Reverend Slime brought up KISS.

I knew it was coming. But as I recall, no KISS song was actually played. It wasn’t like “Beth” talked about bestiality backward, or “Rock and Roll All Night” revealed some sort of devil-love. Gene, Paul, Peter and Ace were guilty mainly of being “Kings in Satan’s Service.” Because why not.

“Well, what’d ya think of that?” asked my father on the silent car ride home, past darkened corn fields and spooky silos. It was his way of saying “So, did that scare you enough?”

Short answer: Yes. Long answer: FUCK yes.

The very next day, I burned—literally set on fire—my KISS collection in the 50-gallon drum in which we burned our garbage (yeah, thanks, 1981). I watched with piety as Hotter Than Hell became exactly that. Double Platinum turned into Double Bubbling Tar. Destroyer? Destroyed. If I’d had the White Album, I’d have burned that, as well.

My Queen 45? I kept that. I mean, maybe it was actually fun to smoke marijuana.

Reverend Slime’s handiwork didn’t end after the presentation. Oh no, he gave us a leaflet to take home—a haphazardly reproduced booklet that referenced dozens of examples of backmasking and Satanic album cover imagery. Most of it I hadn’t heard of and can thankfully recall only a few of the examples today.

The leaflet did reveal that even Styx—my favorite band at that exact time—was guilty of backmasking, as well. The track “Snowblind” from the Paradise Theatre album? It totally says, Oh….Satan move in our voices…mooooove backward.

I know this because the preacher wasn’t the only one with a Neutral gear on his turntable.

Satan was moving through those voices! How could I sleep at night with that source of evil in the room? I couldn’t, so I didn’t. On to the pyre with ye, Styx! Your band, after all, was named for the river in hell! Or something like that!

Thankfully, I snapped out of this phase as quickly as I fell into it. The next few years would lead me to British New Wave (and yeah, I did hear that Boy George would make me gay) and pop so saccharine it couldn’t possibly have come from the Dark Side. And in ensuing years, I ended up amassing all the records I’d burned during that Jesus Freaky summer—my soul be damned.

As an adult, I see that backmasking as a practice is fraught with unanswered questions. What songwriter took the time to put words together that conveyed one meaning sung forward…and a decidedly more evil meaning backward? The amount of time that must have taken would have equaled the span of an entire recording session. And what tortured soul first began playing vinyl backward—looking for these messages? The mind boggles at the sheer logistics of this countercultural phenomenon.

All of this leads me to ask, who backmasks these days? How does the modern, devil-lovin’ rock n’ roll band get its message of eternal torment, human sacrifice and bloodlettin’ orgies of evil out to an audience just craving some good, old-fashioned damnation? Is it coded somehow in the MP3s? Is there a hidden Neutral gear on the YouTube? Wait…is this why all this stuff is being released on vinyl these days??

I’m thankful for my turntable with a removable belt so I can go back and revisit Turn me on dead man anytime I want to. Well, I don’t, because, well, effort, but it’s nice to know I have that option should I want a pants-pissingly creepy experience.

But what of the born-again youngster who’s convinced that Dashboard Confessional is actually confessing its love of Lucifer? Or the impressionable youth who wants to make a statement by destroying his Neko Case download, convinced she’s a high-ranking priestess in a folky coven? What drama is there in hitting “Delete?” One could, I suppose, burn one’s iPod, but there’s no thrill in that, really—and by doing so, one would never have the satisfaction in watching an album cover be eaten by fire when there’s no fucking album cover.

So what are we missing in the recordings of the modern digital age? How many dead men are missing their entreaties to turn us on? Must the woodsheds of Satanic torture remain unlocked, their secrets unable to be deciphered? We may never know.

Until then, I’m content to mourn the death of backmasking while figuring out how to use ProTools to learn what Creed are really saying.

Meh, who cares? Banality sounds the same in either direction.