Hell? Ozzy’s raising Hull!
QUESTION Did any musicians really put reversed satanic messages in songs?
The encoding of subliminal or secret messages in audio recordings that can be heard only when the track is played in reverse is known as backmasking.
This became a source of moral panic in the eighties when U.S. televangelists railed against alleged violent and satanic messages in rock and heavy metal songs.
The most notorious example concerned Led Zeppelin’s Stairway To heaven. In 1982, Assemblies of God minister Paul Crouch claimed that when you played the song backwards, the lyric beginning ‘bustle in your hedgerow’ becomes: ‘ 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 toolshed where he made us suffer, sad Satan.’
When reversed, this section of the song does sound a little like Crouch’s interpretation, though the band insisted it was a bizarre coincidence.
Lead singer Robert Plant expressed frustration with such accusations: ‘To me it’s very sad, because Stairway To heaven was written with every best intention, and as far as reversing tapes and putting messages on the end, that’s not my idea of making music.’
Reversing records was proposed by the ‘wickedest man in the world’ Aleister Crowley. In his 1913 book Magick (Pt. 4), he suggested that a satanic follower could ‘train himself to think backwards by external means’, one of which was to ‘listen to phonograph records, reversed’.
Intriguingly, Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page lived at Boleskine house, a manor in the Scottish highlands that once belonged to Crowley.
The Beatles included backmasking as a sound effect on John Lennon’s song Rain. As the song fades out, the vocal is reversed: ‘… the sun shines. Raaain. If the rain comes, they run and hide their heads.’
If reversed, The Beatles song Revolution 9 also supposedly incants: ‘Turn me on, dead man.’
In 1974, eLO’s song eldorado gained notoriety when it was condemned for containing a back-masked ‘ satanic’
message: ‘He is the nasty one — Christ you’re infernal.’
The band’s Jeff Lynne claimed this was rubbish and responded with a back-masked intro for the 1975 track Fire On high: ‘ The music is reversible, but time ... (violin note) is not. Turn back! Turn back! Turn back! Turn back!’
his album Secret Messages is strewn with backmasking.
heavy metal band Judas Priest were taken to court in 1990 by distressed parents who claimed subliminal messages in their cover of Spooky Tooth’s Better By You, Better Than Me had led to the tragic deaths of their sons. The band members testified and were found not liable.
Ozzy Osbourne, former frontman of Black Sabbath, was sued by parents following similar allegations about his Blizzard Of Ozz album.
he hit back by implanting a back-masked message on his song Bloodbath In Paradise. Ozzy screams in reverse ‘ Your mother shells whelks in Hull’, a cheeky reference to The exorcist.
Danny Avery, Scarborough, Lincs.
QUESTION Did silver not tarnish before the Industrial Revolution?
TheRe is probably some truth to this. Tarnish is a thin layer of corrosion that forms from a chemical reaction on the surface of an object.
With silver, this layer consists of black silver sulphide caused by its reaction with corrosive hydrogen sulphide.
The amount of hydrogen sulphide in the atmosphere increased significantly following the Industrial Revolution. It is a by-product in the production of coke from sulphur-containing coal, the refining of sulphur-containing crude oils and from producing wood pulp.
however, silver tarnishing was not unknown. hydrogen sulphide is a key compound in the natural cycle of sulphur in the environment. It is produced during the decay of plant and animal protein, and occurs in volcanic gases. It gives the eggy smell to swamps and sewers.
Some natural gas fields and geothermally active areas have significant concentrations of hydrogen sulphide.
human intestinal gas contains hydrogen sulphide. Its corrosive nature is a problem for museum and art curators. The proteins in egg white produce hydrogen sulphide gas and can cause silver to tarnish rapidly. Dr Ian Smith, Cambridge.
QUESTION What was the first casino in Las Vegas?
LAS Vegas was founded as a city on May 15, 1905. The following year, hotel Nevada, the first casino in the state, opened on Fremont Street.
It was renamed the Golden Gate hotel and Casino in 1959 after the bridge in San Francisco, and is still open.
Gambling in Nevada pre- dates the creation of the state. Prospectors in the Sierra Nevada brought games of chance with them during the Gold Rush.
Five years after Nevada became a state in 1864, the legislature decriminalised gambling. however, in 1909, all games of chance were banned. hotel Nevada reopened as a casino after the state reinstated gambling in 1931.
In the 1930s, the construction of the Boulder Dam, later renamed the hoover Dam, drew thousands of workers. Casinos and showgirl venues opened on Fremont Street, the town’s only paved road.
Major casinos opened from 1940. In 1941, el Rancho Vegas became the city’s first themed casino on highway 91, which would become the Las Vegas Strip.
The el Cortez hotel became the first mob-run casino when Bugsy Siegel bought it in 1945. The 1946 Christmas Day opening of Siegel’s swanky Flamingo (originally The Fabulous Flamingo) attracted hollywood celebrities. D. M. Watts, Birmingham. ■ IS THERE a question to which you want to know the answer? Or do you know the answer to a question here? Write to: Charles Legge, Answers To Correspondents, Daily Mail, 2 Derry Street, London W8 5TT; or email charles.legge@dailymail.co.uk. A selection is published, but we’re unable to enter into individual correspondence.