I Now Serve Satan Because I Listened To Stairway To Heaven
As I was walking home yesterday I listened to a song I hadn’t in a long time, Stairway to Heaven.
I thoroughly enjoy this song, though yesterday it conjured memories of conversations of long ago about how it’s satanic. I’m sure everyone has heard that if you play it backwards it will tell us to serve Satan. I was always a little skeptical of this, as I had never heard it played backwards. How could I, what kinds of players could play something backwards?
Then in high school I listened to a tape of a talk (from the 80’s) given by Lex De Azevedo in which he spoke about all of rock music’s evil meanings. He gave examples of lyrics from Led Zeppelin, Rolling Stones, Queen, The Beatles, CCR, Tom Petty, etc. that spoke of drugs, sex, and poor social behavior. He then did something that floored me (mostly because the talk was given in a church setting), he played Stairway to Heaven backwards. As I listened to a portion of the song, I could kinda hear the words, “serve Satan, serve Satan”. At that point I didn’t know what to think. Was this something that’s in our heads or is there some legitimacy behind all this? Of course those questions never persuaded me to avoid Led Zeppelin, or any other band for that matter. (They did, however, make me more curious to learn about Satan. Now I’m in a Satanic Cult. Damn you Led Zeppelin, look what you did to me!)
Anyway, I recently took a digital version of the song and tried playing it backwards on a software program and didn’t hear anything other than a song being played backwards. I also tried to listen to Another One Bites the Dust by Queen, which supposedly says, “smoke marijuana.” The sounds I heard on this were closer to the myth, but still not enough to convince me that there was any intention. So I thought I’d returned to my pre-Azevedo-talk skeptical ways. Then I found this and this. Now I’m not sure what to think.
Not that this stuff really has any sway in my love for Zeppelin, but I’m just curious, what do you all think about this stuff?
“Sad Satan” haha! That’s pretty awesome. I’ve always assumed that stuff was all bunk, but it wouldn’t surprise me to find out they did do that stuff. I don’t know much about Zep.
So are you too young to ever have vinyl records? I had a Prince song that was recorded backwards…can’t remember now what it said when you played it back.
Comment by Susan Malmrose — January 26, 2005 @ 6:54 pm
Oh…I just played the Queen song from the link you posted. I hear the “f” word more than I do the word “smoke.” Haha.
Comment by Susan Malmrose — January 26, 2005 @ 6:55 pm
I was absolutely obsessed with this topic in the early eighties. A friend and I actually went to great lengths dismantling a cassette and reversing it to get to the bottom of things. We learned that yes if you do listen to “Stairway to Heaven” backwards you hear what sounds like “My sweet Satan,” but we did an experiment that proved interesting. We just spoke the lyrics into a recorder and played it backwards. It sounded like “My sweet Satan” too. So the suggestion that messages were intentionally placed in songs seems silly. My verdict was that it was coincidental.
However, who knows maybe Page and Plant got fancy in the studio? But when it comes to Led Zep you don’t have to play music backward to get occult messages. It’s all right there. If you hold up the album art in the center of Led Zeppelin IV up against a mirror, you’ll see the head of a wolf revealed in the mountain. I know that’s true ’cause I did it a couple dozen times a week in the early eighties. Plus, Jimmy Page was supposedly steeped in the occult when they put the fourth album out, that’s why rather than giving it a traditional name they chose to put four “runes” on the cover, one for each band member. Page’s is the freaky one that looks like ZOZO or some weird word. Not only that, he bought and was living in the mansion of Aleister Crowly, an occult philosopher, when he wrote “Stairway to Heaven.”
Hah. Here I started out dispelling myth and rumor and ended up perpetuating more. Who cares? The bottom line, Led Zeppelin rules.
Comment by Brian G — January 26, 2005 @ 7:23 pm
And why, O why don’t we radio.blog this one!
Rusty, nothing can hurt my love for Zep. There’s never been a better rock band, perhaps excepting the Beatles. As far as I’m concerned, they must’ve sold their souls to Satan to sound so good. But it doesn’t matter.
Comment by Steve Evans — January 26, 2005 @ 7:34 pm
Somebody send me a Led Zep mp3 and I’ll post it. (That’s right, I have no Led Zeppelin–they’re one of those bands, like the Beatles, that I never listen to because I’ve heard them on the radio so much.)
I heard something somewhere, either talking to someone I know, or read it online, about a talk given to the youth at church about song lyrics. I wish I could remember what the speaker covered, but he basically shared lyrics that on the surface look bad, but if looked at from a different perspective, actually had a very good message. And then I think he shared some words from an opera that were really objectionable. Something like that…totally cool, anyway.
Comment by Susan Malmrose — January 26, 2005 @ 7:44 pm
I’ll get it to you, Susan. Just got your disc, BTW — yay!
Comment by Steve Evans — January 26, 2005 @ 7:53 pm
Just uploaded “Stairway to Heaven” to the radio.blog.
Comment by Susan Malmrose — January 26, 2005 @ 8:56 pm
So, wouldn’t playing “my sweet Satan” backwards be a form of repudiating him? The take home message is that “Stairway” stands for the opposite of all that is demonic and evil.
In an unrelated note, at my oldest daughter’s dance recital last year, one of the numbers performed by the older girls was to “Stairway to Heaven,” which is one of the most undanceable songs ever. My 2-year old son Stanley is obsessed with dance — one manifestation is that he loves to watch video of Jaymie’s dance recital.
A few weeks ago he came up to me as I held my guitar and said, very insistently, “I want ‘wind on down the road’”. I asked my wife if she knew what song he was talking about. She had no clue. Neither did I. Stanley grew quite agitated. It took a few days for me to figure out that he wanted the section from “Stairway to Heaven” where those lyrics appear.
One last “Stairway” story. Sometime BCC commenter Bill, my college roommate, had a great tape he made on his mission of someone singing “Give Said the Little Stream” to “Stairway”. Try it — you can kind of make it work.
Comment by Bryce I — January 26, 2005 @ 9:35 pm
Another funny thing I remember hearing about Stairway is how the song is like how Satan works. It’s slow at first and builds up, carrying you along until the climax where it gets all loud and crazy and that’s when Satan gets you, then there is nothing you can do. Then I thought, hmmm, isn’t that how sex is too? Isn’t that how books are written? Isn’t that how every other song is written? I guess sex, books, and songs are all mimicking Satan.
Comment by Rusty — January 27, 2005 @ 9:31 am
OK, I tried it myself (grabbed an mp3 of Stairway, reversed it using Goldwave). No monkey business — you can hear the purported lyrics.
Comment by Bryce I — January 27, 2005 @ 10:51 am
Also, for you numerologists:
Ronald
Wilson
Reagan
6 letters in each name
Comment by Bryce I — January 27, 2005 @ 10:51 am
There’s a great Flash animation version of this too that has made the rounds on the Internet. You can view it here.
Comment by Steve Evans — January 27, 2005 @ 10:54 am
Steve, didn’t you follow the links in my original post? It’s the same thing. You’re just being redundant. You’re just being redundant.
Comment by Rusty — January 27, 2005 @ 11:46 am
sorry Rusty. I’m sorry. and I apologize.
Comment by Steve Evans — January 27, 2005 @ 12:03 pm
I grew up in the Pasadena, California stake, where every single Stake Dance ended with Stairway to Heaven as the final song. Every single one. It was a long-standing tradition, and I imagine that we will all burn in hell for it.
Aaron b
Comment by Aaron Brown — January 28, 2005 @ 3:43 am
I used to know exactly where on the Led Zeppelin IV album you had to place the needle so that when you backed it up, you would hear “my sweet Satan.” I believe it’s at the line “if there’s a bustle in your hedgerow.” I have no idea what that line even means when its played normally … but it sounds cool. I also don’t know if there’s anything to this concept of backward masking/recording or if sometimes lyrics played backwords will simply sound like other words.
I have been listening to a little Zeppelin recently (along with Bob Dylan and others) and what strikes me about them over and over again is simply the power of the drumming, the fluidity and beauty of the guitar lines, etc. Jimmy Page was a session-musician who had played all kinds of music for years before Zeppelin came together. He was a genius guitarist with a breadth of influences. He also understood how a studio works and how to produce music in the studio. All of this shows when one is listening to the music.
I was recently listening to “Babe I’m Going To Leave You” off of their first album and couldn’t hardly believe how wonderful that song was. It’s so plaintive and emotional … I just love it.
The only complaint I have about Zeppelin is that they didn’t credit the black blues artists whose music they were often covering (at least on earlier albums). I’d like to know more about those original artists and hear some songs in their original versions. Here is a web-site that lists the myriad black blues artists Zeppelin ripped off:
http://www.warr.org/zep.html#Thieves
Everyone in the world these days is influenced by Zeppelin but how many of us have ever listened to the originals by Willie Dixon, Bukka White, Howlin’ Wolf, etc. and etc.?
Comment by danithew — January 28, 2005 @ 8:31 am
I was at a super fancy Mormon wedding (post temple reception) last month and there was a string quartet playing classical music while we ate lunch. After the reception, as everyone was leaving, the string quartet started branching out, and were playing stairway to heaven as I left. It was awesome. Just made the exquistely beautiful wedding hugely entertaining as well….
Comment by Karen — January 28, 2005 @ 4:03 pm
Danithew,
Speaking of Jimmy Page and his background, if you go rent the 1966 movie “Blowup”, there is a scene where the protagonist wanders into a London club where the Yardbirds, featuring Jeff Beck and pre-Zeppelin Jimmy Page, are jamming. Cool stuff. And I agree with you: the first Zeppelin album — before they got into mythology and mysticism — is an amazing record.
Comment by Greg — January 28, 2005 @ 5:02 pm
During the trial of Judas Priest, the song that supposedly said to “Do it, do it” meaning kill yourself, actually sounded like “have a peppermint” when it was played in court backwards.
Comment by Scott — January 29, 2005 @ 1:09 pm
I remember playing the Revolution Number 9 from the Beatles’ White Album backwards when I was a kid. (My parents didn’t know I was messing with their vinyls) It seemed like it really did say “turn me on deadman” or something… But that song (#9) sounds like it is backwards already. I’m pretty impressed with the skills of “the Mighty Zep” (at least that’s what KGB in San Diego called them) in pulling off such back-masking with real(ish) lyrics.
I’m not sure how any of that helps Satan anyway (as Brian mentioned). He has much more effective and open methods of attracting fans.
BTW — I still have a bunch of really cool jazz vinyls I bought in the 80s but no turntable to play them on… those things are hard to find and expensive now.
Comment by Geoff Johnston — January 29, 2005 @ 7:01 pm
I have a turntable I picked up at a swap meet. It was $20. Then the next weekend a friend said “Oh you needed a turntable?” and gave me his old one. Check swap meets and thrift stores.
Comment by Susan Malmrose — January 29, 2005 @ 9:54 pm
I’ve also heard the tape from the 80’s about backmasking, but I thought it was by somebody named Lynn Bryson –not Lex de Azevedo.
I remember that the whole point of the tape was that the music WAS inspired by Satan, and the proof was in the backwards lyrics. If you sat down with a pencial and paper and tried for a thousand years, that it would be impossible for a human being to come up with a lyric that had a complex meaning both forwards and backwards, but that the devil could.
I remember he also made the point that when played forwards, “Stairway to Heaven” had pagan references in it (something about the May Queen is the only one I remember), and when “Another One Bites the Dust” is played forward, it’s about a guy named Stevie who takes a machine gun and blows a bunch of people away. So any way you look at it, they’re not the *nicest* songs in the world…
I haven’t really made up my mind. So while I don’t run away screaming if they play “Another One Bites the Dust” at a dance, I don’t go out of my way to listen to it, either…
Comment by Mephibosheth — January 30, 2005 @ 12:20 am
I want to say thank you for putting Stairway on the Radio Blog. I listen to it over and over and over…
In the early 90’s, a radio station in Columbus Ohio went through a tough format change, and they spent one day playing all Stairway, all day long.
Comment by Ann — January 30, 2005 @ 2:19 pm
Bryce,
I still have that tape, and Give Said the Little Stream/Stairway to Heaven (complete with guitar) was only the second most hilarious selection, the first being an improvisation, JKP-style, called “All I need is money (…then I will have found true happiness),” complete with four or five key changes and more and more missionaries joining in for the raucous conclusion.
Comment by Bill — January 31, 2005 @ 9:37 pm
All of this reminds me of the flap over AC/DC and what their name supposedly “really meant”. Being a rock musician, someone once asked me if I thought it really stood for “Anti Christ/Devil’s Nephew’s manicurist’s best friend’s dog” or whatever… I told them that if you want to find out if AC/DC is on the Devil’s side, don’t waste your time trying to figure out scary acronyms for their name. Just listen to the songs. Heck, just read the titles, and the prosecution will rest.
But then, even as a hard rocker, I never much liked AC/DC.
And, for the record, I also played “Stairway” backward many years ago. While I don’t doubt that others might be able to hear things, I heard only gibberish.
MRKH
Comment by Mark Hansen — February 4, 2005 @ 8:56 am
I thought it was KISS that had a big flap about their name (Knights in Satan’s Service). AC/DC cracks me up because the band didn’t realize it was slang for bi-sexual. Haha.
Comment by Susan Malmrose — February 4, 2005 @ 10:51 am
Mephibosheth, you are probably right about it being Lynn Bryson. It might have been a book by LDA about bad influences in music that I’m thinking about and LB gave the talk.
Comment by Rusty — February 4, 2005 @ 11:57 am
I did all this 10 years ago on my beater Mac. My roomie and I put every song that we had ever heard rumours of having backwards lyrics and searched for them. The “my sweet Satan” in Stairway was easy to find. Like Bryce, we play around with singing the lyrics ourselves. We then would say “my sweet satan” and record it and play it backward to hear what that sounded like. We came to the conclusion that they probably started with the phrase they wanted to hide and found something that sounded like it when sung. That explains the odd emphasis on the syllables of “there’s still time to change the road you’re on”. Similarly, that seemed to be the only possible explaination for the lyrics to Another One Bites The Dust, which makes no sense otherwise.
We found the “backwards secret message” in The Wall. We listened to Hotel California quite a bit but oculd never find a message in that. Tried some Beatles songs as well.
Comment by a random John — February 4, 2005 @ 8:31 pm
I did all this 10 years ago on my beater Mac. My roomie and I put every song that we had ever heard rumours of having backwards lyrics and searched for them. The “my sweet Satan” in Stairway was easy to find. Like Bryce, we play around with singing the lyrics ourselves. We then would say “my sweet satan” and record it and play it backward to hear what that sounded like. We came to the conclusion that they probably started with the phrase they wanted to hide and found something that sounded like it when sung. That explains the odd emphasis on the syllables of “there’s still time to change the road you’re on”. Similarly, that seemed to be the only possible explaination for the lyrics to Another One Bites The Dust, which makes no sense otherwise.
We found the “backwards secret message” in The Wall. We listened to Hotel California quite a bit but could never find a message in that. Tried some Beatles songs as well.
Comment by a random John — February 4, 2005 @ 9:17 pm
I’m a skeptic as regards back-masking. What’s really going on is the power of suggestion. My spouse and I were watching some TV program on “Satan’s influence in rock music” late one night. We noticed that whenever the program played a segment of “backwards Satanic lyrics,” it *also* displayed the Satanic lyrics on the screen.
So we decided to try an experiment. One of us closed our eyes, while the other one kept them open. It turned out that the person with closed eyes, who **could not read** the “Satanic lyrics” on the screen, ***could not hear them*** in the backwards-played music either. Without the suggestion provided by the printed lyrics, the backwards music just sounded like gibberish.
We decided that the only way you can hear “my sweet Satan” in “Stairway to Heaven” played backwards is if that’s what you are listening for.
Comment by VeritasLiberat — February 5, 2005 @ 5:10 pm
Veritas,
I found it in Stairway, without knows what I was listening for or where.
Comment by a random John — February 5, 2005 @ 5:27 pm
i think you have to take into consideration the time period when all this backmasking was taking place…it revolves around a period when people listened to records, not tape cassettes, 8-tracks or even cds. it was all just a marketing scam to get people to buy more records. nobody backmasks anything anymore…and why should they?
someone should write a book on the “devil worship” phenomenon that went on starting in the late 60’s all the way through to the late 80’s. all those possession and devil movies (the omen, the exorcist, the entity, the amityville horror, etc), all that backmasking music, all those “christian rock” bands that emerged to save us all.
even lynn bryson found a “nitch” for making money.
out like a stryper album.
~gary
Comment by ~gary — February 5, 2005 @ 9:10 pm
Stryper — did they do “To Hell With the Devil”?
Comment by Steve Evans — February 5, 2005 @ 10:07 pm
gary,
Actually a group was recently found to have masked in an image of their faces. They generated a sound wave that when played back through a specturm analyzer produced the image of them. I can’t remember the band. Also there was a controversy in the early 1990’s about Madonna back-masking satanic messages.
Comment by a random John — February 6, 2005 @ 9:26 am
It just so happens there has actually been legitimate research done on the phenomenon of reverse speech. It’s said Aleister Crowley AKA The Beast taught his followers to speak backwards as an expression of his Occult Law of Reversal and as any Led Zeppelin fan knows Jimmy Page had a huge interest in Aleister Crowley. The latest theories propose the subconscious mind imbeds meaning in our words, that in fact we are communicating forwards and backwards simultaneously all the time. According to experts, the subconscious mind reveals the truth. The only true way to tell a lie then is to speak in palindromes.
Weird, hunh?
Comment by SeptimusH — May 6, 2005 @ 6:06 am
I totally believe in the subconscious revealing the truth. Back in the 80’s I vividly remember waking up in the middle of the night in a total panic (my heart thumping and my pulse racing)- and not from a nightmare… (completely out of the norm for me!) I couldn’t figure it out at first - but I soon realized I’d left the radio on and it was playing The Stairway to Heaven. I figured whatever message was hidden in the song from the conscious mind was truly evil.
It wasn’t until quite a few years later that I heard Lynn Bryson’s tape (I even have it now). So, now that I “know” the message (and I guess it maybe is worse on the unsuspecting, unconsious mind than on the rational conscious self)I just prefer to keep my distance from it. And I do agree that if I hadn’t been “coached” to listen for what the words meant and had them interpreted for me - I never would have understood them. But I can’t understand the Lyrics played forward on most songs either. Bad eardrums? (Not too cool for music majors, which I was). Whatever the case - I’ll listen to my subconscious reaction. It’s not a song that brings peace to my soul.
Comment by lwest — May 25, 2005 @ 7:12 pm
I’ve known about this for quite some time.
and one fact people have failed to fully point out is that Jimmy Page is a occultist and bought Aleister Crowley’s home, and wrote stairway to heaven whilst living in it. Aleister likes to be called The Beast 666. When backmasked part of the lyrics state “He’ll give you give you 666″ and so to my thinking this means that satan, wasnt really the so called mythological “devil” but Crowley himself, more or less in honour of him.
Comment by 666 — June 8, 2005 @ 4:06 pm
led zepllin nvr intentionally made it so it did that it cowsondencioal its a tounge the did want to do it.
Comment by Jimmy Cygan — June 18, 2005 @ 1:47 pm
I listened to that Flash site, but not trusting it completely i downloaded the song and used an editor to reverse it myself. I listened to the whole song backwards and it all sounded like gibberesh except for the “satanic” verse.
I heard “Oh here’s to my sweet satan, the one whose path would make me sad whose power is satan. He will give you give you 666. There was a little toolshed where he made us suffer sad satan.
The last half of it is iffy and i wouldnt have noticed it if i hadnt seen the lyrics to it already. But nothing else in the song can really make a word except for that verse.
I’ve listened to other little secret messages in songs. There’s one in the Britney spears song Hit me baby one more time that says “sleep with me im not too young” And Lennons song Imagine has one that says “The people war beside me” those and a few others had “messages” in them but the stairway to heaven message just seemed more intentional then all of them, except the message in the pink floyd song.
Comment by Kyle H. — June 20, 2005 @ 2:05 am
yha i have hered other messiges on my own in that britany spease song hit me baby one more time
Comment by ryan — June 24, 2005 @ 2:41 am
i took the cd version on my computer recorded the part and it did gave those lyrics but i just think forward stairway to heaven and backwords stairway to hell visa versa its briliant in a kinda way or else hes saying bad stuf about satan cuz it sounds like satan whos power is fake and his litle path would make sad and stuf
Comment by VooDoo — July 7, 2005 @ 12:13 pm
I have been looking for copies of the Lynn Bryson tape where he talks about music that has been mentioned in this blog. Can anyone tell me the name of the tape or even how to get a copy?
Comment by Jon L — September 19, 2005 @ 12:58 pm
[...] Now for songs. Even though they’ve got a long library of incredible songs it’s hard to put anything above Stairway to Heaven (I wrote a post about that song here. The only one that comes close would be Kashmir but it still doesn’t have the power and mythology of Stairway. I don’t like the idea of ranking their songs and only being able to include five in the Top 5 but with a gun to my head this is probably how I’d do it: [...]
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