Led Zeppelin, Reverse Lyrics and Meaning
Robleh Wais
When I first heard the 70's rock classic Stairway
to Heaven, I found it one of the few rock songs I liked.
I had trouble understanding the lyrics in any deep philosophic way. Well, I was in my early twenties then, in college, smoking marijuana, and often found these musical experiences shall we say mesmerizing.
I remember that some of the lyrics, I completely misunderstood, for instance, take the phrase in the song, I heard as: It's just a sprinkling for the May Queen.
To Spring clean is a rare phrase construct in English, but the phrase
sprinkling is common. Is it any wonder why I heard it as
sprinkling? The word is almost identical to the phrase Spring clean.
I also mistook this phrase:
Sometimes all of our thoughts are Misgiven
Sometimes all of our thoughts are Misleading
Song. Here is probably the funniest:
I'm not kidding, this is how I heard it, on a reefer high and in a normal state of mind
I thought wow, that's a pretty anti-Semitic line, how did they get this song made with
comments like that? Again, I ask you to listen to the song and see if you can
hear what I heard. It's important too, because it lends relevance to what I will allege about the reverse lyrics.
And this is not uncommon I am sure any reader of this essay has misunderstood the lyrics to a song they have
heard and supplied their interpretation of its meaning When I finally got a copy of the album with
lyric transliteration, I was shocked to see, what I thought was being sung was so far wrong! I exclaimed in surprise:
So, that's what he's saying!!! Wow, damn, how could I have....
And yes, how could I have gotten it so wrong? This misunderstanding is at the heart of what I want to examine in this essay. We make meaning or better put, create meaning all the time
We engage in interpretation and meaning assignment in our every waking minute of life So, this brings us to Led Zeppelin and a campaign to ban rock music by the
meddling neurotic Christian religious right in the 1980s.
In 1982 a television program on the Trinity Christian Broadcasting network a Christian fanatic alleged that the:
Stairway to Heaven song contained satanic references if played in
reverse. See this Wiki site for details:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stairway_to_Heaven#Allegation_of_backward_masking, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stairway_to_Heaven#Allegation_of_backward_masking
Later, many other jack-asses added their voices to this claim. There was even a campaign to have albums imprinted with warnings about the satanic content of rock genre music.
They wanted to put before legislative bodies in several states, a bill to have this warning required by law
Such a bill never passed any legislative body anywhere in the country. All of this is so distasteful to me that I won't chronicle the story further.
I will focus on the specific example from the Stairway To Heaven song, which is proffered as an example of satanic lyrics in reverse.
I do this to show how we as human beings can be made to see meaning where there is none.
Recall what I've said above about how I saw meaningful words in this song where there were not? Well, now let's see what some very sick neurotic person managed to do by reversing a
specific section of this song.
Please note what I've said above Some person sat down and input to the reversed lyrics of Stairway To Heaven an interpretation of what he or she thought was
being sung. So, with that said here is the verse, and next its reverse
interpretation.
The song phrase is:
If there's a bustle in
your hedgerow
Don't be alarmed now
It's just a spring
clean for the May Queen
Yes, there are two
paths you can go by,
But in the long run
There's still time to
change the road you're on
And the reverse yields (if you read it while listening I
stress)
Oh here's to my sweet
Satan,
The one whose little
path,
Would make me sad
Whose power is
Satan
He'll give those with
him 666
There was a little
tool shed,
Where he made us
suffer, sad Satan
Now, if you visit this site and many others about embedded
messages in reverse lyrics of audio electronic records, you will hear
what the verse above says
But, only if you are primed to hear it by reading the lyrics.
If you listen without any written
interpretation of what the reverse audio is saying you will not hear anything
more than the word Satan enunciated twice
The question to ask is the following:
meant? A greater question is the following:
If I don't look I don't hear 666. It's hard to see this but if you reverse the sounds of certain English words they can in a stream of
sounds coincidentally come out as other English words. It's more complex than I'm indicating. Remember when a sound stream is reversed everything is
reversed. This includes pitch and tone. So, low sounds go to high and pitch changes from slow to fast and all of this put together can randomly create the
appearance of other English words, if if if and this is a big if coming here....some jerk sits down and forces you to see his/her
interpretation of it. And that's what somebody did with Led Zeppelin's lyrics.
I believe this to be true. However, I haven't done any linguistic research to substantiate This. Still, I don't think this is necessary. Remember what I said above
about my misunderstanding of the lyrics to Stairway to Heaven sung in the forward direction? This shows that I was able to misperceive what I was hearing and apply
my interpretation to a misperception! And I am not alone in this. So many others have confirmed to me in casual conversations about songs they know
from their youth that they've misunderstood and misperceived. With this fact in hand, is there any doubt that same can happen when the lyrics of a song like
Stairway to Heaven are reversed?
But, more important is the greater fact that we can be deluded into hearing an audio illusion that there is some meaning in the reversal of sound
that is not there. That is what is invidious. Somebody with an agenda cooked up this satanic interpretation!
So, let's tie this all together from the Existentialist perspective.
There is no meaning in the reverse lyrics of Stairway to Heaven. It is yet another example of how human beings can find meaning where there is none.
We can easily be seduced into seeing that Stairway to Heaven has satanic lyrics because we always seeking
meaning in everything we perceive even; false meaningfulness. Yeah, I know that last phrase is kind of oxymoronic. Just think about it, if these guys were trying to embed
satanic messages subliminally, why not put them in the whole recording? Why just there? Well, because somebody worked hard to find their lyrics at that one area that
teeny-weeny one little place, that area was the one place some big horn-rimmed glasses-wearing, church-going jerk, found to put in
his/her interpretation. Makes me sick to think of this person. And, and, and ....and this is a big and coming here--even if we accept that the song is saying what is
claimed in reverse, the message is hardly satanic any super reverent Christian should love what it's saying. It's lamenting the influence of Satan!