Satanic Message

Backmasking is a recording technique in which a message is recorded backward onto a track that is meant to be played forward. It is a deliberate process, whereas a message found through phonetic reversal may be unintentional.

Artists have since used backmasking for artistic, comedic and satiric effect, on both analogue and digital recordings. It has also been used to censor words or phrases for "clean" releases of explicit songs.

In 1969, rumors of a backmasked message in the Beatles song "Revolution 9" sparked the Paul is dead urban legend. Since at least the early 1980s, Christian groups in the United States alleged that backmasking was being used by prominent rock musicians for Satanic purposes, leading to record-burning protests and proposed anti-backmasking legislation by state and federal governments during the 1980s, as part of the Satanic panic movement of the time.

Many popular musicians were accused of including backmasked messages in their music. However, apparent backmasked messages may in fact be examples of pareidolia (the brain's tendency to recognize patterns in meaningless data), coincidental phonetic reversal, or as deliberate responses to the allegations themselves.

History

Development

The backwards playing of records was advised as training for magicians by occultist Aleister Crowley, who suggested in his 1913 book ''Magick (Book 4)'' that an adept "train himself to think backwards by external means", one of which was to "listen to phonograph records, reversed". In the movie ''Gold Diggers of 1935'', the end of the dancing-pianos musical number, "The Words Are in My Heart," is filmed in reverse motion, with the accompanying instrumental score incidentally being reversed.

In 1959, a vocal group called The Eligibles released a record called "Car Trouble", which contains two nonsense passages. When reversed, they reveal the phrases "And you can get my daughter back by 10:30, you bum!" and (perhaps inevitably) "Now, lookit here, cats, stop running these records backwards!". Peaking at #107 on the Billboard magazine charts that summer, "Car Trouble" is believed to be the first hit record to contain backmasking.

The Beatles, who incorporated the techniques of ''concrète'' into their recordings, were responsible for popularizing the concept of backmasking. Singer John Lennon and producer George Martin both claimed they discovered the backward recording technique during the recording of 1966's '' Revolver''; specifically the album tracks "Tomorrow Never Knows" and "I'm Only Sleeping", and the single "Rain". Lennon stated that, while under the influence of marijuana, he accidentally played the tapes for "Rain" in reverse and enjoyed the sound. The following day he shared the results with the other Beatles, and the effect was used first in the guitar solo for "Tomorrow Never Knows" and later in the coda of "Rain". According to Martin, the band had been experimenting with changing the speeds of and reversing the "Tomorrow Never Knows" tapes, and Martin got the idea of reversing Lennon's vocals and guitar, which he did with a clip from "Rain". Lennon then liked the effect and kept it. Regardless, "Rain" was the first Beatles song to feature a backmasked message: "Sunshine ... Rain ... When the rain comes, they run and hide their heads" (; the last line is the reversed first verse of the song).

Controversies

The Beatles were involved in the spread of backmasking both as a recording technique and as the center of a controversy. The latter has its roots in an event in 1969, when WKNR-FM DJ Russ Gibb received a phone call from a student at Eastern Michigan University who identified himself as "Tom". The caller asked Gibb about a rumor that Beatle Paul McCartney had died, and claimed that the Beatles song "Revolution 9" contained a backward message confirming the rumor. Gibb played the song backwards on his turntable, and heard "Turn me on, dead man ... turn me on, dead man ... turn me on, dead man ...". Gibb began telling his listeners about what he called "The Great Cover-up", and to the original clue were added various others, including the alleged backmasked message "Paul is a dead man, miss him, miss him, miss him", in "I'm So Tired".

The "Paul is dead" rumor popularized the idea of backmasking in popular music. After Gibb's show, many more songs were found to contain phrases that sounded like known spoken languages when reversed. Initially, the search was done mostly by fans of rock music; but, in the late 1970s, during the rise of the Christian right in the United States,