The Led Zeppelin song said to include Satanic messages
Sure it’s the bane of guitar shop owners everywhere, but ‘Starway to Heaven’ by Led Zeppelin is still an absolute classic. Weaving a tapestry of biblical imagery, folkish acoustic guitar and hard-rock riffage, the 1971 single has been the cause of adoration and consternation in equal measure. Yet, for all its enduring popularity, its true meaning has often alluded listeners, spawning a wealth of interpretations, one of which maintains that the song actually contains satanic messages
Led Zeppelin are not alone in this respect. The world of rock music is full of examples of people finding occult meanderings and satanic verses in songs. That’s hardly unsurprising when you remember that rock music has been associated with evil since its inception. Even before rock, the blues virtuoso Robert Johnson was being accused of dealings with the Devil. How could a man possess such talent, the naysayers said, without selling his soul? Since then, everyone from The Rolling Stones and The Beatles to Alice Cooper and Marilyn Manson have been the focus of Christian scorn.
Led Zeppelin’s perceived connection with satanism grew steadily over the years. Much of the band’s imagery was connected with paganism and guitarist Jimmy Page had something of an obsession with renowned occultist Aleister Crowley; he even bought his house on the southeast side of Loch Ness. The band’s connection to the Devil grew more pronounced in the 1980s when a Michigan minister named Michael Mills claimed that ‘Stairway To Heaven’ contained a reversed audio message of Luciferian design. Mills maintained that the song contained the backmasked messages: “master Satan”, “serve me”, and “there’s no escaping it”. As a strident Christian, he feared that these messages were being subconsciously absorbed into the minds of young people.
Evangelist Paul Crouch was in agreement. Rolling Stone reported that, in 1982, he claimed the backwards lyrics contained the message: “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.”
The thing about backmasking is that it provides the perfect space for audio pareidolia – that’s the phenomenon where people spot meanings and images in ambiguous patterns. The shakey legitimacy of Crouch and Mills’ claims did nothing to dissuade inhabitants of America’s Bible Belt that Led Zeppelin were turning their children into antichrists, however, and that aura of occultism is still an important part of the band’s mythos to this day.
Check out the backwards recording below.
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