Tackling the Satanic Panic: How ELO wrote the creepiest song of the ’70s
We owe our musical ability to God. At least, that’s what the bible would have you believe as in Ezekiel 28:13; the passage reads, “The workmanship of thy tabrets and of thy pipes was prepared in thee in the day that thou wast created.” In other words, the musical ability of an individual is the result of God, hence why so many people use music as a form of worship, as seen in hymns and songs of praise.
Because of music’s close affiliation with religion, where God enters the conversation, Satan isn’t far behind. The story goes that Lucifer was one of the best musicians in heaven, to the extent that he was the heavenly choir director. When Lucifer fell from heaven in rebellion against God, he didn’t lose his musical abilities. As such, it is believed that he continued to use music to turn people against God rather than rejoice in his name.
Since then, people have always been on high alert when it comes to satanic imagery within music. Many believe that several artists sold their souls in exchange for musical ability, as the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Elvis and Niccolo Paganini are all often cited by the religious as devil worshippers. This steady tension between popular music and the church eventually resulted in the Satanic Panic. In this fear-induced movement, people were convinced those who listened to specific music were also being corrupted by it—an orchestra of sin with Satan himself as the conductor.
A popular recording technique that people often associated with evil was backward masking. This is where people would include lyrics or sections of music in a song that was played backwards. It was initially used by The Beatles, who put backward masking in their songs to provide something for fans to pick at and add another layer of music to the record. This recording technique was considered controversial, firstly because it stirred rumours that Paul McCartney had passed away, but secondly because people started to think it could be used to hypnotise listeners.
The theory was that when a message is reversed and layered within music, it can penetrate the conscious mind and feed into the subconscious. Essentially, if artists hid a message inside a song that said “Hail Satan,” people wouldn’t pick up on the words, but they would still resonate subconsciously, steadily turning listeners over to the side of sin. Many songs were picked up for, including backtracking, and there were calls in Congress for it to be made illegal.
The Satanic Panic meant that people everywhere would read made-up messages to find controversy in tracks where there shouldn’t be any. Musicians grew tired of it, so Jeff Lynne, when putting together the B side for the ELO track ‘Sweet Talking Woman’, decided to address it.
ELO are hardly a band that listeners would associate with the devil, but they wholeheartedly embraced creepy and evil sounds in their bid to dismiss them. On the song, ‘Fire on High’, the band used their string section in a way that doesn’t sound like the pop-infused hits they were used to playing but instead came across as sinister and unsettling. The band also used backtracking to record vocals that sounded evil and otherworldly in their delivery.
The vocals said, “The music is reversible, but time is not; turn back, turn back.” It’s incredibly cryptic, but the overarching message the band were trying to achieve was to stop wasting your time by looking for hidden messages in reversible music. Their music, and that of other famous artists at the time, didn’t qualify for the controversy it received, which was getting in the way of the creative process. In their effort to dismiss affiliations with Beelzebub, they created a hellish landscape that they then ran amuck into and made fun of. They encouraged listeners to be scared of the sound they had made, and then when the message was decoded, the lyrics said, “What are you scared of? It’s just music.”
