Did Demons Write Led Zeppelin's Stairway To Heaven

by dh 11 Replies latest jw friends

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  dh

  does anyone remember the jw urban legend that 'the demons' wrote the song 'stairway to heaven' by lez zeppelin
  

  i remember being told as a kid that the song was written by 'the demons', because...

  the guy who wrote the song was wasted at a party or something, and when he woke up the next day, the song was written in his own writing, but he didn't remember writing it.

  jw perspective 'oh it must have been the demons'

  anyway, that happens to me when i get too high, not a serious topic but i wondered if anyone remembers hearing this story as a jw.

  (edited to put commas on 'the demons')
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  Sassy

  all I remember is some entertainment newsy type show having a clip of it playbackwords where you hear "my sweet Satan".. I did hear it from my own ears and freaked out.. the rest of the time I was a JW, I never let my ex listen to that song on the radio.
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  got my forty homey?

  Actually, is you play the whole song backwards there's messages in it about knocking on peoples doors at 10 am in the morning on Saturdays and standing on street corners with plastic magazine holders!
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  Gopher

  I never heard that urban legend.

  But among the serious JW's I knew, the rule was: If you don't understand a song's lyrics, then you can't trust them.

  So anything with symbolism or deeper meaning (like STH) is thrown out just on the basis of ignorance.

  Of course -- you could say, if you don't understand the book of Revelation (with all its mysticism and symbolism), you shouldn't trust THAT either. (But of course we know the Revelation Climax book from the WTS explains everything in that book perfectly !!
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  Leolaia

  The backwards message is the simply the result of phonetic sounds in the words that are sung that somehow by chance sound like words when played backwards. I actually tested this myself, of singing the same line in the same way, and then reserving the tape and seeing if the hidden message was there. And it was. It's easy to find messages in other songs. One of the best examples I've ever heard is Queen's "Another One Bites the Dust." In the bridge, if you hear it backwards, it sounds just like "y' wanna smoke marijuana?" I can think of a few other cases that are surely coincidental, like one about "brushing your teeth". The one intentional backwards message I heard is the Pink Floyd one, which is classic, but that is obvious because it sounds backwards when you hear it normally.
• 

  Simon

  This may be the reason ... one of the most impressive cases of phonetic reversal (aka 'backtracking'). Whether by accident or by design, it's very impressive !

  There is an explanation about the technique and then some sound clips of Stairway: http://www.triplo.com/ev/reversal/ (lots more info and examples)

  Phoenetic Reversal in popular music

  Another One Bites The Dust
  Queen's only dance hit generated a little bit of attention when it was alleged that the song contained a reversed message: "It's fun to smoke marijuana".

  "Another one bites the dust" -> "It's fun to smoke marijuana"

  This, if it is not already obvious, is a complete accident. The reversed phrase barely resembles "It's fun to smoke marijuana" distinctly - it would be better translated to "'s fun-a scout mare-wanna". However, the important consonants exist to make the correlation between the two easy to do. The phonetic analysis is somewhat complex - it is left as an exercise to the reader.

  Stairway to Heaven
  Led Zeppelin's epic "Stairway To Heaven" creates possibly the most amazing phoenetic accidents known in popular music. To further the mystery around the song, a little background is necessary.
  Led Zeppelin had it's popularity in the 1970s mostly in the grass-roots rock and roll community. Influences for the band included J.R.R. Tolkien books, mystical folks stories, and the like - most of which had paganistic overtones, easily interpreted by the public as closely satanic. The growth of Led Zeppelin seemed mystical in itself - though minimal promotion was done by the group's record company Atlantic Records, the group's popularity spread by word of mouth, something not usually expected or calculated.
  The song "Stairway To Heaven" became a legendary song in rock and roll music culture. Stranger than the fact that it was the most-played track in radio history, stranger than the fact that the song's length was nearly 8:00 (most radio stations played nothing over 4:00), stranger than the fact that it is a staple of rock and roll guitar players everywhere, was the way the lyrics were written. Robert Plant, the lead singer and lyric writer described it: "I just sat down next to Pagey (Jimmy Page, guitarist) while he was playing it through. It was done very quickly. It took a little working out, but it was a very fluid, unnaturally easy track. It was almost as if - uh-oh - it just had to be gotten out at that time. There was something pushing it, saying 'you guys are okay, but if you want to do something timeless, here's a wedding song for you."

  What makes this song truly amazing on another level is that in a stretch of nearly one minute, you could find 7 different consecutive phonetically reversed "phrases" seeming to refer to the same subject: Satan. Never in the history of popular music has this happened before or since.

  1. "Your stairway lies on the whispering wind" -> "'cause I live with Satan"
  2. "The piper's calling you" -> "the lord turns me off"
  3. "And it makes me wonder" -> "there's no escaping it"
  4. "There's still time to change the road you're on" -> "here's to my sweet Satan"
  5. "Yes there are two paths"... -> "there is power in Satan"
  6. "It's just a sprinkling for the May Queen" -> "he will give you, give you 666"
  7. "There's a feeling I get" -> "i gotta live for Satan"

  Knowing how difficult it is to get one phrase to phonetically reverse into something understandable, but to get seven phrases, consecutively, in a passage of lyrics that forward seems almost disturbingly pagan, all related to a similar subject, in a song that led it's life the way it did, has truly been unmatched.

  The facts above lead, not surprisingly, to a mystical conclusion that had many a music critic pondering and related back to many stories about popular music: in order to succeed, you had to sell your soul to the devil. The late great blues guitarist Robert Johnson (a big influence on Led Zeppelin) had many stories around him about his drifting lifestyle, amazing guitar playing, notorious seduction of women, and selling his soul to the devil in order to succeed at them. Did some sort of evil force play a part in the writing of "Stairway To Heaven"? When reversed, does it literally translate to "Stairway To Hell" in more ways than one? As mystical and far from logic as it seems, the conclusion seems appropriate!
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  Englishman

  OK!

  So the word "There's" played backwards sounds like "Satan".

  Englishman.
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  dh

  thanks for that info simon, i actually backtracked the whole song today and have listened to it repeatedly trying to find these back tracked sections, but to no avail! then i came online and read your post and checked out those .aiff files and i have to say that for the case of this being back tracked to have any substance, i'd have to have a very very open and generous disposition, i can't for the life in me hear those things it's supposed to say when reversed.

  i was surprised to hear that robert johnson is said to have sold his soul, he's definitely a legend, i remember hearing that alice cooper sold his though, maybe just because the shoe fits him easier.

  anyways, i will keep listening to this song backwards and see if i don't have a revelation!

  dh'
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  Leolaia

  Simon....Ah, thank you, that's exactly what I was thinking about. I've been doing phonetic reversal stuff for some time. Way back when, Art Bell would open his line to alien callers, and I would call up with reversed speech as in Twin Peaks. I would just write what I want to say in advance, reverse the phonemes, and then say it that way, then reverse the tape which gives it that weird effect. Art Bell took my prank with great spirit, telling me that it sounds like a terrible phone I'm using, about wouldn't aliens with their superior technology use a better-sounding phone?

  The example you gave of "Another One Bites the Dust" can be represented in phonetic notion the following way (hopefully the phonetic notation will post in the right format):

  « n «T«w an bay ? s DEdÃs ?> sà dED s t yab na w«T« n «

  If the IPA did not post correctly, the converted form is phonetically: seh deth styab na wethunuh. The first "th" is as in breathe and the second is as in breath. Now the part that sounds like "smoke marijuana" comes from the bridge where the words are sung more loosely and quickly. So if you listen, "Another one" sounds more like "Ano'er one", the word is kinda mumbled. So that means the phrase is seh deth styabna weunuh. Now, also because the words are a bit mumbled in this portion, there is another case of what is called in phonetics "assimilation': in "one bites," the [n] is pronounced as an [m]. This is because it is directly followed by a [b], which like [m] is bilabial. It is like saying "football" as "foopball" in causual speech. So now the result of this very simple and everyday change is that the phrase now sounds like this:

  seh deth styab maweunuh

  As you can see, the "marijuana" part is fully there. I'll leave you the rest of the phrase, of how to come up with the "smoke" part, because it is much more complex, and involves a lot more imagination. When I listen to the sound clip, the first phrase is not clear but the second definitely sounds consistent with "Styab", which is the normal reversal of "bites". The phrase is more like "eh(?) styab maweunuh".

  Englishman...."There" definitely does not sound like "Satan", it sounds more like Zayy. The imagination fills in the rest. "There's a feeling I get" phonetically is something like: theyzuh fi:linay geh' and reversed that is 'ehg yanili:f uhzeyth. Loosely, that sounds like: "Eggyan ih leaf fuh zey" since the [th] is pretty silent. Thus " ih leaf fuh zay" is interpreted to mean "I live for Satan", though it really sounds like "Ih leaf fuh zay."
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  joannadandy

  I dunno about demons, but I remember the common belief among most God Fearin people was that Led Zepplin was demonized, or into witchcraft, or all of the above.

  I remember my sister had a tape (that's right tape) and got in big trouble. Not because of the lyrics, but because they had a falling angel as a logo...HE WAS NAKED AND FALLING!! OH MY GOD!!

  I wonder if it bothers my parents at all that she married a guy who worships Jimmy Page and Robert Plant and takes her to all the demonic concerts now...lol