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Backmasking

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Through Controversy

Artists have 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" fueled 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 began incorporating musique concrète-inspired tape manipulation techniques into their recordings in the mid-1960s, were responsible for popularizing the concept of backmasking. Singer John Lennon and producer George Martin both claimed that they had discovered the backwards 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 "Rain" in reverse and enjoyed the sound. After sharing the results with the other Beatles, the effect was used on tape loops and the guitar solo on "Tomorrow Never Knows" and later on Lennon's vocals 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. "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 first line of the song in reverse).

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 the phrase "turn me on, dead man". Gibb began telling his listeners about what he called "The Great Cover-up", and listeners cited other alleged backmasked phrases, including "Paul is a dead man, miss him, miss him, miss him", on "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. In the late 1970s, during the rise of the Christian right in the United States, fundamentalist Christian groups began to claim that backmasked messages could bypass the conscious mind and reach the unconscious mind, where they would be accepted subliminally by the listener. In 1981, Christian DJ Michael Mills began stating on Christian radio programs that Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven" contained hidden Satanic messages that were heard by the unconscious.

In 1982, the Trinity Broadcasting Network's Paul Crouch hosted a show with self-described neuroscientist William Yarroll, who argued that rock stars were cooperating with the Church of Satan to place backmasked messages on records, and fundamentalist Christian pastor Gary Greenwald held public lectures on dangers of backmasking and at least one mass record-smashing event. During the same year, thirty North Carolina teenagers, led by their pastor, claimed that singers had been possessed by Satan, who used their voices to create backward messages, and held a record-burning at their church.

Allegations of demonic backmasking were also made by social psychologists, parents, and critics of rock music, as well as the Parents Music Resource Center, which accused Led Zeppelin of using backmasking to promote Satanism.

Legislation

One result of the furor was the firing of five radio DJs who had encouraged listeners to search for backward messages in their record collections. A more serious consequence was legislation by the state governments of Arkansas and California. The 1983 California bill was introduced to prevent backmasking that "can manipulate our behavior without our knowledge or consent and turn us into disciples of the Antichrist". Involved in the discussion on the bill was a California State Assembly Consumer Protection and Toxic Materials Committee hearing, during which "Stairway to Heaven" was played backwards, and William Yaroll testified. The successful bill made the distribution of records with undeclared backmasking an invasion of privacy for which the distributor could be sued. The Arkansas law, which referenced albums by the Beatles, Pink Floyd, Electric Light Orchestra, Queen and Styx, and mandated that records with backmasking include a warning sticker, passed unanimously in 1983, but was vetoed by Bill Clinton and failed a second vote to override his veto. United States House Resolution 6363, introduced in 1982 by Representative Bob Dornan, proposed mandating a similar label federally; the bill was referred to the Subcommittee on Commerce, Transportation and Tourism and never passed. Government action was also called for in the legislatures of Texas and Canada.

With the advent of compact discs in the 1980s, but prior to the advent of sound editing technology for personal computers in the 1990s, it became more difficult to listen to recordings backwards, and the controversy died down.

Resurgence

Although the backmasking controversy peaked in the 1980s, the general belief in subliminal manipulation became more widespread in the United States during the following decade, with belief in Satanic backmasking on records persisting into the 1990s. At the same time, the development of sound editing software with audio reversal features simplified the process of reversing audio, which previously could only be done with full fidelity using a professional tape recorder. The Sound Recorder utility, included with Microsoft Windows from Windows 95 to Windows XP, allows one-click audio reversal, as does popular open source sound editing software Audacity. Following the growth of the Internet, backmasked message searchers used such software to create websites featuring backward music samples, which became a widely used method of exploring backmasking in popular music.

In January 2014, the first backmasked video was released as part of a Grammy Awards promotional campaign. A customized video player allowed the user to watch a piece of film accompanied by a music soundtrack both forwards and backwards. The backwards content contained a hidden visual story and the words 'music unleashes you' embedded into the reversed audio track.

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