What exactly lurks within the backward grooves of “Stairway to Heaven?”

Christians are always embarrassingly late on stuff like this. The article stated this silliness came up in 1981. Led Zeppelin IV came out in 1971. Really, guys?

Tyler is a pastor in Olympia, WA and works in State government.

…the “Bloom County” where they played “Billy and the Boingers” backwards and it told people to go to church and tithe. And of course, the old joke about what happens when you play country & western records backwards…you get your wife back, your dog back, your truck back, your car back, your job back…..and you get sober!

Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.

…the real scandal about claims of “backmasking” among Christians is that they were seriously arguing—and I quote—“that backmasked messages could bypass the conscious mind and reach the subconscious, where they would be unknowingly accepted by the listener.” A funny from the same article; people actually argued this about AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell”. Lead guitarist Angus Young had a lot of fun with that one by pointing out that the message of the song is not exactly ambiguous, and so he wondered why one would bother.

I’m guessing it came out in 1981 instead of 1971 simply because that’s when Michael Mills had the soapbox he wanted, and he’d not found what he wanted to find off currently popular albums he’d also purchased. So he went with Led Zeppelin, because Stairway to Heaven sort of worked.

By the way, “Satan eats Cheez Whiz.” (from Weird Al, in 3-D, “Nature Trail to Hell”)

Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.