Vortigern99
Sorcerer Supreme
The idea that a blues-rock band, which clearly modified their lyrics, sound and image to reflect the "peace-and-love" hippie movement (QV "Led Zeppelin IV"), simultaneously concocted lyrics which would produce satanic messages when sung or played backwards is laughably silly.
It's true that guitarist/band-leader Jimmy Page was "into" witchcraft, the occult and the works of "Satanists" Anton LaVey and Aleister Crowley, and that those studies led him to create "magical" iconography and a marketable "mystic" persona for the band. But he did not write the lyrics of the songs; Robert Plant, the lead singer was the band's lyricist.
Plant in his youth was primarily a bluesman who sang first and foremost about women -- losing them and anguishing over them. As the band progressed musically and lyrically, folk motifs (such as "Gallows Pole") legendary material ("The Immigrant Song") and songs of battle and the misery of war ("No Quarter", "The Battle of Evermore") began to influence Plant's lyrics more and more. Several of the songs on "IV" are about the hippie experience or consist of poetic descriptions of their daily lives as freewheeling musicians. Mystical and spiritual imagery ("Misty Mountain Hop") also began to appear in certain lines and phrases in various songs, but none of it is even vaguely satanic or demonic.
The supposedly "satanic-message" containing song on "IV", "Stairway to Heaven", represents something of an amalgamation of all these motifs; it's about a hippie-ish woman who is seeking something spiritual or mystical, and which may be linked metaphorically to drug usage prevalent in the culture at the time. It's also full of pagan nature imagery ("the forests will echo with laughter") that has nothing whatever to do with satanic worship or ritual.
That Plant and/or Page could have developed over a hundred songs over the course of the band's career,, each with thousands of individual lyrical components that mean something entirely different when played backwards, is the height of stupidity and blind, biased bigotry.
Also, Led Zep broke up in 1980 after drummer John Bonham died. It may be time for Satan-obsessed, anti-good time, rock-hating pastors to move on to a new target.
It's true that guitarist/band-leader Jimmy Page was "into" witchcraft, the occult and the works of "Satanists" Anton LaVey and Aleister Crowley, and that those studies led him to create "magical" iconography and a marketable "mystic" persona for the band. But he did not write the lyrics of the songs; Robert Plant, the lead singer was the band's lyricist.
Plant in his youth was primarily a bluesman who sang first and foremost about women -- losing them and anguishing over them. As the band progressed musically and lyrically, folk motifs (such as "Gallows Pole") legendary material ("The Immigrant Song") and songs of battle and the misery of war ("No Quarter", "The Battle of Evermore") began to influence Plant's lyrics more and more. Several of the songs on "IV" are about the hippie experience or consist of poetic descriptions of their daily lives as freewheeling musicians. Mystical and spiritual imagery ("Misty Mountain Hop") also began to appear in certain lines and phrases in various songs, but none of it is even vaguely satanic or demonic.
The supposedly "satanic-message" containing song on "IV", "Stairway to Heaven", represents something of an amalgamation of all these motifs; it's about a hippie-ish woman who is seeking something spiritual or mystical, and which may be linked metaphorically to drug usage prevalent in the culture at the time. It's also full of pagan nature imagery ("the forests will echo with laughter") that has nothing whatever to do with satanic worship or ritual.
That Plant and/or Page could have developed over a hundred songs over the course of the band's career,, each with thousands of individual lyrical components that mean something entirely different when played backwards, is the height of stupidity and blind, biased bigotry.
Also, Led Zep broke up in 1980 after drummer John Bonham died. It may be time for Satan-obsessed, anti-good time, rock-hating pastors to move on to a new target.
Cool effect.
