But in that case, it wasn’t subliminal, it was allegedly audible.
One of the first instances of the so-called “backward masking” I’d heard of was in Led Zeppelin songs.
The case was very interesting, since it was about subliminal messages, plain and simple, and what they have the potential to do or not do. These two boys were massive Priest fans, and that made it even more heart-wrenching that this terrible combination of the night and the drugs and the booze and their state of mind turned into something quite terrible. And then there was just the tension and the sadness in the courthouse, because at the heart of the matter were these two guys that lost their lives tragically. All the local metalheads were there, chanting and holding up signs calling for us to be exonerated. I remember walking up the steps every day at the courthouse in Reno, and feeling the incredible fan support that we had every day. It feels like it was just yesterday, because it’s such a strong memory. Below, Halford took some time to reflect on what was a landmark case in recorded music before he and the rest of Judas Priest readied themselves for a U.S. The judge ultimately decided that the group was not responsible. The band’s attorneys also drew attention to Vance and Belknap’s troubled childhoods and substance-abuse problems.
The Private Lives of Liza Minnelli (The Rainbow Ends Here)Īs a “defendant of the faith” - as Rolling Stone described him in 1990, punning off the band’s Defenders of the Faith album title - the group’s frontman, Rob Halford, testified in court that the supposed “backward masking” in the tune was the sound of him exhaling while singing.
The suit went to trial in July, 1990, and the prosecution played the song forward, backward and sped up in an attempt to prove the group had brainwashed these two young men into killing themselves. They claimed that Judas Priest had hidden subliminal messages like “try suicide,” “do it” and “let’s be dead” in their cover of Spooky Tooth’s “Better by You, Better Than Me,” influencing Vance and Belknap to form a suicide pact. Belknap died instantly, but Vance lived, sustaining serious injuries that left him disfigured he died three years later.īefore his death, Vance and his parents sued the band and their label at the time, CBS Records, for $6.2 million in damages. One day in December 1985, the men - Raymond Belknap, then 18, and James Vance, 20 - had spent six hours drinking, smoking marijuana and listening to the metal band’s Stained Class album, after which each man took a shotgun and shot himself. Twenty-five years ago today, a judge ruled that heavy-metal trendsetters Judas Priest were not liable for the deaths of two young men who cited the band’s music as the reason they killed themselves.
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