Just curious

[Dayna]

I've been hearing for years, that some people were concerned about evil messages being recorded on records whcih was called backward masking. Has this ever been possible?

[Janet M]

I recall hearing a squiggly noise on what I recall being a Pink Floyd album and when that was played backwards (recording onto tape then putting a twist in the tape!) it said something like " Now that's avant garde" I don't know which album it was but it was 1974 or earlier.

[Des]

Perhaps Adam can enlighten us about the last few seconds of Strawberry Fields?

...and wasn't there something evil on a Black Sabbath album? Apart from the music that is.

[Philellinas]

Correct me if I am wrong but wasn't there a rumour (in North America?) that if you played some part of "Abbey Road" backwards you would get the message "Paul is dead" and that on the cover of the album a stand-in replaced Mr MacCartney on the pelican crossing. I may have been high on drugs or alcohol or both at the time...Phil

[john poole]

Cranberry Sauce

[kas]

Correct me if I am wrong but wasn't there a rumour (in North America?) that if you played some part of "Abbey Road" backwards you would get the message "Paul is dead" and that on the cover of the album a stand-in replaced Mr MacCartney on the pelican crossing. I may have been high on drugs or alcohol or both at the time...Phil

I remember hearing of that rumour too. It was lambasted quite mercilessly on the 'Rutles' spoof documentary by Eric Idle and Neil Innes.

I also have a tape produced by some Finnish christian evangelists about the evils of heavy metal (produced sometime in the mid '80s). The two guys on it use quite a lot of time playing records backwards and trying to convince you that you do indeed hear evil messages on them.

Most of the time the result is just a blurry mess, but some indeed seem to contain recognisable sentences (Stairway to Heaven is one of these). The atmosphere on the tape is quite eerie at times, even though the whole thing is pretty laughable on the whole.

You may be interested in this site:

http://jeffmilner.com/backmasking.htm

The song called 'Pokemon Rap' is particularly, uh, surprising in this context...

[Dayna]

The only ones I've ever heard about were Stairway To Heaven no Beatles songs. The people who said this could have just had wild imaginations & heard what they wanted to hear but I just wondered if it was technically possible to do this.