Obviously, at least two points can be made concerning the search for hidden meanings. First of all, many of us would agree that anyone who spends so much time playing records backward, putting albums in sync with classic movies, and searching endlessly for the meaning for each minute detail contained within an album’s cover artwork probably simply has too much time on his hands. But on the other hand, wasn’t it Einstein who said “Imagination is more important than knowledge”? It is fun to look back over your old album collection and think, “Why didn’t I think of that? It was always right in front of my face.” So, the pure entertainment value alone is worthwhile, if the listener remembers that it is all in fun.
The second point in dealing with the hidden messages phenomenon concerns those individuals and groups who carefully dissect musical passages looking for a hidden conspiracy, Satanic or otherwise, and announce their findings as valid and not open to discussion. For example, I was shocked while reading The Satan Hunter to discover that the book’s publisher was located at 666 Dundee Road. I couldn’t help but notice the irony in this. I also find irony in the sensational court cases that have been brought against Judas Priest and Ozzy Osbourne.
Did a hidden subliminal message in Judas Priest’s “Stained Glass Window” lead two youths to commit suicide? Variety magazine (December 31, 1986) ran an article on this sensational trial. The original lawsuit claimed that Judas Priest and CBS Records were responsible for the two youths attempting suicide by shooting themselves in the head in a church parking lot. The victims allegedly spent six hours listening to an album by the band. The legal argument deals with the “hypnotic” quality of the ever-present beat. Additionally, the lyrics were argued to have an effect on the listener, especially those with “emotional problems,” that would lead them to “reject society and commit suicide.” One point was obvious. Rock and roll music has always rejected society. It is another matter, however, to prove that it leads to suicide.
The boys’ attorney, Kenneth McKenna, claimed that the combination of the “intonation of the music” and suggestive lyrics led to the “mesmerism” of the plaintiffs, making them believe that the solution to life’s many problems is death.
Lawyers for the band claimed that the individual members of Judas Priest were protected by their First Amendment rights to freedom of expression. It was also argued that it would be unrealistic to claim any form of monetary damages and the band could not be held liable for any damages.
Jerry Whitehead, the Washoe district judge in Nevada who heard the case, denied a defense motion to dismiss the suit against Judas Priest. He said under Nevada law a lawsuit could not be dismissed unless “every factual claim made by the plaintiff could be considered true and there could still be no basis for damages.” There was no statement issued concerning the proper interpretation of the First Amendment. “McKenna said [the two youths] had been listening to the album Stained Glass in Belknap’s bedroom. He said they had been drinking ‘some’ and smoking marijuana.”3
The hidden subliminal message is said to be found in “Better by You, Better Than Me” and when played backward simply states “Do it.” The actual sound seems to be formed from the breathing of one of the singers and a reversed guitar sound. “The 1990 trial in Reno was a media circus, complete with members of Judas Priest, groupies, subliminal junk-science extraordinaire Wilson Bryan Key, and the national press. Rob Halford [lead singer] of Judas Priest and CBS Records insisted that they had no intention whatsoever of exterminating their markets.”4 During the trial, Halford did admit to placing one subliminal message in the Judas Priest song “Love Bites” from the album Defenders of the Faith. Halford claimed that the well-hidden message stated “In the dead of the night, love bites.” Even with this admission the judge ruled against the plaintiff’s case.
A similar California suit against filed against hard rocker Ozzy Osbourne and CBS Records was also dismissed in another courtroom. The song in question was “Suicide Solution” and a claim that a twenty-seven-second subliminal message existed. The message was alleged to say, “All right now people, you really know what it is about. You’ve got it. Why try? Why try? Take the gun and try it. Try it. Shoot. Shoot. Go on.”5 Ironically, the true message behind “Suicide Solution” is antisuicide and was written by Osbourne shortly after the death of AC/DC’s lead singer Bon Scott.
In looking back at the hidden-message phenomenon of the early 1980s we must ask ourselves, were the Plasmatics right in the backward warning given in “Coup d’état”? Were we the brainwashed? Or is the entire concept of the dangers of backward masking a modern-day Tituba placing the blame on a new generation of accused disciples of Satan? This new spectral evidence does not contain invisible yellow birds representing witches’ familiars but rather the inconstant gibberish of phonetic word salad open only to the interpretation of the faithful. Fortunately for many unjustly accused musicians and companies, the gallows and stake were not prepared in order to purge their souls from the perceived foul touch of Satan. As the backward message craze grew more and more outlandish, the embarrassed public quickly turned away from the accusations. It took the visionary girls from Salem, accusing the wife of Massachusetts’s governor of witchcraft, to end the witch craze in that time period. Perhaps it was the accusation of a hidden Satanic message in Bing Crosby’s traditional Christmas rendering of “Silver Bells” that may now help the public see through the lunacy of declaring that many songs are being filled with cryptic messages. It was suggested that when “Silver Bells” was played backward a listener could hear “Agents of evil they’re listening … they are longing.” When Christmas classics and religious hymns can be brought into question, surely the madness must end here. To some extent it has, but rumors still persist as to the placement of hidden messages.
At the height of the congressional hearings on back masking and the Tipper Gore findings, comedian Bob “Bobcat” Goldthwait recorded a live comedy album, Meat Bob, that made fun of many of these supposed hidden messages. As his album ends, the listener can’t help but hear a garbled message that indicates the presence of a concealed track. As researchers recorded the passage to determine the meaning, they were shocked to determine its true message. What did it say? What was this secret demonic message? Only this: “Obey your parents, be nice, don’t eat snacks, and go to church. Umm, give money to Jerry Falwell. Bye.”
9 “If 6 Was 9”
—Shakespeare, Hamlet (1.5.187-88)There are more things in Heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
—John Lennon Nothing ever just happens.
—Jimi Hendrix “Voodoo Chile” If I don’t see you any more in this world, I’ll see you in the next one so don?t be late.
Throughout history man has sought the answersto his inevitable destiny. In the dawn of the ancient Chaldean empire the movement of the stars and other heavenly bodies gave birth to the study of astrology. Seers looked into the heavens in order to find their place in the universal order of things. From the heavens man has witnessed omens from the skies. Written history has chronicled “flaming stones [falling] from the skies. The Israelites witnessed their enemies, the Egyptians, being plagued by fiery hail. Aristotle recorded the fall of a meteorite at Aegosotami. Meteorites showered on southern France in 1790. A single meteorite, which fell in Siberia in 1908, filled the sky with debris for two years. The Indians spoke of red-hot stones being hurled down from the heavens. Oil rained down on Arabia. The Portuguese say that it rained blood in Lisbon in 1551.
“… In the Middle Ages, flaming crosses fell several times. Stone hatchets were showered on Sumatra. Flaming planks blasted down on Touraine. Fish fell without warning from the sky in many places, most notably in Singapore in 1861. Also in the skies luminous visions have appeared. To the children of Israel there appeared a pillar of fire by night and a cloud by day. Constantine saw a lighted cross appear in the sky. Visionaries through the ages have spoken with angels and have whirled up into the clouds. Winged beings appeared in Pal
ermo, Italy, in 1880. Winged beings also appeared over the battlefield of Mons in 1914. They appeared to the English soldiers below as English bowmen, and they were led by St. George.”1
As man continually searches the heavens he also quietly casts an introspective eye within his own being. Desperately, he searches for the true meaning of his existence and his purpose for being. He probes for some hidden key to bring about his eventual enlightened state. Nothing can be taken for granted. The mathematical laws of nature all must be examined as to their meaning and significance. This search for meaning can also add to tragedy. The rules of the universe are simple. No one is guaranteed to live happily ever after, not even a rock star.
Guitar great Jimi Hendrix was in a constant search for some cosmic meaning to life. His songs strongly suggested his belief in UFOs (“Up From the Skies,” “Castles Made of Sand,” “House Burning Down”), Transcendental Meditation, and reincarnation. He believed that rainbows were actually bridges that linked the world of the living to the unseen spirit world of the dead. His dreams were often filled with vivid colors and images of being underwater. His trademark guitar classic, “Purple Haze,” was at first considered a drug song. The title was mistakenly cast as a tribute to LSD, or in the opinion of some listeners, amphetamine tablets called “purple hearts.” According to the late Monika Dannemann, Hendrix’s lover at the time of his death, the actual meaning of the song was based upon a very long manuscript whose actual working title was “Purple Haze—Jesus Saves.” In this manuscript Hendrix stated that the entire meaning of the song came from a dream he had: “In this dream he looked down on earth and saw an unborn fetus waiting for its birth as if it were pointing at the time for it to be born. At the same time he saw spirits of the dead leaving earth. Later in the dream he went on a journey through the dimensions, and was walking under the sea. Part of the song was about the purple haze which surrounded him, engulfed him, and in which he got lost. He told me later what a traumatic experience this had been, but that in the dream his faith in Jesus had saved him.”2 Some sources, though, including Keith Altham in an article from the magazine Univibes, claim that the title “Purple Haze” actually came from a sci-fi novel concerning a futuristic weapon that emitted pulsating purple beams of light. Altham claims that Hendrix’s vision was based upon Philip José Farmer’s Night of Light, published in 1957. It was also in 1957 that the American sci-fi pulp magazine Fantasy and Science Fiction ran a short story derived from the same novel. This may well have served as the inspiration behind the song’s title. Jimi Hendrix, however, seemed to corroborate Dannemann’s claim when he mentioned in an interview with John King for New Musical Express (January 1967): “I dreamt a lot and I put a lot of my dreams down as songs. I wrote one called ‘First Look Around the Corner’ and another called ‘The Purple Haze,’ which was all about a dream I had that I was walking under the sea.” (The lyric “’scuse me while I kiss the sky” was said to refer to a drowning man bursting through the water’s surface to fill his collapsed lungs with life-sustaining oxygen.)
Jimi Hendrix’s underwater dreams continued with his vision of the lost continent Atlantis in “1983 (A Merman I Should Turn to Be).” In this selection Hendrix and his lover, Catherina, walk peacefully into the sea, away from the war-torn earth, to be reborn as higher spiritual beings and make their way to the undersea colony of Atlantis to live forever in complete spiritual awareness. The irony involving Hendrix’s dreams seems to relate to a premonition of his premature death. Jimi Hendrix died by asphyxiation caused by inhaling his own vomit while he slept. Earlier that evening Hendrix had drunk some wine and taken nine sleeping pills to help him sleep. When he was rushed to the hospital his lungs were filled with a combination of vomit and wine. Sadly, the press rushed to the incorrect verdict that Jimi Hendrix had died of a drug overdose. “He [Hendrix] regarded taking drugs, drinking alcohol, even smoking cigarettes, as weaknesses and nothing to be proud of.”3
At least one of Hendrix’s most popular songs hinted at his awareness of magic and the supernatural. In “Voodoo Chile (Slight Return),” Hendrix’s lyrics suggest that he can chop a mountain down with a wave of his hand. Monika Dannemann comments on Hendrix’s suggestion of magic and voodoo: “I asked him why he called himself a ‘voodoo child,’ because for me voodoo had always meant something to do with black magic. He explained that the word came from Africa, and just meant magic in general, and that originally voodoo was a religion in which magic is used, as it is in many other religions. Depending on the purpose for which this magic is used, it can be positive or negative. Voodoo was meant to be a positive force.”4 In the opening lyric to “Voodoo Chile,” Hendrix sings
The night I was born the moon turned a fire red
My poor mother cried out, “well, the gypsy was right”
And I seen her fall down right dead
Once while performing at the Royal Albert Hall in 1969, Hendrix introduced Dave Mason, Chris Wood, and African percussionist Kwasi Dzidzornu, who was called “Rocki” by his fellow musicians, and invited them to join the Experience on stage and perform “Room Full of Mirrors.” Hendrix enjoyed composing his songs against a background of different drum sounds. They helped serve as his inspiration: “Rocki’s father was a voodoo priest and the chief drummer of a village in Ghana, West Africa…. One of the first things Rocki asked Jimi was where he got that voodoo rhythm from? When Jimi demurred, Rocki went on to explain in his halting English that many of the signature rhythms Jimi played on the guitar were very often the same rhythms that his father played in voodoo ceremonies. The way Jimi danced to the rhythms of his playing reminded Rocki of the ceremonial dances to the rhythms his father played to Oxun, the god of thunder and lightning. The ceremony is called voodoshi. As a child in the village, Rocki would carve wooden representations of the gods. They also represented his ancestors. These were the gods they worshiped.
“They would jam a lot in Jimi’s house. One time they were jamming and Jimi stopped and asked Rocki point blank, ‘You communicate with God, do you?’ Rocki said, ‘Yes, I communicate with God.’”5 It is ironic that Oxun would be the god of “thunder and lightning,” since the roaring wailing feedback of the guitar icon’s trademark Fender Stratocaster guitars duplicated the tumultuous sounds of the tempest and the deafening howl of the gale. To a great extent human existence relies on rhythms. The pounding of the blood through the arteries and veins determines a fine-tuned pulse. The pulsating and throbbing of the heart forces the life-giving blood throughout the body in a sweeping cadence. As the heart ceases to beat, life comes to an end. The first musical rhythms to inspire a young Jimi Hendrix were the driving gospel rhythms of the black Pentecostal churches in which he grew up.
Jimi Hendrix was also proud of his Native American ancestry. His great-grandmother was a full-blooded Cherokee. Though Jimi’s actual birth name was given as Johnny Allen Hendrix, Jimi’s father decided to change his son’s name to James Marshall Hendrix when young Jimi was four years old. However, “There’s an old superstition among certain Native American tribes that it is unwise to name a child twice because it splits his eternal spirit in two, half of it ascending into Heaven and half of it going straight to Hell.”6 In this way, Jimi Hendrix was indeed born a “Voodoo Child.” Shortly after his parents’ divorce, Jimi remembered a dream concerning his mother: “My mother was being carried away on this camel. It was a big caravan and she’s going under these trees and you could see the shade, you know the leaf patterns across her face. She’s saying, ‘Well, I won’t be seeing you too much anymore, you know. I’ll see you.’ And I said, ‘Yeah, but where are you going?’ It was about two years later that she died. I will always remember that. There are some dreams you never forget.”7
Hendrix’s fascination with the occult continued with his release of Axis: Bold As Love: “The axis is like the Christian cross or the voodoo peristyle—a link between the heavens and earth. The axis of the earth holds everything together. If the axis of the earth were altered, everything woul
d be different. Entirely new continents, new directions for north and south, and seas inundating shores that once laid peaceful …” Jimi also felt a record spinning on a turntable was directly related to the Earth’s spinning on its axis. At one point he said, “Well, like the axis of the Earth, you know. If it changes, well it changes the whole face of the Earth like every few thousand years, you know. It’s like love in a human being if he really falls in love deep enough, it will change him, you know, it might change his whole life …” Manly P. Hall once wrote (in The Secret Teachings of All Ages: An Encyclopedic Outline), “The Axis is a mysterious individual who, unknown and unsuspected, mingles with mankind and who, according to tradition, has his favorite seat on the roof of the Caaba …
“When an ‘Axis’ quits this earthly existence, he is succeeded by the ‘Faithful One,’ who has occupied the place at his right hand…. For to these holy men, who bear the collective titles of ‘Lord of Souls’ and ‘Directors,’ is committed a spiritual supremacy over mankind far exceeding the temporal authority of earthly rulers.”8
Spiritual awareness is also evident in the study of numerology. Monika Dannemann writes about Hendrix’s awareness of numerology and his belief in mysterious powers in her book The Inner World of Jimi Hendrix. He believed these powers are found everywhere but specifically in certain words, numbers, and names and felt that there are deep mysteries hidden in some ancient words.
Take a Walk on the Dark Side Page 19
