Vintage ENM: Controversy continues about Led Zeppelin’s “Oppositioner”
April 23, 2008 by ElfNinosMom
Back in the ’70s, there was a lot of controversy about alleged backward masking (i.e., subliminal messaging) in rock music. Parents were absolutely freaking out over it, and forbidding their children to listen to rock music. It should surprise no one to discover that I was one of the kids back then who played a lot of albums backward, just to see what all the controversy was about. It was pretty easy to do on a record player, after all.
While most songs played backward have words here and there that you can clearly recognize, and some even had recognizable sentences which appear to make sense in some way, the undisputed king of all backward messages was, and still is, “Stairway To Heaven” by Led Zeppelin. In fact, many hardcore rock fans at that time called the song “Oppositioner”, based on its backward message.
Don’t misunderstand, I don’t think this was intentional at all, since even everyday human speech played backward can say some pretty weird stuff. Still, it’s kinda freaky that the entire song seems to be a message in line with the song title, LOL. So, for your viewing and listening pleasure, I present to you “Stairway To Heaven” played backward, with the ”Oppositioner” lyrics printed on-screen.
My dad was a DJ. He said backward masking was not new and was real. He was a DJ in from the late 50s on. They used reel-to-reel. He said there were several people that couldn’t be cued on the air because of what they slipped in cuss words. According to my dad it was just a gag by the musicians to get cuss words passed the censors.
In the 80’s when one of our preachers started preaching about the evils of rock. My dad blew the whole thing off. He said it was just an intentional gag to get sell music.