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Judas Priest: Satanic Panic, Censorship, Heavy Metal Suicide, and Defenders of the Faith
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- [00:01]
Jake Brennan
This episode is brought to you by Disgraceland All Access and the listeners who support this show through Patreon and Apple Podcasts. You can become a supporting member of Disgraceland and receive ad free and exclusive content by signing up today for just $5 a month before prices go up at the end of October. To become an All Access member, go to Disgracelandpod.com all right, guys, if you haven't heard me talk about groons before, you're about to right now. There's a reason I'm talking about grunds. You know, I love grunds. They're a convenient, comprehensive formul packed into a snack pack of gummies to get you through your day. Guys, this is not a multivitamin, a greens gummy or a prebiotic. It's all of these things. And it's all these things at a fraction of the price. And it tastes great. And also, I'm not standing over my counter with green powder flying all over the place in my kitchen trying to make a drinker. You know what I'm saying? Gruns is a totally different thing. Daily snack pack of gummies because you can't fit the amount of nutrients Gruns fits into just one gummy. Plus, I'm telling you, I'm watching what I'm eating these days and I look forward to eating Groons. They taste great. It's a treat with 6 grams of prebiotic fiber, which is three times the amount of dietary fiber compared to the lean greens powders. For context, that's more than two cups of broccoli and it tastes better than broccoli. There's the Groonie Smith apple flavor. Okay, that's my new go to. That's the Groons fall flavor. I'm here for it. It's only available through October. It's got the same full body benefits that you know and love from Grunes. But this time, it tastes like you're walking through an apple orchard in a cable knit sweater. Getting those New England vibes, all that warm apple cider. You know, those apple cider donuts. Maybe you're buying a little corn on the cob for later that day. You know what I'm talking about. Grund's ingredients are backed by over 35,000 research publications. I love Groons. They taste great. They are super convenient, and they are chalk filled with healthy benefits. Grab your limited edition Groonie Smith apple Groons, available only through October. Stock up because they will sell out. Get up to 52% off. Use the code Disgraceland. I was recently researching A subject for one of our podcast episodes whose home was broken into and the algorithm started to then send me all these horrifying clips of home break ins and I got pulled into the wormhole and naturally started questioning my own home security system at the time. And what I found out was that my system wasn't very preventative. And that's because most home security systems aren't very preventative. They're actually designed to only react and take action once someone has already broken in. And that ain't good. 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I've got a security system I can depend on in a great, easy, intuitive app that helps me monitor my home no matter where I'm at. Right now. My listeners can save 50% on a SimpliSafe home security system at simplisafe.com Disgracepod that's simplisafe.com DisgracePod there's no safe like SimpliSafe. This episode contains content that may be disturbing to some listeners. Please check the show notes for more information. Disgraceland is a production of Double Elvis. This is a story about death, about suicide, censorship, idolatry, and the ruination of souls. It's a story about Satan and St. Michael, about leather, studs and clothed hooves, and about heavy metal. Specifically about heavy metal icons. Judas Priest, a band who made great music. Unlike that music I played for you at the top of the show. That wasn't great music. That was a preset loop from my melotron called Dead eyed and musclebound MK2. I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to say you, say me by Lionel Richie. And why would I play you that specific slice of it ain't easy like Sunday morning cheese anymore. Could I afford it? Because that was the number one song in America on December 23, 1985. And that was the day the two young metalheads put a shotgun to their heads and threatened not only their own existence, but the future existence of heavy metal. On this episode, suicide, censorship, satanic panic. St. Michael and the defenders of the faith. Judas Priest. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is disgrace. The young rocker didn't know it yet, but he was a metalhead. It was 1969 and that term wouldn't come about for another decade or so. But here, in this Birmingham, England church, he felt the heaviness. It tangled with a very real sense of beauty. And that beauty was working hard for itself, like a rare sunny day in the dreary Midlands where he grew up. The light in the dark, hope in gloom. And inside that contrast, there was irony. After all, this was a funeral. How could a funeral be beautiful? Especially a funeral for a kid he didn't know. It just was. The saints above, their images, cut and kilned into the stained glass windows, stared down at him. The young metalhead knew that the intended effect was warmth. But right now, in his dirty denim, with his long hair, all he felt was judgment. Sitting among the square working class members of his community, he tried to remember the Ten Commandments. Thou shall not kill. That was one of them, he was certain. But which one? And was there a commandment that forbade one from killing oneself? The van rattled violently. This machine wasn't built for speed. Not this amount of speed, anyway. And its driver wasn't built for this world. Or so the kid thought. But that was okay, because this world was about to end. That was a week ago, over in Hampstead Hill. The kid couldn't take it. He drove his van as fast as he could into a telephone kiosk on purpose. No amount of light was going to overcome his darkness. And there was no more hope, only gloom. Evil had triumphed over good, despair and certitude over faith. And now, at just 18 years of age, young John Perry was dead. And so were the prospects of Birmingham's most promising young band of rockers. Judas Priest. It was a damn shame, thought the young metalhead. Would suicide kill Judas Priest dead, hanging from a tree in the field of blood like Judas Iscariot? Or would Judas Priest resurrect itself like Lazarus? Or better yet, like the man himself, the first rock star, Jesus Christ. Resurrection. Inspired. Maybe the young metalhead would replace John Perry on guitar and Judas Priest, should they continue? Thoughts of resurrection continued and bled out from the organist's stabs at the mighty pipe organ, a soundtrack of ambition and grief, and the organist rolled his head atop his slight shoulder frame as he played. He looked up in a trance, up at the icons in stained glass and the saints and disciples staring down at the mourners. Jesus, disciples. The world's first groupies. That was it. Thou shalt have no other gods before me. That was the first commandment. No hero worship, no idols. It seems strange to the young metalhead looking up at the Bible's heroes looking down at him, he supposed it was all easily explainable. The saints and disciples weren't being worshipped. But what about St. Michael? The congregation leaned into the petition as one. St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray. And do thou, O Prince of the heavenly host, by the power of God, cast into hell Satan and all the evil spirits who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls. Amen. The ruin of souls. Now that was some heavy shit. St. Michael wasn't being worshipped. He was being called upon to protect us. But what about the rock stars he and his friends worshiped and idolized? What about Jimi Hendrix and that young local guitar God in the making, Tony Iommi from Black Sabbath? Was he this young metalhead here, guilty of hero worship himself, of idolatry, of putting his gods before his God? Or was he just a disciple? Maybe someday an archangel himself? Or a heavy metal saint? KK Downing, guitar player for Judas Priest, sent to protect rockers everywhere from the wickedness of shitty pop music. Or was he just another evil spirit wandering through the world for the ruin of souls? Leather boys, big studs, S and M giants, beasts among weaker thans. Rob Halford, Judas Priest's singer, papered the wall of the Colhern Arms pub, a good distance from its iconic J shaped bar, and took in the scene. Wild, gorgeous gay men everywhere, and all there for the same thing, liberation in whatever form they desired. Almost anything went within the walls of Coleherne Arms. That is, of course, if they could keep the coppers out. Homosexuality was partially decriminalized in England in 1967, but that meant that it was still partially criminal in the late 70s. So best keep your head on a swivel for any raiding bobbies looking to crack skulls. Violence, the threat of it and the stories about it, the thrill of it was always Prevalent, the thrill was why Rob was there. The man in leather. They were something to look at, or to look up at, rather, the way they dressed head to toe in black leather and studs over their muscular physiques. All of their muscles alive except their faces. Their faces expressed dead calm, like bedrock, but their eyes reflected fire in dominance and they moved through the club like big game, slow, plodding and oblivious to the hunt. Disco blared men made small talk about safe words and sex crimes where the best amyl nitrate could be procured. News of mutilations out by the docks, floor shows. Over in the States, New York City's rough trade was a different cut. Manhattan's Anvil nightclub supposedly featured Crisco, Fis fucking the willing and able on all fours right there in public on Saturday nights. And the Anvil, it wasn't even a full time gay bar. Not that New York City didn't have its problems. It did. But London was different. London was more conservative. And here in the Colhern Arms, it was strictly leather. No policemen, no firemen, no construction workers and no Indians. It was all leather. Just like where Rob Halford grew up, 125 miles away in Walsall, home of a thriving leather manufacturing industry. A town where not everyone was gay like Rob, but where most everyone wore leather. And now so too with the straight boys and Rob's band, Judas Priest 1980 was on the horizon. And so were Judas Priest's heavy metal fortunes. They'd broken out of their hometown of Birmingham with their debut album, Rocka Rolla and then a string of solid 70s long players. But in order to truly break internationally, in order to achieve heavy metal icon status like Black Sabbath, their Birmingham predecessors, who literally invented the genre of heavy metal from their shared hometown. In order to do that, Judas Priest needed something different. Something beyond big riffs, defiant boogie and vengeful screams. They needed great music. Yes, and their next album, British Steel, was indeed filled with great music, particularly the planned singles Breaking the Law and Living After Midnight. But if Judas Priest wanted to be iconic, they not only had to sound iconic, they needed to look iconic. KK Downing, Priest guitar player, encouraged Rob Halford to lean into not only his leather roots from back in Walsall, but his leather passion at the Coleherne Arms as well, and at all the other leather bars Rob, as a closeted gay man, frequented while the band was on tour. And thus Judas Priest's badass heavy metal image was born. There it was, right there on the back of the 1980s British Steel. Rob Halford decked out from head to toe in skin tight leather straddling the microphone stand. KK Downing, mid slash of his flying V guitar with studded leather bands running up his forearms, across the flesh of his exposed midriff. Glenn Tipton on his black Strat with his black leather jacket open to reveal his chest. Bassist Ian Hill holding it down, clad fully in black like some some hard as nail Saxon warrior propelled by Dave Holland leering over his black kit. The look was and still is iconic. It inspired a heavy metal uniform of sorts. Millions of metalheads, most of them hetero, a minority of them, surely homophobic from the day British Steel was released in April of 1980, would dress in the same leather and studs Rob Halford Nick drew from the gay leather bars that he hung out in. Once again, KK Downing was not oblivious to the irony. But he, like the rest of Judas Priest, who at the dawn of the new decade were in the midst of unprecedented success, was oblivious to the release of a book from that same year, a book called Michelle Remembers. A book that detailed violence and wandering evil spirits in a way that no leather bar could ever portend. A book that would create in the United States and Canada a satanic panic. One that would ensnare Judas Priest just like the devil himself in the ruin of not one, but two teenage souls.
- [17:09]
Josh Radner
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- [17:41]
Jake Brennan
And I am so excited to tell you about how we Made your Mother a Rewatch podcast. Looking back at How I Met yout Mother and I'm here with Craig Thomas who who co created the show along with Carter Bayes. Hi Craig. Hey Josh. Somehow it has been 20 years since the show premiered. I'm gonna check the math on that. Ten years since it went off the air and we thought that made this a perfect time to look back, see what the hell we did and why the show still seems to resonate with fans around the world today. Follow and listen to How We Made youe Mother. Wherever you get your podcasts, imagine fast.
- [18:12]
Josh Radner
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- [18:44]
Jake Brennan
Satan wants you and he's coming for you in a million different ways. Sometimes he's successful. Sometimes St. Michael and his celestial choir fight him off and drown him out Michelle Remembers A book published in 1980 written by psychiatrist Larry Pazder and his patient Michelle Smith would have the world believe that Satan was coming for their children at their daycare centers. The book detailed Michelle's story as recounted to Pazder through what was called recovered memory therapy, a practice that has been since denounced by the psychiatric community. Regardless, Michelle detailed her satanic possession from the age of five when her parents handed her over to a satanic cult or her daycare center in Saskatchewan, a Canadian province. Mutilations, ritual murders, the killing and torture of little children, babies even. It led to a case known as the Martinsville Nightmare, in which Michelle's daycare center was investigated for satanic ritual abuse. Ultimately, nine people from that daycare center faced charges despite there being no real evidence of any wrongdoing. Two women spent years in the prison before being exonerated. Several men, under pressure, pleaded guilty to lesser charges and decades later, the prosecutions were condemned as a miscarriage of justice and the convictions were overturned. But of course the damage was by then long since done. The lack of evidence that led to these convictions didn't stop law enforcement in Canada and in the United States due to the popularity of the Martinsville Nightmare case and of the book, Michelle remembers from instituting mandatory training sessions for their officers on how to identify the signs of satanic ritual abuse Throughout North American suburbia. Cops, teachers and others in positions of authority were all keyed up on satanic panic and on high alert, searching for signs of devil worship among their children and those influencing their kids. And according to the norms in charge, there was plenty to look for. Horned hands, goat headed figures, occult symbols, ritualistic ephemera, candles, bondage, leather. It sounded like the COVID of an early 80s heavy metal album. Judas Priest didn't go in for the whole horned hands goat head bit, but that didn't mean others like Venom didn't. As far as other occult symbolism, both figurative and literal, ACDC released an album that was entirely black, and they wrote it up the charts partly on the back of a single entitled Hell's Bells. This album, Back in Black, became the best selling record of all time, only to be supplanted shortly thereafter by none other than Michael Jackson and his album Thriller. Def Leppard, another promising heavy metal band from Sheffield, England, a band that toured with Judas Priest in their early years, released a record in 1983 called Pyromania. The COVID of that record a building in the crosshairs, its top floors engulfed in a hellish inferno. And of course, there was Judas Priest. From British Steel. In 1980 onward, the band's image leaned even more fully into the leather and studs. Walk into any metalhead's bedroom in the early 1980s and he or she was likely to have ACDC, Def Leppard and Judas Priest albums lying around. But bands like ACDC and Def Leppard sold massively. Judas Priest did not. Their records sold well. But as far as popularity goes, compared to the young brothers and the boys from Sheffield, Priest was second tier at the record store checkout line. Their excellent 1984 live album, One of my favorite live albums, by the way. Defenders of the faith only sold 800,000 copies upon release. But none of this means priests weren't rock stars. They absolutely were. And at this particular moment in 1985, while in the Bahamas posted up at a resort bar on break from recording their follow up to the Defenders of the Faith, the band was surrounded by groupies. And not only were they signing autographs and signing the breasts of their autograph seekers, they were also signing the babies of one of the women who sought their autographs, literally signing the heads of twin newborns. But such hero worship was quickly brought to an end by the news on the television screen up above the bar, there was Tipper Gore, the wife of Democratic Senator Al Gore from Tennessee, and the head of a new organization called the pmrc, short for the Parents Music Resource center, an organization whose mission was to increase parental control over children's access to music deemed to have violent, drug related or sexual themes. The question was, though, who decides which content is harmful and which isn't? Essentially, the PMRC was a censorship organization created by a bored housewife from Tennessee. Joseph Coors, the owner of Coors Beers, and Mike Love, the singer from the Beach Boys, helped fund the pmrc. But before Tipper Gore felt her calling to found such an organization, she was sitting in rush hour Traffic in Washington D.C. with her 11 year old daughter, Carrie. Carrie wanted to listen to the new cassette Tipper had bought for her. Purple Rain by Prince and the Revolution. The slinky sexy beat kicked the song in and Tipper nodded her head behind the wheel, no doubt out of time. Her daughter seated next to her, grooved innocently. The first verse started and Prince sang. I knew a girl named Nikki. I guess you could say she was a sex fiend. Wait a minute. What? What did he just say? Before the Senator's wife could register what was happening, Prince hit the second line of the first verse. I met her in a hotel lobby masturbating with a magazine. What the hell was happening? Tipper slammed the Stop eject button on the car stereo. She then pulled over to examine the cassette art and find the lyrics to make sure she wasn't hearing things. But she was out of luck. The lyrics weren't printed on the Purple Rain album and Tipper Gore would have to do her research at a later date without her daughter by her side, perhaps with the good Senator Al behind closed doors. This was the backdrop to the testimony Tipper Gore was now delivering in front of the US Senate on live television, her and her colleagues words being broadcast out across the bar about some of that Bahamian bar's clientele. At the moment, the members of Judas Priest, Susan Baker, Tipper Gore's co founder at the PMRC, and the wife of then Treasury Secretary James Baker, presented briefing materials to the senators that fingered Judas Priest as part of the problem, particularly as it pertained to the issue of sadomasochism and the occult in the genre of heavy metal. It seemed that the PMRC had quickly expanded their self assigned mandate from warnings about violence, drugs and sex to include the occult as well as the influence of the devil in popular music. I have no way of proving it, but I would bet a healthy amount of cash that Susan Baker and Tipper Gore have been partisan. DC Wives Book Club that recommended the book Michelle remembers at one point before the formation of the PMRC regarding the occult, I.e. satanism. Other metal bands in addition to Judas Priest, W.A.S.P. and Venom to name two, were listed as part of the PMRC's Notorious Filthy 15, a list of 15 songs by artists from all genres that the PMRC found to be egregiously objectionable. The artists, the songs and the objectionable lyrical content went as 1 Prince Darling Nicky, sex and masturbation. Number two on the list, Sheena Easton, Sugar Walls. Lyrical content that they found offensive was sex. Judas Priest coming in at number three. Eat Me Alive Supposed offensive lyrical content, sex and Violence number four Vanity Strap on Robbie baby Sex number five Motley Crue Bastard Violence and language Number six ACDC Let me put my love into you Sex number seven Twisted Sister we're not gonna take it Violence number eight Madonna dress you up Sex number nine Wasp Animal Parentheses Fuck like a beast Sex language violence number 10 DEF Leppard High and dry Parentheses Saturday Night Drug and alcohol use number 11 Merciful Fate into the coven the lyrics supposedly repped the occult 12. Black Sabbath trashed drug and alcohol use number 13 Mary Jane girls in my house sex 14. Venom possessed the occult 15. Cindy Lauper she Bop Sex and Masturbation now the lyrics to Judas Priest's Eat Me Alive are kind of lame if I'm being honest. They sort of read like a sophomore stab at Prince's sexuality. The lyrics are comical. They go bound to deliver as you give and I collect, squealing in passion as the rod of steel injects, okay dude, try saying that to your wife after date night this weekend when you're hoping to get laid and see how far you get. I'm not gay, but I would bet the dudes don't find this hot in any real way either. Even the Leather boys. I'm sure they have their own version of over the Top, but I'm betting it's less silly than the Rod of Steel injects. To his credit, Rob Halford likened the song's ridiculously over sexualized lyrics to Spinal Tap. He said that the song was tongue in cheek about a consensual over the top sexual fantasy. My point in all of this, I guess, is that I find the inclusion of Eat Me Alive along with a couple others on this list of filthy 15 positively laughable. Including such a cartoonish Come on on the list speaks directly to the fundamental unseriousness of Tipper Gore and her organization and the senators who took her seriously for that matter. At the hearing, Senator Paula Hawkins, a Republican from Florida, cited Judas Priest by name, no doubt for whatever free press and coveted TV time she could gin up. And the Senator described Judas Priest as, quote, representative of the most extreme examples of violent and sexual content in rock. With this hearing, the PMRC was trying to get the record industry to agree to a content warning system, the label on albums with lyrics these suburban moms deemed sexually explicit, violent, drug related or otherwise offensive. A couple other things came out of this hearing. One the great Frank Zappa testified against the PMRC and pretty much torched them. The PMRC proposal is an ill conceived piece of nonsense which fails to deliver any real benefits to children, infringes the civil liberties of people who are not children, and promises to keep the courts busy for children years, he said. The PMRC was eager to have John Denver testify, thinking that he, being the wholesome, bespectacled singer songwriter that he was, would side with them. But that ploy backfired. Denver testified that censorship was a slippery slope, recalling how his own innocuous song Rocky Mountain High, had once been falsely accused of promoting drug use. However, despite such testimony, the riaa, that's the Recording Industry association of America, was in fact moved to include a warning sticker on records deemed to contain explicit content the now infamous Black and White Parental Advisory Label. In an exchange with Republican Senator Slade Gorton from Washington, Frank Zappo was asked about the supposed existence of subliminal messages on albums, secret messages planted there by musicians to inspire children to turn to the devil. Zappa replied correctly that no empirical evidence existed to prove subliminal messaging existed on rock or heavy metal or any other records. Back in the Bahamas, KK Downing of Judas Priest leaned back on his beachside barstool and considered what had just transpired on CNN concerning his band. It was all rubbish. The PMRC and the senators who were buying into their bullshit and the record industry that was caving to their arbitrary censorship demands were painting him and his bandmates and his friends and fellow musicians as evildoers, as degenerates prowling about for the ruin of souls. KK Downing wasn't in league with Satan. Neither were any of the other groups mentioned at that hearing, and that includes Venom. Despite their song entitled In League with Satan, KK Downing was in this business to sell records, to be a heavy metal icon. Like Tony Iommi before him and Jimi Hendrix before him in December. Despite whatever so called negative press this hearing would lay at the feet of Judas Priest, KK was smart enough to know that warning labels on records would only mean more record sales. He smiled and sipped his cocktail. Thousands of miles away in a working class bedroom in Sparks, Nevada, two metalheads, 18 year old Raina Belknap and 20 year old James Vance, lay back on the shag rug, stoned out of their minds and took in the sounds of Judas Priest stained class while the devil readied himself. We'll be right back after this.
- [33:25]
Josh Radner
Word, word, word.
- [33:31]
Jake Brennan
The detective said. Missing kids usually come home. What happens when they don't? Based on a true story Police looking for John Gacy. We discovered bodies by the looks of it. The younger man, the things he did to those kids. He's sick. The system failed these families. Devil in disguise. John Wayne Gacy Streaming now only on Peacock. Do you know how many there are? Up to you to find out. When did making plans get this complicated? It's time to streamline with WhatsApp, the secure messaging app that brings the whole group together. Use polls to settle dinner plans, send event invites and pin messages so no one forgets mom 60th and never miss a meeting or milestone. All protected with end to end encryption. It's time for WhatsApp message privately with everyone.
- [34:27]
Josh Radner
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- [35:03]
Jake Brennan
It was the unforgivable sin. Despair. Judas Priest didn't say that. The whiskey priest said that the main character from Graham Greene's excellent 1940 novel the Power and the Glory, Raymond Belknap And James Vance, 45 years later, had no doubt never heard that literary quote. But they had heard Judas Priest. And right now, on December 23, 1985, they were loaded up on weed and cans of cheap domestic beer, endlessly spending Judas Priest's 1978 album Stained Cloud Class. Specifically, they were spinning Priest's cover of Spooky Tooth's Better by you, better by me, the third song on side one. Life sucked for Raymond and James, and the Judas Priest record seemed to confirm that fact. Or at least it soundtracked the confirmation they received from the drugs and the alcohol. Raymond had been telling anyone who'd listen about the despair he'd come to expect, accept as his lot. No job, no girl. So for young Raymond here, that meant no. Nothing. James was in the same boat. But James, being the older of the two, was the idea man. He had a solution. They killed themselves this life, worrying about the future, never getting laid. James was serious. He'd do it if Raymond would. And who was Raymond to argue? James always knew what was best. It was James who turned Raymond onto Judas Priest. Raymond wanted to know when fucking now, dickwad. Oh, okay. Raymond was surprised, but he was still in. James grabbed his stepdad's sawed off 12 gauge out back There was an old pentacle Pentecostal church, and Raymond pulled some beers from the fridge and they both stumbled outdoors toward the church's playground. It was the right thing to do, James explained. There was no fucking cavalry coming for them, no guardian angels, no celestial choir, no intercession from St. Michael. Just gloom. Who was Raymond to argue? They sat on the church playground's rickety merry go round. Raymond had to go first, James explained. Raymond took James word as gospel. He grabbed the 12 gauge, crushed what was left of his beer, pointed the shotgun to his throat, and James looked on, half in shock, half with morbid curiosity. Raymond's eyes tightened into a focus James hadn't seen in weeks, and James nodded as if to vouchsafe the pact, and Raymond pulled the trigger. The top of his head blasted up above the merry go round and rained down quickly on the scrubby, hallowed ground. Fear fired its way up into James chest, speeding his heart to a rate he'd never felt. Panic momentarily overtook despair. Flight had vanquished whatever fight James had in reserve. He knew he'd be blamed for this. He couldn't accept that. He grabbed the shotgun from his friend's death clutch, pointed the gun under his own chin, and he looked around the churchyard. He looked beyond to his stepfather's house and beyond that to Sparks, Nevada, and all he saw was despair. And that's when James pulled the trigger. All right, discos, we're about 80 through this Judas Priest story, and we haven't touched on one of the darkest chapters yet, the shocking arrest of Judas Priest drummer Dave Holland on charges of indecent assault and attempted rape. The details and the outcome, they don't quite fit into this story we're telling here in this main episode, but they're too important and too disturbing to ignore. That's why today's exclusive mini episode is all about that Dave Holland story and what really happened and how it shook Judas Priest fans to their core. To hear it, you got to be a Disgraceland All Access member. It's $5.99 at DisgraceLandPod.com and it unlocks ad free episodes plus more exclusives just like this one. All right, back to our story. Famed record producer Eddie Kramer, about as expert a witness as one could get on the art and the science of recording technology, sat in his studio with the members of Judas Priest. They were painstakingly analyzing the sound of their version of Spooky Tooth's. Better by you, better by me being played backward. Eddie Kramer and the band were engaged in this ridiculous exercise because Judas Priest and their record label, cbs, were being sued in civil court by the families of James Vance and Raymond Belknap. Raymond Belknap died, but James Vance survived, albeit horribly disfigured, and he claimed that Judas Priest's lyrics gave him the idea for the suicide pact. The suit claimed that the band had purposefully, purposefully included the phrase do it in its recording of Better by you, better by me. Making the allegation more absurd was the fact that prosecutors were claiming Judas Priest did this in a way that allowed for the phrase to be heard only if their record Stained Class was played backward, and that furthermore, the band, Rob Halford, KK Downing and the rest of them did this to incite children to kill themselves. As insane as this sounds at the time in 1980, this was quite serious business. The satanic panic that had taken root a decade earlier was still very much part of the public consciousness. Ozzy Osbourne had gone through his own trial four years earlier over his song Suicide Solution. Thankfully, the judge dismissed the case, citing Ozzie's protection under the Constitution's First Amendment guaranteeing freedom of speech. Still, that decision meant nothing as far as judicial. As Priest was concerned, this was an entirely different matter. Records everywhere were still being affixed with the PMRC's toothless parental guidance sticker. While America was in the midst of a nasty culture war between religious conservatives and liberal baby boomers grabbing institutional power in ways and numbers they'd never had before. The stakes were very real if the prosecution was successful, improving the Judas Prior Priest was guilty, responsible for the deaths of two young metalheads, and on the hook for the 6.2 million the dead kid's parents were seeking, then the fate of heavy metal was very much up in the air. It's doubtful that in this environment, with this type of financial risk, that record labels would continue to back heavy metal bands. And this would then spell death for the genre as a viable commercial form of music. In other words, Priest, Def Leppard, even Ozzy and all the rest would all be fucked. Talk about despair. The band members and Judas Priest were a mess. For one thing, two of their fans were dead, and the idea that they wanted their fans dead was patently absurd. And if the band was defeated in the civil court case, they would be the ones responsible for killing the careers of countless heavy metal musicians, including their own. Such an outcome would ensure that Judas Priest would land far short of icon status. Hell, in this scenario, they'd not even be martyrs if proven guilty. They feared that in the eyes of the heavy metal community, they'd be something more akin to their namesake, Judas, the ultimate betrayer. And so it was Priest guitarist Glen Tipton's idea to go into the studio with Eddie Kramer. He later said of his thinking at the time, it's a fact that if you play speech backwards, some of it will seem to make sense. So I asked permission to go into a studio and find some perfectly innocent phonetic flukes. The lawyers didn't want to do it, but I insisted. We bought a copy of the Stained Class album in a local record shop, went into the studio, recorded it to Tate, turned it over and played it backwards. Right away we found hey, Ma, my chair's broken, and Gimme a peppermint and help me keep a job. These findings were an extension of Frank Zappa's argument against the PMRC's absurd claim that musicians were including harmful subliminal messages on their albums. The whole issue of hidden messages, frank said, backward masking and all that. If you play any record backwards long enough, you'll eventually hear what you want to hear. It's the same as looking at clouds. People see what they want. It's not scientific and it's not serious. The judge in the case against Judas Priest apparently agreed with Frank Zappa and with Glenn Tipton in the defense, ruling that subliminal messages, if they exist, are not protected speech under the First Amendment. But in this case, no evidence was presented that Judas Priest placed subliminal messages, intentionally or subliminally, to cause this tragic event. In the end, the case was dismissed, and Judas Priest and heavy metal prevailed. The band's next album, Painkiller, their first with new drummer Scott Travis, was released in 1990. But despite it being an incredible achievement of heavy metal awesomeness, Rob Halford departed the band a few years after. Afterward, he was replaced by Tim the Ripper Owens, while Rob pursued a career making heavy music with other musicians. In 1998, unprompted in a television interview with MTV's Kurt Loder, Rob Halford, apropos of nothing, a lot of homophobia still exists in the music world, in all kinds of music. I think it's time to break down that barrier. I'm gay. Most of us in the the heavy metal community at the time shrugged and said, yeah, no shit. The leather and studs kinda gave it away nearly two decades ago, dude. Regardless, back in 1998, coming out was an act of courage from Rob Halford, when much of America still held on to its backward ideas about homosexuality. Who knows what Tipper Gore thought. But the metal community continued to embrace Rob Halford just as it always had, doubly so when he rejoined Judas Priest in the early 2000s. And now when this not so young anymore Metalhead sits in his pew on Sundays and looks up at the stained glass saints staring down at him. He sees the church's defender, St. Michael, and is reminded of one of his favorite live metal albums, and he wonders which metal bands deserve the vaunted status of heavy metal icon. His mind goes to Black Sabbath, the founders, but then also very quickly to Judas priest, like St. Michael, the defenders of the faith, a band that Tipper Gore and other evildoers prowling about for the ruin of souls once labeled a disgrace. I'm Jake Brennan and this is Disgraceland. Okay, thanks for hanging with me and Judas Priest and St. Michael. If you want more of this story, if you want to know what the hell happened with the band's drummer Dave Holland in the sexual assault case is sent into prison, you can nab that story in the Disgraceland mini episode coming up next in your feeds. But you need to be an All Access member and if you ain't, it's easy to sign up. Just go to Disgracelandpod.com sign up there with either Apple Podcasts or Patreon and unlock this and more exclusive content along with ad free listening and access to connect with the disco community of music obsessives in the Disgraceland chat. Your support is very much appreciated. Okay, question of the week. Duh. Greatest metal band of all time. Who is it and why? Priest fans, I want to hear from you. Sabbath. Which Sabbath? Aussie? Dio? What are we talking here? Metallica? Slayer? Who? Who is it? Let me know. Get at me. Let's duke it out in the afterparty. 617-90-66638 Leave me a voicemail or send me a text with your answers and you might hear yourself in our bonus episode coming up right after this@graceland. Pod on the socials disgracelandpodgmail.com electronic mail all right, here comes some credits. Disgraceland was created by yours truly and is produced in partnership with Double Elvis. Credits for this episode can be found on the show notes page@gracelandpod.com Rate and review the show and follow us on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter and Facebook and on YouTube@YouTube.com Disgracelandpod Rocka roll He's a bad, Bad man. This episode is brought to you by 20th Century Studios New Film Springsteen Deliver Me From Nowhere starring Golden Globe winner Jeremy Allen White and Academy Award nominee Jeremy Strong. Scott Cooper, the director of the Academy Award winning movie Crazy Heart, brings you the story of the most pivotal chapter in the life of a knight icon. Springsteen. Deliver Me from Nowhere, Only in theaters October 24th. Get your tickets now. And Doug, here we have the Limu Emu in its natural habitat, helping people customize their car insurance and save hundreds with Liberty Mutual. Fascinating. It's accompanied by his natural ally, Doug. Limu. Is that guy with the binoculars watching us? Cut the camera. They see us. 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