SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- While some lawmakers try to decode satanic messages supposedly seeping into teenage minds from secret backward recordings on rock albums, record producers and popular groups like Styx dismiss the notion as 'rubbish.'
'It must be the devil putting the message on the record because no one here knows how to do it,' said Bob Garcia of A&M Records in Los Angeles.
'It's a hoax,' said James Young of Styx, a five-member group from Chicago. Young and another group member wrote the song 'Snowblind,' which allegedly contains a satanic message that can be heard if played backwards on a turntable or tape recording.
'The whole idea of backward satanic messages is just a bunch of rubbish,' Young said in a telephone interview. 'At least in relation to Styx -- we have never done anything with satanic messages.'
Several psychologists at California universities interviewed were skeptical that backward messages could even be understood.
The Styx song, with lyrics referring to cocaine addiction, drew new nationwide attention last week when Republican Assemblyman Phillip Wyman, of Tehachapi and his witnesses told an Assembly committee that 'Snowblind' contained the hidden words, 'Oh, Satan move in our voices.'
In another example, they said Led Zeppelin's 'Stairway to Heaven' contained a backward recording of the words: 'I sing because I live with Satan. The Lord turns me off. There's no escaping it. Here's to my sweet Satan. Whose power is Satan. He will give you 666. I live for Satan.'
A cassette tape of six examples of hidden messages, including one of a Christian music recording, was played once for the Assembly Consumer Protection and Toxics Committee. Mixed with garbling and static, a few words seemed to the audience to match portions of phrases deciphered by panel witness James Yarroll II, president of a Colorado-based management consulting firm.
Yarroll, who said he has studied how the brain functions, contended that the backward recordings could be understood subconsciously and even 'become fact' in the minds of unsuspecting people.
He spoke on behalf of Wyman's bill, which would require record companies to place warnings on albums that contain backward recordings. It doesn't deal with albums which have been rather straightforward about Satan, such as the Rolling Stones' 'Sympathy for the Devil.'
The consumer protection panel and the Assembly Constitutional Amendments Committee, which Wyman chairs, plans to hold a between-sessions hearing in the fall to delve into the issue.
'I wouldn't dignify it with my presence,' said Styx's Young of the hearing.
Young conceded that the name of his group, referring to the river in Greek mythology encircling Hades over which the souls of the dead traveled, has prompted such violent reaction as record burnings by religious groups in several states.
Young said the backward recording of messages was possible by simply flipping over a tape of a high quality recording. 'But to have it not appear somehow audibly in forward... that it was masked and only come through subliminally but not audibly... that is impossible,' he said.
