Late twentieth-century America saw a widespread moral panic surrounding the alleged rising threat of occultist behaviour. Due to the satanic components present in growing forms of popular culture, specifically rock and heavy metal music, American society was whipped into a frenzy, adamant that the morally corrupting music was inviting the devil into the lives of their children. Using Stanley Cohen’s model of moral panic as presented in Folk Devils and Moral Panics, this article will examine the folk devils and moral entrepreneurs of the satanic panic over rock and heavy metal music, continuing from my previous article by focussing on the 1980s.

The 1980s saw the greatest number of crusades against heavy metal that America had previously seen, as the country was swept up in what has since been named the ‘satanic panic’. In 1980 the bestselling book Michelle Remembers was published, which was written by psychiatrist Lawrence Pazder and his patient, Michelle Smith. The book details Michelle’s memories that were recovered during therapy sessions with Pazder, in which she recalls “memories of captivity, torture, and molestation by a group of devil worshipping cultists”. The narrative of satanic abuse that Smith and Pazder created led to law enforcement identifying multiple criminal investigations that had satanic elements, and psychology professionals diagnosing countless other women with repressed memories of satanic ritual abuse in their pasts. The publication coincided with the election of Ronald Reagan as the President of the United States in 1981, whose strong conservative ideologies favoured tradition, Christian values and the belief that moral relativism was a threat. Reagan’s landslide victory was seen as a political upheaval, with Moral Majority’s founder Jerry Falwell claiming that “he and his organisation had helped to mobilise support as many as four million apolitical evangelicals into electoral participation”. Falwell also perceived Reagan’s election to be “the greatest day for the cause of conservatism and American morality”. I believe that the increasing presence of satanic ritual abuse in the mainstream media, alongside the growth of conservatism and the influence of the Christian Right in the political sphere, led to increasing tensions between heavy metal musicians and moral entrepreneurs that would ultimately lead to legal action taking place.

The formation of MTV in 1981 can also be credited as cultivating the panic over rock and heavy metal music, as musicians had a new form of media to help market their music. MTV is a multinational channel on television that, amongst other content, broadcast music videos into the homes of America and reach a wider audience. Furthermore, younger generations were obsessed with MTV; after only eighteen months there were nine million subscribers watching, and if an artist’s music video played on their channel, the albums of that musician would sell out in music stores. With a growing number of music videos available, artists had to become increasingly outrageous so as to be remembered; the music videos that heavy metal musicians created were “laced with near-nudity and sexual imagery”, occultist themes, violence and drug-taking. This is evocative of heavy metal in the 1970s where folk devils performed purposeful reactive deviance to their label of folk devil because it was a marketable image that had great commercial success, and in the 1980s “metal became one of the most commercially successful forms of rock music”. One of the most famous heavy metal bands in America in the 1980s were Iron Maiden, a British group whose music videos, album covers and lyrics were smothered with references to death and the occult. Their 1982 album release Number of the Beast was particularly controversial to moral entrepreneurs; not only did the lyrics contain blatant references to the devil – “666 the number of the beast” – but the album cover depicted the band’s ghoulish mascot as a “puppet master who controls the devil, which in turn is making people dance in the flames”. Newspaper articles published images of the album covers to analyse the satanic iconography, and the band were heavily denounced by the Moral Majority who used the band “as a prime example to support their anti-rock stance” and advocated for the burning of Iron Maiden albums and picketed their concerts. The music video for Iron Maiden’s song ‘Number of the Beast’ was also controversial, because the band made good use of fog machines, cemeteries, werewolves and devilish costumes. The addition of controversial visuals to a music style that was already considered to be provocative caused an outrage amongst the parents of those who watched MTV. An article from Florida-based broadsheet newspaper The Palm Beach Post, which is considered to be a paper of moderate liberal leanings, offered advice to parents who wished to “exorcise MTV” from their televisions. Ron Wiggins, the author of the article, retells a story where a child “was in a trance” watching music videos, and when he inspected her eyes, he “saw little test patterns”. He further claimed that the “cable tuner was possessed of an evil entity”. The language that Wiggins used implied that the child had been brainwashed and possessed by the music channel, which is similar to the argument of moral entrepreneurs that rock music could indoctrinate its audiences through techniques of backward masking.

Backward masking is “the theory and alleged practice of planting messages into music” that are only distinguishable when the music is played backwards. Moral entrepreneurs claimed that backward masked music aimed to subliminally stimulate its listeners, and exerted a “powerful influence on the listener, encouraging drug use, criminal behaviour, homosexuality, sexual promiscuity and Satanism”. As I mentioned briefly in Chapter One, famous occultist Aleister Crowley advocated for backward masking and claimed that “black magicians in training ‘listen to phonograph records, reversed,’ to learn how to think and speak backwards”. Jimmy Page from the band Led Zeppelin was a great fan of Aleister Crowley’s work, so it is not a surprise that the main song that was targeted was Led Zeppelin’s 1971 hit ‘Stairway to Heaven’. In 1982 Paul and Jan Crouch of the Trinity Broadcasting Network played the song backwards and believed the jumbled words were Led Zeppelin exclaiming “here’s to my sweet Satan […] he’ll give you 666”. The Trinity Broadcasting Network was televised to families all over America on a twenty-four-hour schedule, so it would have had a wide reach throughout society. The allegations further stimulated press coverage; for example, The Newark Advocate in Ohio published an article that questioned whether rock musicians were “in league with Satan trying to corrupt the minds of youth”. Despite the article simply questioning the allegation, the fact that it was published would have contributed to the panic as it would instigate its readers to listen to the song backwards and believe that the band were subliminally corrupting their children. The sound that emerged when ‘Stairway to Heaven’ was played backwards was merely coincidental, but it was taken as fact by moral entrepreneurs who were trying to advance their agendas and preach rock as being immoral and under the influence of the devil. This analysis compliments Philip Jenkins’ research on why certain moral panics do not come to fruition; if there were no moral entrepreneurs attempting to find evidence of backward masked messages, Led Zeppelin would not have received such backlash and the work of further evangelists on backward masking would not have been so well received.

The most influential anti-rock moral entrepreneurs on backward masking include the likes of Jacob Aranza, Bob Larson and Jeff Godwin, each of whom regularly published a plethora of anti-rock resources. Jacob Aranza, an evangelical minister from Louisiana, wrote Backward Masking Unmasked in 1983, where he argues that rock and roll has a detrimental effect on young minds due to its association with the occult, rebellion, drugs and sexual perversion. Aranza intends to shock and frighten his readers in order to enlighten them through his study of backward masking techniques in music, which he believes rock musicians use “to convey satanic and drug related messages to the subconscious”. Through his utilisation of psychology and ‘expert research’ in the subliminal and subconscious, Aranza claims that satanic backward masked lyrics are “stored as fact” by our brains without us realising. Backward Masking Unmasked is a fascinating insight into the evangelical mindset and provides an instance of how moral panics were passed on to the public. Aranza manipulates the words of musicians in interviews to fit with his own argument, a classic example of scaremongering, and demonstrates how far moral entrepreneurs were willing to go in order to convince the public that occultism and Satanism were both on the rise. Furthermore, his writing style is reminiscent of a sermon; his way of writing and ideas are highly convincing, which shows how readers could be easily cast under his spell. It is interesting to note that despite the title claiming that the book ‘exposes’ the satanic messages in backward masked songs, Aranza spends little time actually discussing the issue, instead spending the majority of the book listing different musicians and their tendencies towards sex, drugs and the occult. Furthermore, instead of referring to specific cases Aranza proceeded by assumption rather than by documented examples. Nevertheless, Aranza’s ideas were well received by the press who described him as a best-selling author who “conveys the reality of Jesus Christ in a dynamic and living way”. Philip Jenkins and Daniel Maier-Katkin claim that Aranza’s publisher, Huntington House, was one of several religious publishers in a flourishing market that “made minor industries out of attacking contemporary cults, Satanism and unbelief”, and the volume of books published by moral entrepreneurs in the 1980s demonstrates that this was not an overestimation.

Jeff Godwin, a fundamentalist preacher and author that produced books that closely resemble the arguments of Jacob Aranza, published a book called Dancing with Demons: The Music’s Real Master. Godwin believed that rock music led to the glorification of immoral sex, claiming that to give in to lust served “to spread demons” which “are a venereal disease in the truest sense”. Gary Greenwald also produced similar works on backward masking in his series of VHS tapes, books and cassette tapes, but I was unfortunately unable to access his publications. Nevertheless, the sheer volume of moral entrepreneurs that propelled the subliminal dangers of backward masking demonstrate that their messages reached a larger populace than ever before, and also that moral entrepreneurs could generate wider interest from their combined bandwagon effect. Bob Larson, whose book Rock & The Church was discussed in the previous chapter, published at least seven books that fought against rock music and Satanism over the span of four decades, and in the 1980s he created his call-in show ‘Talk Back’, aimed towards teenagers, in which he debated members of the Church of Satan and focused on satanic rock music and video games. By the late 1980s Larson even began to perform exorcisms live on air, and his show was able to reach around one hundred and seventy-five radio stations across America for two hours every day. However, Larson has faced criticism from his previous employees, who claimed that he watched the “computer screen for a running tally of donations even as he [counselled] the distressed” and “exploited the purported victims of satanic ritual abuse”. This shows that not all moral entrepreneurs were simply pushing a moral agenda; Larson seemed to be more concerned about commercial and financial gain, which does not fit in with the role of a moral entrepreneur as outlined by Cohen. Nevertheless, the volume of resources being produced by moral entrepreneurs in the 1980s, across multi-media platforms, were accessible to everyone across America. Furthermore, it also demonstrates how moral entrepreneurs utilised what Jason Bivins describes as “the religion of fear’s rhetoric”, which involves “popular discourse and imagery [being] manipulated for political purposes”. Fears over backward masking can also provide us with an example of how folk devils performed reactive deviance to their alleged personas; musicians like Iron Maiden began to purposefully include subliminal messages in their songs as a reaction to moral entrepreneurial claims. Bruce Dickinson, the lead singer of Iron Maiden, claimed that the backwards messages in their songs were “put there to deliberately make fun of the devil worship rumour […] this was a message for the Moral Majority”.

As has been explored in the previous chapter, cases of murder and serial killings continued to be associated to the influence of rock and heavy metal musicians. In the June of 1984, Ricky Kasso murdered his friend Gary Lauwers whilst under the influence of the psychedelic drug LSD. Kasso had known affiliations with a gang known as the ‘Knights of the Black Circle’, was a fan of Anton LaVey’s teachings of Satanism and enjoyed the music of AC/DC, Judas Priest and Black Sabbath. The New York Times reported that authorities believed the murder to have been part of a ritual, with the ‘Knights of the Black Circle’ being a “satanic cult”, and when Kasso committed suicide in prison his father was quoted by The Morning Call as saying “he wanted to die […] all he thought about was drugs and rock music”. Richard Ramirez was another example of serial killers and music being connected together, as we have seen in previous chapters with the Charles Manson and David Berkowitz murders. Ramirez murdered 14 victims from April 1984 to August 1985, each in a night-time home invasion in the areas of Los Angeles and San Francisco. Before Ramirez was caught by the police the press gave him the nickname of the ‘Night Stalker’, and in some of the crime scenes he painted satanic symbols. Most notably, Ramirez left behind a baseball cap at one of the crime scenes with the band AC/DC’s insignia on it, which spurred allegations in the press that it was heavy metal music that instigated his killing spree. Centre-leaning newspaper The Napa Valley Register published an article that explored the connections between the Night Stalker and his music tastes; they note how “AC/DC is a heavy metal rock band whose music makes repeated reference to devil worship, and some say the letters stand for Anti-Christ, Devil’s Child”. They further investigate lyrics from the AC/DC song ‘Night Prowler’, which they suggest “include some phrases strikingly suggestive of the Night Stalker’s murderous marauding”. In comparison to earlier connections between serial killers and rock music, as seen with Manson and Berkowitz, the press differed in their methods of reporting from noting the connections to conducting their own investigations thus drawing parallels between lyrics and crimes. This is in line with Cohen’s analysis of moral panics whereby the threat is disproportionately represented in the media in comparison to the threat it actually possesses; this becomes especially evident when put in context with the upcoming trials and congressional hearings of 1985.

Not only did musicians allegedly ‘influence’ the actions of murderers, but they also were blamed for causing youths to commit suicide due to the lyrics of their songs. In 1985 a lawsuit was filed against Ozzy Osbourne as his song ‘Suicide Solution’ was accused by the parents of teenager John McCollum for causing his suicide. This case is another example of newspapers analysing lyrics to rationalise horrendous events; the Auburn Journal published an article that stated Ozzy Osbourne had a hand in helping “push a teenager over the brink of depression to suicide with his satanic-influenced song”. He was taken to court over the wrongful death allegations, however, the case did not result in legal action. It would appear preposterous that music, over deteriorating mental health, would be blamed for causing someone to end their own lives. However, it must be considered that grieving parents in both trials needed to attach blame and explain the deaths of their loved ones. Nevertheless, the fact that musicians were accused for the actions of their fans demonstrates that the concern over the ‘threat’ was disproportionate to that actually caused. Moreover, these allegations, resulting in court action, could also represent the final stage of Cohen’s mode, where legal actors become involved with the moral panic, despite the fact that no change to society was realised.

One event that did result in legal action was the congressional hearing against musicians instigated by the Parents Music Resource Centre (PMRC) in 1985. The PMRC was formed in 1985 by the wives of government officials believing that “socially irresponsible songs and videos – particularly those associated with heavy metal – were a contributing factor in […] teenage pregnancy, sexual exploitation, drug and alcohol abuse, and suicide”. The culmination of events that I have spoken about thus far, from claims of backward masking to wrongful death lawsuits, finally resulted in the moral entrepreneurs and folk devils battling it out in the courtroom. Tipper Gore, the wife of Al Gore, who would later become vice president, was the cofounder of the PMRC which aimed to produce a label to be placed on album covers which would warn the listener of its contents. In the September of 1985, the Senate conducted a hearing which involved members of the PMRC, various senators and three prominent musicians: Dee Snider from Twisted Sister, Frank Zappa and John Denver. Members of the PMRC argued that “rock lyrics have turned from ‘I can’t get no satisfaction’ to ‘I’m going to force you at gunpoint to eat me alive”, to which Dee Snider replied that the PMRC were committing “character assassination and unfair lyrical interpretation”. When Tipper Gore claimed that the Twisted Sister song ‘Under the Blade’ was an example of sadomasochism, Snider replied that the song was written about a friend undergoing surgery, and “the only sadism, bondage and rape is in the mind of Ms. Gore”. While the PMRC trial aligns with Cohen’s model of moral panic as it represents legal action taking place against folk devils, it also delineates from Cohen’s theorisations because it allowed the folk devils to have a prominent voice in the court proceedings. Snider alluding that Tipper Gore, who as a ‘moral’ and religious woman, secretly thought about bondage must have caused great embarrassment, especially as the proceedings were broadcast all over the nation. This is representative of the folk devil holding power over the moral entrepreneur. Nevertheless, the PMRC succeeded and a Parental Advisory Sticker would be added to albums that were thought to contain explicit content.

Throughout the 1980s it is evident that the moral panic in society over rock and heavy metal musicians was strengthening. The alleged rise in satanic crimes, alongside the growing influence of conservative ideologies and increasing resources being published by moral entrepreneurs represents the panic being disproportionate to the threat in Cohen’s terms. Furthermore, the final stage of Cohen’s model, where the moral panic either results in legal action or subsides, is also seen in the 1980s with the wrongful death lawsuits and the PMRC congressional hearing. However, while the events of the 1980s compliment Cohen’s model, the next chapter will demonstrate that the story did not end at Cohen’s final stage.

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