George Case - Here’s to My Sweet Satan: How the Occult Haunted Music, Movies and Pop Culture, 1966-1980

PRAISE FOR
HERES TO MY SWEET SATAN

If you think belief in the occult and supernatural faded in the late seventeenth century after the murderous Salem Witch Trials, think again. America went through a second wave of paranormal beliefs in the late twentieth century, resulting in disastrous moral panics over satanic cults and recovered memories of sexual abuse. Beliefs have consequences and George Case has documented this period in exquisite detail and compelling prose. The best book Ive read all year.

Michael Shermer, publisher of Skeptic magazine, monthly columnist for Scientific American, and author of Why People Believe Weird Things and The Moral Arc

George Case has assembled, contextualized and made clear more disparate occult references and examples across multiple disciplines than has been proposed in any other book on the subject thus far. Whats more, he brings back to the modern world the press reactions of the day, making for a lively read that takes us right back to the sixties and seventies. Heres to My Sweet Satan is a swift-moving read that re-conjures dozens of key story lines linking pop culture to the Satanic, that you thought you knew, but now realize you never knew this richly.

Martin Popoff, author of Who Invented Heavy Metal? and The Big Book of Hair Metal

Horns in the air! Case takes us to a veritable witches sabbat of obsession with satanic themes in late twentieth century culture. His well researched work encompasses everything from the growth of modern nihilistic philosophy to the horror gimmicks of 1970s toys. Get ready to break out your Black Sabbath albums, rewatch Rosemarys Baby and see contemporary culture in its darkest hues. Youre in for a hell of a ride.

W. Scott Poole, historian and author of Satan in America and Vampira: Dark Goddess of Horror

How the Occult Haunted Music, Movies
and Pop Culture, 19661980

George Case

Heres to My Sweet Satan
Copyright 2016 by George Case. All rights reserved.

Published by Quill Driver Books
An imprint of Linden Publishing
2006 South Mary Street, Fresno, California 93721
(559) 233-6633 / (800) 345-4447
QuillDriverBooks.com

Quill Driver Books and Colophon are trademarks of
Linden Publishing, Inc.

ISBN 978-1-61035-265-9

135798642

Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Case, George, 1967- author.

Title: Heres to my sweet Satan : how the occult haunted music, movies, and
pop culture 1966-1980 / George Case.

Description: Fresno : Quill Driver Books, 2016. | Includes bibliographical
references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2015042350 | ISBN 9781610352659 (hard cover : alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH: Occultism. | Arts. | Popular culture.

Classification: LCC BF1429 .C36 2016 | DDC 130.973--dc23

LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015042350

Forthwith from every squadron and each band

The heads and leaders thither haste where stood

Their great commander; godlike shapes and forms

Excelling human, princely dignities,

And powers that erst in Heaven sat on thrones;

Though of their names in heavnly records now

Be no memorial, blotted out and razed

By their rebellion, from the Books of Life.

Nor had they yet among the sons of Eve

Got them new names, till wandring oer the earth

Through Gods high sufferance for the trial of man,

By falsities and lies the greatest part

Of mankind they attempted to forsake

God their Creator, and th invisible

Glory of him that made them, to transform

Oft to the image of a brute, adorned

With gay religions full of pomp and gold,

And devils to adore for deities:

Then were they known to men by various names

And various idols through the heathen world.

John Milton,
Paradise Lost

When I was in high school in the late 1960s and early 1970s ,a craze swept the nation for playing vinyl records backwards in search of hidden messages allegedly buried within by rockers under the influence of more than just mind-altering substances. On a cheap turntable one could shift the speed switch midway between 331/3 and 45 to disengage the motor drive (while the amplifier remained active), then manually turn the record backward in hopes of plucking out of the noise something meaningful.

One of the eeriest comes from the Fab Fours White Album, by which time the lovable mop tops from Liverpool had morphed into darker incarnations of the Beatles, most notably in the nearly nonsensical Revolution No. 9. Forward, an ominously deep voice endlessly repeats number nine... number nine... number nine.... But spin the platter counterclockwise and you get turn me on, dead man... turn me on, dead man... turn me on, dead man....

To a wide-eyed school kid without an ounce of skepticism, this fueled the rumor then circulating that Paul McCartney was dead. You see, the future Sir Paul was actually killed in an automobile accident in 1966 and subsequently replaced by a look-alike. The clues were there in the albums, if you knew where to look. It didnt take us long. Sgt. Peppers A Day in the Life, for example, recounts the accident:

He blew his mind out in a car
He didnt notice that the lights had changed
A crowd of people stood and stared
Theyd seen his face before
Nobody was really sure if he was from the House of Lords.

The cover of the Abbey Road album, released late September 1969, shows the one-time Quarry Men walking across a street in what looks like a funeral procession. According to legend, John was dressed in white as the preacher, Ringo in black as the pallbearer, a barefoot and out-of-step Paul as the corpse (appropriately holding a cigarette), and George in work clothes as the gravedigger. In the background one sees a Volkswagen Beetle whose license plate reads 28IFthe age Paul would have been if he had not been killed in the 1966 accident. (Type into a search engine the word string Paul is dead for countless more examples.) As these things go, when legends become fact, it is the legend that gets printed, despite John Lennons disclaimer to Rolling Stone magazine in 1970: That was all bullshit, the whole thing was made up. But made up by whom?

Darker still were satanic messages purportedly buried in rock songs, most improbably (or was it?) in Led Zeppelins Stairway to Heaven. The stanza in question, when played forward, reads:

If theres a bustle in your hedgerow
Dont be alarmed now
Its just a spring clean for the May queen
Yes, there are two paths you can go by
But in the long run
Theres still time to change the road youre on.

Frankly, Im not sure what the lyrics mean forward, but when I was in high school this and many other now-classic rock tunes were deeply meaningful. (What did John mean when he said the walrus was Paul?) Play this portion of Jimmy Page and Robert Plants masterpiece in reverse and you get this:

Oh... heres to my sweet Satan
The one whose little path will make me sad
whose power is Satan
Hell give you... give you 666
There was a little tool shed where he made us suffer
sad Satan.

Interestingly, if you listen to this section backwards without the words on the screen, your brain will only pluck out a few words or fragments, such as Satan and 666 (or sex, sex, sex in some hearings). But bring up the reverse words on the screen and the lyrics are nearly as clear as when played forward (although, tellingly, different interpretations of the words yield equally clear lyrics). Its a striking example of what cognitive psychologists call priming: prime the brain to see or hear something by providing guiding cues (such as lyrics to accompanying vocals) and it will obey. I have long used this particular example in my public talks (see my first TED talk, for example), and there are entire web pages dedicated to finding reverse lyrics and words in songs and speeches, for example, reversespeech.com . (Most amusing is one of President Clintons speeches that when played in reverse supposedly reveals his peccadillo with a certain White House intern, as if that was the smoking gun needed to convict.)