.
Jeroen Offerman “The Stairway at St.Paul’s”
video, 2002/03
"For this video the artist practiced 3 months in a row to learn to sing Led
Zeppelins most famous song entirely backwards.
“The Stairway at St.Paul’s” is based on the hysteria that surrounded certain
music-recordings of the 60’s and the 70’s. Some rock bands, like the Beatles,
Judas Priest and Led Zeppelin were supposed to have put hidden messages in
their records that could only be heard when played backwards. These messages
though, would subconsciously be picked up by the listener who would then react
in response to them.
In this way the band Judas Priest ended up in a court case because their
records had ‘induced’ children to commit suicide. Also, the Beatles were
supposed to suggest through their records that Paul McCartney, one of their
main band members, had died in a car crash and was replaced by a look-a-like.
The most famous example though, is Led Zeppelin’s ‘Stairway to Heaven’, a
song about a woman buying herself a way in to heaven. The mystic lyrics seem
to urge us to follow the right path in life. But, as one line in the song already
says, “sometimes words have two meanings”, and so, when played backwards,
this song is supposed to urge us to worship evil.
It’s time to dive in to your record-collection and find out if it was all true. But
first let us watch this video. So turn up the volume and remember the first time
you smoked a cigarette…"
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