10 Creepy Myths Surrounding Popular Songs
3. Stairway To Satan
Like Judas Priest, Led Zeppelin were also singled out for backmasking messages in songs. This time, the allegations were brought about by televangelist Paul Crouch, who accused the band of knowingly including satanic messages in their seminal classic ‘Stairway to Heaven’.
Supposedly, if you play part of the song backwards, Robert Plant says: “Here's to my sweet Satan/The one whose little path would make me sad, whose power is Satan/He will give those with him 666/There was a little toolshed where he made us suffer, sad Satan.”
If you reverse the segment in question, it’s hard to deny the similarities, but that’s arguably because we know what to look for.
Robert Plant and audio engineer Eddie Kramer dismissed the allegations, and nothing came of Crouch’s attempts to instigate a law that required records containing intentional backmasked messages to be labelled as such.