Judas Priest: Satanic Panic, Censorship, Heavy Metal Suicide, and Defenders of the Faith

They helped create the genre of heavy metal, and then Satan and the censors tried to destroy them. Judas Priest defended the metal faithful on stage and in the courts, and became icons in the process. For a full list of contributors, visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠disgracelandpod.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.disgracelandpod.com/ This episode contains themes that may be disturbing to some listeners, including suicide. If you’re thinking about suicide, or are worried about a friend or loved one, call the Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255. To listen to Disgraceland ad free and hear an exclusive mini-episode about Judas Priest' drummer Dave Holland's notorious crime, become a Disgraceland All Access member at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠disgracelandpod.com/membership⁠⁠ disgracelandpod.com/membership⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Sign up for our newsletter and get the inside dirt on events, merch and other awesomeness - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠GET THE NEWSLETTER⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://mailchi.mp/doubleelvis/disgraceland-email-newsletter Follow Jake and DISGRACELAND: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.instagram.com/disgracelandpod/ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.youtube.com/@disgracelandpod ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠X⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://twitter.com/disgracelandpod (formerly Twitter) ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Facebook Fan Group⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.facebook.com/groups/491024204626127/ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠TikTok https://tiktok.com/disgracelandpod To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  This is exactly right.

• 0:13Speaker 01

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• 0:41Jake Brennan?

  I like a story with a twist as much as anyone, but some of the best traditions don't have one. They just started and kept going. That's something that's great about Chateau St. Michelle. They've been leading Washington wines since 1967 with wines that are balanced, expressive, and easy to enjoy. Choosing the right bottle shouldn't feel complicated. It should be something you open with confidence every time. So for once, here's a story with no twist, just a good bottle. Redefine your rituals with Chateau St. Michelle. Hey guys, time to dust off your detective skills while unwinding in the Caribbean on Virgin Voyages' second True Crime Voyage.

• 1:20Jake Brennan?

  Backed by popular demand, this five-night, adults-only escape sets sail March 20, 2027, to Grand Turk in the Beach Club at Bimini. The difference between this year and last will be that I will be on the cruise this year, along with Zeph, and he and I will be taping a live version of DisgraceLand, along with podcast hosts from Exactly Right's Buried Bones, Podcast of the Year Award winners WiseCrack, and other fan favorites. Get on this cruise with us, guys, and enjoy live podcast recordings, behind-the-scenes storytelling, exclusive meet-and-greets, and immersive true crime programming throughout this one-of-a-kind voyage. Head over to www.virginvoyages.com/truecrime to secure your spot.

• 2:02Speaker 03

  This episode contains content that may be disturbing to some listeners. Please check the show notes for more information. DisgraceLand is a production of Double Elvis.

• 2:20Jake Brennan?

  This is a story about death, about suicide, censorship, idolatry, and the ruination of souls. It's a story about Satan and Saint Michael, about leather studs and cloved hooves, and about heavy metal, specifically about heavy metal icons Judas Priest, a band who made great music. Unlike that music I played for you at the top of the show, that wasn't great music. That was a preset loop from my Mellotron called "Dead-Eyed and Musclebound MK2." I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to "Say You, Say Me" by Lionel Richie.

• 3:06Jake Brennan?

  And why would I play you that specific slice of "It Ain't Easy Like Sunday Morning Cheese Anymore Could I Afford It?"

• 3:15Jake Brennan?

  Because that was the number-one song in America on December 23rd, 1985. And that was the day that two young metalheads put a shotgun to their heads and threatened not only their own existence, but the future existence of heavy metal. On this episode, suicide, censorship, satanic panic, Saint Michael and the defenders of the faith, Judas Priest. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is DisgraceLand.

• 4:10Jake Brennan?

  The young rocker didn't know it yet, but he was a metalhead. It was 1969, and that term wouldn't come about for another decade or so. But here in this Birmingham, England church, he felt the heaviness. It tangled with a very real sense of beauty, and that beauty was working hard for itself, like a rare sunny day in the dreary Midlands where he grew up. The light in the dark, hope in gloom. And inside that contrast, there was irony. After all, this was a funeral.

• 4:47Jake Brennan?

  How could a funeral be beautiful? Especially a funeral for a kid? He didn't know, it just was. The saints above, their images cut and kilmed into the stained glass windows stared down at him. The young metalhead knew that the intended effect was warmth, but right now, in his dirty denim with his long hair, all he felt was judgment, sitting among the square working class members of this community. He tried to remember the Ten Commandments. "Thou shall not kill," that was one of them, he was certain, but which one? And was there a commandment that forbade one from killing oneself?

• 5:31Jake Brennan?

  The van rattled violently. This machine wasn't built for speed, not this amount of speed, anyway. And its driver wasn't built for this world, or so the kid thought. But that was okay, because this world was about to end. That was a week ago, over in Hampstead Hill. The kid couldn't take it. He drove his van as fast as he could into a telephone kiosk, on purpose. No amount of light was going to overcome his darkness, and there was no more hope, only gloom. Evil had triumphed over good, despair and certitude over faith.

• 6:12Jake Brennan?

  And now, at just eighteen years of age, young John Perry was dead. And so were the prospects of Birmingham's most promising young band of rockers, Judas Priest. "It was a damn shame," thought the young metalhead. Would suicide kill Judas Priest? Dead? Hanging from a tree in the field of blood like Judas Iscariot? Or would Judas Priest resurrect itself like Lazarus? Or better yet, like the man himself, the first rock star, Jesus Christ?

• 6:48Jake Brennan?

  Resurrection inspired. Maybe the young metalhead would replace John Perry on guitar and Judas Priest, should they continue? Thoughts of resurrection continued, and bled out from the organist's stabs at the mighty pipe organ, a soundtrack of ambition and grief. And the organist rolled his head atop his slight shoulder frame as he played. He looked up in a trance, up at the icons in stained glass, and the saints and disciples staring down at the mourners. Jesus's disciples, the world's first groupies. "That was it. Thou shalt have no other gods before me." That was the first commandment: no hero worship, no idols.

• 7:32Jake Brennan?

  It seemed strange to the young metalhead, looking up at the Bible's heroes looking down at him. He supposed it was all easily explainable: the saints and disciples weren't being worshipped. But what about Saint Michael? The congregation leaned into the petition as one.

• 7:48Speaker 04

  Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray. And do thou, O prince of the heavenly host, by the power of God, cast into hell Satan and all the evil spirits who prowl about the world, seeking the ruin of souls. Amen.

• 8:13Jake Brennan?

  The ruin of souls? Now that was some heavy shit. Saint Michael wasn't being worshipped. He was being called upon to protect us. But what about the rock stars he and his friends worshipped and idolized? What about Jimi Hendrix? And that young local guitar god in the making, Tony Iommi from Black Sabbath? Was he, this young metalhead here, guilty of hero worship himself? Of idolatry? Of putting his gods before his god? Or was he just a disciple, maybe someday an archangel himself, or a heavy metal saint? K.K. Downing, guitar player for Judas Priest, sent to protect rockers everywhere from the

• 8:58Jake Brennan?

  wickedness of shitty pop music? Or was he just another evil spirit, wandering through the world for the ruin of souls?

• 9:12Jake Brennan?

  Leather boys, big studs, S&M giants, beasts among weaker thans. Rob Halford, Judas Priest singer, papered the wall of the Coleherne Arms pub, a good distance from its iconic J-shaped bar, and took in the scene. Wild, gorgeous gay men everywhere, and all there for the same thing: liberation, in whatever form they desired. Almost anything went within the walls of Coleherne Arms. That is, of course, if they could keep the coppers out. Homosexuality was partially decriminalized in England in 1967, but that meant that it was still partially criminal in the late 70s, so best keep your head on a swivel for

• 9:56Jake Brennan?

  any raiding bobbies looking to crack skulls. Violence, the threat of it, and the stories about it, the thrill of it, was always prevalent. The thrill was why Rob was there. The men in leather, they were something to look at, or to look up at, rather. The way they dressed, head to toe in black leather and studs over their muscular physiques. All of their muscles alive, except their faces. Their faces expressed dead calm, like bedrock, but their eyes reflected fire and dominance. Then they moved through the club like big game, slow, plodding, and oblivious to the hunt.

• 10:38Jake Brennan?

  Disco blared, men made small talk about safe words and sex crimes. Where the best amyl nitrate could be procured. News of mutilations out by the docks, floor shows over in the States. New York City's rough trade was a different cut. Manhattan's Anvil nightclub supposedly featured Chris Goat Fists fucking the willing and able on all fours right there in public on Saturday nights. In the Anvil, it wasn't even a full-time gay bar. Not that New York City didn't have its problems. It did. But London was different. London was more conservative. And here in the Coleherne Arms, it was strictly leather.

• 11:19Jake Brennan?

  No policemen, no firemen, no construction workers, and no fucking Indians. It was all leather. Just like where Rob Halford grew up, 125 miles away in Walsall, home of a thriving leather manufacturing industry. A town where not everyone was gay like Rob, but where most everyone wore leather. And now, so too would the straight boys in Rob's band, Judas Priest. 1980 was on the horizon, and so were Judas Priest's heavy metal fortunes. They'd broken out of their hometown of Birmingham with their debut album, Rock-a-Rolla, and then a string of solid 70s long players.

• 12:03Jake Brennan?

  But in order to truly break internationally, in order to achieve heavy metal icon status like Black Sabbath, their Birmingham predecessors who literally invented the genre of heavy metal from their shared hometown. In order to do that, Judas Priest needed something different. Something beyond big riffs, defiant boogie, and vengeful screams. They needed great music. Yes, and their next album, British Steel, was indeed filled with great music, particularly the planned singles, "Breaking the Law" and "Living After Midnight." But if Judas Priest wanted to be iconic, they not only had to sound iconic, they needed to look iconic.

• 12:47Jake Brennan?

  KK Downing, Priest guitar player, encouraged Rob Halford to lean into not only his leather roots from back in Walsall, but his leather passion at the Coleherne Arms as well. And at all the other leather bars Rob, as a closeted gay man, frequented while the band was on tour. And thus, Judas Priest's badass heavy metal image was born. There it was, right there on the back of 1980's British Steel. Rob Halford decked out from head to toe in skintight leather, straddling the microphone stand. KK Downing, mid-slash of his Flying V guitar with studded leather bands running up his forearms across the flesh of his exposed midriff. Glenn Tipton on his black strap,

• 13:30Jake Brennan?

  with his black leather jacket open to reveal his chest. Bassist Ian Hill holding it down, clad fully in black like some hard-as-nail Saxon warrior, propelled by Dave Holland leering over his black kit. The look was, and still is, iconic. It inspired a heavy metal uniform of sorts. Millions of metalheads, most of them hetero, a minority of them surely homophobic, from the day British Steel was released in April of 1980, would dress in the same leather and studs Rob Halford nicked from the gay leather bars that he hung out in. Once again, K.K. Downing was not oblivious to the irony. But he, like the rest of Judas Priest, who at the dawn of the new decade were in the

• 14:15Jake Brennan?

  midst of unprecedented success, was oblivious to the release of a book from that same year. A book called "Michelle Remembers." A book that detailed violence and wandering evil spirits in a way that no leather bar could ever portend. A book that would create in the United States and Canada a satanic panic. One that would ensnare Judas Priest, just like the devil himself, in the ruin of not one, but two teenage souls.

• 15:09Speaker 05

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• 15:39Jake Brennan?

  I like a story with a twist as much as anyone, but some of the best traditions don't have one. They just started and kept going. That's something that's great about Chateau St. Michelle. They've been leading Washington wine since 1967 with wines that are balanced, expressive, and easy to enjoy. Choosing the right bottle shouldn't feel complicated. It should be something you open with confidence every time. So for once, here's a story with no twist, just a good bottle. Redefine your rituals with Chateau St. Michelle.

• 16:10Speaker 06

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 16:25Speaker 07

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic, in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 16:36Speaker 06

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone.

• 16:41Speaker 08

  One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.

• 16:47Speaker 06

  So join us and hear their stories and more, because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast, on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeart Radio app today.

• 17:12Jake Brennan?

  Satan wants you, and he's coming for you in a million different ways. Sometimes he's successful. Sometimes Saint Michael and his celestial choir fight him off and drown him out. Michelle remembers, a book published in 1980, written by psychiatrist Larry Pasder and his patient, Michelle Smith, would have the world believe that Satan was coming for their children at their daycare centers. The book detailed Michelle's story as recounted to Pasder through what was called recovered memory therapy, a practice that has been since denounced by the psychiatric community. Regardless, Michelle detailed her satanic possession

• 17:54Jake Brennan?

  from the age of five, when her parents handed her over to a satanic cult, or her daycare center in Saskatchewan, a Canadian province.

• 18:05Jake Brennan?

  Mutilations, ritual murders, the killing and torture of little children, babies even. It led to a case known as "The Martinsville Nightmare", in which Michelle's daycare center was investigated for satanic ritual abuse. Ultimately, nine people from that daycare center faced charges despite there being no real evidence of any wrongdoing. Two women spent years in prison before being exonerated. Several men, under pressure, pleaded guilty to lesser charges. And decades later, the prosecutions were condemned as a miscarriage of justice and the convictions were overturned.

• 18:43Jake Brennan?

  But of course, the damage was by then long since done. The lack of evidence that led to these convictions didn't stop law enforcement in Canada and in the United States, due to the popularity of the Martinsville Nightmare case and of the book Michelle remembers, from instituting mandatory training sessions for their officers on how to identify the signs of satanic ritual abuse. Throughout North American suburbia, cops, teachers, and others in positions of authority were all keyed up on satanic panic and on high alert, searching for signs of devil worship among their children and those influencing their kids.

• 19:24Jake Brennan?

  And according to the norms in charge, there was plenty to look for: horned hands, goat-headed figures, occult symbols, ritualistic ephemera, candles, bondage, leather. It sounded like the cover of an early 80s heavy metal album. Judas Priest didn't go in for the whole "horned hands, goat head" bit, but that didn't mean others like Venom didn't. As far as other occult symbolism, both figurative and literal, AC/DC released an album that was entirely black, and they wrote it up the charts partly on the back of a single entitled "Hell's Bells". This album, Back in Black, became the best-selling record of all time, only to be supplanted

• 20:06Jake Brennan?

  shortly thereafter by none other than Michael Jackson and his album "Thriller". Def Leppard, another promising heavy metal band from Sheffield, England, a band that toured with Judas Priest in their early years, released a record in 1983 called "Pyromania", the cover of that record, a building in the crosshairs, its top floors engulfed in a hellish inferno.

• 20:30Jake Brennan?

  And of course, there was Judas Priest. From British Steel in 1980 onward, the band's image leaned even more fully into the leather and studs.

• 20:43Jake Brennan?

  Walk into any metalhead's bedroom in the early 1980s, and he or she was likely to have AC/DC, Def Leppard, and Judas Priest albums lying around. But bands like AC/DC and Def Leppard sold massively. Judas Priest did not. Their records sold well, but as far as popularity goes, compared to the Young Brothers and the boys from Sheffield, Priest was second tier at the record store checkout line. Their excellent album, Defenders of the Faith, only sold 800,000 copies upon release. But none of this means Priest weren't rock stars. They absolutely were. And at this particular moment in 1985, while in the Bahamas, posted up at a resort bar

• 21:26Jake Brennan?

  on break from recording their follow-up to Defenders of the Faith, the band was surrounded by groupies. And not only were they signing autographs and signing the breasts of their autograph seekers, they were also signing the babies of one of the women who sought their autographs, literally signing the heads of twin newborns.

• 21:47Jake Brennan?

  But such hero worship was quickly brought to an end by the news on the television screen up above the bar. There was Tipper Gore, the wife of Democratic Senator Al Gore from Tennessee, and the head of a new organization called the PMRC, short for the Parents Music Resource Center, an organization whose mission was to increase, quote, "parental control over children's access to music deemed to have violent, drug-related, or sexual themes," unquote. The question was, though, who decides which content is harmful and which isn't? Essentially, the PMRC was a censorship organization created by a bored housewife from Tennessee.

• 22:32Jake Brennan?

  Joseph Coors, the owner of Coors Beers, and Mike Love, the singer from the Beach Boys, helped fund the PMRC.

• 22:41Jake Brennan?

  But before Tipper Gore felt her calling to found such an organization, she was sitting in rush hour traffic in Washington DC with her 11-year-old daughter, Carrie. Carrie wanted to listen to the new cassette Tipper had bought for her, "Purple Rain" by Prince and the Revolution. The slinky sexy beat kicked the song in. And Tipper nodded her head behind the wheel, no doubt out of time. Her daughter seated next to her grooved innocently. The first verse started, and Prince sang. "I knew a girl named Nikki. I guess you could say she was a sex feed." Wait a minute, what? What did he just say? Before the senator's wife could register what was happening,

• 23:24Jake Brennan?

  Prince hit the second line of the first verse. "I met her in a hotel lobby masturbating with a magazine." What the hell was happening? Tipper slammed the stop eject button on the car stereo. She then pulled over to examine the cassette art and find the lyrics to make sure she wasn't hearing things. But she was out of luck. The lyrics weren't printed on the "Purple Rain" album. And Tipper Gore would have to do her research at a later date, without her daughter by her side, perhaps with the good senator, Al, behind closed doors. This was the backdrop to the testimony Tipper Gore was now delivering in front of the US Senate on live television. Her and her colleagues' words being broadcast out across the bar about some of that Bahamian

• 24:09Jake Brennan?

  bars clientele at the moment, the members of Judas Priest. Susan Baker, Tipper Gore's co-founder at the PMRC, and the wife of then-Treasury Secretary James Baker, presented briefing materials to the senators that fingered Judas Priest as part of the problem. Particularly as it pertained to the issue of sadomasochism and the occult in the genre of heavy metal. It seemed that the PMRC had quickly expanded their self-assigned mandate from warnings about violence, drugs, and sex to include the occult as well as the influence of the devil in popular music. I have no way of proving it, but I would bet a healthy amount of cash that Susan Baker

• 24:52Jake Brennan?

  and Tipper Gore have been part of some DC Wives book club that recommended the book Michelle remembers at one point before the formation of the PMRC. Regarding the occult, i.e. Satanism, other metal bands in addition to Judas Priest, Wasp, and Venom, to name two, were listed as part of the PMRC's notorious Filthy Fifteen, a list of fifteen songs by artists from all genres that the PMRC found to be egregiously objectionable. The artists, the songs, and the objectionable lyrical content went as follows. Number one, Prince, Darling Nikki, Sex and Masturbation.

• 25:33Jake Brennan?

  Number two on the list, Sheena Easton, Sugar Walls, lyrical content that they found offensive was sex. Judas Priest coming in at number three, Eat Me Alive, supposedly offensive lyrical content, sex and violence. Number four, Vanity, Strap On Robbie Baby, sex. Number five, Motley Crue, Bastard, violence and language. Number six, AC/DC, Let Me Put My Love Into You, sex. Number seven, Twisted Sister, We're Not Gonna Take It, violence. Number eight, Madonna, Dress You Up, sex. Number nine, Wasp, Animal (Fuck Like a Beast), sex, language, violence.

• 26:15Jake Brennan?

  Number ten, Def Leppard, High and Dry (Saturday Night), drug and alcohol use. Number eleven, Merciful Fate, Into the Coven, the lyrics supposedly repped the occult. Number twelve, Black Sabbath, Trashed, drug and alcohol use. Number thirteen, Mary Jane Girls, In My House, sex. Fourteen, Venom, Possessed, the occult. Number fifteen, Cyndi Lauper, She Bop, sex and masturbation.

• 26:44Jake Brennan?

  Now, the lyrics to Judas Priest's "Eat Me Alive" are kinda lame, if I'm being honest. They sorta read like a sophomoric stab at Prince's sexuality. The lyrics are comical. They go, "Bound to deliver as you give and I collect, squealing in passion as the rod of steel injects." Okay dude, try saying that to your wife after date night this weekend when you're hoping to get laid and see how far you get. "I'm not gay, but I would bet the dudes don't find this hot in any real way either, even the Leather Boys. I'm sure they have their own version of over the top, but I'm betting it's less silly than the rod of steel injects." To his credit, Rob Halford likened the song's ridiculously over-sexualized lyrics to Spinal Tap.

• 27:29Jake Brennan?

  He said that the song was tongue-in-cheek, about a consensual, over-the-top sexual fantasy. "My point in all of this, I guess, is that I find the inclusion of 'Eat Me Alive', along with a couple others on this list of filthy 15, positively laughable. Including such a cartoonish come-on on the list speaks directly to the fundamental unseriousness of Tipper Gore and her organization, and the senators who took her seriously, for that matter." At the hearing, Senator Paula Hawkins, a Republican from Florida, cited Judas Priest by name, no doubt looking for whatever free press and coveted TV time she could gin up. And the senator described Judas Priest as, quote, "representative of the most extreme

• 28:11Jake Brennan?

  examples of violent and sexual content in rock." With this hearing, the PMRC was trying to get the record industry to agree to a content warning system. "A label on albums with lyrics these suburban moms deem sexually explicit, violent, drug-related, or otherwise offensive." A couple other things came out of this hearing. "One, the great Frank Zappa testified against the PMRC and pretty much torched them. 'The PMRC proposal is an ill-conceived piece of nonsense which fails to deliver any real benefits to children, infringes the civil liberties of people who are not children, and promises to keep the courts busy for years,' he said."

• 28:57Jake Brennan?

  The PMRC was eager to have John Denver testify, thinking that he, being the wholesome, bespectacled singer-songwriter that he was, would side with them. But that ploy backfired. Denver testified that censorship was a slippery slope, recalling how his own innocuous song, "Rocky Mountain High," had once been falsely accused of promoting drug use. However, despite such testimony, the RIAA, that's the Recording Industry Association of America, was in fact moved to include a warning sticker on records deemed to contain explicit content—the now infamous black-and-white parental advisory label.

• 29:39Jake Brennan?

  In an exchange with Republican Senator Slade Gordon from Washington, Frank Zappa was asked about the supposed existence of "subliminal messages on albums: secret messages planted there by musicians to inspire children to turn to the devil." Zappa replied correctly that "no empirical evidence existed to prove subliminal messaging existed on rock or heavy metal or any other records." Back in the Bahamas, K.K. Downing of Judas Priest leaned back on his beachside barstool and considered what had just transpired on CNN concerning his band. It was all rubbish.

• 30:23Jake Brennan?

  The PMRC, and the senators who were buying into their bullshit, and the record industry that was caving to their arbitrary censorship demands, were painting him, and his bandmates, and his friends and fellow musicians, as evildoers, as degenerates prowling about for the ruin of souls. K.K. Downing wasn't in league with Satan. Neither were any of the other groups mentioned at that hearing. And that includes Venom, despite their song entitled "In League With Satan." K.K. Downing was in this business to sell records, to be a heavy metal icon, like Tony Iommi before him, and Jimi Hendrix before him. And despite whatever so-called negative press this hearing would lay at the feet of Judas

• 31:06Jake Brennan?

  Priest, K.K. was smart enough to know that warning labels on records would only mean more record sales. He smiled and sipped his cocktail.

• 31:20Jake Brennan?

  Thousands of miles away, in a working-class bedroom in Sparks, Nevada, two metalheads, 18-year-old Raymond Bellknap and 20-year-old James Vance, lay back on the shag rug, stoned out of their minds, and took in the sounds of Judas Priest's stained glass while the devil readied himself.

• 31:47Speaker 09

  We'll be right back after this word, word, word.

• 31:55Speaker 01

  OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 32:23Jake Brennan?

  I like a story with a twist as much as anyone, but some of the best traditions don't have one. They just started and kept going. That's something that's great about Chateau St. Michelle. They've been leading Washington wine since 1967 with wines that are balanced, expressive, and easy to enjoy. Choosing the right bottle shouldn't feel complicated. It should be something you open with confidence every time. So for once, here's a story with no twist, just a good bottle. Redefine your rituals with Chateau St. Michelle.

• 32:54Speaker 06

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 33:08Speaker 07

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 33:19Speaker 06

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone.

• 33:24Speaker 08

  One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.

• 33:30Speaker 06

  So join us and hear their stories and more, because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat, it's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At The Table, the food allergy podcast on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At The Table and start listening on the free iHeart radio app today.

• 33:53Jake Brennan?

  It was the unforgivable sin, despair. Judas Priest didn't say that. The whiskey priest said that. The main character from Graham Greene's excellent 1940 novel, The Power and the Glory.

• 34:11Jake Brennan?

  Raymond Bellna and James Vance, 45 years later, had no doubt never heard that literary quote. But they had heard Judas Priest. And right now, on December 23rd, 1985, they were loaded up on weed and cans of cheap domestic beer, endlessly spinning Judas Priest's 1978 album, Stained Glass. Specifically, they were spinning Priest's cover of Spooky Tooth's "Better By You, Better Than Me," the third song on side one.

• 34:42Jake Brennan?

  Life sucked for Raymond and James, and the Judas Priest records seemed to confirm that fact. Or at least, it soundtrack the confirmation they received from the drugs and the alcohol.

• 34:54Jake Brennan?

  Raymond had been telling anyone who'd listen about the despair he'd come to accept as his lot. No job, no girl. So for young Raymond here, that meant no nothing. James was in the same boat. But James, being the older of the two, was the idea man. He had a solution. They'd kill themselves. Fuck this. Fuck life. Fuck worrying about the future. Fuck never getting laid. James was serious. He'd do it if Raymond would. And who was Raymond to argue? James always knew what was best. It was James who turned Raymond onto Judas Priest. Raymond wanted to know. When? Fucking now, dickwad!

• 35:39Jake Brennan?

  Oh, okay. Raymond was surprised, but... He was still in. James grabbed his stepdad's sawed-off twelve-gauge. Out back, there was an old Pentecostal church. And Raymond pulled some beers from the fridge, and they both stumbled outdoors toward the church's playground. It was the right thing to do, James explained. There was no fucking cavalry coming for them, and no guardian angels, no celestial choir, no intercession from Saint Michael. Just gloom.

• 36:10Jake Brennan?

  And who was Raymond to argue? They sat on the church playground's rickety merry-go-round.

• 36:17Jake Brennan?

  Raymond had to go first, James explained. Raymond took James's word as gospel. He grabbed the twelve-gauge, crushed what was left of his beer, pointed the shotgun to his throat. And James looked on, half in shock, half with morbid curiosity. Raymond's eyes tightened into a focus James hadn't seen in weeks. And James nodded as if to vouchsafe the pact. And Raymond pulled the trigger.

• 36:46Jake Brennan?

  The top of his head blasted up above the merry-go-round and rained down quickly on the scrubby hallowed ground. Fear fired its way up into James's chest, speeding his heart to a rate he'd never felt. Panic momentarily overtook despair. Flight had vanquished whatever fight James hadn't reserved. He knew, he'd be blamed for this. He couldn't accept that. He grabbed the shotgun from his friend's death-clutch, pointed the gun under his own chin, and he looked around the churchyard. He looked beyond, to his stepfather's house. And beyond that, to Sparks, Nevada. And all he saw... Was despair. And that's... When James pulled the trigger.

• 37:43Jake Brennan?

  All right, this goes, we're about 80% through this Judas Priest story, and we haven't touched on one of the darkest chapters yet, the shocking arrest of Judas Priest drummer Dave Holland on charges of indecent assault and attempted rape. The details and the outcome, they don't quite fit into this story we're telling here in this main episode, but they're too important and too disturbing to ignore. That's why today's exclusive mini episode is all about that Dave Holland story and what really happened and how it shook Judas Priest fans to their core. To hear it, you gotta be a DisgraceLand All-Access member. It's $5.99 at disgracelandpod.com and it unlocks ad-free episodes plus more exclusives just like this one. All right, back to our story.

• 38:33Jake Brennan?

  Famed record producer Eddie Kramer, about as expert a witness as one could get on the art and the science of recording technology, sat in his studio with the members of Judas Priest. They were painstakingly analyzing the sound of their version of Spooky Tooth's "Better By You, Better Than Me" being played backward. Eddie Kramer and the band were engaged in this ridiculous exercise because Judas Priest and their record label CBS were being sued in civil court by the families of James Vance and Raymond Belknap. Raymond Belknap died, but James Vance survived, albeit horribly disfigured, and he claimed that Judas Priest's lyrics gave him the idea for the suicide pact. The suit claimed

• 39:16Jake Brennan?

  that the band had purposefully included the phrase "do it" in its recording of "Better By You, Better Than Me." Making the allegation more absurd was the fact that prosecutors were claiming Judas Priest did this in a way that allowed for the phrase to be heard only if their record's stained class was played backward, and that furthermore, the band, Rob Halford, K.K. Downing, and the rest of them, did this to incite children to kill themselves.

• 39:45Jake Brennan?

  As insane as this sounds, at the time, in 1980, this was quite serious business. The satanic panic that had taken root a decade earlier was still very much part of the public consciousness. Ozzy Osbourne had gone through his own trial four years earlier over his song Suicide Solution. Thankfully, the judge dismissed the case citing Ozzy's protection under the Constitution's First Amendment guaranteeing freedom of speech. Still, that decision meant nothing as far as Judas Priest was concerned. This was an entirely different matter. Records everywhere were still being affixed with the PMRC's Toothless Parental Guidance sticker while America was in the midst of a nasty culture

• 40:30Jake Brennan?

  war between religious conservatives and liberal baby boomers grabbing institutional power in ways and numbers they'd never had before. The stakes were very real. If the prosecution was successful in proving that Judas Priest was guilty, responsible for the deaths of two young metalheads, and on the hook for the 6.2 million the dead kid's parents were seeking, then the fate of heavy metal was very much up in the air. It's doubtful that, in this environment, with this type of financial risk, that record labels would continue to back heavy metal bands. And this would then spell death for the genre as a viable commercial form of music. In other words, Priest, Def Leppard, even Ozzy and all the rest would all be fucked.

• 41:15Jake Brennan?

  Talk about despair. The band members and Judas Priest were a mess. For one thing, two of their fans were dead. And the idea that they wanted their fans dead was patently absurd. And if the band was defeated in this civil court case, they would be the ones responsible for killing the careers of countless heavy metal musicians, including their own. Such an outcome would ensure that Judas Priest would land far short of icon status. Hell, in this scenario, they'd not even be martyrs. If proven guilty, they feared that in the eyes of the heavy metal community, they'd be something more akin to their namesake: Judas, the ultimate betrayer.

• 42:00Jake Brennan?

  And so, it was Priest guitarist Glenn Tipton's idea to go into the studio with Eddie Kramer. He later said of his thinking at the time: "It's a fact that if you play speech backwards, some of it will seem to make sense." "So I asked permission to go into a studio and find some perfectly innocent phonetic flukes." "The lawyers didn't want to do it, but I insisted." "We bought a copy of the Stained Class album in a local record shop, "went into the studio, recorded it to tape, turned it over and played it backwards." "Right away, we found, 'Hey ma, my chair's broken,' and 'Give me a peppermint and help me keep a job.'"

• 42:40Jake Brennan?

  These findings were an extension of Frank Zappa's argument against the PMRC's absurd claim that musicians were including harmful, subliminal messages on their albums. "The whole issue of hidden messages," Frank said, "backward masking and all that. "If you play any record backwards long enough, you'll eventually hear what you want to hear. "It's as safe as looking at clouds. People see what they want. It's not scientific and it's not serious." The judge in the case against Judas Priest apparently agreed with Frank Zappa, and with Glenn Tipton in the defense, ruling that "subliminal messages, if they exist, "are not protected speech under the First Amendment." But in this case, no evidence was presented that Judas Priest placed subliminal messages

• 43:23Jake Brennan?

  intentionally or subliminally to cause this tragic event.

• 43:29Jake Brennan?

  In the end, the case was dismissed, and Judas Priest and heavy metal prevailed. The band's next album, Painkiller, their first with new drummer Scott Travis, was released in 1990. But despite it being an incredible achievement of heavy metal awesomeness, Rob Halford departed the band a few years afterward. He was replaced by Tim "The Ripper" Owens, while Rob pursued a career making heavy music with other musicians. In 1998, unprompted, in a television interview with MTV's Kurt Loder, Rob Halford, apropos of nothing, blurted: "A lot of homophobia still exists in the music world, in all kinds of music.

• 44:11Jake Brennan?

  "I think it's time to break down that barrier. I'm gay." Most of us in the heavy metal community at the time shrugged and said, "Yeah, no shit. The leather and studs kinda gave it away nearly two decades ago, dude." Regardless, back in 1998, coming out was an act of courage from Rob Halford when much of America still held on to its backward ideas about homosexuality. Who knows what Tipper Gore thought? But the metal community continued to embrace Rob Halford, just as it always had. Doubly so, when he rejoined Judas Priest in the early 2000s. And now, when this not-so-young-anymore metalhead sits in his pew on Sundays and

• 44:54Jake Brennan?

  looks up at the stained-glass saints staring down at him, he sees the church's defender, St. Michael, and is reminded of one of his favorite live metal albums, and he wonders, "Which metal bands deserve the vaunted status of heavy metal icon?" His mind goes to Black Sabbath, the founders, but then also very quickly to Judas Priest, like St. Michael, the defenders of the faith, a band that Tipper Gore and other evildoers prowling about for the ruin of souls once labeled "a disgrace." I'm Jake Brennan, and this is DisgraceLand.

• 45:52Jake Brennan?

  Okay, thanks for hanging with me and Judas Priest and St. Michael. If you want more of this story, if you want to know what the hell happened with the band's drummer Dave Holland in the sexual assault cases sent into prison, you can nab that story in the DisgraceLand mini-episode coming up next in your feeds, but you need to be an All-Access member, and if you ain't, it's easy to sign up. Just go to disgracelandpod.com, sign up there with either Apple Podcasts or Patreon, and unlock this and more exclusive content along with ad-free listening and access to connect with the disco community of music obsessives in the DisgraceLand chat. Your support is very much appreciated. Okay, question of the week, duh. Greatest metal band of all time. Who is it and why? Priest fans, I want to hear from you. Sabbath, which Sabbath? Ozzy, Dio? What are we talking here? Metallica, Slayer? Who? Who is it? Let me know.

• 46:37Jake Brennan?

  Get at me. Let's duke it out in the after party. 617-906-6638. Leave me a voicemail or send me a text with your answers, and you might hear yourself in our bonus episode coming up right after this. At DisgraceLandPod on the socials. [email protected], electronic mail. All right, here comes some credits. DisgraceLand was created by yours truly and is produced in partnership with Double Elvis. Credits for this episode can be found on the show notes page at disgracelandpod.com. Rate and review the show and follow us on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and Facebook at DisgraceLandPod and on YouTube at youtube.com slash at DisgraceLandPod. Rockerola.

• 47:18Speaker 10

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• 47:21Jake Brennan?

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• 47:52Speaker 11

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• 48:05Speaker 09

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• 48:48Speaker 09

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