I wouldn't really put it past Jimmy Page to think of slipping something like this into a song; he's always been fascinated with black magick and even purchased Alestair Crowley's old cottage. We'll never really know for sure if it's legit, though. If you'll notice, you can't really make out any of the "reverse lyrics" until you've read them. The power of suggestion at work. Of course, Led Zeppelin (weird experiments by Page excluded) were pretty much only satanists in the sense of hedonistically having sex with a ton of girls, including more an few who were underage. They did enjoy their "mystique," though, until tragedies started cropping up in their lives, including the death of drummer John Bonham, and people starting whispering that Page had accidentally cursed them. I find the most intersting question to be, if it is fake, who the hell thought of listening to a Led Zeppelin album backwards? I mean, the thought certainly never occured to me until I heard the rumors.
There are a number of examples of this. Here's the Beatles Revolution #9, the part where John repeats the words "number nine" over and over http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Birdland/5430/revolutionrev.aiff Clearly he says "Turn me on, dead man", a reference to the "Paul is dead" legend. Another is Pink Floyd, from Empty Spaces http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Birdland/5430/emptyspaces.aiff Can you understand it? It's obviously intentional. Another one that is famous, yet unproven, is Queen's Another One Bites the Dust, although I have yet to find a copy file of the .wav. I've heard different versions, one that says "It's fun to smoke mar1juana", and one that says "I've decided to smoke mar1juana". Here's a page of other ones. http://www.reversespeech.com/music.shtml
Yeah the Floyd one is hysterical. "Hello, you have reached the backwards message." or something like that. Zeppelin may or may not be satanic....but one thing holds true: they are one of the best bands of all time.
"The Oz-man always came straight with his message!" "Another One Bites" the dust, backwards, sounds like "it's fun to smoke mar1juana!" What big pot-heads those cats from Queen were.
