More about the Judas Priest suicide thing..... on the left is how Ray Balknap and James Vance looked some time prior to this:Two days before Christmas in 1985, 20-year-old James and 18-year-old Raymond Belknap spent hours listening to Stained Class in Raymond's room. They drank a twelve-pack of beer and smoked marijuana. They made a suicide pact, then went on a rampage, tearing at the room's walls and smashing belongings.On the right is what James looked like after surgeons had tried (and failed) to reconstruct his face.
"The only things not broken in the room were the turntable and the albums," says Phyllis Vance.
Near dusk, the two went to the playground of a local church with Raymond's sawed-off 12-guage shotgun. Raymond Belknap, seated on a merry-go-round, placed the end of the shotgun under his chin and pulled the trigger, killing himself. A few minutes later, James pointed the same gun at his chin and fired. Somehow, the blast missed his brain and he lived.
Apparently he would ride his bicycle around town shocking people with his grotesque disfigurement. He later died in somewhat mysterious circumstances before the trial reached court.
Somewhere in the middle of this colossal page (scroll down to JULY 1990: Metal on trial), there's a comprehensive and entertaining account of the trial.
Some choice quotes:
It was originally about the track Heroes End - they tried to say the band were saying you could only be a hero if you killed yourself, till I had to give them the correct lyrics which is "why do heroes have to die?"... Then they changed their plea to subliminal messages on the album.
- Jayne Andrews, Management Co-ordinator for Judas Priest
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".
- Glenn Tipton, Judas Priest
I took the two-track master tape of Stained Class with me to a studio near the courthouse and played it backwards till I found something. It took about two minutes... On the track Exciter, during the chorus where it says "Stand by for Exciter / Salvation is his task", played backwards it said "I-I-I asked her for a peppermint / I-I-I asked for her to get one".
- Rob Halford, Judas Priest
The only subliminal message I would put on an album would be, "Buy seven copies".
- Bill Curbishley, Manager
We had to sit in this courtroom in Reno for six weeks. It was like Disneyworld. We had no idea what a subliminal message was - it was just a combination of some weird guitar sounds, and the way I exhaled between lyrics. I had to sing Better by You, Better Than Me in court, a cappella. I think that was when the judge thought, "What am I doing here? No band goes out of its way to kill its fans".
- Rob Halford
It's a sad that two people died -- even though they wanted it that way -- but it's quite offensive that these retarded Americans tried to hoist blame on to someone else. Americans and Christians should fuck off and leave heavy metal alone. Bah.
3 comments:
I saw the movie (documentary), the kid's family & lawyers were clearly nonplussed when Judas Priest turned up in court & were revealed to be a bunch of articulate, educated, middle aged Englishmen.
Heh, I remember that. They were very nonplussed.
I also liked these quotes:
"The very first day in court, one of the prosecution lawyers stood up wearing one of Ray Belknap's suits. It was just like Perry Mason, you know - this man standing in the clothes of a dead lad, holding the shotgun that had killed them, and he turned 'round and looked at us. That was the point when I finally realized how serious the whole thing was."
- Glenn Tipton
"Both of the prosecuting attorneys have children and we were giving them autographs and albums and all of those nice things during recesses, and it was quite strange to have to stand there and sign autographs for a person that's trying to destroy you"
- Rob Halford
And Bill Curbishley is, of course, brother of West Ham manager Alan Curbishley.
Post a Comment