Stained Glass
[2005] Interview with Wilson
Bryan Key This one particular album, [Judas
Priest’s] Stained Class, which was the subject of the case – these boys
had listened to it and committed suicide. Six hours, over and over and over
again. They knew the words, they knew everything about it. Then they took the
shotgun and went down to the churchyard. One blew his head off.....So
[the attorneys] gave me a record [Stained Class] and I took it home. Wow! There
was all kinds of stuff hidden in that thing! The theme of this whole genre of
music was suicide… We took the lyrics and transcribed them – I don’t think
they’d ever been transcribed – and began to analyse them: ‘who’s talking to who
about what?’.....
Well, [Better by You, Better than Me] was
inducement to suicide … The total content of that thing was subliminal. I
analysed the lyrics. What does it mean? OK, it’s a young man, talking to Satan,
his god, asking Satan to talk to his mother and tell her what a noble thing his
life had been, how good he was. Because he was going to kill himself. Now, it’s
there. It’s not a conjecture, or an opinion thing. I mean, you can cite that out
of the lyrics. …
Then [there were the] embeds: I found that one voice
that was put in, I did a spectroscopic analysis of it, it was Halford the lead
singer and in between the phrasing, the singer takes a breath and in between the
phrasing they put ‘Do it! Do it! Do it! Do it!’ at increasing levels in the
stereo. Now, that was dubbed in after the thing was made.
Stained Glass
