A little over a week before Judas Priest’s first show on Slovenian soil since 1991, at Metaldays 2018 (Thursday, July 26, 2018), it will be 28 years since the events that could very well have ended the career of one of the most influential metal bands of all time. With the band’s visit to Slovenia coming up, and the sad and unexpected news that the other half of the band’s immortal guitar duo, Glenn Tipton, is also stepping back from active duty – a little over a week ago he revealed that, because of Parkinson’s disease, he can no longer manage longer live shows – we’re looking back at how, almost thirty years ago, the band was made a scapegoat through the American legal system by the grieving parents of two dead teenagers. To this day, that makes Judas Priest one of the very few bands who literally defended the colors of heavy metal in the dock.
Let’s start with the background. In December 1985, after hours of drinking, smoking weed and listening to music, two young men headed to a local playground and, in a bizarre ritual murder-suicide pact, shot themselves with a shotgun. 18-year-old Raymond Belknap died on the spot, while 20-year-old James Vance survived for three more years, badly maimed and disfigured. Belknap and Vance were best friends, and both came from unstable family and social backgrounds. Both came from broken homes, both were victims of domestic violence, both used alcohol and drugs, both dropped out of school very early, both had been fired from numerous jobs, and both were regularly in trouble with the police over minor offenses. Both had owned several firearms from a young age, and in their early teens both became devoted fans of Judas Priest.
On December 23, 1985, Belknap and Vance were in the former’s room smoking weed, drinking beer and listening to Judas Priest records, playing the 1978 album Stained Class over and over, which includes the songs Better By You, Better Than Me, Beyond the Realms of Death and Heroes End, among others. In one of them, as Vance later testified, they heard the words “Do It,” which they took as a call to suicide, realizing they were sick of life. They finished their beer, took a shotgun from under Belknap’s bed and headed to the local children’s playground, where Belknap shot himself in the head first, followed by Vance. Vance flinched at the shot and blew off the lower part of his face, which is why he survived, but he went on to endure many painful operations, became dependent on drugs again, and finally died on November 29, 1988.
Convinced that heavy metal was to blame for the incident, specifically Judas Priest’s Stained Class, the parents of Belknap and Vance filed a lawsuit against the band and its label, CBS. In the initial complaint they claimed that the lyrics of Heroes End – “Why do you have to die to be a hero?/It’s a shame a legend begins at its end” – were a call to suicide.
The suit argued that suggestive lyrics, combined with the unbroken rhythm and intonation of the music, trigger, encourage, aid, lead or otherwise inspire the notion that death is the answer to life[1]. The plaintiffs’ strategy shifted when they realized that courts in similar cases had ruled that lyrics also enjoy legal protection under the constitutional standard of free speech[2]. So the plaintiffs’ lawyers hired special engineers to hunt for hidden, so-called subliminal messages in the songs on Stained Class, the copy of the album found in Belknap’s possession. The amended complaint worked; Judge Jerry Whitehead, without answering the question of whether the songs in question really contain subliminal messages, ruled that they aren’t actual speech and so aren’t protected by the First Amendment. Partly because individuals have a right to be protected from unwanted speech, and because subliminal messages can’t be avoided, they intrude unacceptably on a person’s privacy. Vance v. Judas Priest was, at its core, a product liability case. A supposedly defective product had been put on the market and caused harm – the album Stained Class caused the suicides of Belknap and Vance.
The plaintiffs went on to claim that they had found hidden, backwards messages in several lyrics, which the listener supposedly picks up unconsciously when the music is played normally. The lines “Deliver us/from all the fuss” in White Head, Red Hot, for example, were said to really be saying “Fuck the Lord, fuck you all.”[3] Whitehead did write that the First Amendment also includes an individual’s right to be free from intrusive speech, which is crucial in cases involving subliminal messages, where the person doesn’t know they exist and has no chance to decide whether to accept or avoid them[4]. Before the trial began, Whitehead stressed the difficult social circumstances Belknap and Vance lived in, but also doubted that subliminal messages were the cause of their actions. Nevertheless, in line with Nevada civil case law, under which a trial must be allowed if there is even the slightest chance the plaintiff’s claim could succeed, Whitehead opened the trial on July 16, 1990. The judge also accepted an agreement between the parties that the case would be heard without a jury.
After the opening statements from both sides, the plaintiffs’ audio expert William Nickloff played a slowed-down version of Better By Your, Better Than Me in the courtroom, in which the words “Do It” were supposedly heard several times. Singer Rob Halford was the only band member who testified during the trial, flatly denying that the band had put hidden messages on the album, and arguing that if they had, they’d have put in messages telling fans to buy more of their albums, not to kill themselves. Halford had to sing a few lines of the song live, pointing out his habit of stressing the last syllable of a lyric with an audible breath.
The band’s lawyer, Anthony Pellicano, insisted that the phrase “Do It” was merely the result of the singer’s breath and a guitar note. In the fourth and final week of the trial, during his last testimony, Halford played recordings of a few songs played backwards that he’d made while the trial was going on. You could hear phrases like “I asked her for a peppermint, I asked her to get one”[5], with which the defense wanted to prove that the alleged hidden messages were nothing but phonetic coincidences.
In closing arguments, the Vance family’s lawyers demanded $5 million in damages for mental anguish and medical costs, while the Belknap family’s lawyers asked for $1.2 million. On August 24, 1990, Judge Jerry Whitehead ruled in favor of Judas Priest and CBS, explaining that the plaintiffs hadn’t proven convincingly, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the subliminal messages were placed on the album on purpose or that those messages caused the suicides. The plaintiffs argued that the words Do It were hidden on the album, but Whitehead ruled it was merely a chance combination of the singer’s breathing and guitar effects. The plaintiffs appealed, but in May 1993 the Nevada Supreme Court upheld Whitehead’s decision.
It was the first hugely publicized case in American legal history of a band ending up in the dock over its art. The whole thing was, of course, nothing but the product of American conservative society’s conviction that heavy metal is evil and exists only to corrupt the youth. Judas Priest proved exactly the opposite: heavy metal brings people together, as shown nicely by the civilized, peaceful protest of countless fans outside the courtroom. Judas Priest deserve a deep bow and the status of true standard-bearers and defenders of heavy metal. Defenders of the Faith.
The goings-on around the trial are also documented in the hour-long documentary Dream Deceivers. Because of the footage of the badly disfigured Vance, you need to sign in to watch it.
Judas Priest will play Metaldays 2018 on Thursday, 26.07.2018.
Pictured: Rob Halford testifying in court
This article is part of the author’s master’s thesis, Freedom of Expression in Musical Art.
