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

Episode Date: October 21, 2025

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 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. Sign up for our newsletter and get the inside dirt on events, merch and other awesomeness - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠GET THE NEWSLETTER⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow Jake and DISGRACELAND: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠X⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ (formerly Twitter)  ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Facebook Fan Group⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠TikTok 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/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is exactly right. Double Elvis. When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands. I vowed. I will be his last target. He is not going to get away with this. He's going to get what he deserves. We always say that trust your girlfriends. Listen to the girlfriends.

Trust me, babe. On the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This season on Dear Chelsea with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests like Amelia Clark. When like young people come up to me and they want to be an actor or whatever. My first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do? Rather be disappointed in. Do that.

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Your body is not what you thought it was. Your identity is formed by a secret history. I'm Danny Shapiro, and these are just a few of the stunning stories I'll be exploring the 14th season of Family Secrets. He kind of shoved me out of the way and said, move. And he went out the front door and he jumped in a car and drove off. And that was the last time I saw him. Listen to Season 14 of Family Secrets, starting May 7th on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

This episode contains content that may be disturbing to some listeners. Please check the show notes for more information. Disgrace Land is a production of Double Elvis. This is a story about death, about suicide, censorship, idolatry in the ruination of souls. It's a story about Satan and St. Michael, about leather studs and clothed 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 Melotron called dead-eyed and muscle bound MK 2 I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to say you say me by Lionel Richie

and why would I play you that specific slice of it ain't easy like Sunday morning cheese anymore could I afford it because that was the number one song in America on December 23, 1985. And that was the day the 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, St. Michael, and the defenders of the faith, Judas Priest. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is Disgraceland. 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 and gloom. And inside that contrast, there was irony. After all, this was a funeral. 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 kilned 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, 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? And rattled violently. This machine wasn't built for speed. Not this amount of speed anyway. And his driver wasn't built for this world. Or so the kid thought. But that was okay. because this world was about it.

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.

And now at just 18 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 Ascaria? Or would Judas Priest resurrect itself like Lazarus? Or better yet, like the man himself, the first rock star, Jesus Christ. 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 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 and stained glass, and the saints and disciples staring down at the mourners. Jesus's disciples, the world's first groupies. That was it.

Thou shall have no other gods before me. That was the first commandment. No hero worship. No idols. It seems 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 St. Michael?

The congregation reigned. to the petition as one. St. 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. The ruin of souls. Now that was some heavy shit. 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 Jimmy Hendricks 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 in arcane? himself or a heavy metal saint. K.K. Downing, guitar player for Judas Priest, sent to protect rockers everywhere

from the wickedness of shitty pop music. Or was he just another evil spirit wandering through the world for the ruin of souls? Leather boys, big studs, S&M giants, beasts among weaker-thans. Rob Halford, Judas Priest's singer, papered the wall of the Colhern 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, and whatever form they desired. Almost anything went within the walls of Coleran Arms. That is, of course, if they could keep the coppers out. Homosexuality was partially decriminalized in England in 1967, but that meant that they were a lot of course that that it was still partially criminal in the late 70s, so best keep your head on a swivel for any raiding Bobby's 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 in dominance. And they moved through the club like big game, slow, plotting, and oblivious to the hunt. 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 Fiss fucking the willing and able on all fours right there in public on Saturday nights. And 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 Colhern Arms, it was strictly leather. No policeman, no fire. 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 with the straight boys and 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, Rockarola, and then a string of solid 70s long players. 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, in 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 a sound iconic, they needed to look iconic. K.K. Downing, Priest's guitar player, encouraged Rob Halfer to lean into not only his leather roots from back in Walsall, but his leather passion at the Colhern arms as well. And at all the other leather bars, Rob, as a closet and 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 1980s British Steel. Rob Halford decked out from head to toe in skin-tight 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, 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 was... who at the dawn of the new decade were in the 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. There's two golden rules that any man should live by. Rule one, never mess with a country girl. You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes. And rule two, never mess with her friends either. We always say that trust your girlfriends. I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of the girlfriends, Oh my God, this is the same man.

A group of women discover they've all. all dated the same prolific con artist. I felt like I got hit by a truck. I thought, how could this happen to me? The cops didn't seem to care. So they take matters into their own hands. I said, oh, hell no. I vowed.

I will be his last target. He's going to get what he deserves. Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe. On the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Remember when you'd walk into your local video rental place and there were always those two employees behind the counter arguing about movies?

Well, that's us. I'm Millie to Cherico. And I'm Casey O'Brien. And now we're arguing about movies on our podcast, Dear Movies I Love You, from the Exactly Right Network. Can I say something about the Criterion Clause? Go ahead, dude. They're letting too many people in there. Okay, that's another film, Great By Got Two.

Sadly, that rental place doesn't exist anymore. It's probably a store that sells running shoes. Or an ice cream shop with an extra pee and an E at the end. So consider us your slacker movie clerks in podcast form. I would like to establish a timeline of the moment you figured out who Channing Tatum was. Every Tuesday, we dig into the movies we can't stop obsessing over, from hidden gems to big screen favorites. New episodes drop every week on the exactly right network. Listen to Dear Movies I Love You on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, host of The Wicked Words Podcasts. Each week I sit down with the true crime writers behind some of the most compelling true crime stories and discuss their years spent investigating and why it still matters. He sees his father coming out of the woods with his hands over his face, and he knows something happened. His father just grabs him and says she's gone. She's gone. These are the cases that leave survivors, families, and the journalists who cover them changed forever. Working in national television, it'll push you to your limits and you'll end up doing things you never thought you'd do. You know, you look back at it and you're like, I can't believe that really happened.

Join me and step inside the investigation. New episodes drop every Monday on the exactly right network. Listen to wicked words on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Satan wants you. And he's coming for you in a million different ways. Sometimes he's successful. Sometimes St. Michael in his celestial choir fight him off and drown him out. Michelle remembers a book published in 1980, written by psychiatrist Larry Pazder and his patient, Michelle Smith,

would have the world believed that Satan was coming for their children at their daycare centers. The book detailed Michelle's story, as recounted to Pazder through what was called recovered memory therapy, a practice that has been since denounced by the psychiatric community. Regardless, Michelle detailed her satanic possession from the age of five when her parents handed her over to a satanic cult, or her daycare center in Saskatchewan, a Canadian province. 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 face 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. 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 in 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 Titanic panic and on high alert, searching for signs of devil worship among their children and those influencing their kids. 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, goathead bit, but that didn't mean

others like Venom didn't. As far as other occult symbolism, both figurative and literal, ACDC 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 shortly thereafter

by none other than Michael Jackson and his album Thriller. Def Leopard, 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. 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. Walk into any metalhead's bedroom in the early 1980s, and he or she was likely to have ACD's, Death Leopard and Judas Priest albums lying around. But bands like ACDC and Def Leopard 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 brunt. rock stars. They absolutely were. And at this particular moment in 1985, while in the Bahamas posted up at a resort bar 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. 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 boardhousewife from Tennessee. Joseph Coors, the owner of Coors Beers and Mike Love, the singer from the Beach Boys, helped fund the PMRC. But before Tipper Gore felt her calling to found such an organization, she was sitting in rush hour traffic in Washington, D.C. with her 11-year-old 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, 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-a-ject 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 son. 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 U.S. Senate on live television.

Her and her colleague's words being broadcast out across the bar about some of that Bahamian bar's 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 occults 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 be

bet a healthy amount of cash that Susan Baker 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 15, a list of 15 songs by artists from all genres that the PNACs. EMRC 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.

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, Supposed Offensive Lyrical Content, Sex and Violence. Number four, vanity. Strap on, Robbie Baby. Sex. Number five, Motley Crew, bastard. Violence and language. Number six, ACDC, let me put my love into you.

Sex. Number seven, twisted sister, we're not going to take it. Violence. Number eight, Madonna, dress you up. Sex. Number nine, wasp, animal, parentheses, fuck like a beast. Sex, language, violence. Number 10.

Deaf leopard. and dry, parentheses Saturday night, drug and alcohol use. Number 11, merciful fate into the coven. The lyrics supposedly repped the occult. Number 12, Black Sabbath, trashed. Drug and alcohol use. Number 13, Mary Jane Girls, in my house, sex. 14, venom, possessed.

The occult. Number 15. Cindy Lopper, Shebop, Sex, and Masturbation. Now, the lyrics to Judas Priest, Eat Me Alive, are Kind of lame, if I'm being honest. They sort of 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 songs ridiculously over-sexualized lyrics to spinal tap. 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 uns seriousness of Tipper Gore in 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 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 deemed 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-conceive 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. 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. In an exchange with Republican Senator Slade Gorton from Washington, Frank Zappo 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, KK. 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. 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 in 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 the... 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 Jimmy Hendrix before him. And despite whatever so-called negative press, this hearing would lay at the feet of Judas Priest, KK was smart enough to know that warning labels on records would only mean more record sales. He smiled and sipped his cocktail. Thousands of miles away in a working class bedroom in Sparks Nevada. Two metalheads,

18-year-old Raymond Belknap 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 class, while the devil readied himself. There's two golden rules that any man should live by. Rule one, never mess with a country girl. You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes. And rule two, never mess with her friends either. We always say that, trust your girlfriends. I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of The Girlfriends...

Oh my God, this is the same man. A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist. I felt like I got hit by a truck. I thought, how could this happen to me? The cops didn't seem to care. So they take matters into their own hands. I said, oh, hell no, I vowed. I will be his last target.

He's going to get what he deserves. Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe. On the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, host of the Wicked Words podcast. Each week I sit down with the true crime writers behind some of the most compelling true crime stories

and discuss their years spent investigating and why it still matters. He sees his father coming out of the woods with his hands over his face, and he knows something happened. His father just grabs him and says, she's gone, she's gone. These are the cases that leave survivors, families,

and the journalists who cover them changed forever. Working in national television, it'll push you to your limits, and you'll end up doing things you never thought you do. You look back at it, and you're like, I can't believe that really happened. Join me and step inside the investigation. New episodes drop every Monday on the Exactly Right Network.

Listen to Wicked Words on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Remember when you'd walk into your local video rental place and there were always those two employees behind the counter arguing about movies? Well, that's us. I'm Millie de Cherico. And I'm Casey O'Brien. And now we're arguing about movies on our podcast. Dear Movies I Love You from the Exactly Right Network. Can I say something about the Criterion Clause?

Go ahead, dude. They're letting too many people in there. Okay, that's another film, grape I got two. Sadly, that rental place doesn't exist anymore. It's probably a store that sells running shoes. Or an ice cream shop with an extra pee and an E at the end. So consider us your slacker movie clerks in podcast form. I would like to establish a timeline of the moment you figured out who Channing Tatum

was. Every Tuesday, we dig into the movies we can't stop obsessing over, from hidden gems to big screen favorites. New episodes drop every week on the exactly right network. Listen to Dear Movies I Love You on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It was the unforgivable sin, despair. Judas Priest didn't say that. The Whiskey Priest said that. the main character from Graham Green's excellent 1940 novel, The Power and the Glory. Raymond Belna 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 23, 1985, they were loaded up on weed and cans of cheap domestic beer,

endlessly spending Judas Priest's 1978 album Stained Class. Specifically, they were spinning priest's cover of spooky tooths, Better by You, Better Than Me, the third song on Side One. Life sucked for Raymond and James, and the Judas Priest record seemed to confirm that fact, or at least its soundtrack, the confirmation they received from the drugs and the alcohol.

Raymond had been telling anyone who'd listen about the despair he 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 killed themselves. Fuck worrying about the future. Fuck never getting laid. James was serious. He'd do it if Raymond would. 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, Dick Wad. Oh, okay. Raymond was surprised, but he was still in. James grabbed his stepdad, sawed off 12-gauge. Out back, there was an old Pentecostal church. 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 St. Michael. Just gloom. And who was Raymond to argue? They sat on the church playground's rickety merry-go-round. Raymond had to go first, James explained. Raymond took James' word as gospel.

He grabbed the 12-gauge, crushed what was left of his beer, pointed the shotgun to his throat. 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 vouchsaf the pact, and Raymond pulled the trigger. 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' chest, speeding his heart to a raid he'd never felt. Panic momentarily overtook despair. Flight had vanquished whatever fight James had in reserve. 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. All right, discos, 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've got to be a disgrace and an all-access member. It's 599 at disgracelandpod.com and it unlocks ad-free episodes plus more exclusives just like this one. All right, back to our story. 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 tooths, 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 that the band had purposefully included the phrase, do it, in its recording of Better By You, Better 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 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. 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 Osborne had gone through his own trial four years earlier over his song's 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 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 the Judas Priest was guilty, responsible for the deaths of two young metalheads, and on the hook for the 6.2 million the dead kids' 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, deaf leopard, even Ozzy and all the rest would all be fucked. 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 the 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 they feared they'd. that in the eyes of the heavy metal community,

they'd be something more akin to their namesake, Judas, the ultimate betrayer. 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. 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 the same 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 intentionally or subliminally to cause this tragic event.

In the end, the case was dismissed, and Judas Priest and heavy metal prevailed. The band's next album, Pain Killer, 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 Loader, Rob Halford, apropos of nothing, blurted, a lot of homophobia still exists in the music world, in all kinds of music. 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 kind of 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 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. 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 and 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 Discreacelandpod.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 disgrace land 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, Ozzie, Dio?

What are we talking here? Metallica Slayer, who is it? Let me know. Get at me. Let's duke it out in the after party. 617-90666-6-6-3-8. 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 Disgraceland Pod on the social's Disgracelandpod. At g-mail.com 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 disgracelampod.com. Rate and review the show and follow us on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and Facebook at Disgraceland and on YouTube at YouTube.com slash at Disgraceland Pod.

Rockerola. When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands. I vowed. I will be his last target. He is not going to get away with this. He's going to get what he deserves. We always say that trust your girlfriends.

Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe. On the IHart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. This season on Dear Chelsea, with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests like Amelia Clark. When, like, young people come up to me and they want to be an actor or whatever. And my first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do?

Rather be disappointed in. Do that. David O'Yellowo. I love this podcast, whether it's therapy or relationships or religion or sex or or addiction or you just go straight for the guts. Dennis Leary, Gaten Moderato from Stranger Things, Tana Monsu, Camilla Morone, Carrie Kenny Silver, and more. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the IHeart Radio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Your husband is not who you think he is. Your body is not what you thought it was. Your identity is formed by a secret history. I'm Danny Shapiro, and these are just a. few of the stunning stories I'll be exploring on the 14th season of Family Secrets. He kind of shoved me out of the way and said, move. And he went out the front door and he jumped in a car and drove off. And that was the last time I saw him.

Listen to Season 14 of Family Secrets, starting May 7th on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.