Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: Devil Horns

Episode Date: August 13, 2025

Metal fans have many ways to express themselves, but none are as metal as throwing the devil horns. But who did it first?See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. I'm Bob Crawford, host of American History Hotline, a different type of podcast. You, the listener, ask the questions. Did George Washington really cut down a charity? Were JFK and Marilyn Monroe having an affair? And I find the answers. I'm so glad you asked me this question. This is such a ridiculous story.

You can listen to American History Hotline on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hail Satan and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh and there's Chuck. And this is our mid-metal two-parter short stuff. That's more metal adjacent than you can possibly imagine. We're talking about the origin of the devil horn's hand sign that is as metal as metal gets as far as hand signs go. Yeah, I've never had an opportunity to flash this, so I've never really done it, and I feel like a bit of a nerd, but I'm practicing because of that Judas pre-show.

Yeah. I figure that'll be a great time to whip it out for the first time. For sure. So where did this come from, Chuck? Well, I mean, let's talk a little bit about what it actually is, because there's a bit of irony attached to this, because when you're at a metal show doing this, you are, you know, what you're really doing is just a fun thing where you're not. like this band rocks, and this is the appropriate sign that you do at a show like this to indicate that I think this rocks. But sort of the kind of funny subtext is like, yeah, Satan's horns, but what it really

is in origin is sort of the opposite. It's known as a corna, which is Italian for horn, and it is what you do in old Italy, or even if you have a grandma in Italy, who is still, you know, still sort of superstitious, to ward off the evil eye. It's not like, yeah, Satan rocks. It's like, no, get the out Satan. Yeah, exactly. So all of the metal fans are like, oh, that's the problem.

That's why Satan never shows up. We've been doing this wrong. Yeah. So, yes, and like you said, is totally associated with metal. And most people trace it back to Dio, Ronnie James Dio, who we surely have talked about by now in part one, at the very least we definitely do in part two. He sang for Elf, Rainbow, Dio, obviously. He also took over after Ozzy, RIP, was kicked out of Black Sabbath in 1979. Dio took over as the front man, which is a cool way of saying lead singer

for Black Sabbath. And Ozzy was known to give like double peace signs as like his thing. And Dio I was like, I can't do that same thing. But I got to come up with something. Everybody's going to be expecting some signature hand signal. So he turned to the corner. That's right. What does it deal with those hand signals? It's like definitely a hard rock to metal thing.

Because like Van Halen did with Sammy Hagar, they did that thing. And I don't know. I just never feel like I see other bands doing that. What did Sammy Hagar and Van Halen do? They did the double I Love You put together. in such a way that, you know, it may have indicated something sort of naughty. I'll just say that. Oh, gotcha.

I remember White Lion made the W with their two index fingers and thumbs coming together. Did they really? No. No. And then Poison had the thing where you snap your fingers and then slap your hand on top of your closed fist three times. And then class mind would go whoop, whoop, who, right. I don't believe that one, so I didn't fall for that one. But, you know, a lot of people, if you're just a casual researcher, you'll just see everywhere that it was Ronnie James D.O.

People have asked him this. There was an interview in 2001 where he said, I doubt very much that I would be the first one who ever did that. That's like saying I invented the wheel. But I think you'd have to say that it made it fashionable. So he'd never claim to be the originator of that hand symbol, which is great, stand-up guy, Ronnie James Dio, RIP, of course. so where did it come from i mean jean simmons in court said it was him or tried to at least he so here's the thing jean simmons really outed himself as a dipstick which time well this time in particular right because he tried to trademark his

his trademark hand sign which is like the devil horns but rather than the thumb closing over the two closed middle and ring fingers like you do with the devil sign he stuck his thumb out. So there's three digits sticking out, right? That's I Love You. It is. It's the American Sign Language Sign for I Love You. Regardless of that, he tried to trademark it for himself, probably so he could sue people who continued to use it.

And, yeah, he tried to trademark an American Sign Language sign. That just kind of is pretty dipsticky, if you ask me. But what's interesting about it is all the press that this thing got started to actually tease out the people who probably really were responsible for introducing the metal horns to heavy metal, or to music at least. Yeah. Should we take a break?

Yeah. All right. We'll be back with more of this mystery right after this. Have you ever wished for a change but weren't sure how to make it? Maybe you felt stuck in a job, a place, or even a relationship. I'm Emily Tish Sussman, and on she pivots, I dive into the inspiring pivots of women who have taken big leaps in their lives and careers. I'm Gretchen Whitmer, Jody Sweeten. Monica Patton.

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to stuff they don't want you to know on the IHartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you find your favorite shows. So before we get to, who possibly may have created this, we should mention Gieser Butler. the bass player for Black Sabbath, he said, hey, look at our photo from 1969. I'm flashing the sign. So I did it before Dio, and I actually suggested that he do it. And also this was on the cover of Yellow Submarine, like John Lennon in animated form, is making the sign on the cover of Yellow Submarine. That doesn't really clear it up because Gieser Butler is also wrong.

So I'm going to let you lay it on us, my friend, who maybe started this whole thing. Okay. Thank you for giving me this one, because this is amazing. It turns out that it was probably a blonde 18-year-old American girl named Jinks Dawson, who was the lead singer of a band called Coven, which would be, I guess, psychedelic rock maybe, but super dark psychedelic rock. Yeah. Did you listen to much of it? I did. It's not that great, but...

It didn't even sound psychedelic to me. And if you hadn't known the lyrics or the song titles, it didn't seem even spooky. Yeah, you'd be like, is this like a Paul Revere in the Raiders cover band or something? Kind of. Sort of. It was interesting. There was a, yeah, there was an article by a guy named Dom Lawson and Metalhammer. And he called it, he said it was scarcely any kind of metal, but it flowed with a similar dark magnetism. I think you kind of nailed it on the head. Yeah, well, what's interesting is, like, it is ultra-metal with imagery and lyrics and song titles,

but it's such a weird thing for your brain to hear that kind of thing coming out of something that's not metal-sounding, you know? Right, exactly. This is a 1969 album called Witchcraft Destroyes Minds and Reap's Souls, and it had songs like For Unlawful, Carnal Knowledge on it, packed with Lucifer, and then very spookly, the first track on this album was called Black Sabbath. Yeah, can I read a few other song titles? White Witch of Rose Hall. Choke, thirst, die.

That's just one song. Yeah, yeah. The commas in between. Eat, shoots, and leaves. Wicked Woman is one, and there was one called Dignitaries of Hell. And so, Jinks Dawson, the reason why she's, like, probably the one who did this, she was actually raised in a left-hand-path house and was raised as a Satanist in the Anton LeVay, Alistair-Crowley sense, the occult sense. And another reason why it's attributed to her and her band Coven is because no one, no one was doing this, especially in the States. they were from Chicago.

They essentially had no inspirations aside from the real-life, left-hand path initiations that Jinks Dawson had been raised around. Yeah, I mean, if you look at the, I think it's on the back cover, right, of their album, once again, witchcraft destroys minds and reaps souls. I just want to read that like five more times. They're doing that sign.

I mean, it's very clear. It's not an accident. It's very much on purpose. It's exactly what it is. And it was so convincing that in 2017, when Gene Simmons was trying to trademark this stuff, they came forward and Gene Simmons was like, you know, didn't know about these guys. No. Someone else who said they didn't know about these guys was Ozzy Osbourne and Gieser Butler and Black Sabbath. Yeah.

And supposedly, and it gets even spookier, the bassist for Coven's name was Greg Oz Osborne. Yeah. This is happening simultaneously in Chicago. Yes, as Black Sabbath is changing their name from Earth to Black Sabbath. Yeah. And Black Sabbath has always maintained. This is just some spooky coincidence. Sure.

It's believable. There's an article by a guy named Dom Lawson, that same Dom Lawson from Metalhammer magazine, who basically says, like, their album got zero. It just didn't make it over to the UK. There's almost no way they would have heard this. And the reason why is because their album was released right around the time of the Sharon Tate murders, the Manson murders, and America was not in the mood for stuff like satanic rituals. Or bad music, yeah.

Sure. But Lester Bangs heard it. He compared Black Sabbath to a combination of Cream and Coven. So at least in the mind of legendary rock critic Lester Bangs, Coven was at least somehow related thematically to Black Sabbath. Yeah, I think it was like take the music of Cream and combine it with the spooky imagery and lyrics of Coven. or Coven, as I like to say. Oh, yeah, you can say it that way, too.

I forgot. Yeah, that seems to be the deal. Yeah, so I guess it's unclear exactly how much direct influence they had, but at the very least, everybody tips their hat to them for being pioneers in that respect. Yeah, well, at the very least, it shut Gene Simmons up. Right, exactly. So hats off the jinx awesome for that. And then we can't talk about the devilhorns without at least a nod to the Kitsuni side.

Kitsuni means Fox. And in Japan, if you go to a metal concert, say like a baby metal concert, that will come up at the end of part two, you will see something similar to a devil sign, but rather than the ring finger and middle finger bent down and the thumb crossing them, the ring finger and middle finger come together and are pressed against the thumb with the pinky and the index finger up. And what you're doing is you're making a face of a fox. And it's very Japanese, that's what they do at Japanese metal shows. You know, I didn't understand any of that until I just sort of did it as you were following along. And I was like, oh, yeah, look at that little fox. Great. Makes a nose is what it does.

It does. A little fox face, and you can be like, oh, I'm a fox. If we have one extra minute here, I would like to do a real-time update, breaking news. In part one, I rattled off my top five metal bands, and I forgot because I was listening to Hair Nation again later that day. And I have an update, and I hate to do it, but I'm going to, I guess, bump the scorpions out. okay in favor of Tesla okay all right I can see that they're similar in level yeah I I feel bad forgot about Tesla and while I don't dive deep into Tesla I think I'm gonna go on record and say that like three of their songs are some of the best songs of that era out of any band so I have to

put them in there okay well while we're talking while we're doing updates I watched um okay Yumi showed me some, I guess, Instagram clips of Ozzy's funeral and Sharon Osborne just losing it. It's so hard to watch. But then also she showed me a clip of him singing Coming Home, Mom, I'm Coming Home. Yeah, great song. I think he's sitting on like a throne in this stadium in Birmingham, that last show, like right before he died. Oh, yeah. It's amazing.

I hadn't seen it when we recorded Part 1 and 2 of heavy metal, but it's, yeah, it's quite stirring. It's really neat to see. So I'm like, man, that is a really great way. to go out, you know? Yeah, I mean, he practically passed away on stage, you know. Right. So we've said it before, said it again. RIP Ozzy Osbourne, one of the metal greats.

And I guess Chuck Short's stuff's out, right? That's right. Stuff you should know is a production of IHeartRadio. For more podcasts to My Heart Radio, visit the IHeartRadio app. Apple Podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Thank you.