I'd never heard the thing about the former girlfriend, so I can't comment on that. But I'd understood that it was, if not a joke, then at least an homage to Led Zeppelin.
During the 70's and early 80's, a lot of fundamentalist Christians (primarily in the States) were charging that certain hard rock and metal groups were "in leage with the devil" in one way or another. This was happening as I was growing up and was getting interested in rock music, so it kinda grabbed my attention at the time. Anyways, one of their biggest pieces of "evidence" regarding this allegation was the assertion that some acts purposefully put backward messages on their songs, stating their true, evil intentions. And one of their biggest examples of this was a section supposedly found in Zeppelin's Stairway to Heaven. These allegations grew continuously out of control, resulting in a couple of acts actually going to court to prove that their songs didn't contain backward messages. Most notably Judas Priest and Ozzy. Apparently a couple of kids had committed scuicide while listening to these groups songs (One was Scuicide Solution by Ozzy. Can't remember offhand which Priest song it was) and the parents suid the bands claiming that backward messages prompted their kids to kill themselves. After all of that, the whole thing kinda went away. I'm guessing it was partially because all of the court cases pretty much proved that it was all a coincidence. Plus, I think a lot of people on the right realized that all of this publicity was just getting a lot of kids interested in the music, instead of having the adverse effect.
Anyways, that's a long explanation. And when the purposeful backwards voices on Hessian Peal appeared, it was apparently in tribute to the whole backwards masking controversy arising from Stairway. Or at least that's what I'd heard. It's certainly not "serious" in that Mike (and I'm guessing the rest of the guys) are avowed atheists.
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