Suicide music

Suicide music

“I've now been sued by about 25 people who claim their kids committed suicide from listening to my music.”—Ozzy Osbourne (Source -interview, Ozzy Meets Marilyn Manson, 1997)
    "In October 1984, a nineteen-year-old teenager named John M. shot himself in the head, while listening to Ozzy Osbourne's "Suicide Solution". When the coroner entered the room, he found the headphones still on John's head. This would be one of the tragedies that caused Ozzy immeasurable grief.
In 1986, Ozzy had just gotten off a plane at LAX airport when people began asking him about the "lawsuits". Ozzy knew nothing about any lawsuit but the details quickly emerged. Three lawsuits had been launched against Ozzy, claiming that his lyrics had caused youths to commit suicide. The family of John hired attorney Thomas Anderson in a lawsuit against Ozzy. Mr. Anderson claimed on the "Don't Blame Me" Ozzy video, that the song contained tones known as 'hemisync' and would cause a person to be unable to resist what was being said in the song.
The Institute for Bio-Acoustics Research, Inc. (IBAR) was hired to evaluate the song. They claim to have found subliminal lyrics that weren't included in the lyrics sheet. These subliminal lyrics were sung at one and one-half times the normal rate of speech and are not recognized by a first time listener. The IBAR institute claimed the subliminal lyrics, "are audible enough that their meaning and true intent becomes clear after being listened to over and over again." The subliminal lyrics in question were "Why try, why try? Get the gun and try it! Shoot, Shoot, Shoot", followed by a hideous laughter.
Further analysis by IBAR revealed the hemisync tones, which result from a patented process that uses sound waves to influence an individual's mental state. The tones have been found to increase the rate at which the human brain assimilates and processes information. IBAR claimed these tones made John vulnerable to the suggestive lyrics which Ozzy sang.
    Ozzy's lawyer claimed that this was nonsense and relied upon the First Amendment of the Constitution to argue that Ozzy could write about anything he wanted. Three people had now taken their lives, and in each case it was Ozzy's 'Suicide Solution' song which was the focus as the cause of the deaths. Mr. Anderson claimed that the words, "shoot shoot, get the gun, get the gun" were audible in the song. There is an effect which can be heard on the song, that could be interpreted as that if one tried hard enough. The sounds were just Ozzy messing around with the soundboard." -SOURCE
 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. [2005] Interview with Wilson Bryan Key