POP/ROCK - July 23, 1990

Questions on Messages in Music: A Reno judge has questioned what possible motive the heavy-metal band Judas Priest would have for putting subliminal messages on an album blamed for driving two young men to suicide. District Judge Jerry Whitehead, who earlier sat through repeated playings of the 1978 album “Stained Class” with a poker face, asked audio engineer William Nickloff Jr., who had played the tape in court, why Judas Priest and others “would go to so much trouble” to hide the record’s so-called “do it” subliminal message. Nickloff replied, “I don’t know.” Gail Edwin, attorney for CBS Records, which distributed the record, said Whitehead’s questions “were telling.”