POP/ROCK - Aug. 2, 1990

Rocker Hid Messages--but Just Once: Judas Priest vocalist Rob Halford admitted in a Reno court Tuesday that he inserted a backward message once on a song in 1985, but denied ever planting hidden messages to promote suicide on the group’s 1978 “Stained Class” album. The British singer said he reversed the phrase “In the dead of the night, love bites” and mixed it into the background of a song (“Love Bites”) on the 1985 album, “Defenders of the Faith.” Halford’s heavy-metal band is the target of a multimillion-dollar lawsuit in which the parents of two youths allege that subliminal messages embedded in “Stained Class” album caused their sons to shoot themselves.