ROCK OF MAGES
THE SECRET OF COVEN
I began my studies in television production before I started radio production. In our classes we were required to create commercials, public service announcements. And educational video for the school district. I was involved in the production of many educational films during my tenure in television production because it was a requirement to do some serious production work on subject matter that had educational value.
There was one part of the television course that was added to the curriculum and that was Music video production. When I was a junior in High school music videos were the newest craze. MTV had just started operations in New York, and they were literally blazing the trail in video music marketing. It was like radio had made a quick transition to television, and I was sure that it was similar to the moment in time where silent film had to convert to talkies.
Rock Stars who weren’t all that visual were forced into creating a visual presence. It was then we began seeing bands like AC/DC, KISS, MOTLEY CRUE and others take on a super visual look. There were also disco acts like THE VILLAGE PEOPLE and New wave acts like DEVO and the B52’s that not only sounded different but had an outrageous image. Groups like PINK FLOYD created a full length music video and HEAVY METAL magazine was also producing a full on Rock and roll video with outrageous imagery.
Music video production was an elective within the television education curriculum and I signed up for it immediately.
The assignment we were first given was to create music videos for songs by bands that told a story. The assignment was to create videos for virtually unknown bands whose songs painted a picture that we could easily interperpret into a music video.
The first three songs that we were given to interpret were “Run Joey Run” by David Geddes, “The Legend of Wooley Swamp” by the Charlie Daniels Band, and finally “One Tin Soldier” by Coven.
Three songs that we all agreed were cult classics.
In 1975 the song “Run Joey Run” was teenage tragedy song that was a number 4 hit for David Geddes. The song had already had been released in a sleeve as a 45 with the lyrics and what appeared to be a comic or graphic image showing a young man receiving a phone call from his girlfriend Julie warning him that her father had found about their love affair and threatened to kill him.
The song warns that Joey should run because Julie’s father has a gun and he was going to make him pay for what they had done.
Joey pays no mind to the warning and decides to go to the house. When he arrives Julie runs to him bruised and beaten with tears in her eyes, yelling to her father that it is okay, that whatever has happened between Joey and her will be corrected with a wedding indicating that she may have been pregnant.
As Joey approaches the house he steps out of the car and Julie yells that her father has a gun and steps in front of him. Then shot rings out and helplessly Joey watches Julie fall in front of him. He runs to her and holds her close, and then he sees that there is blood on his hands and Julies last words are heard as angels are singing “Daddy please don’t it wasn’t his fault, he means so much to me, daddy please don’t we’re going to get marr—ied. She then dies in his arms.
This song goes down in history as a teen age tragedy tune in the same style as “Teen Angel” by Mark Dinning “Tell Laura I love her” by Ray Petersen and “Patches” by Dickie Lee, all songs that are dark tales of teen angst and horror.
In the 1950s the Teen tragedy song was considered a dark rebellious song that always had a strange or untimely death in it. The songs also dealt with suicide pacts, firey car crashes, accidents, and drowning.
Back in the day, it was an evil dichotomy to watch squeaky clean performers singing lyrics like “A girl named Patches was found / Floating face down in that dirty old river” and later hearing that the protagonist in the song will join her in death by jumping in the river as well.
As disturbing and frankly odd as the whole thing was , it’s undoubtedly a sad fact that young death was taken so lightly at the time that it was frequently reduced to the triviality of a three minute pop song.
Some argue that this was the beginnings of a genre of rock and roll called horror rock. It was Screamin Jay Hawkins that would sing songs like “I put a spell on you” dressed like a witch doctor and being brought out in a coffin. If Halloween could be said to have a musical patron saint it would be Screaming Jay Hawkins. Released in the fall of 1956, “I Put a Spell on You” was not a big seller, mostly because it was banned by most radio stations. The voodoo vibe of the record was deemed offensive, as was the suggestion of carnal sexuality in the grunts and wails of the vocal. Hawkins song was quite possibly the first rock song that could be called Satanic. It was DJ Alan Freed that encouraged Hawkins shock rock personae and had him as a guest at his rock review shows. Hawkins would regularly perform with props like chattering teeth and a battery-powered crawling hand. Alan Freed urged him to take it further and make his entrance by popping out of a coffin.
With a machine spewing smoke and flash powder caps creating onstage lightning, Hawkins would be rolled onto the stage and emerge from the coffin, tossing firecrackers from his pockets and looking menacingly at the audience. Some members of the largely teenage audience would run for the exits in genuine fright.
This leads us to the second song we were asked to make a music video for “The Legend of Wooly Swamp” a song by The Charlie Daniels Band that tells a country tale with a horror rock edge to it.
The song tells a mythical ghost story, with the first verse relating the life of Lucius Clay, an elderly and greedy recluse who lives in a backwoods area of Wooley Swamp called Booger Woods. Clay cares about nothing except his money, which he keeps buried in Mason jars around the shack where he lives. According to the lyrics, Clay digs up his money “on certain nights if the moon is right” just to run his fingers through it.
The second verse introduces the antagonists, the Cable Boys who live in nearby Carver’s Creek; three young brothers described as mean and belligerent white trash. Jealous of Lucius Clay, the brothers plot to kill him, feed his corpse to the alligators and steal his money. Late one night, they sneak up on Clay in Booger Woods, who has just dug up “thirteen rusty mason jars” filled with money. The Cables then mercilessly beat him to death and joyously dump his body in the swamp.
But when they grab the money from Clay’s shack and attempt to escape they become trapped in quicksand. The boys scream for help and struggle to free themselves, but to no avail. Just before they meet their own doom, they hear Clay himself “laughin’ in a voice as loud as thunder.”
I had a lot of fun making this video in school; we did a lot of ghostly effects with the switcher machine, learned the art of an arc shot and had to actually create a quick sand effect in a field not far from our high school.
The final song we were asked to make a music video for was a song that was a top hit for a band called Coven. The song “One Tin Soldier” was a counterculture antiwar song that featured in the movie Billy Jack. It was one of those songs that received a lot of airplay on the radio years after it was a major hit. That is why the song was selected for our video class. The teacher felt that if any song needed a music video it would be this one. “One Tin Soldier” tells the story of a hidden treasure and two neighboring peoples; the peaceful Mountain People and the warlike Valley People.
The Mountain People possess a treasure on the mountain, buried under a stone. The Valley People send a message to the Mountain People demanding it.
The Mountain People reply with an offer: they are willing to share the treasure with the Valley People. However, the Valley People instead decided to take it all by force, and in doing so kill all the Mountain People. The Valley People then move the stone and find only a simple message: “Peace on Earth.”
This video was also fun to make because we were able to dress up in costumes from a left over skit that we did from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. We also had to borrow the armor from a rival High school whose mascot was a Lancer or a Knight in armor.
We really di not know much about the song only that we felt that it needed to be portrayed in a mediaeval style. We had plenty of old imagery, witches and people who looked like peasants as well as princes and kings. I felt that witches were appropriate since the song was sung by a band called “Coven.”
Later I found out that the song was not suing by Coven at first but by the bands lead singer a beautiful blonde woman named Jinx Dawson. Dawson asked that her band, Coven, be listed on the recording and film, not her name as a solo artist. This Warner release, titled as “One Tin Soldier (The Legend of Billy Jack)” reached #26 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the fall of 1971.
The full Coven band then re-recorded the song for their album. The recording then hit the charts again in 1973. The Coven recording was named Number One All Time Requested Song in 1971 and 1973 by the American Radio Broadcasters Association.
This would explain why in 1981 we were still hearing the song being played on Oldies stations.
What however was not explained was that Jinx Dawson and the band Coven were considered to be one of the first bands in Rock and roll to infuse the music with heavy metal and Satanic or Luciferian themes.
Rock ‘n’ Roll was always called by preachers as “The Devil’s Music.” It was preached against mainly for its sexualized lyrics and its beat, supposedly the cause of teenage delinquency, and rebellion.
However coven was a far cry from the Beatles or even Black Sabbath. Coven would tour woth bands like Alice Cooper and Jimmy Paige’s Yardbrids. Jinx Dawson began and ended each Coven concert with the sign of the horns, being the first to introduce this hand sign into rock, metal and pop culture. This alone puts an end to an age old Feud between Gene Simmons of KISS and Ronnie James Dio who before Dio died of stomach cancer would argue over first flashed the devil horns in rock shows. Turns out that Dawson had them all beat.
According to Dawson, “The satanic thing actually was something we were interested in and were studying at the time. When you’re younger, you’re looking for answers, and a lot of members of the band were looking into the same books at the same time. We studied it, we practiced it.” This content was considered highly unusual for the time. Starting with their first contract with Mercury records in 1969, it was said that the Coven members signed all their record contracts each in their own blood.
Once again a similar stunt was carried out by KISS members Gene Simmons, Peter Criss, Ace Frehley, and Paul Stanley when Marvel comics published the KISS comic book. Each member donated a vial of their own blood to put in the ink that was used to print the first KISS comic books.
The Satanism that was practiced at the time originated with Anton LaVey and the Church of Satan (founded in 1966). However, Coven’s first album, and some of the 1960s trends and styles associated with it, are an indication that there were also other unique, and sometimes more underground, trends within Satanism. Coven and Anton LaVey did actually almost cross paths, at the October 31, 1969, Detroit Black Arts Festival, which also included the singer Arthur Brown, a dark and alleged Satanic rock performer. His song “Fire” is a warning that you will burn in hell no matter how hard you work slave and earn. While Coven did perform, Anton LaVey, although scheduled, did not appear.
Before Dawson recorded “One Tin Soldier,” her band Coven was featured in a sensationalistic Esquire article called “Evil Lurks in California” which linked the so called Satanic counterculture with Charles Manson and the Tate-La Bianca murders, while also mentioning their album Witchcraft and some of the Black mass style performances on the album.
Mercury then pulled the album from store shelves.
Coven - Satanic Mass
Who knew that Jinx Dawson was using the hand gesture while performing with her band Coven years before?
Satanism in Rock is up for broad interpretation. It is not however a myth by any stretch that Rock artists increasingly embrace satanic imagery. However there seems to be an indifference to pop artists who are now part of some Luciferian agenda that many people say is nonexistent. The media has become increasingly indifferent to the Satanic imagery used in videos by singers like Ke$ha, Katy Perry, Beyonce, Lady Gaga, Jay Z and Kanye West.
I suppose it is harder to believe that someone like Justin Bieber or even Miley Cyrus can convey some Satanic message to their public than it is for someone like Marylin Manson, KISS, or Mick Jagger to do so.
Mick Jagger in an interview with Creem magazine claimed that when they were perceived as devil-worshippers, he thought it was odd. It was all because of one song “Sympathy for the Devil” and from there it was all played up with satanic imagery and other things that made people wonder about the Rolling stones.
True enough, even when Jagger introduced himself as the Devil, it was more the media who cast him in that mold, suspecting the band of indulging in the occult.
The devil has moved on today and can be seen in all kinds of hidden imagery that promotes Luciferian themes that are accepted as all part of the hype and glory.
In the meantime it seems that Jinx Dawson and her Satanic Coven are the missing link between bands that pretend to be satanic and the other bands that hide behind pop rock culture and death metal posing.
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