THE HAIR WHIP!

Your occasional source for heavy metal, progressive rock and hard rock coverage. Whenever I feel like it.

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Il Mano Corne

I was tooling around on Wikipedia and found this interesting paragraph in the article on the sign of the horns, the salute of all things heavy metal.

"It also has a variety of meanings in heavy metal subcultures, where it is known by a variety of terms, including: maloik, devil sign, devil horns, goat horns, metal horns, heavy metal devil horns, death fist, horns up, slinging metal, metal sign, sticks up, throwing the goat, rocking the goat, sign of the goat, throwing the horns, evil fingers, the horns, forks, metal fist, satan salute, the Irons, the Priest, and the Jackal."

Rocking the goat?

Anyway, the article goes on with a great quote from Mr. Ronnie James Dio himself, which originally appeared in Metal Rules magazine:

"I doubt very much if I would be the first one who ever did that. That's like saying I invented the wheel, I'm sure someone did that at some other point. I think you'd have to say that I made it fashionable. I used it so much and all the time and it had become my trademark until the Britney Spears audience decided to do it as well. So it kind of lost its meaning with that.

But it was...I was in Sabbath at the time. It was symbol that I thought was reflective of what that band was supposed to be all about. It's NOT the devil's sign like we're here with the devil. It's an Italian thing I got from my Grandmother called the "Malocchio." It's to ward off the Evil Eye or to give the Evil Eye, depending on which way you do it. It's just a symbol but it had magical incantations and attitudes to it and I felt it worked very well with Sabbath. So I became very noted for it and then everybody else started to pick up on it and away it went. But I would never say I take credit for being the first to do it. I say because I did it so much that it became the symbol of rock and roll of some kind."

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