DEVIL HORNS - THE HISTORY

NOT JUST FOR SATAN ANYMORE

If you're planning on coming to my show next week, it'll be important that you know exactly how to make proper devil-rock horns (index & pinkie only -- the thumb changes everything unless you are, in fact, deaf, in which case it is even more important you come out and watch the most electrifying live performance since Elton John stopped doing a mountain of coke every morning before breakfast).

To that end, here's a fairly well-researched history of the devil-horn signal in rock. The consensus seems to be that Ronnie James Dio was among the first, though George Clinton gets a serious nod as well.

The best part of the article, though, is that Gene Simmons, that master of humility, claims to have invented it himself, and in the course of his research, every other person Steve Appleford interviews for the article (Lemmy, Lars Ulrich, Dave Grohl) just openly scoffs at him.

"He should know better," [George Clinton] says, with a laugh. KISS and Parliament-Funkadelic were both on Casablanca Records in the ’70s. "Our costumes were made at the same place," he adds. "And we had ours made there first!"