Seeing as the infamous rock hand (or rock fist, devil horns, devil sign, metal horns, maloik, corna, or whatever you may prefer to call it) is part of our Rock World logo, it seemed only fitting to tell you a little bit about it. It’s important to understand the symbol’s derivations to trace how it made its way into contemporary rock culture.
Its Mediterranean heritage points to the gesture as being a superstitious protection against evil or bad luck. The horns were traditionally pointed down, and the gesture could be thought of as a slightly more vulgar equivalent to knocking on wood, or crossing your fingers behind your back. The very earliest depiction of it is in an ancient Greek painting. It appears to have been passed into ancient Roman culture, where it was also used to symbolized a curse. The term “corna” is Italian for “horns.”
Interestingly, an entirely unrelated use of the sign has an intrinsically musical background. As far back as the early 1600s, it was used as a crude measurement, ranking up there with the cubit in its antiquity. The distance between the pointer and pinky fingers was meant to gauge the distance the slide on a tenor trombone must move between “Choire tone (Chorton)” and “Chamber tone (Kammerton).” This was representative of one-half-step.
The sign is also similar to a mudra (hand symbol) in Eastern religions. The Karana mudr? is meant to expel demons and remove obstacles like sickness or negative thought, and can be seen in many statues and paintings of Buddha. The two middle fingers form a pinch with the thumb, instead of being tucked under it.
In sign language, the symbol for love is also similar to the “rock hand,” save for the thumb being held out rather than folded in.
So with all these eclectic origins, how did this two-fingered symbol find its way into rock music? The earliest appearance arose with the psychedelic-occult rock band Coven in the late 1960s. Beginning in 1968, the band would open and close their shows by giving the sign onstage. Their 1969 back album cover for Witchcraft Destroys Minds & Reaps Souls pictured the band giving the “sign of the horns.” An included poster also showed the band members making the sign at a ritual Black Mass. Coincidentally, the band’s bass player was named Oz Osborne, and they recorded a song called “Black Sabbath.”
Also in 1969, and far on the other side of the rock spectrum, The Beatles released Yellow Submarine, with a cartoon of John Lennon making the sign. Photographs of Lennon show him gesturing with the thumb extended, indicating he may have in fact been signing “love” (which seems to be more fitting) and the artist of the cartoon misrepresented it.
Gene Simmons of KISS has been cited as saying he adopted the sign from a performance of Sister he watched in 1977 (featuring Blackie Lawless, formerly of the New York Dolls and later of W.A.S.P., and Nikki Sixx, later of Mötley Crüe). Blackie had discovered the corna salute in an occult book and began using it in his live shows.
When Ronnie James Dio joined Black Sabbath in 1979, he wanted his own hand gesture he could use to connect with his fans, as original singer Ozzie Osbourne had done using the peace sign. Dio picked up the corna gesture from his Italian grandmother, who used it as the traditional protection against the evil eye, or “malocchio.” This is how the name “maloik,” a corruption of the original term, came about. He has clarified that the sign was never meant to be interpreted as “the devil’s sign.” Rather, it is a symbol representing “magical incantations and attitudes,” which he thought was reflective of what the band was supposed to be all about.
There have been many variations developed involving both hands, and even a sort of handshake that has come to be known as the “rock lock.” But in the end, no matter what the origins or “proper” use of the sign may be, in modern popular culture it’s universally recognized as a simple sign of downright enthusiasm for our common love—ROCK ‘N ROLL! Which is, basically, what we’re all about.
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