There’s a couple of key differences in Tenacious D’s version: they met a demon rather than the devil himself, and the challenge was for the best song, not simply the best performance. Kris Kristofferson in “To Beat The Devil” tells us of meeting a guitar playing devil in a bar Mötley Crüe’s “Shout at The Devil” counsels us to “Rock Hard”-presumably to win any rock contests that might occur and when Tenacious D were hitchhiking down down a long and lonesome road, they met a shiny demon who demanded: “Play the best song in the world / Or I’ll eat your soul.” The D plays “the first thing that came to our heads” which “just so happened to be the best song in the world.” (It was the best song in the world.) The Prince of Darkness is 0 for 2 at this point, and might benefit from some music lessons. Fortunately, such evidence is not hard to come by, and when considered as a whole the message is obvious. We would need more evidence to bridge the gap between “not unreasonable” and “certain”. (Not to mention that it’s also very unlikely that conversations in hell begin “pleased to meet you”.) So it seems clear that “Sympathy for The Devil” refers to a time when the Devil was out of hell and travelling incognito for some obscure purpose.Ĭoupling these two songs together, it’s not unreasonable to assume that the devil travels the earth at least semi-regularly looking for souls with a willingness to engage in musical contests to get them. Equally, no one would be puzzled as to the nature of his game once they had witnessed him torturing the souls of sinners in pits of fire. If one met Lucifer on his throne in hell there would be no need to “guess” his name: sycophantic imps would be chanting it constantly. The lyrics are puzzling and their meaning is confounding. “Pleased to meet you, hope you guessed my name,īut what’s puzzling you is the nature of my game” In the famous Rolling Stones song Sympathy for The Devil, Mick Jagger, singing in the first person as the Devil, wails: In fact, this account from the Charlie Daniels Band might address an earlier source of confusion. Still, it’s difficult to believe that’s the only musical contest he ever found himself involved in. But the boy in question won the contest, which is presumably why we’ve heard the story at all. On his search he met a young fiddle player and challenged him to a fiddle contest. For those not familiar, the Devil went down to Georgia “looking for a soul to steal – he was in a bind because he was way behind and he was willing to make a deal”. The Dark Lord’s long and storied relationship with music is one reason the popular folktale immortalized by the Charlie Daniels Band ring true.
The tritone-a musical interval of three whole tones-is known as the diabolis in musica, the “Devil in music.”
Even Christian music legend Larry Norman seemed to take it for granted that the Devil had all the best songs. It’s said that the Genoese violin virtuoso Niccolo Paganini sold his soul to the devil to get his skill on the instrument a similar tale is told about Blues legend Robert Johnson and the guitar. To conclude our One Direction theme week, please enjoy this lighhearted guest post about Satan and his minions from James Burtoft.
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