JULY 20, 2017
“FRIEND OF THE DEVIL” (WRITERS: JERRY GARCIA–JOHN
DAWSON–ROBERT HUNTER)
ARTIST: LYLE LOVETT
RELEASED 1991 ON DEADICATED
LP
Not being much of a Grateful Dead fan, I have no emotional encumbrances
with anyone covering or reinterpreting their material. Therefore, when I heard
Lyle Lovett’s version of “Friend of the Devil,” originally issued on the Dead’s
late 1970 American Beauty LP, it not
only struck me as a perfect cover, but the savior of the song.
I personally was always bothered by the jaunty, upbeat tone
of the original version. The song is about as downer of a lyric as one can
imagine—a deep, dark existential crisis in which one can’t even be sure that
selling your soul will get you what’s been promised. And yet the arrangement
made it sound like it was supposed to be a barrel of fun. Maybe that’s the
irony, but I don’t get it.
Lyle Lovett, who’d been cutting records since the late
1980s, is a sort of outsider country artist who writes often funny, often
poignant songs. He was a good choice to for inclusion on the 1991
benefit-slash-tribute album Deadicated,
conceived of by producer Ralph Sell.
The album featured some apropos guests, like Bruce Hornsby,
Lovett, and Dwight Yoakam, but also some unexpected acolytes including Elvis
Costello, Suzanne Vega, and Los Lobos, faithfully cutting Dead songs in their
own styles.
Backed by Little Feat’s Bill Payne on piano and some top
L.A. session men (Lee Sklar, Russ Kunkel, Dean Parks), Lovett slows “Friend of
the Devil” down, affording Robert Hunter’s lyric the ghostly, eerie, feel of a
damned soul that it warrants.
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