The Devil Has All The Best Tunes: Part TwoSatan Gets Groovy
The Devil in Blues Music: Crossroads, Hellhounds, and the Price of Genius
The blues has always been comfortable with the devil. While gospel singers begged for deliverance and preachers thundered warnings from the pulpit, blues musicians invited Satan in, offered him a chair, poured him a drink, and let him stay the night. The devil in blues is not the distant, abstract evil of Sunday school; he is intimate, familiar, almost a drinking buddy. He walks beside you on dusty Delta roads, knocks on your door at dawn, and sometimes he even sounds like he’s sorry for what he’s about to do.
The crossroads myth is the clearest expression of this bargain. The story usually goes like this: a failed musician goes to a rural crossroads at midnight, tunes his guitar, and waits. A large black man appears (sometimes on foot, sometimes driving a black car), takes the guitar, tunes it perfectly, plays a few unearthly licks, hands it back, and walks away. From that night on, the musician plays like no one else—but he will die young. Tommy Johnson openly claimed this happened to him in the late 1920s. Robert Johnson never confirmed the story, but by 1938 the legend had swallowed him whole.
Robert Johnson’s songs are the darkest, most haunted treatments of the theme. “Me and the Devil Blues” (1937) is chillingly casual:
Early this morning
when you knocked upon my door
I said “Hello Satan
I believe it’s time to go”
There is no panic, only resignation. The devil is not invading; he has an appointment. In “Hellhound on My Trail” the pursuit is relentless, supernatural, and personal:
I got to keep moving
I got to keep moving
blues falling down like hail
And the days keeps on worryin’ me
there’s a hellhound on my trail
The hellhound—an old Southern folk image of inescapable doom—becomes the sound of Johnson’s own genius chasing him to an early grave.
Other singers treated the devil with swagger instead of dread. Peetie Wheatstraw billed himself on record labels as “The Devil’s Son-in-Law” and “The High Sheriff from Hell.” His 1931 recording “Devil’s Son-in-Law” is pure boast:
I’m the devil’s son-in-law
I’m married to his daughter
If you mess with me
I’m gonna bring you slaughter
Skip James took yet another angle. His falsetto-laced “Devil Got My Woman” (1931) turns romantic betrayal into demonic possession:
The devil got my woman
he told me this morning he did
I laid down last night
I couldn’t get no rest
The woman is gone, and the devil himself brags about it. Love and damnation collapse into the same wound.
Even musicians who never made literal pacts played with the idea. Son House, an ordained preacher who repeatedly backslid into blues, howled in “Preachin’ Blues”:
Oh, I’m gonna get me religion
I’m gonna join the Baptist church
I’m gonna be a Baptist preacher
so I won’t have to work
Then, a few lines later:
The blues is a low-down shakin’ chill
Yes, preach ’em now
You ain’t heard nothin’ if you ain’t heard me preach the blues
The church called blues the devil’s music. House agreed—and kept playing anyway.
Women sang about the devil too, though usually from the other side of the transaction. Clara Smith’s “Done Sold My Soul to the Devil” (1924) and Bessie Smith’s “Blue Spirit Blues” (1929) treat the devil as a treacherous lover who promises the world and delivers misery. Memphis Minnie, Victoria Spivey, and Lucille Bogan all recorded devil songs that mixed seduction with menace.
By the 1940s and 1950s, as blues moved to Chicago and electrified, the devil became less literal less often and metaphorical more. Muddy Waters’ “Hoochie Coochie Man” and Howlin’ Wolf’s “Moanin’ at Midnight” keep the hoodoo atmosphere without naming Satan directly, but the threat is still there in the growl and the slide guitar that sounds like something crawling out of the swamp.
What makes the devil such durable company in blues is simple: he understands suffering. He doesn’t offer salvation; he offers power, sex, talent, revenge—things you can use right now, tonight, while the bill collector is at the door and the woman is leaving with another man. The preacher promises heaven later. The devil delivers something you can feel before sunrise.
And so the blues singer shakes the devil’s hand, tunes the guitar the devil just retuned for him, and sings—knowing full well that the last verse is already written, that the hellhound is already on the trail, that the debt will come due. But for three minutes on a 78-rpm record, he plays and sings like God and the devil both are listening.
And both of them are.
The Hippie Movement and Its Fascination with the Occult
The hippie movement (roughly 1964–1974) was never just about long hair, free love, and protest songs. At its core was a ferocious spiritual hunger—an urgent, often chaotic search for direct experience of the divine that bypassed churches, universities, and the entire Western rationalist tradition. Psychedelics blew the doors open, but what rushed in was not merely hedonism; it was a wholesale revival of occultism, magic, and esoteric religion on a scale the West had not seen since the Renaissance.
Psychedelics as Sacrament
LSD, psilocybin, mescaline, and DMT were not treated as party drugs by the serious seekers; they were entheogens—literally “generating the god within.” Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert (later Ram Dass), and Ralph Metzner explicitly framed acid trips in the language of the Tibetan Book of the Dead and the Western esoteric tradition. Leary’s 1964 manual "The Psychedelic Experience was subtitled “, A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead” and instructed users how to navigate the bardo-like states of an acid trip using ancient mystical techniques.
The conviction was simple: the veil was thin, and chemicals could rip it aside. Thousands of young people came to believe they had met God, goddesses, demons, extraterrestrials, and past-life memories while peaking on LSD in Golden Gate Park or on a commune in Taos. These experiences were taken as empirical proof that the occult was real.
Eastern Mysticism Meets Western Occultism
While the newspapers fixated on beads and bells, the actual reading lists of serious hippies were astonishingly heavy:
• The I Ching was consulted daily (the Wilhelm/Baynes translation became a bestseller).
• Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha and Alan Watts" The Way of Zen "were passed around like joints.
• Aleister Crowleys books, once confined to a handful of lodges, sold in the hundreds of thousands of copies in cheap paperback editions. His maxim “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law” was scrawled on VW buses and interpreted (usually wrongly) as a license for unlimited freedom.
• The Tarot exploded. The Waite-Smith deck (1909) became the standard; every head shop sold it next to rolling papers.
• Astrology went from newspaper filler to a central organizing principle of identity. “What’s your sign?” was not small talk; it was metaphysical diagnostics.
Witchcraft, Paganism, and the Re-Enchantment of Nature
Wicca and Neo-Pagan Witchcraft
Gerald Gardner’s books (Witchcraft Today, 1954; The Meaning of Witchcraft, 1959) found their true audience at last. Covens sprang up in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and college towns. Raymond Buckland imported Gardnerian Wicca to America in 1964; by the early 1970s there were thousands of initiates. Women especially gravitated toward the Goddess-centered theology as an antidote to patriarchal Christianity.
Crowley Thelema and Magick
The Ordo Templi Orientis and other Crowley-derived groups grew dramatically. Grady McMurtry revived the O.T.O. in California in the late 1960s with explicit hippie membership. Ritual sex magick, previously the most hidden aspect of Crowley’s system, suddenly had a willing experimental population.
Aleister Crowley (1875–1947), the infamous British occultist, magician, poet, and founder of the religion/philosophy of Thelema (“Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law”), exerted a surprising and lasting influence on rock music in the 1960s and 1970s. By the time the counterculture exploded, Crowley had already been dead for two decades, yet his image, ideas, and mythology became a kind of dark patron saint for many musicians exploring mysticism, rebellion, drugs, and sexual liberation—themes that dovetailed perfectly with both the psychedelic era and the subsequent occult revival.
Why Crowley in particular?
Crowley combined several things the 60s/70s counterculture loved:
• Rejection of Christian morality
• Celebration of sex, drugs, and individualism
• A theatrical, larger-than-life persona
• A ready-made mythology of rebellion against the establishment
To a generation that saw itself overthrowing the old order, “Do what thou wilt” sounded less like dangerous occultism and more like the ultimate expression of personal freedom. Whether musicians took him seriously (Jimmy Page and David Bowie) or treated him as exotic window dressing (the Beatles, Rolling Stones), Crowley became the patron saint of rock’s occult wing—a role he still occupies today whenever someone scribbles “666” on a guitar or sings about stairways to heaven.
The Beatles and the Sgt. Pepper Cover (1967)
The most visible mainstream nod came when The Beatles placed Crowley’s face on the cover of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (top row, second from the left). Paul McCartney has said the cover was meant to represent “people we like and admire,” and John Lennon in particular was fascinated by esoteric subjects. Though none of the Beatles were hardcore Thelemites, the inclusion of Crowley alongside figures like Karl Marx, Marilyn Monroe, and Carl Jung signaled that the old occult bogeyman had been rehabilitated as a countercultural hero.
Jimmy Page and Led Zeppelin
The deepest and most committed engagement came from Led Zeppelin’s guitarist Jimmy Page. Page was a serious collector of Crowley memorabilia—he bought Crowley’s Boleskine House on Loch Ness in 1971, owned one of the world’s largest private collections of Crowley manuscripts, and even opened an occult bookshop called The Equinox in London. Musically, this fascination bled into Zeppelin’s work:
• “Stairway to Heaven” (1971) was accused by fundamentalist Christians of containing satanic backmasking; Page never denied the occult flavor of the band and simply laughed it off.
• The runes/symbols on Led Zeppelin IV (1971): Page chose the mysterious “Zoso” sigil for himself, which many interpret as a personal magical symbol inspired by Crowley’s writings and grimoires.
• Lyrics such as “If there’s a bustle in your hedgerow…” were read by some as veiled references to pagan and Thelemic ideas.
Page reportedly performed Crowley-inspired rituals and was rumored (almost certainly apocryphally) to have put curses on bandmates. True or not, the aura stuck.
Sympath for the Devil? The Rolling Stones
• Their Satanic Majesties Request (1967) album title and psychedelic-occult aesthetic owed something to the era’s Crowley fascination.
• More concretely, Mick Jagger read Crowley and was friendly with Kenneth Anger, the underground filmmaker and Crowley disciple who cast Jagger as Lucifer in the aborted film Lucifer Rising. Anger later gave the finished soundtrack job to Bobby Beausoleil, a Manson Family member—showing how thin the line between the 60s occult scene and real darkness could be.
Graham Bond, The Fool, and the Underground Occult Rock Scene
The Graham Bond Organisation (which included a young Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker) was openly Thelemic; Bond claimed to be Crowley’s illegitimate son and titled an album Holy Magick (1970). The psychedelic design collective The Fool (who painted the Beatles’ Apple Boutique and worked with the Stones, Procol Harum, and others) were also deep into Crowley and Thelema.
The Occult and David Bowie
Bowie’s 1970s personas were steeped in Crowleyana:
• In 1971 he told the press he was studying the Kabbalah and Crowley.
• The 1976 album Station to Station opens with the line “Here are we, one magical movement from Kether to Malkuth” — a direct reference to the Kabbalistic Tree of Life that Crowley used extensively.
• Bowie’s Thin White Duke character was described by the singer himself as “a nasty character indeed… very Aryan and obsessed with Aleister Crowley.”
• He reportedly performed banishing rituals in houses he believed were haunted and was so paranoid about Crowleyan magic that he allegedly stored his urine and hair clippings to prevent witches from using them against him.
Black Sabbath and the Birth of Heavy Metal
Ozzy Osbourne and Geezer Butler were reading Dennis Wheatley occult novels and Crowley-related material in the late 60s. Songs like “Black Sabbath” (1970) and “The Wizard” dripped with dark mysticism, and the band’s name itself evoked the kind of black-magic imagery that Crowley had helped popularize in the public mind decades earlier.
More on Black Sabbath and metal bands’ occult references in part three of this series.
Other 1970s satanic links
• The title of Ozzy’s solo album Blizzard of Ozz (1980) nods to Crowley’s nickname “The Great Beast 666” and his poem “A Blizzard of Ozz.”
• Genesis P-Orridge of Throbbing Gristle and Psychic TV was an avowed Thelemite who founded the Temple ov Psychick Cross and later the Process Church-influenced TOPI network.
• Even KISS’s Gene Simmons has claimed he wanted the lightning-bolt SS logo to evoke occult power (though that’s more marketing than genuine magick).
The other key influence: Anton LaVey
Self-confessed Satanist, performer and the founder of the Church of Satan in 1966, had a significant and often exaggerated cultural impact on rock and metal musicians during the late 1960s through the 1990s. His influence was less about direct recruitment into Satanism and more about aesthetics, theatricality, rebellion, and the deliberate use of Satanic imagery as a provocative tool against mainstream Christianity and conformity.
Here are the most notable ways and musicians he influenced:
Direct Personal Connections
• Led Zeppelin (especially Jimmy Page)
Jimmy Page was deeply fascinated by the occult and owned Boleskine House (Aleister Crowley’s former home). Page bought one of the original limited-edition vinyl pressings of LaVey’s 1968 album The Satanic Mass and was rumored to have visited the Church of Satan’s Black House in San Francisco. While Page never joined the Church, LaVey praised him in interviews, and the Zeppelin mystique (backwards messages, the “Hermit” imagery, “Stairway to Heaven” accusations) owed a debt to the kind of occult theater LaVey popularized.
LaVey’s Own Musical Contributions
• Before founding the Church, LaVey played calliope in circuses and Wurlitzer organ in burlesque houses. He released two albums of moody, occult-themed instrumental music:
• The Satanic Mass (1968)
• Anton LaVey Plays the Satanic Organ (later reissued as Strange Music)
• These were sampled or cited by industrial and dark-ambient acts. The spoken-word portions of The Satanic Mass were particularly influential on early goth and death-rock bands.
LaVey did not create a vast network of actual Satanic rock stars who attended rituals in the Black House. His real impact was in giving musicians a ready-made toolkit of rebellious, anti-Christian imagery and a philosophy (individualism, hedonism, eye-for-an-eye morality) that perfectly suited rock’s outlaw ethos. For many artists, “Satanism” meant “LaVeyanism” (atheistic, carnal, theatrical) rather than medieval devil worship.
Key figures with direct or strong influence:
• King Diamond (actual member)
• Marilyn Manson (honorary reverend, close personal contact)
• Jimmy Page (occult interest, owned LaVey recordings)
• A broader wave of 1980s shock-rock and extreme-metal bands who adopted the aesthetics without necessarily reading The Satanic Bible.
LaVey himself loved the attention rock music gave his church; he saw it as the perfect modern platform for Satanic ideas. Whether the musicians took it seriously or not, they amplified his brand far beyond what a small San Francisco organization could have achieved on its own.
The hippie movement grows up: New Age and the rediscovery of Pagan religions and music
The hippie movement, occult teachings, gurus and history moulded together during the 70s as the New Age Movement. Many people around the world have embraced, love and study the history of their people in ancient times, before the organised religions like Christianity. Music, art, poetry and sculpture have all exploded into the mainstream as people look to the past and simpler times for relaxation, consciousness and confidence. The old deities have found a new life in modern times and so as good Ol’ Nick. Occultism, Satanism/Luciferian believes has fed into the music performances of some new age artists and there are many occult and witchcraft bands and musicians like Incubus Sukkubus , Lisa Thie and more !
From the start of the 20th century to the 1970s , from folk ballads to heavy rock, Satan was always around to influence and inspire .
