The Devil's Pact

4: Satanic Bargain

There is another key aspect to guitar playing – the Faustian Pact. This lies behind the blues and all music that came from it, including rock, metal, hip-hop and rap. In fact, the idea that you can sell your soul to the Devil at the crossroads in exchange for guitar expertize and fame and fortune was in common circulation amongst bluesmen in the American South in the 1930s and before.

It was legendary bluesman Robert Johnson who brought this notion into common knowledge. Legend has it that he went to a lonely crossroads in Mississippi during the early 1930s to meet the Devil at midnight. He handed his guitar to the Devil, who re-tuned it to open G (the Devil’s tuning), and gave it back to Johnson.

Within months, the obscure bluesman’s career began to take off. Johnson made records and traveled the American South playing his music. People spoke in hushed whispers of the bluesman who had made a terrible diabolic pact. Within a few years, however, Johnson died in mysterious circumstances. People said the Devil had taken his due – Johnson’s immortal soul.

Johnson was by no means the first to surround himself with a demoniac reputation. During the 1920s, Peetie Wheatstraw and Tommy Johnson (possibly a distant relative of Robert Johnson) played the “Devil” card for all they were worth. Peetie Wheatstraw, a piano and guitar player, dubbed himself “the Devil’s son in law” and “high sheriff from hell.” While Tommy Johnson claimed outright that he’d sold his soul to the Devil.