The
idea of the Devil as someone that musicians would sell their soul to for success
and fame seems rather implausible these days, even as a simple story concept. I
don’t think even Satan possesses the means to keep an album off of BitTorrent,
and if the downloading doesn’t get you, falling ticket sales and the lack of
viable promotional channels probably will. Plus, it’s not even fun to be a rock
star anymore. If you were David Coverdale, your life was about fine cars, drugs, and plugging Tawny Kitaen when the sight of her didn’t make your privates run in the opposite direction. These days, your model is somebody like Pete Wentz, whose life is about blogging, holding marketing meetings to synergize between his clothing lines and record label, and making out with Ashlee Simpson when time permits. Now, if time travel was included in the package and you could
make your stake on the Sunset Strip of the mid 80s, Liverpool in the late 60s or perhaps Bristol or
Seattle in the early 90s…well, then we can talk. But asking for that which
fills my mortal coil in return for…what, 150,000 MySpace friends, a YouTube
viral clip hit, and perhaps a few fleeting affairs with the coke-addled pop
tarts of today? No sale.
Then
again, I’ve never been tempted by opposite of pigment, Tobin Bell. The actor
now best known for playing Jigsaw in The Punisher the Saw films has
signed for Highway 61, in which he’d play Beelzebub as a supernatural trickster
at the legendary Crossroads in Mississippi. As the tale goes, blues guitarist Robert
Johnson sucked ass back in the early 20th century and went to the
Crossroads to trade his soul for fame and talent. He returned and cut about
30-odd records, many about the notion that he owed the Devil and that
hellhounds were on his trail, before mysteriously dying at a very young age. In
this version, it’s a struggling rock band that meets Satan through their
manager, which is probably the most believable part of the story. I’m not sure
how much they have left to sell after signing standard music industry management
contracts, though.
Anyway,
Highway
61 has already begun shooting.