Friend Of The Devil is an all-time classic. Personally I always liked the fast version much better than the slow version. Of course the slow version is fine on occasion, but I just wish the band had switched between the two in the later years instead of just playing the slower arrangement.
The site that I’ve been using for streaming didn’t have this exact version so I’ve included the other version from this set as a representative example.
I saw Grace Potter & The Nocturnals at Red Rocks last summer and they busted out a couple acoustic songs and this was one of them. Grace prefaced it by saying something along the lines of “this is one of the best songs ever written.” I know a lot of people probably rank this song pretty high on their favorite list, but it’s not in my top 10, especially the slow version.
But fortunately this isn’t the slow version! The acoustic sets from 1970 are always a treat and the Road Trips, Vol. 3, No. 3 release has a lot of that material on it, plus some really great stage banter. There are actually 2 versions of Friend of the Devil on the release, but I thought this was the better of the two.
The instrumental break is brief and lacks any sort of solo, but Bobby (I assume) throws in some nice riffs underneath the following verse. I didn’t really notice the lack of a bonafide solo because the fingerpicking made up for it nicely. After he finishes the song you can hear Garcia asking about the volume of his guitar. On to the next one!
Complete Setlist 5/15/70 Late Show
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Here we have one of those early, sprightly versions that evokes the best memories of this song in my mind. Of course it is more raw than the studio version but it also is more real. The guitar parts interweave meaningfully and the vocals are sung without harmonies. Jerry pauses to great effect before the first bridge, just hanging there until he feels like singing it. There is nothing strummy about the solo part – it is two, picked pieces of perfection. Beautiful.
Lunch and Steve,
Agree with both of you. This Friend was a great one and a version that is hard to top. The song is truly an acoustic number, but one they played electric and at a slower tempo, but never equaled this take on it. I’m not that much of a collector of pre 72, but this release really demonstrates why so many heads love that era.
I really enjoyed listening to this entire release. It had been a while and the acoustic sets really blew me away. I’ve been listening to so much Post-70 stuff lately that I’d forgotten about a lot of the old gospel tunes they used to do in their acoustic sets. But this FOTD is just sublime.