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Devils Haircut

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"Devils Haircut"
Song

"Devils Haircut" is a single by Beck, taken from the album Odelay.

Lyrical and Musical content

As is common with his Odelay-era songs, Devils Haircut is driven by a number of samples: the drums in the choruses and drum breaks come from Pretty Purdie's Soul Drums; the drumbeat during the verses comes from Them's cover of James Brown's Out of Sight; and the guitar riff was taken from another Them cover (this time of I Can Only Give You Everything,) but it was replayed by Beck, rather than sampled.

On top of this smorgasbord of instrumental borrowings, Beck sings about 'stealing kisses from the leperous faces,' 'discount orgies,' and 'garbage man trees.' The song was written having just finished his gruelling Lollapalooza tour; consequently, Devils Haircut is dotted with references to the wandering disorientation that comes with touring, such as 'coming to town with the briefcase blues.'

Beck himself has talked about the meaning of Devils Haircut on a few of occasions. In one interview, he claimed that Devils Haircut was 'a really simplistic metaphor for the evil of vanity.' He said of the song:

I don't know if I ever HAD any youthful purity, but I can understand that you might be tempted to make commercial shit and compromise to do it. I try not to compromise on anything. I think we associate becoming an adult with compromise. Maybe that's what the devil is. In 'Devils Haircut' that was the scenario. I imagined Stagger Lee... I thought, what if this guy showed up now in 1996... I thought of using him as a Rumplestiltskin figure, this Lazarus figure to comment on where we've ended up as people. What would he make of materialism and greed and ideals of beauty and perfection? His reaction would be, 'Whoa, this is disturbing shit.'

Music video

The music video for this song is directed by Mark Romanek. It features Beck walking through various locations, wearing cowboy attire and carrying a boombox. At some points, the action freezes and the camera zooms in on Beck in tableau. Later the camera zooms in on spies that have been following Beck the whole time.

The video was meant to reference the films Midnight Cowboy and The 400 Blows.

B-sides and remixes

Devils Haircut was released with a number of B-sides, which included many remixes:

CD #1 includes two remixes by Noel Gallagher of Oasis, and Mike Simpson of The Dust Brothers. The former adds a roaring guitar, emphasised over all other instruments on the track. The latter is a more jazzy take on the song, packed with added percussion and jazz horns.

CD #2 includes Dark and Lovely, another sample-laden Dust Brothers remix, and American Wasteland, by Mickey P, which transforms the song into a fast, hardcore punk style. Another remix, Richard's Hairpiece, was done courtesy of Aphex Twin, in which the riff is removed, and Beck's vocals are sped up to the extent that his voice is extremely high-pitched. This remix was not included on either CD version of Devils Haircut, because of Aphex Twin's delay in making it, but it was included on the subsequent CD for The New Pollution.

Both CDs had one original B-side in addition to the remixes. CD #1 had Trouble All My Days, an early song from 1993 which is characterised by deep, distorted vocals and Beck's thrashing his loosely-tuned strings. Trouble All My Days had been featured on Pay No Mind, Golden Feelings and two other releases prior to its inclusion on Devils Haircut CD #1.

CD #2 features .000.000, a mysterious song with a strange, minimalistic instrumental background and difficult to discern lyrics, which had thitherto not been released. .000.000 was released on The New Pollution also.

  • In the episode "Bendin' in the Wind" of Futurama, Beck guest-starred and said "When I feel sad, I write a song about it. Like when I wrote Devil's Haircut I was feeling...What was that song about again?"
  • Bob Dylan made reference to the song and its lyrical complexity on his weekly XFM show: 'We're talkin' about the Devil here on Theme Time Radio Hour. And the Devil always looks sharp. One of the reasons he looks sharp is that he had a good haircut. Here's Beck to tell you all about it. This is from his hit album Odelay, produced by the Dust Brothers. Beck says "This song is a really simplistic metaphor for the evil of vanity." I just thought you could dance to it.'

Trivia

  • Devils Haircut was originally going to be called Electric Music and the Summer People, until it was decided that it would become one of Odelay's singles. Beck later used this title for a song released both on The New Pollution and Mutations.
  • Devils Haircut is the most remixed song off Odelay.
  • Devil's Haircut has been used to describe both a haircut that resembles devil horns, and a cocktail made with vodka, rum, two splashes of champagne, a few drops of bitters and a slice of lemon.


Track listing

CD #1

  1. "Devils Haircut" [LP Version]
  2. "Devils Haircut" [Remix by Noel Gallagher]
  3. "Groovy Sunday" [Remix by Mike Simpson]
  4. "Trouble All My Days"

CD #2

  1. "Devils Haircut" [LP Version]
  2. "Dark and Lovely" [Remix by Dust Brothers]
  3. "American Wasteland" [Remix by Mickey P.]
  4. ".000.000"
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