A Friend of the Devil: The Glorification of the Outlaw in Song: from Robin Hood to Rap

by John Kruth

This book is a fun and informative historical survey of songs that lionize notorious brigands from Ireland to Brazil, Italy to Australia, to the drug lords of Mexico and the inner-city gangs of the United States. For centuries each of these cultures have continued to romanticize criminals, raising them to the status of heroic figures through poetry, stories, song, and more recently film. A Friend of the Devil tracks the true story of these legendary bandits behind the songs that deify them, while looking at society's role in both creating outlaws, and our perpetual need for a new hero. The book also delves into why socially minded, truth-seeking artists, including Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan, wrote and sang songs about such cold-blooded killers as Pretty Boy Floyd and Joey Gallo, purposefully perpetuating their myths in lieu of an honest portrayal of these bad men.

A Friend of the Devil features new interviews with dozens of contemporary songwriters, including Steve Earle, Richard Thompson, Taj Mahal, and Dr. John along with authors Michael Ondaatje and Ishmael Reed. Illustrated with a series of photographs by the author of songwriters and singers of outlaw ballads that include Pete Seeger, Joan Baez, Aaron Neville, John Prine, and Gordon Gano of Violent Femmes.

Genres: Nonfiction, Music

288 pages, Paperback

Published September 1, 2017

Reviews

[David Ward · Rating 3 out of 5]

A Friend of the Devil: The Glorification of the Outlaw in Song from Robin Hood to Rap by John Kruth (Backbeat Books 2017) (781.5) (4090).

This book is author John Kruth’s exploration of and riff upon just what the title claims: outlaws in song. He has denominated a list of actual outlaws and of fictitious outlaws of legend who have been celebrated in popular music. Rather than a definitive list, this is instead a survey of songs that the author seems to have brainstormed into enough titles to support a book idea, and this is the result. The author has kindly included his “outlaw playlist” as an Appendix.

I enjoyed this volume, and I am certain that other music fans will as well.

The selections that I highlighted to find or to re-listen to include “Machine Gun Kelly” (James Taylor), “Cocaine Blues” (Keith Richard), “Hallucination Horror” and “New Amphetamine Shriek” (The Fugs), “Homegrown” (Neil Young), “Henry” (New Riders of the Purple Sage), “Prodigal Son” (The Rolling Stones), and tunes by the Neville Brothers (“Meet the Boys on De Battlefront,” “Brother John”) and by Leadbelly (aka Hudie Ledbetter).

I own a new PB copy that I purchased from Amazon for $12.50 on 3/1/25.

My rating: 7/10, finished 10/07/25 (4090).

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[Howling Rabbit · Rating 1 out of 5]

This mess was so incompetently written, it pains me to have to go back to it to find examples. Vague connections are made between cited songs, unnecessary details about the artists who recorded them, not enough details provided the songs in the contexts in which they originated or subsequently. The author seems to have just gathered a bunch of "facts" without going into much thought about them. Spare yourself the frustration in trying to read this lazily assembled bunch of sentences.