Please allow me to introduce myself: Autobiographical blues self-fashioning in 'Sympathy for the Devil'

This essay explores the ways in which ‘Sympathy for the Devil’s’ narrator creates a self through autobiographical blues self-invention. By claiming physical proximity to, and responsibility for, catastrophic, global events across millennia, the narrator situates himself within a traditional blues culture where the devil—through Faustian barter or shadowy influence—wields considerable power. Through the analysis of the lyrical content, and the numerous in-studio performances of ‘Sympathy for the Devil’ captured in the Jean-Luc Godard documentary of the same name, this work considers how the Rolling Stones—and Mick Jagger in particular—advances romantic satanic blues mythologies while participating in autobiographical blues self-invention. I argue that ‘Sympathy for the Devil’s’ unreliable satanic narrator engages in fictionalized autobiographical blues self-fashioning, effectively writing himself into the Southern American blues tradition through tall tale telling and the strong impulse to self-name.