Did MTV get the idea for its "Unplugged" series from this tasty, almost-all-acoustic performance on the Tom Snyder Show in 1981? According to Grateful Dead publicist and historian Dennis McNally, the song title came from Jerry Garcia's girlfriend, Mountain Girl, who was watching "The Hound of the Baskervilles" with lyricist Robert Hunter one night and called the pooch a "dire wolf":
The wolf, "600 pounds of sin," is also the devil, and the fact that our guy invites him in speaks volumes. By and large, the Dead stood for moral goodness, but later they would also write a song called "Friend of the Devil." The pivotal moment in American blues history had taken place some 40 years before, when, as Son House told the story, Robert Johnson made a Faustian compact and sold his soul to the devil for the ability to play the guitar, leaving the church and setting out on the blues road. The Dead's postmodern, post-Christian cosmology didn't demand that choice.
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