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Salem to Salem: Altamont



One of the funniest jokes in the book is when Billy, on the eve of destroying the town, compares his visions for a utopia, tragically, to the Altamont free festival in 1969 which resulted in four deaths, one of whom can be seen visibly in the Rolling Stones film Gimme Shelter. Billy even intones the song many, falsely, believe to have been playing when the concert-goer, Meredith Hunter, dies: "Sympathy for the Devil". As Billy and his friends have been certainly devilish up to this point, there is an added irony to the mention of the song; both the song's infernal nature and also that Billy gets it wrong -- this wasn't the song playing when Hunter died.


In a way, though, "Sympathy for the Devil" is what Abigail has for the entire book as she looks up to Billy and grows to form a bond with him. Only when she is in a cage near the book's end, and Billy is cackling over the walkie-talkie, does she realize there has been, "Sympathy for the Devil", but by then it is far too late.

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