"Six-Sixty-Six"

WRITTEN BY: Larry Norman

SUBJECT: The devil.

LYRICS:
in the midst of the war / he offered us peace / and he came like a lover / from out of the east / with the face of an angel and the heart of a beast / his intentions were six-sixty-six / he walked up to the temple / with gold in his hands / and he bought off the priests / and propositioned the land / and the world was his harlot / and laid in the sand / while the band played six-sixty-six / we served at his table / and slept on the floor / but he starved us and beat us / and nailed us on the door / well, I'm ready to die / I can't take any more / and I'm sick of his lies and his tricks / he told us he loved us / but that was a lie / there was blood in his pocket / and death in his eyes / well, my number is up / and I'm willing to die / if the band will play six / if the band will play six-sixty-six / if the band will play six-sixty-six

HISTORY:
- Frank in an interview with BAM, 98...
A lot of people become obsessed with certain songs. You like a song. You say, "We got to do that song." So they might ask the smarter musician in the group to figure out what the chords are. And you do it, and in general, you don't really do it justice. Fortunately, most of the time I butcher cover songs enough so they don't really get released. With "Six Sixty-Six" it had been so long since I had been really obsessed with Larry Norman records--since I was a teenager--so there was all this distance, even though down there in my heart I really respected him and considered myself very much influenced by him, especially as a teenager. It was just a three-chord song, originally a folk-picking song, just G, C, D, and, [guitarist] Lyle [Workman] is good at country licks, and we did our rockabilly thing with his country licks on top. We had fun. A lot of people seem confused by our doing this number, maybe the subject matter. But we don't care. We think it sounds really natural.

LIVE: yes. Frank first played it live in 96. Then plenty in 98-99; Larry Norman even joined in on backing vocals for at least one show. Then starting circa the Dog In The Sand era, they'd usually play this song very slow and powerful, soudning a lot different from the rockabilly/country version on the album.

ACOUSTIC: yes