“Race with Devil on Spanish Highway”

“IT’S A VERY funny song in a way,” Al Di Meola says of “Race with Devil on Spanish Highway,” the jazz-rock masterpiece from his landmark 1977 album, Elegant Gypsy. “By that I mean the way it’s been perceived and written about is a little strange.”

As Di Meola explains, he’s read articles in which the song has been labeled , a term that rubs him the that I’m not crazy about,” he explains. “It just feels so limiting and certainly not a good way to describe what I do, because a lot of shredders aren’t known as good songwriters — they’re just going off on the guitar. I come from a compositional background. Even when I played with Return to Forever, we emphasized writing, although we were certainly known for technique. So this song is interesting to me, but not always in the ways that people like to talk about it.”