May I interest you in the deal of a lifetime? Please allow me to introduce myself, I'm a man of wealth and taste. I'll tell you the answer to the question you've asked, and laughs all you need to do is sell me your immortal soul. I mean, it's not a big deal, you probably don't believe in that stuff anyway. And how about a martini to celebrate a successful transaction? And isn't that solo by Bill Evans simply divine? Such cool music. How about it?

evil laugh

Oh, you sold me your sold to read the rest of the answer! Well, in that case...

The nature of demons in popular culture, and in symbolism of the occult, is often as a sort of shadow of the values that people wish to portray as good. Those who value erudition and classiness likely see their demons as too-emotional, too-sexual, too-unhinged, and those who value simplicity and who value emotionality (in a religious context) likely see their demons as erudite and classy. So there is a stereotype of demons as erudite (see TV tropes here on 'Wicked Cultured', for example) and an opposing stereotype of demons as brutal and playing on base desires. As a result, there certainly are situations in popular culture which the demon is associated with musical styles which in a 21st century context denote erudition (the robot devil in Futurama being one example).

But for all that, rock'n'roll has certainly long been railed against as the devil's music by preachers, primarily for its sonic symbolism of loosening one's grip on one's emotions, which quite naturally leads the possibility of sinful behaviour, especially sexual behaviour ('rock'n'roll' once being slang for sex). Initially, the rock'n'roll music of the 1950s was mostly just about dancing, rather than importing occult symbolic, but as that music became culturally important in the 1960s as 'rock music', being a presager of cultural changes, etc, rock music began to prominently incorporate occult ideas from the rural blues (primarily in the 1960s), and thus started to prominently and deliberately play with occult symbolism as a way to express the relationship of youth in the 1960s to society.

1950s rock'n'roll, by comparison to the 1960s, has little occult symbolism or lyrical content - instead the lyrical focus is on love, sex, dancing, and teenage life (in much the same way that the lyrical focus of most pop music today is on love, sex, dancing, and teenage life). There's a couple of exceptions in 1950s rock & roll, however, which basically play on voodoo symbolism as a schtick not meant to be taken entirely seriously. Bo Diddley is one: his 1955 track 'Bo Diddley' mentions 'mojo come to my house, ya black cat bone', while his 1956 track 'Who Do You Love?' also has a voodoo feel to it. Bo Diddley's schtick was a sort of primitivism (the 'bo diddley' being a primitive string instrument), and Diddley was using occult references along with African-based rhythms as a sort of way of evoking 'primitive' African roots. The other is the has-to-be-seen-to-be-believed Screamin' Jay Hawkins, whose song 'I Put A Spell On You' hams up the voodoo stuff in a 'black Vincent Price' kind of way.

In terms of the rock music of the 1960s, one important source for occult symbolism is in the blues. In the wake of the Beatles, a British blues movement came to prominence - groups like The Animals, The Rolling Stones, and the various groups Eric Clapton was in (The Yardbirds, John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, Cream, etc) - which found inspiration in the acoustic Delta blues of the 1920s-1930s and the post-war Chicago electric blues on labels like Chess (a similar American movement existed but was less influential in this regard). The symbolism of the deal with the devil at the crossroads was common in the Delta blues - 'Cross Road Blues' and 'Me And The Devil Blues' by Robert Johnson are two obvious examples (it's been argued that the specifics of this symbolism has roots in west African theology reinterpreted in the black Christian environment of the Mississippi delta). Similarly, post-war Chicago blues artists like Muddy Waters (e.g., 'Hoochie Coochie Man') and Howlin' Wolf (e.g., 'Evil') played up voodoo symbolism. Anyway, of the British blues movement, The Animals covered 'I Put A Spell On You' in 1965 (playing it straight, rather than for comic effect). 'Hoochie Coochie Man' was covered by Manfred Mann in 1964 and the Graham Bond Organisation in 1965. Eric Clapton's group Cream was covering 'Cross Road Blues' live in 1966 and eventually released it as 'Crossroads' in 1968.

However, as far as the British blues movement went, some of the voodoo references came across as ...exotic to British audiences rather than eerie and foreboding. Additionally, in the heyday of psychedelic drugs such as LSD, rock musicians started experiencing unsettling, occult-seeming experiences - were they bad trips or genuine occult experiences? This is reflected in a variety of music from the era. The Rolling Stones' overtly psychedelic 1967 album was titled Their Satanic Majesties Request (e.g., the track 'We Love You'). Pink Floyd's 1967 Piper At The Gates Of Dawn album has a track called 'Lucifer Sam', playing around with witches' familiar imagery. 1966 saw the release of Donovan's song 'Season Of The Witch', with a session musician by the name of Jimmy Page prominently featured on guitar. An American psychedelic pop group who released their debut album in 1967 called themselves 'H.P. Lovecraft'. And the American rock group Love released a single in 1966, 'Six And Six Is', and an album in 1967, Forever Changes (e.g., 'The Red Telephone') with occult overtones.

In the later 1960s, the British folk-rock movement chronicled in the book Electric Eden by Rob Young also dabbled with occult imagery, seeking to portray a weird old England a la that chronicled in (the 1970s version of) The Wicker Man. I've no doubt that many a metalhead has bought an album by the band Pentangle sight-unseen and discovered to their horror that it's psychedelic jazz-influenced folk rock with Joan Baez-style vocals. Bands like Pentangle and Fairport Convention often did versions of traditional songs like 'The House Carpenter' which featured narrators coming into contact with powerful occult beings.

These various cultural currents came together by the 1970s, when you get bands whose whole image more-or-less revolved around the occult, like Led Zeppelin or Black Sabbath. Led Zeppelin neatly tie all these trends in a bow: Jimmy Page had played in a British blues rock band (The Yardbirds) as they fought to stay on top of the psychedelic trend, and played prominent parts in more than a few psychedelic singles of 1966-1967. There was also a fascination in Led Zeppelin with the British folk-rock movement; 'Black Mountain Side' from their first album is heavily based on an arrangement by Pentangle guitarist Bert Jansch, while Fairport Convention singer Sandy Denny is prominently featured on 'Battle Of Evermore', from Led Zeppelin IV. Jimmy Page was also famously fascinated by the occult, to the extent of buying the occultist Aleister Crowley's former residence, and representing himself in symbolic form on Led Zeppelin IV using a symbol from a 16th century alchemical text (the 'zoso').

Thanks for the soul!

Sources:

1. Ted Gioia, Delta Blues

2. Andrew Hulktrans, Love's Forever Changes (33 1/3)

3. Rob Young, Electric Eden: Unearthing Britain's Visionary Music

4. Erik Davis, Led Zeppelin IV (33 1/3)