BOB DYLAN: PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID (1973)
1) Main Title Theme (Billy);
2) Cantina Theme (Workin' For The Law); 3) Billy 1; 4) Bunkhouse Theme; 5)
River Theme; 6) Turkey Chase; 7) Knockin' On Heaven's Door; 8) Final Theme; 9)
Billy 4; 10) Billy 7.
Intermission. Other than a brief three-day
recording session in March 1971, which yielded ʽWatching The River Flowʼ and the
«canonical» version of ʽWhen I Paint My Masterpieceʼ, there was little musical
activity on Bob's part for almost four years. Somewhere in this gap, lost and
generally overlooked — well, as far as one can «overlook» anything associated
with a giant of Bob's stature — was this soundtrack, which the man generated
for the Sam Peckinpah movie of the same name, in which he also played a brief,
but curious, supporting part.
Although few critics would probably list Pat Garrett as a Peckinpah masterpiece
(nothing beats The Wild Bunch, right?),
it still has to be one of the most dead-on collaborations between a major
movie figure and a major musical figure in history. Peckinpah was pretty wasted
by the time it came to realizing his next project; Dylan was in comparatively
better shape, but still a long way from inner peace and comfort, insecure about
his musical future and facing family trouble on the horizon. Peckinpah was
making a movie about «the end of the Old West» as we know it, and Dylan had
lightly scratched that issue, too, on John
Wesley Harding, although the album wasn't about that topic in general.
Peckinpah put Dylan in the movie, gave him the name «Alias», and pretty much
nailed his essence by providing him with the most bizarre scene in the film
(the one where «Alias» is forced to move behind the bar counter and read all the
labels on cans of beans and tomatoes — am I the only one to see the hilarious
parallels between this
and this?). In return,
Dylan gave Peckinpah some of the most broody, somber, unsettling, and,
occasionally, cathartic music he'd ever written.
The obvious bane of the soundtrack album is
that it is not only way too short, but also way too repetitive and «padded out»
to count as a properly offered record of new original music. No less than four
of the tracks are set to the same melody (the three different ʽBillysʼ and the
instrumental ʽTitle Themeʼ), and, in between them, cover about a half of the
album's running length. Of the remaining half, only ʽKnockin' On Heaven's
Doorʼ counts as a fully self-contained song, melody, lyrics, significance, and
everything; the others are instrumentals, varying in purpose and quality.
Essentially, the album is a movie soundtrack,
never aspiring to anything more, and it wasn't even as if Bob had any incentive
to write a lot of music for the movie — the first impression is that of a quick
toss-off, with neither the acting part nor the writing part helping to make the
man feel happy or satisfied.
That said, even a proverbial «toss-off» like
that from Dylan still in his prime (or, more accurately speaking, on the
threshold of his «Silver Age») may contain its fair share of gold nuggets. For
one thing, the backing band assembled for the sessions was a mega-nugget on its
own: Roger McGuinn and old pal Bruce Langhorne on guitars, Booker T. Jones on
bass, Jim Keltner on drums, fiddler-extraordinaire Byron Berline, and brass/woodwinds-pro
Gary Foster — Dylan's usual knack for getting varied, but amazingly well
compatible teams working again. The combination is so perfectly set that even
the six-minute repetitive acoustic jam of ʽTitle Themeʼ is ultimately quite
addictive — they just repeat the same instrumental folk-blues verse over and
over and over, but with enough nuances to keep it interesting (and when you are
tired of savoring the acoustic guitars, turn your attention to Booker T.'s bass
parts: the man is actually being quite funky in places).
ʽCantina Themeʼ, ʽBunkhouse Themeʼ, and ʽRiver
Themeʼ all seem to be centered on the general atmosphere of the dreamy, relaxed
laziness in a hot New Mexican framework — their slow tempos and somewhat rambling
guitar arrangements also diminish the album's initial impact, but with time, the
laziness acquires its properly mystical character, a sort of «desert Taoism»
that only the best directors of Westerns could capture — and only the best
soundtrack composers. The ninety seconds of ʽRiver Themeʼ are especially
captivating. Monotonous, yes, but so is the river.
The real «meat» of the soundtrack, I think,
begins with ʽTurkey Chaseʼ and covers the next two songs as well. ʽTurkey
Chaseʼ may have begun life as a realistic accompaniment to an actual turkey
chase (fast tempo, aggressive style of playing, and the banjo does a good job
of impersonating an actual turkey), but the frantic fiddle part from Byron
Berline makes it more like a life-and-death chase (well, I guess it was, from the turkey's point of view),
being, simply put, one of the most
stunning country fiddle melodies I've ever heard in my life — seeing as how we
are normally accustomed to «friendly» or «funny» fiddle melodies in the genre,
this one, by contrast, is a deeply tragic impersonation of a restless hunted
soul, forced on the run for eternity. Possibly the greatest musical ode to a
turkey ever written — never mind that the word «turkey» by itself produces a
funny effect, just have a listen for yourself.
Still, Berline's three minutes of glory on the
album are easily outperformed by Gary Foster on ʽFinal Themeʼ — here featuring what
is probably my favorite recorder part in all popular music. ʽFinal Themeʼ
builds on the base chord sequence of ʽKnockin' On Heaven's Doorʼ — for the
first thirty seconds, it seems as if this is simply going to be an instrumental
version, but from the moment Gary's recorder part comes in, it fully compels the
listener's attention, and not just the listener's: drummer Jim Keltner, for
instance, seems totally hooked on the playing, following Foster's melody in all
of its rises and falls, and so do the gospel-styled backing vocals. Little surprise
about that: it uses a bare minimum of tone changes to cover the entire palette
of human emotions — every several bars, the mood goes from sadness / depression
/ tragedy to joy / relaxation / redemption, before, finally, the instrument
gets stuck in a small coda loop of ultimate pacification and coming to terms
with the world. Further words just fail me.
In the middle of this great battle between the
master fiddler, who gets the silver, and the master woodwinder, who gets the
gold, sits ʽKnockin' On Heaven's Doorʼ, the first and unquestionably the best
of Dylan's intrusions into the field of gospel music. Later recast by Clapton
as a reggae number, with Bob picking up on the rearrangement and generally
performing it that way in concert, it is still at its most impressive here,
backed with all the proper, somber "ooh-oohs", funereal organs, and a
slow, steady beat, rather than the reggae pulse that cannot help but transform
the song into a dance number — which it probably shouldn't be. (Actually, I
think one reason why Bob eventually switched to the reggae version was that he might
have found the original too heavy and
serious for his cliché-free image). But it should also be noted that, for all
of its subsequent fame, the song works particularly well in the context of
the original movie — this is when you really get to feel this somberness and
heaviness as almost physical
heaviness, pressing down on the protagonist: the "mama, put my guns in the
ground / I can't shoot them anymore" bit is central to the general idea of
Pat Garrett, and the song is not so
much a generic anti-war / anti-violence song as a personal complaint against
the wearisome side effects that complete freedom from everything, including law
and morale, brings on to people.
So, as you can see, there is not one single
reason on Earth to sidestep Pat Garrett
& Billy The Kid while exploring the different faces of Bob Dylan. It
may be debated to what extent the instrumental numbers are really «Dylan»
(although, formally, he is credited as the only songwriter), but we should
remember that «Dylan music» was never limited to «Dylan songwriting» and «Dylan
singing» — time and time over again, it was also about getting all the right
people in the right place at the right time, getting them in the right mood to
produce great music, and knowing when to start, when to stop, and what to
select for the final take. And from that point of view, this soundtrack is as
quintessentially «Dylan» as everything else — and its thumbs up here means «even if this
is to be your last Dylan acquisition, there is no reason why it should be the
least».
Check "Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid" (CD) on Amazon
"(nothing beats The Wild Bunch, right?),"
ReplyDeleteCross of Iron is at least as good and Straw Dogs beats everything (but by all means avoid the remake).