PAT GARRETT AND BILLY THE KID: THAT LONG BLACK CLOUD: from ‘MINSTREL BOY: THE METAMORPHOSERS OF BOB DYLAN’

PAT GARRETT AND BILLY THE KID

EXTRACTS… FULL TEXT HERE

The little guy in the in brown overalls and a stove pipe hat is sitting in the corner of the saloon staring rather vacantly into space. We cut to the big bad lawman, who has just been given a shave. He’s a pretty scary guy. He’s fast on the draw and takes no prisoners. He squints and asks the little guy, who so far hasn’t said a word, a searching question. You don’t mess with Pat Garrett. Give an answer he doesn’t like and that six shooter will be out of the holster faster than you can say ‘draw’.

Garrett isn’t one to mince his words. …Who are you?.. he enquires.

The little guy stares down at the table in front of him for a moment. We might be wondering if he has a weapon concealed under there and whether he fancies trying to make his name by knocking off the former outlaw. But he merely replies “That’s a good question” and takes a slug of rot gut.

The next time we see the little guy he emerges from a doorway and surveys the dead bodies lying in the street of the Western town and gives a crooked smile. Across the way, the even deadlier Billy the Kid is cleaning his gun, having mercilessly dispatched several renegades. This situation is even more dangerous. Billy smiles as he kills. In fact he is smiling through most of the movie. It’s crucial that the little guy doesn’t say the wrong thing. Otherwise he’ll join the pile of corpses. But instead he smiles broadly, like maybe it’s Christmas or his birthday. One of Billy’s menacing honchos eyes him up suspiciously. He asks the same question Garrett posed earlier.

The little guy merely replies …Alias…

…Alias what?…

…Alias anything you please…

Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid is, like The Wild Bunch, an ‘elegiac’ Western. It is set in the early twentieth century, as the ‘old West’ is dying. Like the equally violent ‘spaghetti Westerns’ of Sergio Leone (also mainly set in Mexico), it is bereft of any heroism or conventional moral message. Yet it has a few moments which are genuinely moving, most notably the death scene of Sherriff Colin Baker, played by the iconic Western actor Slim Pickens. The scene is accompanied by Dylan’s most elegiac composition Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door, which later became one of his most well known songs. The song is clearly written to accompany the scene. …Mama take this badge offa me/ I can’t use it any more… Dylan sings as the dying sheriff sits by a lake, clutching his stomach …It’s getting dark, too dark to see/ I feel like I’m knockin’ on heaven’s door… The second and last verse repeats the pattern with a little variation: Mama, put my guns in the ground/ I can’t shoot them anymore/ That long black cloud is comin’ down/I feel like I’m knockin’ on heaven’s door…. But it is the chorus, in which Dylan (accompanied by three female backing vocalists) merely repeats …knock, knock, knockin’ on heaven’s door… four times, along with the song’s gloriously aching melody, which makes it so distinctive, catchy and infectious. Despite the minimal lyrics, the song sums up the message of the movie with great eloquence. Slim Pickens, veteran of more than fifty Westerns, represents the ‘old West’ which itself is dying, along with the ‘all American’ values it represents.