Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (album)

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Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid
Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid cover
Soundtrack by Bob Dylan
Released July 16, 1973
Recorded January – February 1973
Genre Country
Soundtrack
Length 35:23
Label Columbia
Producer Gordon Carroll
Professional reviews
Bob Dylan chronology
Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits Vol. II
(1971)		 Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid
(1973)		 Dylan
(1973)
This article is about the musical album. For the movie, see Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid.

Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid is a soundtrack album released by Bob Dylan in 1973 for the Sam Peckinpah film of the same name. Dylan himself appeared in the film as the character "Alias". Consisting of primarily instrumental music and inspired by the movie itself, the soundtrack birthed one of Dylan's most beloved songs — and biggest hits — "Knockin' On Heaven's Door", which became a trans-atlantic Top 20 hit.

A gold record, Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid reached #16 US and #29 UK.

Contents

[edit] Casting and filming Bob Dylan in Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid

Sometime in 1972, Rudy Wurlitzer approached Dylan about contributing music to Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. An old friend of Dylan's, Wurlitzer had written the film's original screenplay.

"Rudy needed a song for the script," Dylan said in an interview taken in 1973. "I wasn't doing anything. Rudy sent the script, and I read it and liked it and we got together. And then I saw The Wild Bunch and Straw Dogs and Cable Hogue and liked them. The best one is Ride the High Country...So I wrote ['Billy'] real quick."

Soon, Dylan was interested in contributing more than just "Billy" (described by Clinton Heylin as "a fine return to the ballad form he had forsaken after John Wesley Harding"). Dylan asked Wurlitzer if acting in the film was possible, an idea Wurlitzer was reluctant to support.

Around Thanksgiving Day, Dylan and his wife travelled to Durango, Mexico, where Peckinpah was filming Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. Dylan had always expressed an interest in Mexican culture, and he was more than willing to make the trip.

After his arrival, Dylan met with Peckinpah and played him "Billy" and "Goodbye Holly," both written specifically for the picture. According to Kris Kristofferson and James Coburn - each of whom were cast in one of the title roles - Peckinpah was not enthusiastic about Dylan's participation.

"Sam says, 'Who's Bob Dylan?,'" recalls Coburn. "'Oh yeah, the kids used to listen to his stuff. I was kinda thinkin' of that guy Roger whatsisname, King of the Road guy, to do it.' And we all said, 'What!! You gotta see Dylan,'...He said, 'Okay, bring Dylan down.'...So the night we were over at Sam's house and we were all drinking tequila and carrying on and halfway through dinner, Sam says, 'Okay, kid, let's see what you got. You bring your guitar with you?' They went in this little alcove. Sam had a rocking chair. Bobby sat down on a stool in front of this rocking chair. There was just the two of them in there...And Bobby played [his songs]. And Sam came out with his handkerchief in his eye: 'Goddamn kid! Who the hell is he? Who is that kid? Sign him up!'"

Peckinpah then offered Dylan a role in film, but it was left to Wurlitzer to find one that was suitable. Wurlitzer ultimately suggested 'Alias.' Dylan would later claim "that there was nobody in that story that was the character I played." However, as Heylin reports, "not only did Alias appear in Wurlitzer's original version of the script, but he was a real historical character, mentioned by Garrett himself in his own Authentic Life of Billy the Kid. More than merely a member of Billy's gang, he was Billy's right-hand man."

However, Dylan would spend two and a half difficult months in Durango, Mexico, filming his role. During the course of production, his part was severely reduced. Wurlitzer claims this was done at Dylan's request, but Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid was also plagued with conflict between Peckinpah and MGM Studios. This resulted in MGM refusing Peckinpah's request to reshoot a substantial amount of footage lost to technical error. "Somebody dropped the main camera and for a while we had focusing problems," recalls Coburn. "The left and right of the screen were fine, but the bottom wasn't in focus. We needed to reshoot when we finally got the camera fixed." Peckinpah attempted to reshoot a portion of the tainted footage, but a majority of it was ultimately left lost.

The stress also took its toll of Peckinpah, and it would ultimately impact Dylan's role in the film as well. "[Peckinpah] was never able to sit down and figure out what Dylan was in the movie," recalls Kristofferson. "Bob kept sayin' to me, 'Well, at least you're in the script.'"

[edit] Recording sessions

As Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid neared completion, Dylan held a recording session on January 20 at Columbia's recording studio in Mexico City. Filming had been so difficult, both of the film's stars and Wurlitzer accompanied Dylan out of Durango. Wurlitzer said at the time, "Sam knows he's losing to Dylan...but I don't care, man. I've got to get away."

Backed by local Mexican musicians and members of Kris Kristofferson's band, Dylan had difficulty recording a satisfactory take of "Billy." Eventually, he began paring down the arrangement , and by the last take, he was backed only by bassist Terry Paul. This final take was used for the film and later included on the soundtrack album as "Billy 4." A brief instrumental, "Billy Surrenders," would also be featured in the film. The session would continue until 4 a.m., but it would not produce anything else that would be considered usable.

Meanwhile, Peckinpah hired Jerry Fielding to advise Dylan on his work. Fielding was experienced in film scoring, but he held very conservative views regarding popular music. Dylan was fully aware of Fielding's opinions regarding his work ("a lot of nonsense which is strictly for teenyboppers"), but he did not resist Fielding's recommendations on how to score the film.

On Fielding's advice, Dylan sang "a relevant verse" of the "Billy" ballad "as it fit the story at [four] separate points throughout the picture." Fielding had also heard Dylan's new composition, "Goodbye Holly," which was written for an important scene involving the character, Holly. Fielding recommended dropping this song and writing a new one for a scene involving the death of Sheriff Baker.

"I set up two dubbing sessions," recalls Fielding. "Dylan had this song ['Billy'] he'd written for which he had a limitless number of verses that he would sing in random order...So I had to tape Dylan's song, because he had nothing written down, and have it transcribed...At the same time I asked that he write at least one other piece of music because you cannot possibly hope to deal with an entire picture on the basis of that one ballad. So finally he brought to the dubbing session another piece of music - 'Knock-Knock-Knockin' on Heaven's Door.' Everybody loved it. It was shit. That was the end for me."

Dylan recorded the final version of "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" at a session in February, this time on Warner Bros. Records' soundstage in Burbank, California. "It was very early in the morning," recalls drummer Jim Keltner. "I think the session was 10 a.m. and again it all fell into place...There weren't any overdubs on that, the singers were singing live, little pump organ, Roger McGuinn I think played [guitar]. This was for a particular scene in the movie when Slim Pickens is dying and that's the first time I ever cried while I played. It was the combination of the words, Bob's voice, the actual music itself, the changes, and seeing the screen...In those days you were on a big soundstage, and you had this massive screen that you can see on the wall, [with] the scene...running when you're playing. I cried through that whole take."

The sessions at Burbank lasted several days. Though they were much more relaxed and amiable than the Mexico City session, the process was still irritating to Dylan. At one point, he told producer Gordon Carroll that "this is the last time I work for anyone in a movie on the music. I'll stick to acting." Though Dylan would produce his own films and later contribute songs to other soundtracks, he would never take sole responsibility for an entire soundtrack again.

[edit] Outtakes

The Mexico City session produced two notable outtakes: "Peco's Blues," an instrumental based on the traditional "What Does The Deep Sea Say?," and the song "Goodbye Holly." Both tracks were rejected but eventually bootlegged.

The Burbank sessions yielded a few spontaneous recordings, including a jam titled "Sweet Amarillo" and a simple, improvised song titled "Rock Me Mama." Neither one was seriously considered for the soundtrack as they were borne more out of leisure than actual work. The latter was eventually written fully and recorded as "Wagon Wheel" by Nashville roots rock band Old Crow Medicine Show, then subsequently by artists such as Against Me! and others.

[edit] Aftermath

After Peckinpah completed his own cut of Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, MGM re-cut the film without his input, removing several significant scenes and re-shuffling most of Dylan's music in the process. "I could tell that it had been chopped to pieces,' recalled Dylan in 1985. "Someone other than Sam had taken a knife to some valuable scenes that were in it. The music seemed to be scattered and used in every other place but the scenes in which we did it for."

Severely re-edited, Peckinpah's film was released to mixed reviews and poor box-office receipts. Years later, critical re-evaluation of Peckinpah's film would lead many to regard it as one of his major works, a revisionist view aided by the restoration of Peckinpah's original cut in 1986.

As for Dylan, even though the experience was difficult, it proved to be a turning point, writes Clinton Heylin, "pushing him to finally abandon New York for sunnier climes, and providing him with a most unexpected return to the charts."

A soundtrack album was released to rather mixed reviews. It had been three years since his last 'proper' album, New Morning, and many critics hoping for another were disappointed in settling for a 'mere' soundtrack. "At least the strings on this soundtrack are mostly plucked and strummed, rather than bowed en masse," wrote Robert Christgau, "but it's still a soundtrack: two middling-to-excellent new Dylan songs, four good original Bobby voices, and a lot of Schmylan music."

Jon Landau was far more damning in his review published in Rolling Stone, writing "it is every bit as inept, amateurish and embarrassing as Self Portrait. And it has all the earmarks of a deliberate courting of commercial disaster, a flirtation that is apparently part of an attempt to free himself from previously imposed obligations derived from his audience...It is ironic that the most significant white rock figure of the Sixties has turned himself into one of the least significant of the Seventies. But the most perplexing aspect of it all seems to be the deliberate intent behind the decline. I can think of no other way to explain the gap between the man's earlier accomplishments and the recent dissipation of the quality of his work. But whatever the explanation, one can only note with sadness that in the midst of the summer morass of predictable popular music, Bob Dylan has once again broken the mold, only this time, with the least acceptable method available to him, an album neither exceptional, nor truly different, but merely awful."

Despite the album's lukewarm reception, it did spawn a significant hit in "Knockin' On Heaven's Door," which would be covered by acts such as Eric Clapton and Guns and Roses. Years later, "Knockin' On Heaven's Door," would endure as a popular favorite among critics and fans as well as a concert staple, with its inspirational tone and lyrics regarding impending death. Furthermore, such critics may have simply missed the point; with the exception of its lone hit, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid was a spare, mostly instrumental soundtrack album that many would later find to be of great integrity, once viewed through the prism of not expecting the work to be just another of Bob Dylan's "modern poetry" works.

After witnessing first hand Peckinpah's battles with MGM, Dylan would have his own problems with Columbia Records. After years of minimal activity, Dylan had lost Columbia's patience, and when negotiations for a renewed contract began in 1972, the label (except for Clive Davis) had little interest in being generous. "Early in 1973 I finally did conclude negotiations for a new contract with Bob," wrote Clive Davis in his autobiography. "Basically, it was limited to a commitment for two more albums, plus the Billy the Kid soundtrack album - there was no time period involved...the guarantee was about $400,000 per album. Columbia [then] backed out of the deal after I left. Since the Billy the Kid movie had just been released, Dylan's lawyer [David Braun], screamed that the soundtrack album commitment had to be honored; they couldn't go elsewhere in so short a time. So Columbia released it at the royalty rate agreed upon during my negotiations with Braun...When the single broke out of the album, and clearly showed Dylan's continued fertility, [Columbia head Goddard Lieberson] tried to resume negotiations."

Davis had been a longtime supporter of Dylan's, but he had been the victim of a corporate coup. While finalizing the details of Dylan's contract, Davis had been fired by CBS president Arthur Taylor on May 29. "Met at the door of Taylor's office by two CBS security men, he was then served with a civil complaint, alleging $94,000 worth of expense-account violations over six years," reported Heylin, "this from a man whose income in 1973 alone totaled over $300,000." Dylan would testify on Davis's behalf in a well-publicized civil trial held in July of 1975. In the meantime, the incident would sour Dylan's relationship with CBS, convincing him to sign with David Geffen's fledgling Los Angeles-based label Asylum Records. This switch would also coincide with Dylan's move to the West Coast.

Dylan had already purchased Malibu property in December of 1971 as an investment, but by April of 1973, he was beginning to settle there, leasing additional property on the adjoining land.

It was during this time that Dylan's songwriting began to increase in activity. "[I'd] been hanging out a lot with Bob in Malibu, playing basketball," recalls Roger McGuinn. "One day, he was sitting on the couch and we were trying to write a song together, and I asked him if he had anything and he said he had one that he'd started but he was probably gonna use it himself, and he started playing 'Never Say Goodbye.'" That song and two others, "Forever Young" and "Nobody 'Cept You," were soon demoed in June for his new publishing company, Ram's Horn Music. With a new label and renewed songwriting activity, the stage was set for his next project.

[edit] Track listing

All songs by Bob Dylan.

[edit] Side one

  1. "Main Title Theme (Billy)"
  2. "Cantina Theme (Workin' for the Law)"
  3. "Billy 1"
  4. "Bunkhouse Theme"
  5. "River Theme"

[edit] Side two

  1. "Turkey Chase"
  2. "Knockin' on Heaven's Door"
  3. "Final Theme"
  4. "Billy 4"
  5. "Billy 7"

[edit] Personnel

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