![]() After I wrote a part for him, we flew to Durango so that he could meet Sam.” ![]() He said he was Billy the Kid in a past life. Wurlitzer also remembered how Dylan got himself in the position of soundtrack composer, and how the film’s director, Peckinpah, was initially sceptical about Dylan’s input: “When Dylan heard that a Billy the Kid film was in the works, he came to see me at my place on the Lower East Side wanting to know if there was any way he could be a part of it. When you watch the scene, as Baker slowly dies in front of ‘Mama’, the song hits you right in the feels - an impressive feat for something written off the cuff. What is made even more remarkable about how Dylan wrote the song is that it only contains two verses, but that the lyrics were intended to comment directly on the iconic scene in the film where Slim Pickens’ Sheriff Colin Baker is shot dead by Billy the Kid and his gang in front of his wife, Katy Jurado’s ‘Mama’. He scrawled something on the aeroplane and showed it to me line by line and when we got off the plane, there it was, ‘Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door'”. Detailing further, he continued: “But before that, one night when we were returning to Durango from Mexico City – I forget why we were there – he said he wanted to write something for Slim Pickens’ death scene, which was due to be shot the next day. In a 2008 interview with Arthur Magazine, Wurlitzer remembered: “Bob wrote the film score in Mexico City”. This can be taken as an explanation for the song’s “exercise in splendid simplicity”. According to Rudy Wurlitzer, the screenwriter of the film, whilst on the way to the film’s set, the ‘Bard’ wrote the song with speed and on a whim. ![]() Showing Dylan‘s brilliance, it turns out he wrote the lyrics for the song in the most unlikely of settings for such an introspective piece. The score was even nominated for a BAFTA for Film Music and a Grammy Award for Album of Best Original Score. Unsurprisingly, the movie was well-received. This is deeply ironic, as Dylan originally wrote the song as part of the soundtrack for the Sam Peckinpah film, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. Featuring a cast of some of the western genre’s most prominent character actors such as James Coburn, Richard Jaeckel and Katy Jurado, it also featured country hero Kris Kristofferson as Billy the Kid and Dylan himself, as a mysterious character named Alias. The song is such as classic that it has been featured on numerous film soundtracks over the years.
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