In 1973 Sam Peckinpah's revisionist Western Pat Garrett And Billy The Kid hit the big screens, a retelling of the story of Billy and Pat starring James Coburn (as lawman Pat) and Kris Kristofferson (as outlaw Billy). Peckinpah had a track record of Westerns behind him by 1973, depicting violence explicitly and graphically, stories about outsiders, loners and losers. Ride The High Country. The Wild Bunch. Major Dundee. The Ballad Of Cable Hogue.
Pat Garrett And The Billy The Kid is famed for the behind the scenes rows with the studio MGM, and a mangled version that was largely disowned by cast and crew. In 1988 a re- edit by Peckinpah was released and widely praised as the film the 1973 one should have been.
Peckinpah saw the film as a chance to complete a trilogy (after Ride The High Country and The Wild Bunch), to make a definitive statement about the Western and complete his revisionist perspective of the Old West. He fell out with everyone while making it, suffered budget cuts and technical problems, re- shoots and crew illness, some of this caused by the director's own drinking and argumentative nature. The 1988 version is a gem though, Peckinpah's original vision of the film restored.
We're here for the soundtrack though and the soundtrack was by Bob Dylan. Peckinpah, unbelievably, had never heard of Dylan- Kristofferson brought Bob down, Bob played him a song, and Peckinpah hired him straight away. Dylan appeared in the film too, as an enigmatic character called Alias. In 1973 Bob was a background presence. Self Portrait, released in 1970, seemed a deliberate attempt to shed fans, to get people to leave him alone and to lose the Spokesman for a Generation tag. 'What is this shit?', Greil Marcus famously wrote when reviewing it. It was followed by New Morning, Bob sounding more like Dylan again but still for many a little tame. In 1972 and 1973 there was nothing though, radio silence, until Pat Garrett And Billy The Kid.
The Pat Garrett And Billy The Kid soundtrack is an overlooked Dylan album- or rather, nine of the songs are overlooked and the other is Knocking On Heaven's Door, a worldwide hit, with Roger McGuinn and Jim Keltner on guitar and bass, a song which has suffered from being covered by too many people, usually badly. The other nine (of the twenty four recorded at various sessions, fourteen still unreleased) include four versions of Billy, any one of which is as good as much of what Dylan released in the 70s. This one is Billy 7...
Billy (Main Title Theme) is an instrumental (with Booker T Jones on bass) and none the worse for it. Billy 1, Billy 4 and Billy 7 all have words, slightly different versions and lyrics, different takes on the film and its themes.
'Spend the night with some sweet senorita
Into her dark hallway she will lead you
In some lonesome shadow she might greet you
Billy you’re so doggone far away from home
They say that Pat Garrett's got your number
Sleep with one eye open when you slumber
Every little sound just might be thunder
Thunder from the barrel of a gun
Maybe you will find yourself tomorrow
Drinking in some bar to hide your sorrow
Spending the time that you borrow
Figuring a way to get back home'
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