“Maybe this world is busy enough, yes?”
During my interview with Dylan Haley earlier this month, there was something he said that resonated with me only too well. He said that lately he had been listening to “a lot of Bob Dylan and Hank Williams and other traditional music often with just one guy or girl singing and playing the guitar and that’s it. Now I can hardly listen to any other kind of music, it just sounds like noise,” resembling his recent more minimalist approach to design to a good folk song. I think many creatives are likely to experience this in response to everything that this world has been going through, not just in the last six months.
I have been listening to a lot of early Bob Dylan myself all summer long (I finally understand why Mats Wilander is so hooked on listening to Bob Dylan on his road trips), including his soundtrack for Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, from 1973. Sam Peckinpah’s Western marked Dylan’s first dramatic role, playing an associate of the gunfighter Billy the Kid, and stealing the scene while doing it, and his first soundtrack album. And I couldn’t leave Jeff Bridges’s Hold On You from Crazy Heart (2009) out either. I always mix movie soundtrack songs with other favourite tunes. I just wish I had a good old mix tape every time I feel like gathering all the songs I’m currently listening to in one place. Remember those? The human element.
1. Hold On You, Jeff Bridges / 2. Out on the Weekend, Neil Young / 3. Perfect Day, Lou Reed / 4. Union Sundown, Bob Dylan / 5. Lay Lady Lay, The Birds / 6. Summer in Siam, The Pogues / 7. Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door (Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid soundtrack), Bob Dylan / 8. The River, Bruce Springsteen /
9. Out on the Road, Norah Jones / 10. Main Title Theme (Billy) from the Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid soundtrack, Bob Dylan / 11. Words (Between the Lines of Age), Neil Young / 12. Jersey Girl, Tom Waits /
13. Sara, Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan in “Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid”, 1973, directed by Sam Peckinpah
Photo by MGM/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock
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