by Larry Fyffe
& he’s eating a picture of jean paul belmondo
(Bob Dylan: Tarantula)
Jean-Paul Belmondo, a major French movie star acting in films like “Breathless” in which he plays a small-time, good-looking hood who shoots a policeman; his girlfriend is naive at first but when she discovers what he has done, she turns him over to police.
Jean-Paul’s movie is a ‘noir’ pastiche, based it is on Humphrey Bogart films; “Breathless”, subtitled, is familiar to avid US movie-watchers.
Dylan’s writings, songs, and paintings reference, directly or indirectly, real persons from the entertainment industry who are Americans ~ such as Walter and John Houston; Roy Rogers and Dale Evans; Tab Hunter; Pearl Bailey; Woody Guthrie; James Cagney; William Boyd; Allan Ladd; Robert Mitchum; Tex Ritter; Richard Boone; Gregory Peck; Aretha Franklin regarding Gallup, New Mexico; and perhaps Canadian Wilf Carter (“Montana Slim”).
Example, a song:
Roaring out of Harlan, revving up his mill He shot the Gap at Cumberland, and screamed by Maynardville With G men on his tail light, road block up ahead The mountain boy took roads that even angels fear to tread (Robert Mitchum: The Ballad Of Thunder Road ~ R. Mitchum /J. Marshall)
Mitchum stars in a western movie called “Blood On The Moon”.
Bob shows that he’s been influenced by Mitchum:
Thunder on the mountain, fires on the moon There's a ruckus in the alley, and the sun will be here soo (Bob Dylan: Thunder On The Mountain)
Mitchum stars in “The Lusty Men”, a rodeo movie about the “American Dream”.
Says therein: “Broken, broken bottles, broken bones, broken everything”
Writes Dylan:
Broken cutters, broken saws Broken buckles, broken laws Broken bodies, broken bones .... Everything is broken (Bob Dylan: Everything Is Broken)
Dylan would certainly be aware of the song below:
Dead Man's Curve, it's no place to play Dead Man's Curve, you best keep away Dead Man's Curve, I can hear'em say Won't come back from Dead Man's Curve
(Jan and Dean: Dead Man’s Curve ~ Berry/Christian, Kornfeld, Wilson)
Bob co-composes the song beneath:
Turned to a station I've never heard While the moon glimmers On Dead Man's Curve (Jeff Kosoff: Tioga Pass ~ Robert Hunter and Bob Dylan)
And on he goes:
There's no liquor in the land that can stop your brain from bleeding (Bob Dylan: Tarantula)
It’s all-important to Dylan’s persona that a feeling of hope remains amid the rubble:
A question in your nerves is lit
Yet you know there is no answer fit
To satisfy, to ensure you not to quit
To keep it in your mind and not forget
That it is not he, or she, or them, or it
That you belong to
(Dylan: It's Alright, Ma {I'm Only Bleeding})