How Does It Feel?
References to Crime and Detective Fiction and Films Found in Bob Dylan's Work

Bob Dylan's 1985 album, Empire Burlesque, contained several references to John Huston's film classic The Maltese Falcon, including:

• "I don't mind a reasonable amount of trouble..."
  - Seeing the Real You at Last
  .
• "Don't look for me/I'll see you..."
  - When the Night Comes Falling from the Sky
  .
• "Maybe you love me and I love you ..."
  - When the Night Comes Falling from the Sky
  ".
• You wanna talk to me/Go ahead and talk..."
  - Tight Connection to My Heart
  .
• "Well, I'll have some rotten nights after I've sent you over/But that'll pass..."
  - Seeing the Real You at Last.

From Knocked Out Loaded:

• He paraphrasess some dialogue between Robert Mitchum and Kirk Douglas from the 1947 RKO noir classic Out of the Past.
  
  "You said you were going' to Frisco, stay a couple of months.
  I always liked San Francisco, I was there for a party once.
  - Maybe Someday"
  

Oh, and for you Chandler fans, there are a few references to THE BIG SLEEP and a few other Bogart flicks, too. I'm not making any of this up, either. I stumbled across them in All Across the Telegraph, a collection of items pulled from a British Bob Dylan fanzine, edited by Michael Gray and John Bauldie.

Dylan has always struck me as a bit of a hardboiled guy, anyway. In 1997's Time Out of Mind album, he lets fly with what I think is perhaps the ultimate noir line of despair:

"Don't know if I saw you
If I would kiss you or kill you
It probably wouldn't matter to you anyhow..."
- Standing in The Doorway

There are also a few passages with references to crime and detective (and a few sentences that could have come right out of a hard-boiled P.I. novel) in his rambling 2004 autobiography, Chronicles: Volume One, including:

• "He (Albert Grossman) looked like Sidney Greenstreet in The Maltese Falcon." (p. 97).
  
  
• "I had the Mike Hammer attitude, my own particular brand of justice. The courts were too slow and too complicated, don't take care of business. My sentiment was that the law is fine but this time, I'm the law -- the dead can't speak for themselves. i'm speaking for 'em. Okay? (p. 51)
  
  
• "It's a crazy mixed up world and have to look it right in the eye." (p. 45)
  
  
• "Oh, the wicked ironies of life. I'd gotten a cosmic kick in ther pants. I probably should have been wearing steel underwear." (p. 162)

RECORDINGS

• Empire Burlesque.....Buy this CD
  by Bob Dylan
  (1985, Columbia Records)
  
  
• Knocked Out Loaded.....Buy this CD
  by Bob Dylan?
  (1986, Columbia Records)

BOOKS

• Chronicles: Volume One (2004; by Bob Dylan).....Buy this CD
  Dylan is often infuriatingly full of himself, and sometimes he's just full of shit, but his shit's still better than almost anyone else's, and it's always a trip on his magic swirling ship.
  

RELATED LINKS

• Film Dialogue in the Lyrics of Bob Dylan
  Jim Linwood's great site is an ongoing project to list all film dialogue that appears in Dylan's lyrics. Bogart and film noir are at the forefront. Well worth checking out.
  
  
• How Does It Feel? Part Two
  Private eye novels whose titles are lifted from Bob Dylan's work
  

Report respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.