Cowboy Movie
My soft spot for Westerns developed at an early age. While on my first West Coast stint, I lived in Grants Pass, Oregon. A place most notable nationally for a recent ruling about homelessness set to make things more difficult for the people living on the edges of society.
We lived in a very rural setting, and when it snowed, we got a light dusting at best, thanks to the shelter of the nearby mountains. There was a gravel road near the house that truckers would use as a shortcut to avoid using a busier road with a steeper incline. I experienced my first earthquake, or at least the first one anyone in my life was aware of. I slept through it and learned about it secondhand. It happened sometime after April 21, 1992, because my brother had been born, and both he and our mother were back from the hospital. She was practicing co-sleeping with him, or maybe he was in a crib in the same room as her. The house shook enough for her to notice. She assumed it was a truck.
It might have been the 7.0 that occurred on April 25 in Northern California, but I suppose she was still probably in the hospital and then recovering from the birth. My brother was also a C-section. And I think we were already living in The Region by the time of the one in 1993.
I was born close enough to the New Madrid Fault to feel it if shook in theory. I felt it once in Indiana. Maywood, Illinois, was where I made my grand entrance into the world, the same hometown as John Prine and Fred Hampton. I don’t recall feeling any shakes there or any other time I’ve been in Illinois.
My place of birth set in stone aspects of my future personality and interests: a kid from the heartland, a lover of music that was in tune with its roots and radical politics. And, of course, I was initially a Bulls fan, a mea maxima culpa that I explained in an earlier piece.
In Oregon, our home had a pasture and barn for horses. My dad was a doctor and used his disposable income accordingly, so horses. We had two horses: an Appaloosa named Patches and a Palomino named Golden Boy. I had a pony, and in a display of the inventiveness and creativity with which I approach language, I dubbed him Baby Pony. My Rifle, My Baby Pony and Me.
This little cowboy couldn’t tell his right from left, so my maternal grandfather helped me by labeling the appropriate boots with R and L using a thin, sky blue marker. I couldn’t read then; I was only 3, but I could recognize the letters R and L and knew which one corresponded to which foot.
My boots were black, with embroidery on the front and back shafts of them and maybe a little on the toe bug. I even had spurs, which were made of a thick zip tie. I never wore them when riding my pony; they were for playing make-believe when I’d wear a cowboy hat and a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles tank top and ride on my spring rocking horse or hobby horse while running around with my plastic six-shooter in a holster or with fake guns a-blazing.
My father, a son of the Snake River, claimed to break horses. He was no sort of Bronco buster. I admire such an exaggeration, though it could have potentially dangerous consequences. If you’re going to lie, go big. I certainly exaggerate some aspects of my resume. I know enough Italian that when watching L’Avventura, I can chuckle at pesce cane being translated as shark instead of dogfish, though such a usage is not uncommon.
My lies are lies of omission, a way of giving myself a leg up in a hyper competitive world where my resume renders me invisible as a candidate despite quantifiable accomplishments, like the multiple pieces of hardware bestowed on me by the state press association.
It’s the West, afterall; when the legend becomes fact, print the legend.
The West is where you go to reinvent yourself. The frontier has long served as the release valve for the malcontents and marginalized. The failsons and daughters of the revolution go to the frontier to make a name for themselves. That’s the central thesis of Greg Grandin’s End of The Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America. Matt Christman of the podcast Chapo Trap House has spoken highly of that book and has discussed the importance of the frontier as tool for displacing energy that could potentially be harnessed for other means, say labor militancy or other means of class conflict.
In the excellent miniseries Hell of Presidents, Christman and co-host/producer Chris Wade have a running gag about that using a clip from Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! where Tim Heidecker says, “It’s free real estate.” That clip is employed for the Homestead Act and other means of placating a population growing discontent in opportunities back east. “It’s free real estate” was the raison d'être for those heading west to settle.
In Westerns, it’s a classic trope for a character to roll into a new town and exaggerate their accomplishments and prowess. They might get mistaken for a badass. McCabe is perceived that way in McCabe & Mrs. Miller. There are whispers that he was a gunfighter known as Pudgy McCabe and that he killed Bill Roundtree. In The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Ransom Stoddard (James Stewart) is believed to be the one who shot Liberty Valance (Lee Marvin), but that’s not the whole truth.
You can see why Westerns appealed to rock stars; there’s a similar level of myth-making and turning yourself into someone new, someone bolder and brighter than you are in your ordinary life. You can stroll into a new town and be the confident, swaggering icon you watched on the silver screen during Saturday matinees when you were a kid.
Rock stars and cinematic cowboys are cut from the same cloth. Both are in the business of myth-making. Some embrace it, while others deconstruct it. The tension between individualism and collectivism is a driving force in rock and westerns. In most Westerns, one individual can make a difference and change the fortunes of a town. With some exceptions, I don’t buy into the Great Man of History theory.
That tension is an underrated cause for the backlash against Bob Dylan going electric. Beyond the sound being poorly mixed or too loud, the folkies found it abhorrent because performing the music was no longer an act of a collective but that of an individual.
The Westerns I love best involve a group of people coming together for the common good, to fight against the greed of the railroads or banks or other individuals or organizations that place the accumulation of wealth above rhetoric common good and treat it as the noblest undertaking in the world.
Sometimes that connection is more direct, such as Rick Nelson starring in Howard Hawk’s Rio Bravo, Bob Dylan in Pat Garrett and Billy the Kidd, Elvis Presley in various westerns, or David Crosby being the son of High Noon cinematographer Floyd Crosby and later writing a song titled “Cowboy Movie” for his first solo album.
Floyd also worked with Roger Corman, a transformational Hollywood figure who paved the way for New Hollywood and embraced the counterculture in his work in the late 60s. Corman financed The Shooting, considered one of the first acid westerns. Monte Hellman also directed Two-Lane Blacktop, a road movie, a genre that bears some similarities to Westerns in terms of themes and structure. It also features Dennis Wilson and James Taylor.
Corman was originally going to produce Easy Rider, and it’s in that film that the connection to Westerns is made more explicit.
Peter Fonda’s Captain America and Dennis Hopper’s Billy travel through some of the most picturesque parts of the United States but on motorcycles instead of horses. Hopper’s look in the film was based on Crosby.
David Jones took his stage name from Jim Bowie because he loved The Alamo (1960). Al Caldwell’s stage name, Rory Storm, may have been inspired by actor Rory Calhoun, who appeared in several westerns.
Another member of The Hurricanes, Johnny Byrne, began going by Johnny Guitar, a name derived from the titular character of the 1954 Nicholas Ray film. Richard Starkey may have taken his stage name from the rings he wore or perhaps from OK Corral gunfighter Johnny Ringo or John Wayne’s The Ringo Kid in John Ford’s Stagecoach.
Wayne is the ur-figure of cinematic cowboy, and the cowboy movies loomed large in the minds of rock stars. Phil Ochs was one such figure enamored by the Wayne/Ford partnership and with films in general.
“One of the most exciting things about the twentieth-century and one of the most lyrical forms you'd find now, is movies. In varying stages I was a, I was always a John Wayne fan when I was very young I think uh—That's one of the dilemmas we have one of the dilemmas that America presents is that many of America's greatest, truly greatest artists are very right-wing and reactionary and not particularly intelligent. But they're still great, they're truly great in their own mediums. I think John Wayne is one of the greatest men ever to step in front of a screen. The John Wayne / John Ford combination was really very lyrical. They made a lot, all the calvary movies and they also made some O'Neill stuff, some Irish, Eugene O'Neill plays. They made a movie called The Long Voyage Home. Which I saw when I was about three or something This song came from that movie, ultimately, subconsciously. It’s called "Pleasures of the Harbor,” which I'll dedicate to John Ford and John Wayne. Nobody takes, nobody can take you seriously these days,” said Phil Ochs in a live recording in Vancouver in 1968.
Buddy Holly was inspired to write “That’ll Be The Day” after seeing Wayne repeatedly use that phrase in The Searchers. And that was also inspired the name of the band behind “Needles And Pins.”
Even Joan Didion wasn’t immune to his charms as a screen presence.
“I tell you this neither in a spirit of self-revelation nor as an exercise in total recall, but simply to demonstrate that when John Wayne rode through my childhood, and perhaps through yours, he determined forever the shape of certain of our dreams.” — Joan Didion, “John Wayne: A Love Song”
My conception of the Old West was fueled by what I saw in old cartoons like “Wild and Wooly Hare” and “Drip-Along Daffy.” Those old cartoons taught me a lot, mostly about old Hollywood stuff. That and adapting some of the cultural references of my mother, like the sign off of The Jimmy Durante Show. “Goodnight, Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are ha cha cha cha.”
That sort of thing was more common with people from older generations. Limited options and more of a monoculture meant you absorbed what was there.
One of the first Westerns I can recall seeing was An American Tale: Fievel Goes West. My introduction to James Stewart and a lot of classic Western tropes. It’s like starting with The Rolling Stones and later listening to the music that influenced them. The foundational stuff will help you better understand how what came after uses its influences and attempts to synthesize them into something new or at least slightly different. Which makes it funny that for the longest time, my favorite western was Blazing Saddles.
Despite my interest in Westerns, I didn’t watch any when I was young, whether on TV or in film. F Troop, Gunsmoke, and The Rifleman were of no interest to me at that age.
One of the earliest pieces of classical music I can remember hearing is “Hoe-Down” from Aaron Copland’s ballet Rodeo in a commercial in the early 90s narrated by Robert Mitchum.
It’s easy to fall for the scores of westerns; the music evokes wide-open landscapes, excitement, adventure, heroism, and other emotions guaranteed to get your blood pumping and your heart racing.
When I hear Elmer Bernstein’s “Main Title and Calvera,” I am overcome with an urge to ride off with likeminded do-gooders to right wrongs and stand up for the oppressed. Arthur Conley’s “Sweet Soul Music” opens with a quotation of it.
A significant influence on the scores of Westerns was Antonín Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9, also known as the New World Symohony. The Czech composer drew on the music of the New World to craft his symphony, notably Black and Indigenous music.
“I am convinced that the future music of this country must be founded on what are called Negro melodies. These can be the foundation of a serious and original school of composition, to be developed in the United States. These beautiful and varied themes are the product of the soil. They are the folk songs of America and your composers must turn to them,” Dvořak said.
“I have not actually used any of the [Native American] melodies. I have simply written original themes embodying the peculiarities of the Indian music, and, using these themes as subjects, have developed them with all the resources of modern rhythms, counterpoint, and orchestral color,” the composer said.
Black and Indigenous people tend to get erased from a lot of narratives where they play a vital role. In the case of Westerns, it’s a thorny situation, especially regarding depicting the Indigenous on film. Their characterization is flat; they’re often portrayed as mindless, noble savages or as a means of advancing the story or helping a white character achieve a form of self-actualization.
There’s a perception that such flat characterization was the norm until the spaghetti westerns, but revisionist Westerns have been around longer than that; the traditional Western just outnumbered them. John Ford, the quintessential director of Westerns, was responsible for both.
In Stagecoach, the motives of the Apache go unspoken. They are a threat like the very landscape the coach traverses. But those understanding history know they are merely trying to survive. Violence is a natural response to their very existence being threatened. It is a last-ditch effort of those with their backs against the wall.
“But terror becomes criminal when workingmen and poverty stricken peasants dare to use it against the bourgeoisie. Terror was just and justified when it was used to put one exploiting minority in the place of another. But terror becomes horrible and criminal when it is used to abolish all exploiting minorities, when it is employed in the cause of the actual majority, in the cause of the proletariat and the semi-proletariat, of the working-class and the poor peasantry.” Vladimir Lenin, A Letter to American Workingmen
Indigenous people get a more nuanced characterization in Ford’s later work. For example, in one scene in Fort Apache, Henry Fonda and John Wayne discuss their motivations.
Lt. Col. Owen Thursday: We here have little chance for glory or advancement. While some of our brother officers are leading their well-publicized campaigns against the great Indian nations - the Sioux and the Cheyenne - we are asked to ward off the gnat stings and flea bites of a few cowardly 'digger Indians'.
Captain Yorke: Your pardon, Colonel. You'd hardly call Apaches 'digger Indians', sir.
Thursday: You'd scarcely compare them with the Sioux, Captain.
Yorke: No, I don't. The Sioux once raided into Apache territory. Old-timers told me you could follow their line of retreat by the bones of their dead.
Thursday: I suggest the Apache has deteriorated since then, judging by a few of the specimens I've seen on my way out here.
Yorke: Well, if you saw them, sir, they weren't Apaches.
Or this exchange between Yorke and Silas Meacham.
Captain Yorke: No troop or squadron or regiment's gonna keep the Apaches on this reservation unless they want to stay here. Five years ago we made a treaty with Cochise. He and his Chiricahuas and some of the other Apache bands came on the reservation. They wanted to live here in peace... and DID for two years. And then Meacham, here, was sent by the "Indian Ring"...
Silas Meacham: That's a lie! I've been endorsed...
Yorke: The dirtiest, most corrupt political group in our history. And then it began: whiskey but no beef; trinkets instead of blankets; the women degraded; the children sickly; and the men turning into drunken animals. So Cochise did the only thing a decent man could do... he left. Took most of his people and crossed the Rio Bravo into Mexico.
Meacham: He broke his treaty.
Yorke: Yes, rather than stay here and see his nation wiped out.
Meacham: The law is the law and I DEMAND that you soldier boys enforce it!
Lt. Col. Thursday: Any demands you wish to make, you will make through official channels, Mr. Meacham. Do not again employ that word in my presence.
Meacham: No offense, sir, no offense.
Ford tried to right the wrongs of his earlier films with his final western Cheyenne Autumn in 1964.
“There are two sides to every story, but for once I wanted to show their point of view. I’ve killed more Indians than Custer, Beecher and Chivington put together. Let’s face it, we’ve treated them very badly — it’s a blot on our shield. We’ve cheated and robbed, killed, murdered, massacred and everything else, but they kill one white man and, God, out come the troops,” Ford said in an interview with Peter Bogdanovich.
Any art worth its salt is likely to have some aspects that are difficult to grapple with, which is true of life. The complications and contradictions are what make it interesting. I find art that makes gestures at inclusivity and avoids anything that might offend to be eminently forgettable. Life is about taking risks, and art should reflect that. Without that, why bother making anything in the first place?
One thing I appreciate my mother for is providing books that offered another perspective on things. Around the time the Disney film came out, I remember her reading me a book about the real Pocahontas and the facts of her life. My grandparents on my dad’s side also furnished similar material. I loved myths as a kid, and they sent me several books of Indigenous myths. One was a chapter book drawn from cultures around North America. Others were focused on singular myths and featured beautiful illustrations.
Aspects of the myths seemed familiar. Joseph Campbell was on to something with The Hero with a Thousand Faces, but there were aspects to the stories that were not part of my frame of reference. They felt like things only someone raised within the culture would fully understand or pick up on. I encounter that in art from around the world, and I find it exciting because it gets me thinking of the world differently. The farther one travels, the less one really knows.
I experience something similar when learning how other people’s families mark special occasions or celebrate the same holidays as me. One thing I’ve considered is how one’s upbringing shapes one’s thoughts and one’s way of engaging with the world. For instance, when I think of the word, table, I think of the dining room table I spent most of my life sitting at. Your parents' tastes shape your tastes just as their tastes were shaped by their parents, and so on and so on.
One of my favorite pieces of journalism is about Michael Jordan at 50. There is recurring imagery in the article and an accompanying illustration of Jordan as a figure from a Western, depicting him as riding off into the sunset, wearing a Bulls jersey. A nod to where he was at in life and his love for Westerns, something his father instilled in him. He watched Westerns with his late father and continued that habit after his passing. I think that’s common for anyone who has lost someone. It’s a means of grasping what remains of the threads that once connected you—something crucial when the thread was severed suddenly and violently.
I don’t have the heart to celebrate the holidays anymore, but on Christmas Eve, I always try to eat at Red Lobster because that was our tradition: the Wonderbread Wop version of the feast of seven fishes. It’s the same reason I try to see movies at repertory houses that my mother loved, or I remember watching with her. I can think back to the times I shared with her. I’m sure Jordan believes similarly.
Around the time that article came out, I was playing through Red Dead Redemption, one of my favorite games of all time. I found the story enthralling and realized how much I loved stories in that setting. During this time, I was working on my thesis on The Beach Boys’ SMiLE, an album filled with imagery from the Old West, such as “Heroes & Villains,” which was inspired by the music of Marty Robbins, like “El Paso” from his 1959 album Gunfighters Ballads and Trail Songs.
An article from Far Out Magazine discussed Robbin’s influence on the song.
“Parks later called the song ‘historically reflective’ and a ‘visual effort’, saying it was meant to mirror the balladry of Marty Robbins as the lyrics looked at the brutal beginnings of California, including references to the state’s noted Spanish influence as well as Native Americans.”
Van Dyke Parks, who wrote the lyrics for the project, had this to say about the song.
“To me, ‘Heroes And Villains’ sounds like a ballad out of the Southwest,” he recalled. “That’s what it was intended to be—as good as any of those—and, really, to be a ballad. This Spanish and Indian fascination is a big chapter in Californian history, and that’s what it’s supposed to be—historically reflective, to reflect this place. I think it did it.”
Since playing that game, I’ve watched many Westerns and now understand the source of inspiration for various story beats in that game. It's not an uncommon occurrence. Before I ever saw the film, Shane, I knew the basics of the plot because of a parody on Hey Arnold! When I saw Shane, that past experience only added to my enjoyment of it.
As a survivor of gun violence who lost his mother to it, just reading these lines puts a lump in my throat: “Joey, there's no living with... with a killing. There's no going back from one. Right or wrong, it's a brand. A brand sticks. There's no going back. Now you run on home to your mother, and tell her... tell her everything's all right. And there aren't any more guns in the valley.”
Shane plays a prominent role in the film Logan, which styles itself as a Western. There’s the classic moment of being on the run, being offered shelter and food by a kind family, only for that generosity to be repaid with life-destroying consequences for that family. The Munsons face similar issues as The Starretts in Shane. Not only does Logan watch Shane, he quotes the title character at his death.
Director James Mangold has an affinity for Westerns; he also directed the 2007 remake of 3:10 to Yuma. I have yet to see the original, but I saw the remake in theaters and loved it. I credit it and Blazing Saddles with making me want to go beyond my shallow genre explorations.
Now that I’ve seen more Westerns and read Mel Brooks’ autobiography, I now have a deeper appreciation for Blazing Saddles and admire his dedication to getting the details just right in his affection sendup of horse operas, such as his film having a titular song performed by Frankie Laine, who recorded themes for several westerns. It doesn’t hurt that the film was released fifteen years before I was born, so my affinity for it feels like kismet.
Singing cowboys like Roy Rogers and Gene Autry were a presence in my life from an early age, albeit in more indirect ways, in this case, the music taste of my mother, who listened to country music a lot when I was growing up.
A fact that always amused me because she was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York; what would the appeal of country music be to someone like her?
She wasn’t immune to fads, and in the early 90s, she took part in country line dancing. I listened to a lot of 90s country radio growing up. I have a soft spot for George Strait, Alan Jackson, Reba McEntire, and other singers from that era. The first I ever heard of Gene and Roy was “Should've Been a Cowboy” by Toby Keith. I had no frame of reference as to who they were beyond them being cowboys. There were a lot of cultural allusions within that song that I didn’t get then but can appreciate now that I’m older and a little more worldly.
Like most kids, I rejected the music of my mother as a means of establishing my own identity and beliefs. It’s funny that I ever turned my back on country music because it’s fundamentally tied to so much music I love, whether it’s the old, weird America of The Anthology of American Folk Music or The Beatles or Bob Dylan or The Byrds. Country music was so popular in Liverpool that it was known as The Nashville of The North.
“It is cosmopolitan, and it’s where the sailors would come home with the blues records from America on the ships. There is the biggest country & western following in England in Liverpool, besides London — always besides London, because there is more of it there. I heard country and western music in Liverpool before I heard rock and roll. The people there — the Irish in Ireland are the same — they take their country and western music very seriously. There’s a big heavy following of it. There were established folk, blues and country and western clubs in Liverpool before rock and roll and we were like the new kids coming out. I remember the first guitar I ever saw. It belonged to a guy in a cowboy suit in a province of Liverpool, with stars, and a cowboy hat and a big dobro. They were real cowboys, and they took it seriously. There had been cowboys long before there was rock and roll,” John Lennon said in an interview with Rolling Stone.
Country music would resonate with the people of Liverpool, as the genre has roots in the folk music of England and Ireland. Many of the early practitioners of the genre in the United States had roots that went back to England or Ireland and the musical traditions of those places. Skiffle was an offshoot of that sort of roots music and was revived in England in the 50s and 60s and helped spark the boom in band formation there.
It was part of an ongoing transatlantic exchange: music from Europe traveling to the United States and the descendants of that music making the crossing the other way, which inspired more music and exchanges. And, of course, many of The Beatles’ influences, Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, Carl Perkins, The Everly Brothers, and others, were all steeped in country music to some degree.
Hank Williams, one of the major country music stars, was an early influence on Lennon.
“I started imitating Hank Williams when I was 15. I used to go round to a friend's house, because he had the record-player, and we sang all that Lonnie Donegan stuff and Hank Williams. He had all the records. ‘Honky Tonk Blues’ is the one I used to do,” Lennon said.
Country-rock, or to use Gram Parsons’ preferred term, Cosmic American Music, is what led me to soften my stance on country music by embracing the stuff I’d grown up with and discovering music that resonated with me, like Hank Williams, Buck Owens, and so many other greats. I dearly loved The Byrds’ Sweetheart of the Rodeo, and I loved the country-influenced songs of Buffalo Springfield. I’m sure that appreciation was not incidental to me developing a love for Neil Young’s music.
I credit a course I took during my freshman year of college for making me a more adventurous music listener: History of Rock & Roll In The 70s and 80s. It covered a range of styles and genres: art rock, prog, jazz, reggae, punk, alternative, country-rock, and hip-hop. Before that course, I mainly had stayed within the confines of classic rock.
One of the first things I did when I arrived in the Dakotas was to explore the area a bit. The Lewis & Clark Expedition had passed through the area on its way to the Pacific, so with an eye to that, I listened to The Long Ryders because of their song “Looking For Lewis & Clark.” They were a band that drew on many influences, musical and otherwise - their name was an allusion to the the Western The Long Riders. Punk music and country were touchstones for them, but they also evoked images of the Old West and classic Westerns.
It felt fitting as a soundtrack for my new life as the editor of a newspaper founded in 1884 in a part of the country that was the setting for many popular Westerns, whether on the silver screen or television. I thought a lot about Deadwood and how I was like a modern A.W. Merrick, heading west to make a new life for myself and to capture the life of a small town in the West for posterity. While there, I saw plenty of tumbling tumbleweeds and interviewed several ranchers and even a real cowboy or two. The little cowboy with fake plastic spurs had become a different stock character in a Western. The West was won, and the frontier was no more, but there were still aspects of it, like the Nokota horses living wild and free in the badlands of the Dakotas.