Knockin' on Heaven's Door
A slow, minor-key Bob Dylan cover that closes the I'm Not There soundtrack and plays over the film's end credits.
Antony and the Johnsons, from I'm Not There: Original Soundtrack (2007)
- Written by
- Bob Dylan
- Released
- 30 October 2007
- Length
- 4:14
- Album
- I'm Not There: Original Soundtrack
Dylan wrote the song for Sam Peckinpah's film Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, and his 1973 single reached No. 12 in the US and No. 14 in the UK. Anohni first sang it alone on stage at the end of a tour of Australia in January 2006, and played it at the show that night. For Todd Haynes's Dylan film I'm Not There she recorded it on piano and vocals with Kevin Barker on acoustic guitar and Greg Cohen on bass, producing with David Mansfield, while Stewart Lerman recorded and mixed it. She said they took it slow and minor.
It closes the soundtrack and plays over the film's closing credits. NPR's Laura Conaway chose it as her best song in the world on 6 December 2007, hearing it as the strangest of the film's many portraits of Dylan, and noted that Anohni changes some of the words. Ink 19's reviewer heard it as the most heartbreaking torch reading of the song yet. The band rarely played it live: setlist.fm logs Verona in August 2006 and Eindhoven in May 2009. Anohni returned to Dylan in 2020 with It's All Over Now, Baby Blue.
Secretly Canadian reissued the recording as a one-track digital single on 15 April 2019. The upload in the hypersongs web is the 2007 soundtrack recording, posted as official audio on Secretly Canadian's channel.
On stage
- 2006-08-30, Teatro Romano, Verona One of two performances logged on setlist.fm.
- 2009-05-03, Muziekcentrum Frits Philips, Eindhoven The second logged performance.
More songs by Antony and the Johnsons
Sources
- Antony and the Johnsons cover Dylan, NME (2007-09-06)
- Knockin' on Heaven's Door, A Surprising Cover, NPR (2007-12-06)
- I'm Not There, Ink 19 (2008-06-24)
- I'm Not There: Original Soundtrack, Discogs
- Knockin' on Heaven's Door (2019 single), MusicBrainz