Main Title Theme (Billy) In A Complete Unknown???

At the end of every viewing in the theater

Michael Glover Smith

and I would lean forward at the credits trying to soak it all in, and catch something we hadn’t before. We would become laser focused on the music credits which are both incredibly long and detailed. More on that in a minute.

During the sequence when Bob and Sylvie are walking to the train at the end of their first date, and Sylvie is giving Bob her whole schedule, there is a really nice acoustic guitar fingerpicking melody playing under the scene. At around viewing 6 or 7, I turned to Mike and whispered, “Is this a Bob Dylan song?!” He responded, “I think it’s just the score.” This conversation repeated itself when we watched it on digital last week. I apologized for repeating myself. But something about that melody stuck with me. It sounded familiar, and I could swear it was a Bob Dylan composition.

Sure enough at that same home viewing we were able to pause on each rolling screen of songs, studying the credits like it was the Torah (it kind of is to me). We paused and talked about a few of them, including a blink and you miss it Death of Emmet Till and the 3 appearances of House of the Rising Sun. The song credits appear in roughly the order of appearance in the film, and smack in the middle, right after the score from “Now, Voyager” we get “MAIN TITLE THEME (BILLY) Written by Bob Dylan, Performed by Calexico.” You may remember Calexico from the soundtrack to I’m Not There, but that’s another story. Mike and I were shocked! HUH?! BILLY?! WHERE? WHEN? Over our regular text thread about Bob Dylan and film I speculated that perhaps it was the scene that I kept asking about! Sure enough, after watching it a few times and clipping it, I can confirm, it’s Billy from the Pat Garrett And Billy The Kid soundtrack. It’s slowed down, and fingerpicked, but it’s there. Try to focus on the music and not the dialogue in the clip shared above. And of course, below is Billy.

Here’s the order of how you should do things if you’re interested in this:

1. Look at the picture of the credits

2. Listen to the youtube clip of Billy

3. Watch the shared clip from A Complete Unknown, and try to focus on the music.