Every song is about running (1): When I ran on a hilltop following a pack of wild geese

I don't listen to music while I'm running as much as I used to, but I do on longer solo runs, and one thing I notice after a while is that almost every song is sort of about running, or at least so my mind convinces me as it interprets every thing it hears in relation to the relentless activity of putting one foot in front of the other.

So to start the ball rolling on 'every song is about running', here's some lines from The Band's 'When I Paint my Masterpiece' (written by Bob Dylan) I noticed the other day:

'Train wheels a-running through  the back of my memory,

When I ran on a hilltop following a pack of wild geese,

Someday everything is gonna sound like a rhapsody

When I paint my masterpiece'.

Nice bit of mandolin, too (I occasionally play).

Harry Dean Stanton running with Bob Dylan

Harry Dean Stanton

Good interview with Harry Dean Stanton by Sean O'Hagan in today's Observer, recalling that he and Bob Dylan used to go running together while filming with Sam Peckinpah:

'He [Stanton] later befriended Bob Dylan during the famously difficult shoot for Sam Peckinpah's elegiac western Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid in 1973. "Dylan and I got to be very close. We recorded together one time. It was a Mexican song. He offered me a copy of the tape and I said no. Shot myself in the foot. It's never seen the light of day. I'd sure love to hear it."

... Kris Kristofferson, who played the lead in that film, recalls Peckinpah throwing a knife in anger at Stanton when the actor messed up a crucial scene by running through the shot. "As I recall, he pulled a gun on me, too. It was because me and Dylan fucked up the shot." On purpose? "No, we were jogging and we ran right across the background." The vision of Dylan and Stanton jogging together seems altogether too absurd, but I let it pass'.

Dylan in Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973) - not really dressed for a run