Back in December, I wrote about a potential allusion in Bob Dylan’s “Thunder on the Mountain.” In this post, I want to add another.

We know that Bob Dylan is a fan of the movie Tombstone. Now, I didn’t know it until recently, when Harry Hew posted a fascinating thread on the topic on Twitter. But I think the fact can be taken as read.

I was rewatching Tombstone a few days ago, and the following exchange between Doc Holliday and Wyatt Earp regarding the recently arrived actress Josephine Marcus caught my attention:

Doc Holliday: Tell me somethin’, my friend, I’m curious. Do you actually consider yourself a married man, forsakin’ all others?

Wyatt Earp: Yeah, pretty much. I mean, I was no angel when we met; neither was she. People can change, Doc. Sooner or later, you gotta grow up.

Interestingly, this differs from the script in a couple of ways (assuming that the script at the link is correct), the most significant of which is that the script does not include “neither was she.”

This made me think of “Thunder on the Mountain“:

I been to St. Herman’s church and I’ve said my religious vows
I’ve sucked the milk out of a thousand cows
I got the porkchops, she got the pie
She ain’t no angel and neither am I
Shame on your greed, shame on your wicked schemes
I’ll say this, I don’t give a d–n about your dreams

I think Dylan might want us to think of Tombstone here; but if so, he’s reversed the order of the pronouns.

I’m not sure whether to make anything more of this or not. Some of the rest of the lyrics lend themselves well to a Wild West love story, but I would want to think about it more before drawing further connections to the film.