Take the music of Watchmen, for example. Like few that preceded it, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' comic sampled pop culture's musical history like skilled DJs. From Wagner, Billie Holiday and Elvis to the Dead, Dylan and Iggy, Watchmen cited music in nearly every chapter to keep its dense narrative afloat. Sure enough, some of those tunes made Watchmen's official soundtrack, released Tuesday, which is great news for fans incapable of making their own playlists or mix discs.
The slightly good news is that some of the music that made it into the film, but not the comic, didn't make it to the soundtrack. The bad news? Some lousy songs made both the film and the soundtrack, but never made the comic at all. (Spoiler alert: Minor plot points follow.)
As a comic, Watchmen's panels are rocking with musical content. Its first chapter is bookended by lyrics (pictured above) from the Bob Dylan epic “Desolation Row," Highway 61 Revisited's 11-minute closer, which is either about a place in Mexico or New York's Eighth Avenue, depending on whether you ask Dylan or his organist, Al Kooper. The Grateful Dead covered “Desolation Row" at length in its legendary live shows, and the song is cited when a detective scans a concert poster in Chapter 5 of the Watchmen graphic novel. ("Heh," grumbles the detective, “I used to own the record [that] had this sleeve design.") Meanwhile, for the film's credits and soundtrack, emo noisemaker band My Chemical Romance revised “Desolation Row" in deafening fashion. It even filmed a video for the song, directed by Snyder, that features the band's own live show performed against a backdrop of Rorschach inkblots.
The rabbit hole goes deeper on Chapter 1 alone. Ten pages in, two top- knot punks blast Iggy Pop's “Neighborhood Threat," Lust for Life's trashy rocker co- written by David Bowie and Ricky Gardiner, whose fearsome lyrics (Look down your back stairs, buddy/Somebody's living there an' they don't really feel the weather) perfectly bookend Rorschach's dark prowling. If that's not enough, the chapter concludes with Hollis Mason's theory on why German composer Richard Wagner's “Ride of the Valkyries" is the saddest thing in the world. (His father's boss committed suicide to it.)
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