He was 74, and died – like Frank Zappa – of prostate cancer diagnosed too late.
An interesting figure in his own right in more than one branch of the arts, and a very hardworking film-maker, his name occurs on the fringes of Bob Dylan’s work a couple of times, if seldom directly. Dylan’s Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid co-star Kris Kristofferson made his film debut in the Hopper-directed The Last Movie in 1971, while Tim Drummond, co-composer of the title track of Dylan’s Saved album and bass-player for Bob in the studio and on the road, played on the soundtrack of Hopper’s 1990 film The Hot Spot, in (as mentioned in The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia) a heavyweight ensemble led by Miles Davis, John Lee Hooker and Taj Mahal. Decades earlier, Hopper had also directed the film Easy Rider, to which Dylan did or did not contribute a morsel or two of what became Roger McGuinn’s title song.
Less tenuous connections are that Dylan’s rather lacklustre 1989 recording of ‘People Get Ready’ appears on the soundtrack of the 1990 film Flashback, which starred Dennis Hopper, and is not to be confused with the same year’s Backtrack (aka Catchfire), which was directed by Dennis Hopper and Alan Smithee, in which Bob appears briefly, and unbilled, as a “chainsaw artist”.
Taken from this post:
DENNIS HOPPER DIED LAST SATURDAY
