Robert Ryan was a great actor from the forties through the seventies. He died in ’73, just like the song says. I wrote it because I was thinking about him; the idea came to me and I had to put it in a song. He’s a pretty amazing actor, in a lot of the great film noirs that I’m super into—Crossfire, The Set-Up, On Dangerous Ground. He was also in Odds Against Tomorrow and Bad Day at Black Rock, more favorites of mine. Then he turns up in The Wild Bunch and The Dirty Dozen, those latter-day epics, which are super, super great. He kind of played a bad guy a lot of the time—not always, but often a bad or messed-up guy—yet he was actually a really cool guy.

I didn’t even know most of this when I wrote the song. I just make it up, based on some facts but also on what I feel, letting it roll out. Later I did some research and found out he was a Quaker, a really anti-war guy who spoke out against violence, even though he’s in loads of war movies and Westerns. Turns out he was a very peaceful man.

The really weird story is he lived at the Dakota and eventually sold his apartment to John and Yoko. That’s pretty wild, but that’s not what he should be remembered for. People should remember all the amazing movies he made, all the great, great classic films he’s done, because he’s a really, really great actor. I love how he could be this towering presence and still let the other actors breathe on screen. That balance of menace and decency really sticks with me. And it’s nice when you find out he’s a really cool dude too. That always helps.