Donovan’s “Hail Atlantis” is a strange song in its own right.  The first part of the song is a spoken poem about the fall of the mythical city of Atlantis.  Then the song becomes a catchy ballad pining for an antediluvian love submerged way down below the ocean.  When I hear this song all I can think of is Joe Pesci and Robert DeNiro beating the life out of Billy Bats with a .38 on the floor of The Suite.

Goodfellas was the Scorsese movie that should have won the Oscar.  The frantic, disjointed, yet engaging epic is the peak of Scorsese’s cinematic vision.  Many have tried to replicate it; even borrowing small partitions of its dense scope and having it unfurl into entire movies.

Every time I stumble upon Goodfellas on TV I have to watch the entire thing.  Even TV censored Goodfellas is compelling.  I have probably seen the whole movie, front to back, ten times, but I have seen the movie from Henry’s wedding 15 times, seen it from the whacking of Billy Bats 30 times, seen it from the Lufthansa heist 40 times, and so on.  Seeing segments of this movie so many times has corrupted my recollections, and the artists intended meanings of the soundtrack’s canon of classic rock songs.

Eric Clapton features two of his classics in the movie; two staples of the 60s that will forever remind me of mob violence.  The lumbering guitar intro to Sunshine for Your Love accompanies Robert DeNiro smoking a cigarette while  murdering his associates in the Lufthansa heist with his eyes.  But Sunshine for Your Love isn’t as altered as the piano coda of Layla, a montage of smooth camera movements perfectly complimented by the rolling, seamless piano showing the bodies of all everyone involved in the Lufthansa heist from a couple’s lifeless faces frozen in freight in their new pink Cadillac to Frankie Carbone hanging in a meat truck frozen stiff.  Everytime I hear the end of Layla this is what I think about, not Pattie Boyd like I’m supposed to.  Dead mobsters.

There are even situations in my daily life that conjure Goodfellas music.  Driving to work, if I see a helicopter in the sky I start thinking about Henry Hill watching the helicopter watching him, then what pops into my head?  Magic Bus by the Who, and it’s only a portion of it; the “Iwaaaant-itIwaaaant-itIwaaaant-it” right before he nearly gets into the accident.  This goes the same if I ever hear Magic Bus on the radio, I start thinking about Henry Hill’s coked-out helicopter panic.  Magic Bus is the only song that gets a roundabout association where a helicopter goes to the movie clip as does the song.  The Rolling Stone’s Monkey Man one refers me back to the movie clip when I hear it on the radio.

Though the process has been copied throughout movies since, Goodfellas is the most prominent example of taking well-known classic music, throwing it around in situations where the songs’ lyrics and theme don’t apply with what happening on screen, and somehow everything making sense in the end.  Somehow Hail Atlantis is the perfect song for beating the life out of Billy Bats, I can’t imagine another in its place.

Whacking Billy Bats.

Henry’s Coked-up Helicopter Freakout.