"Knockin' on Heaven's Door" is a song by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, written for the soundtrack of the 1973 film Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid.

Released as a single two months after the film's premiere, it became a worldwide hit, reaching the Top 10 in several countries.

Described by Dylan biographer Clinton Heylin as "an exercise in splendid simplicity",[3] the song features two short verses, the lyrics of which comment directly on the scene in the film for which it was written: the death of a frontier lawman (Slim Pickens) who refers to his wife (Katy Jurado) as "Mama".

[27] Some of these versions have appeared on Dylan's live and Bootleg Series albums including: In January 1975 Eric Clapton played on Arthur Louis's recording of "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" which was arranged in a cross-over reggae style.

Clapton's 1996 boxed set Crossroads 2: Live in the Seventies features a performance of the song recorded in London in April 1977.

This studio recording was slightly modified for the band's 1991 album Use Your Illusion II, discarding the responses in the second verse.

In 1996 and with the consent of Dylan, Scottish musician Ted Christopher wrote a new verse for "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" in memory of the schoolchildren and teacher killed in the Dunblane school massacre.

[74][75] This version of the song, featuring children from the village singing the chorus with the guitarist and producer of Dylan's album Infidels (1983), Mark Knopfler, was released on December 9, 1996, in the United Kingdom and reached No.