“A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” remained associated with the Cuban Missile Crisis. In April 2004, the singer made this comment to Robert Hilburn of the Los Angeles Times: “Someone pointed out it was written before the missile crisis, but it doesn’t really matter where a song comes from. It just matters where it takes you.”19
Production
If Dylan based the lyric structure on the question/answer form of the traditional ballad “Lord Randall,” harmonically it moves away, inserting a chorus that has nothing to do with the ballad. What should be noted is that his performance is a true performance. To interpret a song in the studio for nearly seven minutes under the pressure that such a situation implies, a singer must have an unusual ability to record it in only one take. Obviously there are some errors, like a small problem after the second line of the fourth verse (3:54), and some imperfections at the end (6:46). But Dylan’s message is filled with emotion, and understandably John Hammond did not feel the need to ask him for a second take. The essentials were on tape. “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” is Dylan’s last recorded song of 1962.
THE HARD RAIN PROJECT
After getting lost in the Sahara Desert in July 1969, photographer Mark Edwards was rescued by a Tuareg nomad. “My rescuer rubbed two sticks together,” recalls Edwards. “He made a fire, and we had a nice cup of tea. Then he turned his battered old cassette player on, and [suddenly] Bob Dylan sang ‘A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall’… I was fascinated by the lyrics…”28 Impacted by so many lyrical images, he decided to illustrate each line of the song with photos presenting global challenges. Thus, the Hard Rain Project was born, a project allowing Mark Edwards to photograph around the world the prophetic Dylan’s images and address the challenge of climate change, poverty eradication, environmental protection, and sustainable consumption and production.
FOR DYLANOLOGISTS
Dylan wrote this song at the house of Chip Monck. Their paths crossed again in 1965, when Dylan was co-host of the Newport Folk Festival, during which he performed live with a rock band. Chip managed many other events such as Woodstock (as master of ceremonies!), the disastrous, famous Altamont Festival, and the benefit concert for Bangladesh organized by George Harrison at Madison Square Garden in New York City, where Dylan performed “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall.”
COVERS
“A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” was performed by Joan Baez during the sessions of Farewell, Angelina (1965). Other adaptations were also highly successful: those of Leon Russell (Leon Russell and the Shelter People, 1971), Bryan Ferry (These Foolish Things, 1973), the Staple Singers (Use What You Got, 1973), to which we must add the live versions of Nana Mouskouri (under the title—The Sky Is Black, 1965) and Robert Plant and the Band of Joy (2011).
Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right
Bob Dylan / 3:38
Musician
Bob Dylan: vocals, guitar, harmonica
Recording Studio
Columbia Recording Studios / Studio A, New York: November 14, 1962
Technical Team
Producer: John Hammond
Sound Engineers: George Knuerr and Pete Dauria
Genesis and Lyrics
When Bob Dylan performed “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” for the first time at the Gaslight Cafe in October 1962, Suze Rotolo had already been taking classes at the University of Perugia, Italy, for four months. Dylan acutely felt the pain of separation during this period.
Curiously, he seems surprisingly bitter and disillusioned, but still in love with his beautiful girl. Here he writes a cryptic text offering his love and reproaching her elegantly: “just kinda wasted my precious time” and “could have done better.” Is he addressing Suze? Some allusions to their life together suggest it. In her memoirs, Suze Rotolo describes a time when they went home early in the morning and heard a “singing rooster at the dawn,”14 a detail that Bob clearly alludes to in his words, “When your rooster crows at the break of dawn / Look out your window, and I’ll be gone.” Dylan also emphasizes her youth: “I once loved a woman, a child I’m told.” She was only seventeen years old when they first met.
The portrait he draws is sufficiently eloquent to prompt a reconciliation. But ultimately, what he reproaches her for is that he gave her his heart, then “she wanted my soul.” However, in October 1962, Dylan was still in love with Suze, as evidenced by the letter he wrote her during the Cuban Missile Crisis in which he states, “If the world did end that nite, all I wanted was to be with you.”14 They didn’t see each other again until January 1963 in New York. But by the end of that year, Suze had become pregnant by Dylan and had had an abortion. She declared her independence and stopped living in the shadow of Dylan’s glory by ending their relationship in 1964. Hence the enigmatic character of the song. Dylan told Nat Hentoff in the Freewheelin’ sleeve notes: “It isn’t a love song. It’s a statement that maybe you can say to make yourself feel better. It’s as if you were talking to yourself.”18
Production
A couple of lines are strongly inspired by Paul Clayton’s “Who’s Gonna Buy You Ribbons (When I’m Gone).” Clayton himself was inspired by the traditional Appalachian song “Who’s Gonna Buy You Chickens (When I’m Gone).”
Dylan uses an identical phrase to start most of his stanzas: “Ain’t no use to…” from Clayton’s song, “It ain’t no use to…” This similarity led to a lawsuit for plagiarism, resulting in a generous compensation for Clayton shortly before the two folksingers, reconciled, toured together in February 1964. Interestingly enough, when Johnny Cash’s “Understand Your Man” was released in January 1964, a title that has a real melodic similarity to “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right,” no plagiarism was mentioned. Music, like most art, is a form of emotional expression transmitted to the community, expression fed by a common heritage accessible to all and enriching the collective unconscious. Hence, how much popular music was inspired by the greatest standards of jazz, blues, classical, rock, or folk? Dylan is often accused of having plundered a particular artist, but even if it is true that he finds inspiration in other artists, his immense talent makes all the difference. He transforms the borrowed material and assimilates it into new creations. Not only Dylan, but John Lennon, Jimmy Page, Duke Ellington, Ludwig van Beethoven, and many others have done the same thing. But who can compete with them? “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” shows all the creative force of Dylan, who owes nothing to anyone except himself. It was recorded in one take on November 14, 1962, and Dylan once again demonstrates his great power of concentration in the studio.
Although in public he was just “strumming” his guitar (as heard at the Gaslight Cafe in October 1962 in a non-final version), in the recording he provides a hard part of string-plucking quite convincing and controlled. Some argue that the song was played by Bruce Langhorne, but just listening to Witmark Demos convinces us otherwise. It is the first song on the album where Dylan’s voice has reverb. Columbia planned to release the title as a single, which may explain this special favor (the song finally appears on the B-side of “Blowin’ in the Wind”). Although the first take was the final, nevertheless it has some imperfections: the harmonica (in A) lacks perfection at 0:50, and whenever Bob pronounces the word twice in the chorus, there is a plosive sound (0:41 / 1:26 / 2:10 / 2:58).
Finally, in the notes accompanying the disc, Nat Hentoff18 notes the presence of the same five musicians who accompanied Dylan on his first single, “Mixed Up Confusion”: Bruce Langhorne (guitar), George Barnes (bass guitar), Dick Wellstood (piano), Gene Ramey (bass), and Herb Lovelle (drums). But even listening carefully, there is absolutely no trace of the other musicians, just Dylan himself. Even if they had accompanied and it was subsequently decided to “mutate” or delete their performance, there would inevitably have been some sound leakage on the tape even if at a very low level.
COVERS
“Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” is one of Dylan’s songs that has been covered the most, starting with
Peter, Paul and Mary, whose version reached ninth place on the Billboard charts on September 28, 1963, followed by the Four Seasons under the pseudonym the Wonder Who? in twelfth place on November 27, 1965. Other covers include those by Elvis Presley (1971), Arlo Guthrie and Pete Seeger (1975), Doc Watson (1978), and Eric Clapton for the 30th Anniversary Concert Celebration (1993).
FOR DYLANOLOGISTS
Joan Baez sang “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” at the Newport Folk Festival in 1963, presenting the song as a “love story that has lasted too long…” Who do you think Miss Baez meant?
FOR DYLANOLOGISTS
Paul Clayton’s “Who’s Gonna Buy You Ribbons (When I’m Gone)” would have inspired Dylan to write “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right.” Clayton had recorded his own version of “Lady Franklin’s Lament” about 1954 for his album Sailing and Whaling Songs of the 19th Century.
Bob Dylan’s Dream
Bob Dylan / 5:00
Musician
Bob Dylan: vocals, guitar, harmonica
Recording Studio
Columbia Recording Studios / Studio A, New York: April 23 (24?), 1963
Technical Team
Producer: John Hammond
Sound Engineers: George Knuerr and Pete Dauria
Genesis and Lyrics
Bob Dylan confessed that he wrote the lyrics to “Bob Dylan’s Dream” following a conversation one night in a club in Greenwich Village with Oscar Brown Jr., a songwriter, playwright, and actor engaged in the civil rights movement. “What have our friends become?” could be the subtitle of “Bob Dylan’s Dream.” The narrator is riding a train going west. He falls asleep and begins dreaming about his friends of yesteryear. He sings, “With haunted hearts through the heat and cold / We never thought we could ever get old.” Nostalgia for a lost youth is the main theme of this Dylan dream, surprising for an artist who was not even twenty-two years old. He evokes the idealism of an adolescent relentlessly giving way to a more adult vision of the dark side of the world: “I wish, I wish, I wish in vain / that we could sit simply in that room again.” Without a doubt, Bob Dylan is thinking about his friends from Hibbing and Minneapolis, who now belong to the past.
Production
Dylan kept this song in the back of his head for a moment before writing and recording it. “Bob Dylan’s Dream” is inspired by the nineteenth-century traditional British ballad “Lady Franklin’s Lament,” also known as “Lord Franklin” or “The Sailor’s Dream,” which itself comes from an old Celtic song called “Cailín Óg a Stór.” Dylan probably heard the melody during his stay in London during the winter of 1962, probably in the version by Martin Carthy, who had introduced him to “Scarborough Fair” (see “Girl from the North Country,” page 54) in which he had immersed himself. Besides the melody, Dylan’s song shares some similarities with “Lady Franklin’s Lament,” such as the lyric “Ten thousand pounds I would freely give” that he rewrote as “Ten thousand dollars at the drop of a hat / I’d give it all gladly…” But nothing else in the song has any further connection with the story of poor John Franklin and his sailors icebound in the Victoria Straits in 1845.
Bob appropriates this traditional melody to deliver a nostalgic acoustic version that he plays on his sadly untuned Gibson J-50. Unlike his previous recordings, where he demonstrated a remarkable metronomic regularity, the tempo of “Bob Dylan’s Dream” changes significantly, starting at about 105 beats per minute (bpm) and finishing at 112. This gap may probably be explained by the five-minute length of the interpretation. Finally, at 0:32 and 1:32 a small “jump” in the sound is heard. It might be an unsuccessful mounting or simply “wrinkled” parts of the tape.
Only two takes were necessary to put “Bob Dylan’s Dream” in the box, the second take being the best. It was the last song that Dylan recorded for his second album. But it was not the last take of the day, since the sixth take of “Masters of War” ended the recording session.
Oxford Town
Bob Dylan / 1:49
Musician
Bob Dylan: vocals, guitar
Recording Studio
Columbia Recording Studios / Studio A, New York: December 6, 1962
Technical Team
Producer: John Hammond
Sound Engineers: Stanley Tonkel and Pete Dauria
Genesis and Lyrics
“Oxford Town” is the account of one of the most significant events in America in 1962, the enrollment of James Meredith at the University of Mississippi. Dylan composed the song in response to a request from Broadside magazine, which asked several songwriters to react to this top news event. Phil Ochs’s “Ballad of Oxford, Mississippi” was among the other submissions. It may seem surprising that Dylan doesn’t mention in “Oxford Town” the names of the two protagonists in the incident, the African-American student James Meredith and the segregationist Mississippi governor Ross Barnett. Is it to rise above the debate? Or rather, as he later said in a radio interview with Studs Terkel in May 1963, to address the subject in a more universal manner without being trapped in a particular event? “It deals with the Meredith case, but then again it doesn’t… Music, my writing, is something special, not sacred…”22
Production
In the album notes, Dylan defines “Oxford Town” as “a banjo tune I play on the guitar.” This piece is the shortest on the album at 1:49. John Hammond, after hearing the song, told Dylan with surprise, “Don’t tell me that’s all!”11 Dylan recorded it in just one take on Thursday, December 6, 1962. His guitar is in D, open tuning, and we can sense that he is having fun with his instrument. He confirmed this to Jann Wenner in November 1969, “[I had] a chance to play in open tuning… ‘Oxford Town,’ I believe it’s on that [second] album… That’s open tuning.”19 His vocal performance is no less surprising. He ventures for the first time into a range approaching two octaves, something rare enough to be mentioned, especially because he mastered it perfectly. It is probably because of this difficult vocal range that “Oxford Town” is seldom played in concert. Moreover, the only stage performance that we know so far was by John Staehely with Cesar Diaz on guitar, Tony Garnier on bass, and Christopher Parker on drums on October 25, 1990, at the Tad Smith Coliseum at the University of Mississippi in Oxford.
IN FOCUS: RIOTS IN OXFORD
In 1961, James Meredith, an African-American from Mississippi, was denied admission to the University of Mississippi–Oxford, which had traditionally accepted only white students in violation of the Supreme Court ruling of 1954 that public schools had to be desegregated. Meredith filed a lawsuit in the US Supreme Court, which ruled that Meredith had the right to be admitted to the state school. But in September 1962, he was denied access to the campus three times by the local police under the orders of the state governor, Ross Barnett. President Kennedy sent federal troops to protect Meredith and allow him to enter the university. A riot broke out on September 30—it lasted three days and two people died. Meredith was the first African-American student at the University of Mississippi.
IN YOUR HEADPHONES
If you listen carefully, you can hear shortly before the end of the song (at 1:45) the edge of a pick hit against the body of the guitar.
Talkin’ World War III Blues
Bob Dylan / 6:26
Musician
Bob Dylan: vocals, guitar, harmonica
Recording Studio
Columbia Recording Studios / Studio A, New York: April 24, 1963
Technical Team
Producer: John Hammond or Tom Wilson (?)
Sound Engineers: George Knuerr and Pete Dauria
Genesis and Lyrics
This “Talkin’ Blues” is another tribute to Woody Guthrie. “Talkin’ World War III Blues” was a partly spontaneous composition created in the studio, replacing “Talkin’ John Birch Paranoid Blues,” which was rejected by Columbia. The black humor and squeaky irony dominate the six-minute-long piece, in which the narrator dreams that he is in the middle of the Third World War and the doc
tor to whom he tells his dream thinks that he is crazy! Bearing in mind that during the Cold War the planet could be reduced to ashes at any moment, Bob Dylan denounces the weaknesses of each participant.
Psychiatrists, who always eager to prepare a cell for their patients, are the first to be ridiculed. Then it is the conservatives’ turn to be targeted—those who supported Senator Joseph McCarthy’s witch hunt and continue to have a visceral fear of the “communists.” Even the narrator himself is not immune to self-mockery. Only Elvis Presley’s favorite car seems to find some favor: the narrator drove down Forty-Second Street in his Cadillac.
Production
In Nat Hentoff’s liner notes for the album he wrote that after a great intro on the guitar, Dylan started improvising a part of the text during the recording session on April 24.19 The format of the “Talkin’ Blues” gave Dylan an opportunity to address the subject of nuclear annihilation with humor, unlike in “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall.” As in “Mean Talking Blues” by Woody Guthrie, in which Dylan could have found some inspiration for this song, we see some similarities harmonically with the two other “Talkin’ Blues” recorded during the recording sessions for the album, but not selected for it (included on the Bootleg Series): “Talkin’ John Birch Paranoid Blues” (session on April 24, 1962) and “Talkin’ Bear Mountain Picnic Massacre Blues” (session on April 25, 1962). The same three chords in different keys and the same rhythmic pattern are the basis for his vocal lines. The copyright of “Talkin’ World War III Blues,” dated November 29, 1963, stipulates that it is a vocal achievement rather than a musical composition, the spoken words and the lack of melody explaining this point. After four false starts, the fifth take was selected as the master track.
Bob Dylan All the Songs Page 8