Bob Dylan performed this song over two hundred times, including during his comeback tour in 1974 with the Band and at Live Aid in 1985 accompanied (if we can call it that!) by Keith Richards and Ron Wood.
FOR DYLANOLOGISTS
As part of the Amnesty International compilation Chimes of Freedom, punk-rock band Rise Against covered “Ballad of Hollis Brown.”
With God On Our Side
Bob Dylan / 7:08
Musician
Bob Dylan: vocals, guitar, harmonica
Recording Studio
Columbia Recording Studios / Studio A, New York: August 6 and 7, 1963
Technical Team
Producer: Tom Wilson
Sound Engineers: Stanley Tonkel and Pete Dauria
Genesis and Lyrics
The melody of “With God on Our Side” closely resembles that of “The Patriot Game,” a song written by Dominic Behan, a songwriter fighting alongside the IRA (Irish Republican Army). Its title explicitly refers to St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans: “If God is for us, who can be against us?”
Based on St. Paul’s teaching, the lyrics radically questioned American history and, beyond that, all wars of the last century. The message was clear: if you believed the history books, the nations that triumphed were those that supposedly had God on their side. “Oh the history books tell it / They tell it so well / The cavalries charged / The Indians fell / The cavalries charged / The Indians died / Oh the country was young / With God on its side,” Dylan sang.
Surely, Dylan condemned those who claimed divine intervention to justify their murderous missions—who were, at the same time, those who wrote history. Did the Yankees have God on their side when they defeated the Confederates? The songwriter recalled a few facts that obscured the official discourse. The lines “Though they murdered six million / In the ovens they fried / The Germans now too / Have God on their side” let us understand that Germany, twenty years after World War II, was now on the side of freedom, under the benevolent influence of the United States. Then in the second to last verse, Dylan forced the listener to take sides concerning “That Jesus Christ / Was betrayed by a kiss / But I can’t think for you / You’ll have to decide / Whether Judas Iscariot / Had God on his side.” Once again, the criticism stung: it was addressed not so much to religious congregations as to political leaders and opinion makers who carried out wars in the name of God.
“With God on Our Side” was not just a condemnation of the powerful or an antimilitaristic hymn. What precisely made Dylan an exceptional songwriter was that by mentioning Judas toward the end of his text, he subtly brought his general idea back to the level of the individual. It is up to us to judge in our souls and in our consciences where we place God regarding the responsibility of everyone facing humanity’s tragedies. And he concluded with a message of resignation, but perhaps hope: “If God’s on our side / He’ll stop the next war.”
Production
Since Dylan obviously borrowed the melody of “The Patriot Game” from Dominic Behan, Behan was justifiably upset. However, Behan had himself borrowed the inspiration from an old Irish ballad, “The Merry Month of May.” Dylan tried to apologize later, recognizing that he had no doubt unconsciously borrowed the version of “The Patriot Game” by Liam Clancy. This is highly likely, as he explained in 2004 to Robert Hilburn: “Well, you have to understand that I’m not a melodist… My songs are either based on old Protestant hymns or Carter Family songs or variations of the blues form. What happens is, I’ll take a song I know and simply start playing it in my head. That’s the way I meditate… At a certain point, some of the words will change and I’ll start writing a song.”20
On April 12, 1963, Dylan performed “With God on Our Side” for the first time at Town Hall in New York. This means he could have included it in his second album, since the last recording session was dated April 24. Entering the studio on August 6, he had trouble recording it. After five takes, he only managed to record it the next day right from the first try. It should be added that, being seven minutes long, “With God on Our Side” was the longest song on the album and required tremendous concentration to record it all at once—yet Dylan and the technical team did not use any razor editing in the studio. His guitar playing was striking for its numerous rhythm variations, and modulated variations according to the intensity of the lyrics. Also, his harmonica part in C introduced one of his a cappella pieces for the first time. It seemed as though he was trying to enrich his playing with various subtleties, lest he lose the audience’s attention with such a long text. He often sang this song in a duet with Joan Baez, including during the New York Philharmonic Hall Halloween Show on October 31, 1964 (The Bootleg Series Vol. 6: Bob Dylan Live 1964: Concert at Philharmonic Hall).
In 1988, The Neville Brothers recorded an extraordinary version of “With God on Our Side” for their album Yellow Moon. Daniel Lanois, who produced the album, turned Dylan on to the song that had just been recorded. Dylan remembered discovering the voice of the singer, Aaron Neville: “It always surprises me to hear a song of mine done by an artist like this who is on such a high level. Over the years, songs might get away from you, but a version like this always brings it closer again.”1 It contained a new verse about the war in Vietnam. It seemed Dylan had written and performed it in concert before. But journalist Brian D. Johnson stated, as several people thought, that it was Aaron Neville who wrote it. Still, even today there has been no alteration of the copyright…
FOR DYLANOLOGISTS
Although a new verse was added in the version recorded by the Neville Brothers, during the MTV Unplugged concert in 1995, Dylan deleted the lines about the Germans and the final solution, as well as about the Russians and the Cold War.
Before Dylan filed “With God on Our Side” with his publisher Witmark & Sons on June 10, 1963, the song had been published in Broadside magazine some time before under the title “With God on Your Side.”
One Too Many Mornings
Bob Dylan / 2:40
Musician
Bob Dylan: vocals, guitar, harmonica
Recording Studio
Columbia Recording Studios / Studio A, New York: October 24, 1963
Technical Team
Producer: Tom Wilson
Sound Engineers: George Knuerr and Pete Dauria
Genesis and Lyrics
“One Too Many Mornings” has a distant melodic similarity to “The Times They Are A-Changin’”; however, the lyrics of the song are very different. While listening, it is difficult not to think about the relationship between Bob Dylan and Suze Rotolo. In June 1962, the young woman left the United States to study in Italy, leaving Dylan behind in his loneliness and with his questions. Upon her return to New York, the couple lived together for a few weeks in an apartment on West Fourth Street before moving to Suze’s sister’s apartment. In the meantime, so many things had changed: the young songwriter had become the symbol of an entire generation and rumor had it that he was having—or had had—an affair with Joan Baez. In a nuanced but very poetic way, the song deals with their rupture in three couplets of four verses and a perfect chorus (“I’m one too many mornings / And a thousand miles behind”). The images are strong, but there is no question Dylan refuses to blame his partner alone. “You’re right from your side / I’m right from mine”: this is the moral of the song.
Production
“One Too Many Mornings” is a gem both in terms of writing and of interpretation. From the first rhythm, Dylan manages to show us all the nostalgia that overwhelms him. His voice is soft and introspective, close to emotional overflow (0:25). His guitar fingering is perfect and mastered, and he plays guitar in open A tuning, which contributes to the atmosphere and harmonic richness of the song. Even the harmonica part (in C) is remarkable. Dylan plays harmonica with finesse and emotion as never before. On the production side, Tom Wilson decided this time to come back to Hammond’s vision, a less cluttered sound. The guitar became hushed and underscored the emotion in his voice
. A reverb highlights the nostalgic atmosphere of the whole piece. Wilson seeks to vary the color of the songs and he succeeds admirably.
Although Dylan performed many electric versions (he sang it for the first time in public February 26, 1966, in Hempstead, New York, with the Band), this acoustic version was never equaled. Apparently “One Too Many Mornings” was one of Steve Jobs’s favorite songs. We can understand why.
FOR DYLANOLOGISTS
There is a “One Too Many Mornings” duet with Johnny Cash, which is a part of the recording sessions for the album Nashville Skyline (1969), in an edition dated February 17, 1969, but never officially published. We can hear producer Bob Johnston announcing the song under the title “A Thousand Miles Behind”!
North Country Blues
Bob Dylan / 4:33
Musician
Bob Dylan: vocals, guitar
Recording Studio
Columbia Recording Studios / Studio A, New York: August 6, 1963
Technical Team
Producer: Tom Wilson
Sound Engineers: Stanley Tonkel and Pete Dauria
FOR DYLANOLOGISTS
“North Country Blues” is not a song that Dylan frequently performs in concert. Nevertheless he did perform it in New York on May 9, 1974, at the Friends of Chile Benefit, which is unfortunately considered by some to be one of his worst concerts, perhaps because he consumed too much Chilean wine.
Genesis and Lyrics
Bob Dylan achieves a significant artistic breakthrough with this song: through the despair of a woman, Dylan looks at his own past in Minnesota. The heroine of “North Country Blues” knows the perils of life in a mining community: she lost her father, her mother, her brother, and her husband, himself a miner who sank into alcoholism and let her raise their three children soon after the mine closed. Dylan tells her story and, through it, the sad story of all the mine workers of this region of the United States, an area that saw “iron ore” flow freely before becoming a victim of the Great Depression and the relentless competition of “South American cities.” “North Country Blues” also evokes Bob Dylan’s childhood in Hibbing, Minnesota, a small mining town in the heart of the Mesabi Range, which was hit very hard by economic decline in the 1950s. He wrote in the introduction notes of the album (“11 Outlined Epitaphs”), “The town I grew up in is the one that has left me with my legacy visions it was not a rich town my parents were not rich it was not a poor town an’ my parents were not poor it was a dyin’ town (it was a dyin’ town) a train line cuts the ground.”8
Production
At first hearing, Dylan’s guitar playing with its medium tone strikes us as almost out of phase. Tom Wilson, once again, tried a new approach to get a different sound from the other titles on the album. The “folk song” side of “North Country Blues,” in which only the text has the desolation of a blues song, probably gave Dylan the idea to play guitar with a color closer to traditional instruments, such as the banjo and dulcimer. The result is so imperfect that the sound highlights each detail, such as his hits on the body of the guitar at 0:28. This song is about mine workers and has been influenced by Woody Guthrie. He recorded “North Country Blues” on August 6 at the first recording session for the album, in three false starts, the last take being selected as the master.
He played the song at two important events in 1963, the first at the Freebody Park, Newport Folk Festival, July 27, 1963, the second on October 26, onstage at Carnegie Hall in New York City.
Only A Pawn In Their Game
Bob Dylan / 3:30
Musician
Bob Dylan: vocals, guitar
Recording Studio
Columbia Recording Studios / Studio A, New York: August 6 and 7, 1963
Technical Team
Producer: Tom Wilson
Sound Engineers: Stanley Tonkel and Pete Dauria
Genesis and Lyrics
In “Only a Pawn in Their Game,” Bob Dylan refers to the assassination of civil rights activist Medgar Evers on June 12, 1963, in Jackson, Mississippi. Instead of offering a basic description of the fatal gesture and condemning it without reference to racism, the songwriter prefers to distance himself from the event and deliver a message more philosophical than political. The offender is a white Southerner, but the real criminals are those who have guided him on the path of hate and violence. In the third verse Dylan sings, “The deputy sheriffs, the soldiers, the governors get paid / And the marshals and cops get the same / But the poor white man’s used in the hands of them all like a tool.” Dylan also blamed the Ku Klux Klan because it taught the murderer to “Shoot in the back / With his fist in a clinch / To hang and to lynch / To hide ’neath the hood / To kill with no pain / Like a dog on a chain.” The man who killed Medgar Evers was only a pawn in the hands of those who kill and take advantage of the poor in the South by inciting hatred of blacks among whites.
Production
If “Only a Pawn in Their Game” highlights the problem of racism in American society at the time, it is also the second song (after “Boots of Spanish Leather”) that Dylan works on at the first recording session of the album on August 6. Curiously, the song has many similarities to “With God on Our Side,” also included in the session of the day: the same rhythmic variations, the same three tempos, the same sound on guitar (with a little less roundness), the same type of interpretation, the same reverb… Dylan is close to his text, giving some freedom to the tempo and not imposing strict constraints. Only a slight slip at 1:35 interferes with his delivery, and an unidentified noise is audible in the left stereo at the end of the song precisely at 3:25. After recording six takes (including four false starts) the next day on August 7, he used the first attempt as the final take.
A month earlier, on July 6, at the request of Pete Seeger, he performed “Only a Pawn in Their Game” at a voter registration rally in Greenwood, Mississippi, organized at the initiative of a nonviolent student committee to convince African-Americans to register to vote. On August 28 he sang the song at the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, but removed it from his concert repertoire worldwide as of October 1964.
MEDGAR EVERS
As the Mississippi leader of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People), Medgar Evers demanded the recruitment of black police officers in Jackson and the desegregation of restaurants downtown, which gave rise to indignation in the white community. On the evening of June 12, 1963, he was assassinated as he got out of his car in front of his house. It was not until 1994 that a member of the Ku Klux Klan, Byron De La Beckwith, was convicted. Producer Rob Reiner directed Ghosts of Mississippi about the tragedy in 1996.
FOR DYLANOLOGISTS
The assassination of Medgar Evers inspired other artists besides Dylan: folksinger Phil Ochs in 1963 with “Too Many Martyrs (Ballad of Medgar Evers),” and Dick Weissman’s “Medgar Evers Lullaby,” recorded by Judy Collins in 1964.
Boots Of Spanish Leather
Bob Dylan / 4:40
Musician
Bob Dylan: vocals, guitar
Recording Studio
Columbia Recording Studios / Studio A, New York: August 6 and 7, 1963
Technical Team
Producer: Tom Wilson
Sound Engineers: Stanley Tonkel and Pete Dauria
Genesis and Lyrics
For the melody of “Boots of Spanish Leather,” an epistolary love story, Bob Dylan may have been inspired by the novel Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence, published in 1913. Michael Gray, engaged in a very thorough study of Dylan’s aesthetics, quotes the verses sung by the children of Gertrude Morel in the novel: “My shoes are made of Spanish leather / My stockings are made of silk / I wear a ring on every finger / I wash myself in milk.”30 It is possible that Dylan also had in mind “The Raggle Taggle Gyps,” a Celtic ballad also known as “The Gypsy Laddie(s),” “Gypsy Davey,” and “Black Jack David.” It is a tale of a rich young woman who crossed the Atlantic. It tells of how she left her family to run off with a gy
psy with whom she fell in love. (The song is listed in the repertoire of Cecil Sharp.) Since the 1930s, there have been many recordings of this traditional folk song, including one by Woody Guthrie in 1944. It may be “Gypsy Davey” by Guthrie, with his gloves made of Spanish leather, that inspired Dylan.
“Boots of Spanish Leather” is a love song—one of the most beautiful songs in Dylan’s repertoire. The particularity of this truly romantic ballad has two facets: first, the separated lovers confide to each other in letters; and second, unlike the hero of Homer’s Odyssey, Penelope is leaving for a long trip and Odysseus remains at home. Like “One Too Many Mornings” and other songs of that era, “Boots of Spanish Leather” refers to the relationship between Bob Dylan and Suze Rotolo after she left for Italy in June 1962. Italy turns into Spain. The difference is the role assigned to each protagonist. In this ballad, we guess that it is the feelings of the heroine that have evolved. Dylan sings, “That I might be gone a long time,” before it is clear that she does not know when she will return: “Saying I don’t know when I’ll be comin’ back again / It depends on how I’m a-feelin’.” In reality, Suze decided to extend her stay and enrolled in the Fine Arts Department at the University of Perugia. Bob, in the face of these disparate feelings between the two of them, had to wait until mid-January before they were together again. It was in the early days of the new year, while playing in the company of Odetta in Rome, that he wrote, one after the other, “Girl from the North Country” and “Boots of Spanish Leather.” In the last verse of “Boots of Spanish Leather,” the singer warns the young girl against the strong winds and storms that threaten her, and he finally asks her for the Spanish leather boots… Why the boots? Probably to take to the road, which is a recurring image in Dylan’s work as much as it is in the blues.
Bob Dylan All the Songs Page 12