Over its two sides and thirteen songs – eleven of which were original compositions – The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan introduced listeners to what Dylan could achieve as a songwriter. Traditional melodies were not only revisited but accompanied by lyrics of wit, bitterness, and evocative romance. Many of these songs, for the young Dylan, held a mirror to a changing private and public life.
In January 1962, Dylan moved into a top-floor apartment on West 4th Street, New York, with his then-girlfriend Suze Rotol, before she travelled to Italy for her studies. Their romance stirs in the lyrics of ‘Girl from the North Country,’ and their separation is felt keenly in the frustrated blues of ‘Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right.’ Importantly, this relationship also fed Dylan’s political consciousness, and with the Civil Rights Movement unfolding on his doorstep they informed the topical protests of other tracks, including ‘Blowin’ in the Wind,’ ‘Masters of War’ and ‘Talkin’ World War III Blues.’
To listeners of Dylan’s album, much of his zest and youthful songwriting found its greatest expression with the torrential forecast that ‘A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall.’ Just shy of seven minutes, Dylan’s song brought the personal and political into close proximity, with each descriptive lyric inspired by his readings of microfiche newspapers in the New York Public Library.
Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, where have you been, my darling young one?
– Dylan gently asks, in the opening lines, before replying with a sequence of prophetic visions, migrating between “misty mountains” and “sad forests,” amongst other landscapes. Later, he asks further questions: what has he seen and heard, who has he met on his quest, and what will he do next? Structured to the question-and-answer dialogue of the traditional ballad ‘Lord Randal,’ Dylan’s song asks questions of an America in crisis, departing from the Anglo-Scottish tale of betrayal and poisoned eels to capture the anxiety of Kennedy-Khrushchev relations and civil unrest. From verse to verse, line to line, these images and symbols of change are heaped upon more images and symbols. Dylan sings of innocence lost to experience, recounting lists of what we hold dearest and fear of losing the most.
In his memoir Chronicles: Volume One, Dylan describes the background to the song as a “culture of feeling, of black days, of schism, evil for evil, the common destiny of the human being getting thrown off course.” For Dylan, the centre simply could not hold.
And so Dylan’s weatherman refrain that “it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall” gathers a number of symbolic possibilities, gesturing at both personal and political meanings. For Dylan: “it's not atomic rain, it's just a hard rain. It isn't the fallout rain. I mean some sort of end that's just gotta happen.” Although he frequently turns away from reading meaning into his lyrics, this unusual insight might be the nearest he allows his listeners to any specific understanding. How we brave the storm and find our way through, Dylan suggests, is the greatest quality you can have these days.
‘A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall’ is a song that must be heard more than once for anything to settle. In performance, it has become one of Dylan’s most popular and revisited songs, with covers ranging from Joan Baez, performed several years after its composition, to Patti Smith at the Nobel Prize ceremony in Stockholm, in 2016. They have each heard and interpreted the rain in their own ways. Dylan has also reinvented the mood and rhythms of his protest anthem at various points, most notably during the Rolling Thunder Revue concert tour, where the song is performed at a quicker, more upbeat pace.
Dylan’s song belongs to no specific voice, and much like the symbolic possibilities of each image so does the song allow for multiple voices. Over the years it has taken on new forms and new meanings, with the mesmerising and masterly lyrics remembered and performed anew for each singer.
