1963; A Hard Rain is Going to Fall...Bob Dylan awarded Nobel Prize "for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition". A Hard Rains Gonna Fall {Live at Town Hall 1963} - Elston Gunn

"A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall"

Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son?
And where have you been my darling young one?
I've stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains
I've walked and I've crawled on six crooked highways
I've stepped in the middle of seven sad forests
I've been out in front of a dozen dead oceans
I've been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard
And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, and it's a hard
It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.

Oh, what did you see, my blue eyed son?
And what did you see, my darling young one?
I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it
I saw a highway of diamonds with nobody on it
I saw a black branch with blood that kept drippin'
I saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleedin'
I saw a white ladder all covered with water
I saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken
I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children
And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, and it's a hard
It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.

And what did you hear, my blue-eyed son?
And what did you hear, my darling young one?
I heard the sound of a thunder that roared out a warnin'
I heard the roar of a wave that could drown the whole world
I heard one hundred drummers whose hands were a-blazin'
I heard ten thousand whisperin' and nobody listenin'
I heard one person starve, I heard many people laughin'
Heard the song of a poet who died in the gutter
Heard the sound of a clown who cried in the alley
And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard
And it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.

Oh, what did you meet my blue-eyed son ?
Who did you meet, my darling young one?
I met a young child beside a dead pony
I met a white man who walked a black dog
I met a young woman whose body was burning
I met a young girl, she gave me a rainbow
I met one man who was wounded in love
I met another man who was wounded in hatred
And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard
And it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.

And what'll you do now, my blue-eyed son?
And what'll you do now my darling young one?
I'm a-goin' back out 'fore the rain starts a-fallin'
I'll walk to the depths of the deepest black forest
Where the people are a many and their hands are all empty
Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters
Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison
And the executioner's face is always well hidden
Where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten
Where black is the color, where none is the number
And I'll tell and speak it and think it and breathe it
And reflect from the mountain so all souls can see it
And I'll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin'
But I'll know my song well before I start singing
And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, and it's a hard
It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.

"A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall" is a song written by Bob Dylan in the summer of 1962. It was first recorded in Columbia Records' Studio A on December 6, 1962 for his second album The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan. The lyrical structure is based on the question and answer form of traditional ballads such as Lord Randall. Dylan has stated that all of the lyrics were taken from the initial lines of songs that "he thought he would never have time to write."

Analysis

On September 22, 1962, Dylan appeared for the first time at Carnegie Hall as part of an all-star hootenanny.^]His three song set marked the first public performance of "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall,"^[4] a complex and powerful song built upon the question-and-answer refrain pattern of the traditional British ballad "Lord Randall", published by Francis Child.

One month later, on October 22, U.S. President John F. Kennedy appeared on national television to announce the discovery of Soviet missiles on the island of Cuba, initiating the Cuban Missile Crisis. In the sleeve notes on the Freewheelin' album, Nat Hentoff would quote Dylan as saying that he wrote "A Hard Rain" in response to the Cuban Missile Crisis: "Every line in it is actually the start of a whole new song. But when I wrote it, I thought I wouldn't have enough time alive to write all those songs so I put all I could into this one."

In actuality, Dylan had written the song more than a month before the crisis broke. Nevertheless, the song remained relevant through the years because of its broader message: the imagery suggests injustice, suffering, pollution and warfare. Folk singer Pete Seeger interpreted the line "When the home in the valley meets the dark dirty prison" as referring to when a young person suddenly wants to leave his home, but then qualified that by saying, "People are wrong when they say 'I know what he means.'"

While some have suggested that the refrain of the song refers to nuclear fallout, Dylan disputes that this was a specific reference. In a radio interview with Studs Terkel in 1963, Dylan said:

"No, 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 ... In the last verse, when I say, 'the pellets of poison are flooding the waters,' that means all the lies that people get told on their radios and in their newspapers."

In No Direction Home, Martin Scorsese's documentary on Dylan, the Beat poet Allen Ginsberg talks about the first time he heard Dylan's music:

"When I got back from India, and got to the West Coast, there's a poet, Charlie Plymell - at a party in Bolinas — played me a record of this new young folk singer. And I heard "Hard Rain," I think. And wept. 'Cause it seemed that the torch had been passed to another generation. From earlier bohemian, or Beat illumination. And self-empowerment."^?

Author Ian MacDonald described "A Hard Rain" as one of the most idiosyncratic protest songs ever written.

Live performance

Although Dylan may have first played the song to friends, "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall" was formally premiered at Carnegie Hall on September 22, 1962, as part of a hootenanny organized by Pete Seeger. Seeger recalled: "I had to announce to all the singers, 'Folks, you're gonna be limited to three songs. No more. 'Cause we each have ten minutes apiece.' And Bob raised his hand and said, 'What am I supposed to do? One of my songs is ten minutes long.'"

Dylan featured the song regularly in concerts in the years since he premiered it, and there have been several dramatic performances. An October 1963 performance at Carnegie Hall was released on The Bootleg Series Vol. 7: No Direction Home, while another New York City performance, recorded one year later, appeared on The Bootleg Series Vol. 6: Bob Dylan Live 1964, Concert at Philharmonic Hall. Dylan performed the song in August 1971 at The Concert for Bangladesh, organized by George Harrison and Ravi Shankar. The concert was organized for East Pakistan refugee relief (now independent Bangladesh) after the 1970 Bhola cyclone and during the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War. On December 4, 1975, at the Forum de Montreal, Canada, Dylan recorded an upbeat version of the song, which appears on The Bootleg Series Vol. 5: Bob Dylan Live 1975, The Rolling Thunder Revue album. On May 23, 1994, Dylan performed the song at "The Great Music Experience" festival in Japan, backed by a 90-piece symphony orchestra conducted by Michael Kamen.^[ At the end of 2007, Dylan recorded a new version of "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall" exclusively for Expo Zaragoza 2008 world fair, scheduled to open on June 8, 2008, to highlight the Expo theme of "water and sustainable development". As well as choosing local-band Amaral to record a version of the song in Spanish, Dylan's new version ended with a few spoken words about his "being proud to be a part of the mission to make water safe and clean for every human being living in this world."

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Bob Dylan and Forever Young (Slow Version) [audio]

"Forever Young"
German single cover
Single by Bob Dylan
from the album Bob Dylan at Budokan
B-side	"All Along the Watchtower" & "I Want You"
Released	June 22, 1979
Format	Vinyl
Genre	Rock
Length	5:27
Label	CBS Records
Writer(s)	Bob Dylan
Producer(s)	Don DeVito

"Forever Young"
Song by Bob Dylan from the album Planet Waves
Released	January 17, 1974
Format	Vinyl
Recorded	November 1973 (California)
Genre	Rock
Length	4:57, 2:49
Label	Asylum
Writer(s)	Bob Dylan
Producer(s)	Rob Fraboni
Planet Waves track listing
[show]11 tracks

"Forever Young" is a song by Bob Dylan, recorded in California in November 1973. The song first appeared (in two different versions, one slow and one fast) on Dylan's fourteenth studio album Planet Waves (1974).

A demo version of the song, recorded in New York City in June 1973, was included on Dylan's 1985 compilation Biograph. In the notes included with that album, Dylan is quoted as saying that he wrote "Forever Young" in Tucson, Arizona, "thinking about" one of his sons and "not wanting to be too sentimental."

A live version of the song, recorded in Tokyo on 28 February 1978 and included on Dylan's album Bob Dylan at Budokan, was released as a European single in 1979.

Analysis

Written as a lullaby for his eldest son Jesse, born in 1966, Dylan's song relates a father's hopes that his child will remain strong and happy. It opens with the lines, "May God bless and keep you always / May your wishes all come true", echoing the Old Testament's Book of Numbers, which has lines that begin: "May the Lord bless you and guard you / May the Lord make His face shed light upon you." Not wishing to sound "too sentimental", Dylan included two versions of the song on the Planet Waves album, one a lullaby and the other more rock oriented.

In notes on "Forever Young" written for the 2007 album Dylan, Bill Flanagan writes that Dylan and the Band "got together and quickly knocked off an album, Planet Waves, that featured two versions of a blessing from a parent to a child. In the years he was away from stage Dylan had become a father. He had that in common with a good chunk of the audience. The song reflected it. Memorably recited on American TV by Howard Cosell when Muhammad Ali won the heavyweight crown for the third time."

Personnel

• Bob Dylan – guitar, piano, harmonica, vocals
• Rick Danko – bass guitar
• Levon Helm – drums
• Garth Hudson – organ
• Richard Manuel – piano, drums
• Robbie Robertson – guitars

Rod Stewart

Rod Stewart recorded a song entitled "Forever Young" that was released as a single and included on his Out of Order album in 1988. The song was remarkably similar to the Bob Dylan song of the same title, sharing not only a similar melody but many of the same lyrics. Stewart agreed to share his royalties with Dylan.^[4] Stewart's version made number 57 on the UK singles chart on its release in 1988 and number 55 on re-release in 2013.

2009 remix

In 2009 a remix of the song, "Forever Young (Continued)" was featured in a Pepsi commercial, with American rapper will.i.am rapping a verse. The advertisement ends with the slogan: "Every generation refreshes the world".

Louisa Johnson version

"Forever Young"
Single by Louisa Johnson
Released	13 December 2015
Format	Digital download CD single
Recorded	2015
Length	3:23
Label	Syco Sony
Writer(s)	Bob Dylan
Producer(s)	Julian Bunetta John Ryan Afterhrs
Louisa Johnson singles chronology
"Forever Young" (2015) "Tears" (2016)

In December 2015, Louisa Johnson, the winner of the twelfth series of The X Factor, released a cover version of "Forever Young" as her winner's single. It was released on 13 December 2015, immediately after Johnson won. Johnson performed the song live on The X Factor final. She also performed it on Text Santa. Johnson's version entered the UK Singles Chart on 18 December at number nine. The song has sold 99,648 copies in the UK as of June 2016.

Track listing

CD single
No.	Title	Length
1.	"Forever Young"
2.	"God Only Knows"
3.	"Let It Go"

Chart performance

Chart (2015)	Peak position
Ireland (IRMA)	5
Scotland (Official Charts Company)	2
UK Singles (Official Charts Company)	9
UK Download (Official Charts Company)	4

Release history

Region	Date	Format	Label
United Kingdom	13 December 2015	Digital download CD single	Syco Sony

Other cover versions

A number of Bob Dylan’s contemporaries have recorded cover versions of "Forever Young". Joan Baez recorded the song, as a single (1974) and on her 1976 live album From Every Stage, while Peter, Paul, and Marycovered the song on their 1978 record Reunion. The Band recorded the song on their penultimate album High on the Hog, from 1996. Diana Ross covered the song in 1984 on Swept Away. Johnny Cash contributed a cover of "Forever Young" to the 1994 benefit album Red Hot + Country. The Grateful Dead performed a cover of the song with Neil Young at the Bill Graham memorial concert on November 3, 1991. It was also covered regularly by the Jerry Garcia Band and included on the album Garcia Plays Dylan. Kitty Wells also recorded the song for her 1973 album of the same title.

Additionally, The Pretenders covered the song on their album Last of the Independents in 1994; Their version was used on the end credits of the 1995 film Free Willy 2: The Adventure Home, although on the soundtrack CD a new version by Rebbie Jackson was included instead. Meat Loaf recorded a version on his 2003 album Couldn't Have Said It Better; and Marcia Hines covered the song for her 2004 album Hinesight

Pete Seeger covered the song on the 2012 charity tribute to Dylan, Chimes of Freedom: Songs of Bob Dylan Honoring 50 Years of Amnesty International.

Christina Perri recorded a version in 2015 which is played at the end of the World of Color multimedia spectacle nightly at Disney California Adventure in Anaheim, California as part of the Disneyland 60th Anniversary celebration.

The Band - The Last Waltz - Full Concert “The Last Waltz” at 40: The Band and their classic movie speak beyond boomer nostalgia Scorsese's 1978 movie with Van Morrison, Joni Mitchell and Muddy Waters appeals powerfully to younger musicians too

“The Last Waltz” at 40: The Band and their classic movie speak beyond boomer nostalgia
Scorsese's 1978 movie with Van Morrison, Joni Mitchell and Muddy Waters appeals powerfully to younger musicians too


(Credit: United Artists)


The consummate musical cliché of the baby boomer era is the big, guitar-wielding encore where a bunch of white men in long hair and casual clothes take turns singing one verse after another of a really long, usually blues-based, song. Sometimes it is followed by a boomer-iffic group hug among presumably straight men.

In its crudest form, this describes the enormous, multi-band, marathon concert that came to be known as “The Last Waltz”: a rock-till-dawn gathering assembled by The Band, a quintet of roots musicians who had once backed up Bob Dylan, to play a farewell show alongside their old boss. Old friends and inspirations like Neil Young, Van Morrison, Joni Mitchell, Dr. John and Muddy Waters joined in as well (and, for some reason, Neil Diamond showed up).

As humble as The Band’s identity was — this was a group without a lead singer, after all, and which saw itself as channeling the spirit of the American past even though most of them came from Canada — the concert itself was like the final stand of rock’s royalty. It was a celebration of a legendary group, of the fellowship of the road, of the passing of an era.

But what’s funny about “The Last Waltz,” which was filmed on Thanksgiving 1976 in San Francisco’s Winterland Ballroom and released as a Martin Scorsese film two years later, is that it didn’t just engage nostalgic boomers. It spoke to music and film fans — some of whom would go on to become important players in a country-derived tradition The Band had helped inaugurate. Forty years later, it’s still a milestone.

“Oh, man, it really blew my mind!” said the normally dry Gillian Welch, the pioneering new-acoustic musician, born in 1967, who didn’t hear the original three-LP album or see the film until she was in college. “So much of the music I loved — all in one show. I was unprepared for what it looked like when you played music that sounded like that. They were moving more than I thought. Oh man! They just looked like gods to me. I think it honestly went into me at a cellular level.”

The musician James Felice says he and his fellow Felice Brothers — an upstate New York roots band mostly in their early 30s — saw the film only about a decade ago. “I just remember feeling a palpable sense of awe at The Band’s musicianship,” he said by email. “Each guy was so damn good, and had such unique style and personality, but they made it work perfectly together. They were basically rock and roll superheroes, like ‘The Avengers’ or something.”

What’s surprising about this boomer milestone, made and released before most Xers were out of elementary school — some, because the birth range typically goes from 1964 to 1981, were not born yet — is how the movie connects across generations.

Part of it is just that this concert saw a collection of some of the greatest and deepest musicians if any generation. Some of it is Mojo-magazine-style nostalgia for a more authentic age. “We all romanticize that period so much,” says Taylor Goldsmith, the 31-year-old lead singer of the band Dawes, whose first few albums grew right out of the ground The Band plowed. Some members of Wilco, including bassist John Stirratt, are also major fans of the film and the group.

But part of it may be that “The Last Waltz” and the story of The Band — especially for those who know the whole tale — signified both boomer utopia and Gen X disillusionment at the same time. Nobody was killed, and no one OD’ed on the brown acid. But with one movie, Scorsese and The Band produced Woodstock and Altamont simultaneously. On its 40th anniversary, which sees Rhino reissuing the recording and film in various versions, it’s as ambiguous as ever.

* * *

Around the time of The Band’s Thanksgiving concert (which involved a turkey dinner served to thousands of audience members), the course of rock history was changing in a profound way. The group was retiring partly because its members were worn out from the road, but they also recognized that they were the final gasp of something — of a rock ’n’ roll tradition that was grounded in the Chicago blues, gospel and the rockabilly of the South. (The movie’s inclusion of Muddy Waters, the Staples Singers and their old boss Ronnie Hawkins was in some ways a nod to this.)

So it was not just vainglory to dub the concert “The Last Waltz”: This really was the end of something. Some of these musicians would have late-career renaissances years later — Neil Young and Dylan most notably — but most of them had already peaked artistically by 1976, and even their best work would seem out of place in the new world.

Glam musicians like David Bowie and Roxy Music had electrified young music fans, and made the denim-and-fringed-vest crowd look like backwoods day laborers. The year before the concert, a New York City poet named Patti Smith had released a volcanic debut album called “Horses” that went so deep into feminism and contemporary politics that even Joni Mitchell seemed positively medieval.

By Thanksgiving, history was bending. CBGBs was now more important than the Fillmore West: Its denizens, the band Television, had recorded punk rock’s most poetic LP — “Marquee Moon” — a few months before, and the gawky geniuses of Talking Heads had just signed to Sire. Britain was burning: The Clash and The Sex Pistols had just played a show together in Sheffield. If this new generation had its way, this would be a last waltz indeed. By the time the concert film was released, two years later, punk bands were moving into mid-career (the Clash was dreaming up “London Calling”), and “New Wave” showed a second, more pop-savvy vanguard led by a lanky, bespectacled Liverpudlian who had cheekily named himself for the king of rock ’n’ roll. The Sugarhill Gang would score hip-hop’s first hit with “Rapper’s Delight” just a year later.

This kind of irreverence, aggression and sonic experimentation was most decidedly not what The Band or “Last Waltz” fellow travelers like Eric Clapton or Emmylou Harris or Ringo Starr were about.

Gen Xers and their younger compatriots, though, grew up in a world shaped by punk and hip-hop, and the moussed-out glitz of MTV. And somehow, this earnest, often blues née country née folk-based music, so different from what this younger crowd heard on the radio and saw on television, would make profound sense to some of them.
* * *

As celebratory as the concert was, as sincere its treatment of the music’s old guard, there was a darkness to “The Last Waltz” that was different from what the group may have intended. Some of the band members were wasted from drugs. The Band’s guitarist and songwriter Robbie Robertson told a backstage anecdote — the film was full of moments where the musicians spun stories from the road — that involved playing with legendary bluesman Sonny Boy Williamson, who would alternate playing harmonica with spitting blood into a can.

Most seriously, perhaps, the members of The Band — after 16 years on the road — hated each other. At least some of the time. Robertson was the only one dedicated to a retirement from touring; the others weren’t as sure. And it didn’t get better when the movie came out. Levon Helm, the band’s drummer and sometime singer, was particularly upset. “For two hours we watched as the camera focused almost exclusively on Robbie Robertson, long and loving close-ups of his heavily made-up face and expensive haircut,” he wrote in his memoir, “This Wheel’s on Fire.” “The film was edited so it looked like Robbie was conducting the band with expansive waves of his guitar neck.”

Robertson was most outgoing member of the group, and an engaging and charismatic storyteller, but at times it seemed like pianist Richard Manuel and organist Garth Hudson, who both sang as well, were barely part of the group. (Helm and bassist Rick Danko fared a bit better.)

The reality cut against the image of the band, memorialized in part by a bravura chapter in Greil Marcus’ “Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock ‘N’ Roll Music,” as a group of ego-less, passionate friends, singing vocal harmonies that could help the nation heal after the divisions of the Vietnam war.

When Goldsmith saw the movie in 2008, around the time Dawes was recording its debut album, “North Hills,” he saw, mostly, the dream. “You heard that there’s a whole philosophy to the group’s name: The guy who wrote the songs didn’t sing them, and there was no lead singer. It was so democratic. That’s what created the romance. You think of partnerships like Keith and Mick, or Lennon and McCartney. This was like a five-way relationship — that rock ’n’ roll band romance — epitomized in American rock.”

Perhaps appropriately for younger generations that inherited a less innocent nation after the reveries of the boomers, some Gen X and millennial fans responded to the film not in spite of, but because of the pain and tension.

“It made you want to see more of it, because it sounded like so much had been left out,” says Michael Trent of the Americana duo Shovels & Rope. “As much as I hated to take sides,” says his wife and bandmate Cary Ann Hearst, who was won over by Helm’s description of being an Arkansas country boy visiting New York City, “it’s hard not to. But it didn’t change my mind about the movie, or its sweetness.” Shovels & Rope sing a song about Hudson, “The Last Hawk,” on their new album.

As a first viewing of the movie became an obsession for young musicians, their point of view grew more complex. Some learned, for instance, that they were not really hearing what was played that night: Much of the parts were later overdubbed in the studio because the playing was so sloppy. “The more you get to know about ‘The Last Waltz,’ or get to know about Richard Manuel — in the film he’s pretty tweaked out… It was a pretty tragic story,” says Goldsmith. “They seem upset with each other. But it doesn’t make you love them any less.”

The hard tales from the road, the stories of personal tension, and the rigors of the touring life only excited Gillian Welch and her partner David Rawlings even more. “It means there was all this life behind this one concert,” she said. “You’d drive around for 20 years — yeah, that’s what you’d do. I honestly think it’s altered decisions Dave and I have made. We drive around in a Cadillac, and have been doing that for 20 years. You don’t take a shuttle to the airport.”

The Band — most of whom played with Dylan on his tumultuous 1966 world tour (as “The Hawks), on his epochal “Blonde on Blonde” album, and on the rough home recordings later released as “The Basement Tapes” — certainly had some great years before things all went bad.

But the albums after their first two — “Music from Big Pink” and “The Band” — only occasionally approached the old magic. And post-“Last Waltz,” their solo careers mostly faltered.

Things went from bad to worse. In 1986, Manuel hanged himself after ingesting liquor and cocaine. A heart attack after decades of drink and drugs killed Danko in 1999. Helm ran a series of “midnight rambles” at his farmhouse in Woodstock and made several celebrated albums in his 60s. But cancer took him in 2012. Hudson and Robertson are still alive.

But that’s not entirely all.

My interest in this group, album and film are not entirely archival. As a kid, I was dragged, partly against my will, to see the movie at the Brattle Theatre in Cambridge. It was a double feature with “Singin’ in the Rain,” which I knew and loved, but I was, at 10, not the least bit interested in waltzing. At the time I was a pure British Invasion-and-Dylan zealot — the idea that country rock even existed or could be any good had never crossed my mind. My father insisted.

But from the first scenes of backstage pool-playing and the one-two-three punch of Band songs “Up on Cripple Creek,” “The Shape I’m In,” and “It Makes No Difference,” my life changed. It took me years to get deeply into alt-country and the blues and Van Morrison, but I was launched on a journey. My dad wasn’t always right, but he often was. I dedicate this story to his memory.

Bob Dylan The Times They Are A Changin' 1964

Bob Dylan – The Times They Are A-Changin' Lyrics

Come gather 'round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You'll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you
Is worth savin'
Then you better start swimmin'
Or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'.

Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won't come again
And don't speak too soon
For the wheel's still in spin
And there's no tellin' who
That it's namin'.
For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin'.

Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don't stand in the doorway
Don't block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There's a battle outside
And it is ragin'.
It'll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin'.

Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don't criticize
What you can't understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is
Rapidly agin'.
Please get out of the new one
If you can't lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin'.

The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is
Rapidly fadin'.
And the first one now
Will later be last
For the times they are a-changin'.

"The Times They Are a-Changin'" is a song written by Bob Dylanand released as the title track of his 1964 album of the same name. Dylan wrote the song as a deliberate attempt to create an anthem of change for the time, influenced by Irish and Scottish ballads. Released as a 45-rpm single in Britain in 1964, it reached number 9 in the British top ten.

Ever since its release the song has been influential to people's views on society, with critics noting the general yet universal lyrics as contributing to the song's lasting message of change. Dylan has occasionally performed it in concert. The song has been covered by many different artists, including Nina Simone, the Byrds, Peter, Paul, and Mary, Simon & Garfunkel, the Beach Boys, Joan Baez, Phil Collins, Billy Joel, and Bruce Springsteen. The song was ranked number 59 on Rolling Stone's 2004 list of the "500 Greatest Songs of All Time".

Inspiration and composition

Dylan appears to have written the song in September and October 1963. He recorded it as a Witmark publishing demo at that time, a version that was later released on The Bootleg Series Volumes 1–3 (Rare & Unreleased) 1961–1991. The song was then recorded at the Columbia studios in New York on October 23 and 24; the latter session yielded the version that became the title song of Dylan's third album. The a- in the song title is an archaic intensifying prefix, as in the British songs "A-Hunting We Will Go" and "Here We Come a-Wassailing", from the 18th and 19th century.

Dylan recalled writing the song as a deliberate attempt to create an anthem of change for the moment. In 1985, he told Cameron Crowe, "This was definitely a song with a purpose. It was influenced of course by the Irish and Scottish ballads ...'Come All Ye Bold Highway Men', 'Come All Ye Tender Hearted Maidens'. I wanted to write a big song, with short concise verses that piled up on each other in a hypnotic way. The civil rights movement and the folk music movement were pretty close for a while and allied together at that time."

Dylan biographer Clinton Heylin recounts how Tony Glover stopped by Dylan's apartment in September 1963, picked up a page of the song Dylan was working on and read a line from it: "Come senators, congressmen, please heed the call." "Turning to Dylan, Glover said, 'What is this shit, man?' Dylan shrugged his shoulders and replied, 'Well, you know, it seems to be what the people want to hear.'"

The critic Michael Gray called it "the archetypal protest song." Gray commented, "Dylan's aim was to ride upon the unvoiced sentiment of a mass public—to give that inchoate sentiment an anthem and give its clamour an outlet. He succeeded, but the language of the song is nevertheless imprecisely and very generally directed." Gray suggested that the song has been outdated by the very changes that it gleefully predicted and hence was politically out of date almost as soon as it was written. The lyrics reflected his views on social injustices and the government’s unhelpful attitude towards change.

The literary critic Christopher Ricks suggested that the song transcends the political preoccupations of the time in which it was written. Ricks argued that Dylan is still performing the song, and when he sings "Your sons and your daughters / Are beyond your command", he sings inescapably with the accents not of a son, no longer perhaps primarily a parent, but with the attitude of a grandfather. Ricks concluded, "Once upon a time it may have been a matter of urging square people to accept the fact that their children were, you know, hippies. But the capacious urging could then come to mean that ex-hippie parents had better accept that their children look like becoming yuppies. And then Republicans..."

Critic Andy Gill points out that the song's lyrics echo lines from the Book of Ecclesiastes, which Pete Seeger adapted to create his anthem "Turn, Turn, Turn!". The climactic line about the first later being last, likewise, is a direct scriptural reference to Mark 10:31: "But many that are first shall be last, and the last first."

Less than a month after Dylan recorded the song, President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963. The next night, Dylan opened a concert with "The Times They Are a-Changin'"; he told biographer Anthony Scaduto, "I thought, 'Wow, how can I open with that song? I'll get rocks thrown at me.' But I had to sing it, my whole concert takes off from there. I know I had no understanding of anything. Something had just gone haywire in the country and they were applauding the song. And I couldn't understand why they were clapping, or why I wrote the song. I couldn't understand anything. For me, it was just insane."

The Byrds' version

"The Times They Are a-Changin'"
2011 re-release picture sleeve 45-rpm vinyl
album track by The Byrds from the album Turn! Turn! Turn!
Released	December 6, 1965
Recorded	September 1, 1965, Columbia Studios, Hollywood, California
Genre	Folk rock
Length	2:18 (album version) 1:54 (original version)
Label	Columbia
Writer(s)	Bob Dylan
Producer(s)	Terry Melcher

"The Times They Are a-Changin'" was one of two Dylan covers that the Byrds included on their second album, Turn! Turn! Turn!, with "Lay Down Your Weary Tune" being the other. Like other Dylan compositions that the band had covered, such as "Mr. Tambourine Man" and "All I Really Want to Do", the song was intended to be the A-side of a single. It was sung by bandleader Jim McGuinn and prominently features his signature twelve-string Rickenbacker guitar. The song was often played at concerts surrounding its release.

I remember the Beatles were in the studio for one of them (version of 'The Times They Are a-Changin'). That kinda put a lot of pressure on us.

“

”

— Roger McGuinn 

The recording sessions have been noted for the surprise appearances made by George Harrison and Paul McCartney in the control booth, which according to Byrd members prevented them from completing the session and the track effectively. Columbia Records originally pressed thousands of cover sleeves for the intended single, but the Byrds' manager, Jim Dickson, asked for the release to be dropped because of the group's dissatisfaction, most vocally expressed by David Crosby; Dickson originally thought the song would have made a strong single. In a 2004 interview, Chris Hillman stated his dislike for the song, suggesting that "we shouldn't have bothered with that song". Another version of the song, recorded in June, is a bonus track on the 1996 reissue. "Turn! Turn! Turn!" ended up becoming the band's third single, reaching number 1 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart and number 26 on the UK Singles Chart.

The Byrds performed the song on the U.S. television program Hullabaloo, but it failed to make a long-term impact. CBS England issued "The Times They Are a-Changin'" as the lead track of an EP, along with "Set You Free This Time", written by Gene Clark, which was moderately successful. In addition to its appearance on the Byrds' second album, "The Times They Are a-Changin'" is included on several Byrds compilations, including The Very Best of The Byrds, The Byrds, The Essential Byrds, There Is a Season, The Byrds' Greatest Hits and The Byrds Play the Songs of Bob Dylan. The song is also included in the boxset There Is a Season, which comprises 99 tracks and includes material from each of the band's twelve studio albums, presented in roughly chronological order.

Other cover versions

Artist	Album	Year
Peter Paul & Mary	In Concert	1964
Simon and Garfunkel	Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M.	1964
The Beach Boys	Beach Boys' Party!	1965
Odetta	Odetta Sings Dylan	1965
The Seekers	A World of Our Own	1965
Boudewijn de Groot	Apocalyps	1966
Bob Lind	The Elusive Bob Lind	1966
Flatt & Scruggs	Nashville Airplane	1968
Cher	With Love, Cher	1968
Burl Ives	The Times They Are a-Changin'	1968
The Hollies	Hollies Sing Dylan	1969
Nina Simone	To Love Somebody	1969
Josephine Baker	Recorded Live at Carnegie Hall	1973
James Taylor & Carly Simon	No Nukes Benefit Concert	1978
Vice Squad	No Cause for Concern	1981
Billy Joel	KOHЦEPT	1987
Tracy Chapman	The 30th Anniversary Concert Celebration	1992
Barbara Dickson & Gerry Rafferty	Don't Think Twice It's All Right	1992
Richie Havens	Cuts to the Chase	1994
Phil Collins	Dance into the Light	1996
Judy Collins	Both Sides Now	1998
Manfred Mann's Earth Band	Best of Manfred Mann's Earth Band 2 1972–2000	2000
Blackmore's Night	Fires At Midnight	2001
Me First and the Gimme Gimmes	Turn Japanese	2001
Joan Baez	This Land Is Your Land: Songs of Freedom	2002
Will Hoge	The America EP	2004
Keb' Mo	Peace... Back by Popular Demand	2004
Billy Joel	My Lives	2005
Les Fradkin	If Memory Serves You Well	2006
A Whisper in the Noise	Lady in the Water	2006
Bryan Ferry	Dylanesque	2007
Mason Jennings	I'm Not There	2007
The Parlotones	VideoControlledRobot	2008
Damien Leith	Catch the Wind: Songs of a Generation	2008
Bruce Springsteen	The Kennedy Center[22]	2008
Chuck Ragan	Revival Road	2008
Herbie Hancock with vocals by Lisa Hannigan	The Imagine Project	2010
D.O.A.	Talk – Action = 0	2010
Flogging Molly	Chimes of Freedom: Songs of Bob Dylan Honoring 50 Years of Amnesty International	2012
Frank Turner and Billy Bragg	Live from Wembley Friday 13th April 2012 (DVD)	2012
Medeski Scofield Martin & Wood	Juice	2014

Later history

In January 1984, a young Steve Jobs recited the second verse of "The Times They Are a-Changin'" in his opening of the 1984 Apple shareholders meeting, where he famously unveiled the Macintosh computer for the first time.

In 1994, "The Times They Are a-Changin'" was licensed for use in American TV advertisements for the auditing and accountancy firm Coopers & Lybrand, as performed by Richie Havens. It was sung by a children's choir in an advertisement for Canada's Bank of Montreal in 1996. In 2005, it was used in a television advertisement for the insurance company Kaiser Permanente.In 2009, the song was featured in the film adaptation of the superhero graphic novel Watchmen, in which it was used in the opening montage illustrating 20th-century history in its fictional timeline.

The "Dylan Covers Database" listed 436 recordings, including bootlegs, of this song as of October 19, 2009, including 85 versions of it by "Bob Walkenhorst", recorded live between March 2004 and September 2009, at "Molly's Irish Pub" in Kansas City. According to the same database, the song has been recorded in at least 14 other languages (Catalán, Czech, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Polish, Serbian, Spanish and Swedish).

John Mellencamp made a home-video recording of the song on a web-cam on September 2, 2008, and posted it on his website the next day as a statement about the possible change the 2008 presidential election could bring to the United States.

In 2008, episode eight ("Roe") of the last season of Boston Legal featured blues musician Keb' Mo''s cover of the song.

In 2009, the filmmaker Michael Moore sang the third verse of the song live on The Jay Leno Show after being told that he had to "earn" a clip from his film Capitalism: A Love Story to be shown.

The 2009 film Watchmen, a neo noir superhero film directed by Zac Snyder used The Times They are A Changing as the background music to the opening titles.

On December 10, 2010, Dylan's hand-written lyrics of the song were sold at auction at Sotheby's, in New York, for $422,500. They were purchased by a hedge fund manager.

The song is included in "The 500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll", a permanent exhibit at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.