''The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan'' is the second studio album by the American singer-songwriter
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan (legally Robert Dylan; born Robert Allen Zimmerman, May 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter. Described as one of the greatest songwriters of all time, Dylan has been a major figure in popular culture over his nearly 70-year ...
, released on May 27, 1963, by
. Whereas his self-titled debut album ''
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan (legally Robert Dylan; born Robert Allen Zimmerman, May 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter. Described as one of the greatest songwriters of all time, Dylan has been a major figure in popular culture over his nearly 70-year ...
'' had contained only two original songs, this album represented the beginning of Dylan's writing contemporary lyrics to traditional melodies. Eleven of the thirteen songs on the album are Dylan's original compositions. It opens with "
Blowin' in the Wind", which became an anthem of the 1960s, and an international hit for folk trio
Peter, Paul and Mary soon after the release of the album. The album featured several other songs which came to be regarded as among Dylan's best compositions and classics of the 1960s folk scene: "
Girl from the North Country", "
Masters of War", "
A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall" and "
Don't Think Twice, It's All Right".
Dylan's lyrics embraced news stories drawn from headlines about the ongoing
civil rights movement and he articulated anxieties about the fear of
nuclear warfare
Nuclear warfare, also known as atomic warfare, is a War, military conflict or prepared Policy, political strategy that deploys nuclear weaponry. Nuclear weapons are Weapon of mass destruction, weapons of mass destruction; in contrast to conven ...
. Balancing this political material were love songs, sometimes bitter and accusatory, and material that features
surreal humor
Surreal humour (also called surreal comedy, absurdist humour, or absurdist comedy) is a form of humour predicated on deliberate violations of causal reasoning, thus producing events and behaviors that are obviously illogical. Portrayals of s ...
. ''Freewheelin'' showcased Dylan's songwriting talent for the first time, propelling him to national and international fame. The success of the album and Dylan's subsequent recognition led to his being named as "Spokesman of a Generation", a label Dylan repudiated.
''The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan'' reached number 22 in the US (eventually going platinum), and became a number-one album in the UK in 1965. In 2003, the album was ranked number 97 on ''
Rolling Stone
''Rolling Stone'' is an American monthly magazine that focuses on music, politics, and popular culture. It was founded in San Francisco, California, in 1967 by Jann Wenner and the music critic Ralph J. Gleason.
The magazine was first known fo ...
'' list of the "
500 Greatest Albums of All Time". In 2002, ''Freewheelin'' was one of the first 50 recordings chosen by the
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress (LOC) is a research library in Washington, D.C., serving as the library and research service for the United States Congress and the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It also administers Copyright law o ...
to be added to the
National Recording Registry for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
Recording sessions
Neither critics nor the public took much notice of Dylan's self-titled debut album, ''
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan (legally Robert Dylan; born Robert Allen Zimmerman, May 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter. Described as one of the greatest songwriters of all time, Dylan has been a major figure in popular culture over his nearly 70-year ...
'', which sold only 5,000 copies in its first year, just enough to break even. In a pointed rebuke to
John Hammond, who had signed Dylan to
, some within the company referred to the singer as "Hammond's Folly" and suggested dropping his contract. Hammond defended Dylan vigorously and was determined that Dylan's second album should be a success. The recording of ''Freewheelin'' took place from April 1962 to April 1963, and the album was assembled from eight recording sessions at
Columbia Records Studio A, located at 799 Seventh Avenue in New York City.
Political and personal background

Many critics have noted the extraordinary development of Dylan's songwriting immediately after completing his first album. One of Dylan's biographers,
Clinton Heylin, connects the sudden increase in lyrics written along topical and political lines to the fact that Dylan had moved into an apartment on West 4th Street with his girlfriend
Suze Rotolo (1943–2011) in January 1962. Rotolo's family had strong left-wing political commitments; both of her parents were members of the
American Communist Party. Dylan acknowledged her influence when he told an interviewer: "Suze was into this equality-freedom thing long before I was. I checked out the songs with her".
Dylan's relationship with Rotolo also provided an important emotional dynamic in the composition of the ''Freewheelin'' album. After six months of living with Dylan, Rotolo agreed to her mother's proposal that she travel to Italy to study art.
[Rotolo writes that "my mother did not approve of Bob at all. He paid her no homage and she paid him none". Rotolo suspected that her mother presented her with the trip to Italy "as a ''fait accompli'' to lure her away from her relationship with Dylan. See .] Dylan missed her and wrote long letters to her conveying his hope that she would return soon to New York. She postponed her return several times, finally coming back in January 1963. Critics have connected the intense love songs expressing longing and loss on ''Freewheelin'' to Dylan's fraught relationship with Rotolo. In her autobiography, Rotolo explains that musicians' girlfriends were routinely described as "chicks", and she resented being regarded as "a possession of Bob, who was the center of attention".
The speed and facility with which Dylan wrote topical songs attracted the attention of other musicians in the New York folk scene. In a radio interview on
WBAI in June 1962,
Pete Seeger described Dylan as "the most prolific songwriter on the scene" and then asked Dylan how many songs he had written recently. Dylan replied, "I might go for two weeks without writing these songs. I write a lot of stuff. In fact, I wrote five songs last night but I gave all the papers away in some place called
the Bitter End."
Dylan also expressed the impersonal idea that the songs were not his own creation. In an interview with ''
Sing Out!'' magazine, Dylan said, "The songs are there. They exist all by themselves just waiting for someone to write them down. I just put them down on paper. If I didn't do it, somebody else would".
Recording in New York
Dylan began work on his second album at Columbia's Studio A in New York on April 24, 1962. The album was provisionally entitled ''Bob Dylan's Blues'', and as late as July 1962, this would remain the working title. At this session, Dylan recorded four of his own compositions: "Sally Gal", "
The Death of Emmett Till", "Rambling, Gambling Willie", and "
Talkin' John Birch Paranoid Blues". He also recorded two traditional folk songs, "Going To New Orleans" and "Corrina, Corrina", and
Hank Williams
Hiram "Hank" Williams (September 17, 1923 – January 1, 1953) was an American singer, songwriter, and musician. An early pioneer of country music, he is regarded as one of the most significant and influential musicians of the 20th century. W ...
' "(I Heard That) Lonesome Whistle".
Returning to Studio A the following day, Dylan recorded his new song about
fallout shelters, "
Let Me Die in My Footsteps". Other original compositions followed: "Rocks and Gravel", "Talking Hava Negiliah Blues", "
Talkin' Bear Mountain Picnic Massacre Blues", and two more takes of "Sally Gal". Dylan recorded cover versions of "Wichita",
Big Joe Williams
Joseph Lee Williams (October 16, 1903 – December 17, 1982) was an American Delta blues guitarist, singer, and songwriter, notable for the distinctive sound of his nine-string guitar. Performing over five decades, he recorded the songs "Baby, Pl ...
' "
Baby, Please Don't Go
"Baby, Please Don't Go" is a traditional blues song that was popularized by Delta blues musician Big Joe Williams in 1935. Many cover versions followed, leading to its description as "one of the most played, arranged, and rearranged pieces in ...
", and
Robert Johnson's "Milk Cow's Calf's Blues".
Because Dylan's songwriting talent was developing so rapidly, nothing from the April sessions appeared on ''Freewheelin''.
The recording sessions at Studio A resumed on July 9, when Dylan recorded "
Blowin' in the Wind", a song that he had first performed live at
Gerde's Folk City on April 16. Dylan also recorded "Bob Dylan's Blues", "Down the Highway", and "Honey, Just Allow Me One More Chance", all of which ended up on ''Freewheelin'', plus one other original composition, "Baby, I'm in the Mood for You", which did not.
At this point, music manager
Albert Grossman began to take an interest in Dylan's business affairs. Grossman persuaded Dylan to transfer the publishing rights of his songs from Duchess Music, whom he had signed a contract with in January 1962, to Witmark Music, a division of Warner's music publishing operation. Dylan signed a contract with Witmark on July 13, 1962. Unknown to Dylan, Grossman had also negotiated a deal with Witmark. This gave Grossman fifty percent of Witmark's share of the publishing income generated by any songwriter Grossman had brought to the company. This "secret deal" resulted in a bitter legal battle between Dylan and Grossman in the 1980s.
Albert Grossman became Dylan's manager on August 20, 1962. Since Dylan was under twenty-one when he had signed his contract with CBS, Grossman argued that the contract was invalid and had to be re-negotiated. Instead, Hammond responded by inviting Dylan to his office and persuading him to sign a "reaffirment"—agreeing to abide by the original contract. This effectively neutralized Grossman's strategy, and led to some animosity between Grossman and Hammond.
Grossman enjoyed a reputation in the folk scene of being commercially aggressive, generating more income and defending his clients' interests more fiercely than "the nicer, more amateurish managers in the Village". Dylan critic Andy Gill has suggested that Grossman encouraged Dylan to become more reclusive and aloof, even paranoid.
On September 22, Dylan appeared for the first time at
Carnegie Hall
Carnegie Hall ( ) is a concert venue in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. It is at 881 Seventh Avenue (Manhattan), Seventh Avenue, occupying the east side of Seventh Avenue between 56th Street (Manhattan), 56th and 57th Street (Manhattan), 57t ...
, part of an all-star
hootenanny. On this occasion, he premiered his new composition "
A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall", a complex and powerful song built upon the question and answer refrain pattern of the traditional British ballad "
Lord Randall". "Hard Rain" would gain added resonance one month later, when
President Kennedy appeared on national television on October 22, and announced the discovery of Soviet missiles on the island of Cuba, initiating the
Cuban Missile Crisis
The Cuban Missile Crisis, also known as the October Crisis () in Cuba, or the Caribbean Crisis (), was a 13-day confrontation between the governments of the United States and the Soviet Union, when American deployments of Nuclear weapons d ...
. In the sleeve notes on the ''Freewheelin'' album,
Nat Hentoff quotes Dylan as saying that he wrote "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 fact, Dylan had written the song more than a month before the crisis broke.
Dylan resumed work on ''Freewheelin'' at Columbia's Studio A on October 26, when a major innovation took place—Dylan made his first studio recordings with a backing band. Accompanied by
Dick Wellstood on piano, Howie Collins and
Bruce Langhorne on guitar,
Leonard Gaskin on bass, and
Herb Lovelle on drums, Dylan recorded three songs. Several takes of Dylan's "
Mixed-Up Confusion" and
Arthur Crudup's "
That's All Right Mama
"That's All Right" is a song written and originally performed by the American blues singer Arthur Crudup, and recorded in 1946. It was rereleased in early March 1949 by RCA Victor under the title "That's All Right, Mama", which was issued as R ...
" were deemed unusable, but a master take of "Corrina, Corrina" was selected for the final album. An 'alternate take' of "Corrina, Corrina" from the same session would also be selected for the b-side of "Mixed Up Confusion", Dylan's first electric single issued later in the year. At the next recording session on November 1, the band included
Art Davis on bass, while jazz guitarist
George Barnes replaced Howie Collins. "Mixed-Up Confusion" and "That's All Right Mama" were re-recorded, and again the results were deemed unsatisfactory. A take of the third song, "Rocks and Gravel", was selected for the album, but the track was subsequently dropped.
On November 14, Dylan resumed work with his backup band, this time with Gene Ramey on bass, devoting most of the session to recording "Mixed-Up Confusion". Although this track did not appear on ''Freewheelin'', it was released as a single on December 14, 1962, and then swiftly withdrawn. Unlike the other material which Dylan recorded between 1961 and 1964, "Mixed-Up Confusion" attempted a
rockabilly
Rockabilly is one of the earliest styles of rock and roll music. It dates back to the early 1950s in the United States, especially the Southern United States, South. As a genre, it blends the sound of Western music (North America), Western musi ...
sound.
Cameron Crowe
Cameron Bruce Crowe (born July 13, 1957) is an American filmmaker and journalist. He has received numerous accolades including an Academy Award, BAFTA Award, and Grammy Award as well as a nomination for a Tony Award. Crowe started his career a ...
described it as "a fascinating look at a folk artist with his mind wandering towards
Elvis Presley
Elvis Aaron Presley (January 8, 1935 – August 16, 1977) was an American singer and actor. Referred to as the "King of Rock and Roll", he is regarded as Cultural impact of Elvis Presley, one of the most significant cultural figures of the ...
and
Sun Records
Sun Records is an American independent record label founded by producer Sam Phillips in Memphis, Tennessee on February 1, 1952. Sun was the first label to record Elvis Presley, Charlie Rich, Roy Orbison, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, and Jo ...
".
Also recorded on November 14 was the new composition "
Don't Think Twice, It's All Right" (Clinton Heylin writes that, although the sleeve notes of ''Freewheelin'' describe this song as being accompanied by a backing band, no band is audible on the released version).
Langhorne then accompanied Dylan on three more original compositions: "
Ballad of Hollis Brown", "Kingsport Town", and "Whatcha Gonna Do", but these performances were not included on ''Freewheelin''.
[
Dylan held another session at Studio A on December 6. Five songs, all original compositions, were recorded, three of which were eventually included on ''The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan'': "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall", "Oxford Town", and " I Shall Be Free". Dylan also made another attempt at "Whatcha Gonna Do" and recorded a new song, "Hero Blues", but both songs were ultimately rejected and left unreleased.][
]
Traveling to England
Twelve days later, Dylan made his first trip abroad. British TV director Philip Saville
Philip Saville (28 October 1927 – 22 December 2016) was a British director, screenwriter and former actor whose career lasted half a century. The British Film Institute's Screenonline website described Saville as "one of Britain's most prolifi ...
had heard Dylan perform in Greenwich Village, and invited him to take part in a BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved into its current sta ...
television drama: ''Madhouse on Castle Street
''Madhouse on Castle Street'' is a British television play, broadcast by BBC Television on the evening of 13 January 1963, as part of the '' Sunday Night Play'' strand. It was written by Evan Jones and directed by Philip Saville. The production ...
''. Dylan arrived in London on December 17. In the play, Dylan performed "Blowin' in the Wind" and two other songs. Dylan also immersed himself in the London folk scene, making contact with the Troubadour folk club organizer Anthea Joseph and folk singers Martin Carthy
Martin Dominic Forbes Carthy MBE (born 21 May 1941) is an English singer and guitarist who has remained one of the most influential figures in English folk music, inspiring contemporaries such as Bob Dylan and Paul Simon, as well as later ar ...
and Bob Davenport. "I ran into some people in England who really knew those raditional Englishsongs", Dylan recalled in 1984. "Martin Carthy, another guy named obDavenport. Martin Carthy's incredible. I learned a lot of stuff from Martin."
Carthy taught Dylan two English songs that would prove important for the ''Freewheelin'' album. Carthy's arrangement of " Scarborough Fair" would be used by Dylan as the basis of his own composition, " Girl from the North Country". A 19th-century ballad commemorating the death of Sir John Franklin
Sir John Franklin (16 April 1786 – 11 June 1847) was a British Royal Navy officer, explorer and colonial administrator. After serving in the Napoleonic Wars and the War of 1812, he led two expeditions into the Canadian Arctic and thro ...
in 1847, " Lady Franklin's Lament", gave Dylan the melody for his composition " Bob Dylan's Dream". Both songs displayed Dylan's fast-growing ability to take traditional melodies and use them as a basis for highly personal songwriting.
From England, Dylan traveled to Italy, and joined Albert Grossman, who was touring with his client Odetta
Odetta Holmes (December 31, 1930 – December 2, 2008), known as Odetta, was an American singer, often referred to as "The Voice of the Civil Rights Movement". Her musical repertoire consisted largely of American folk music, blues, jazz, and s ...
. Dylan was also hoping to make contact with his girlfriend, Suze Rotolo, unaware that she had already left Italy and was on her way back to New York. Dylan worked on his new material, and when he returned to London, Martin Carthy received a surprise: "When he came back from Italy, he'd written 'Girl From the North Country'; he came down to the Troubadour and said, 'Hey, here's "Scarborough Fair"' and he started playing this thing".
Returning to New York
Dylan flew back to New York on January 16, 1963. In January and February, he recorded some of his new compositions in sessions for the folk magazine '' Broadside'', including a new anti-war song, "Masters of War", which he had composed in London. Dylan was happy to be reunited with Suze Rotolo, and he persuaded her to move back into the apartment they had shared on West 4th Street.
Dylan's keenness to record his new material for ''Freewheelin'' paralleled a dramatic power struggle in the studio: Albert Grossman's determination to have John Hammond replaced as Dylan's producer at CBS. According to Dylan biographer Howard Sounes, "The two men could not have been more different. Hammond was a WASP
A wasp is any insect of the narrow-waisted suborder Apocrita of the order Hymenoptera which is neither a bee nor an ant; this excludes the broad-waisted sawflies (Symphyta), which look somewhat like wasps, but are in a separate suborder ...
, so relaxed during recording sessions that he sat with feet up, reading ''The New Yorker
''The New Yorker'' is an American magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. It was founded on February 21, 1925, by Harold Ross and his wife Jane Grant, a reporter for ''The New York T ...
''. Grossman was a Jewish businessman with a shady past, hustling to become a millionaire".
Because of Grossman's hostility to Hammond, Columbia paired Dylan with a young, African-American jazz producer, Tom Wilson. Wilson recalled: "I didn't even particularly like folk music. I'd been recording Sun Ra
Le Sony'r Ra (born Herman Poole Blount, May 22, 1914 – May 30, 1993), better known as Sun Ra, was an American jazz composer, bandleader, piano and synthesizer player, and poet known for his experimental music, "cosmic" philosophy, prolific ou ...
and Coltrane ... I thought folk music was for the dumb guys. ylanplayed like the dumb guys, but then these words came out. I was flabbergasted." At a recording session on April 24, produced by Wilson, Dylan recorded five new compositions: "Girl from the North Country", "Masters of War", "Talkin' World War III Blues", "Bob Dylan's Dream", and "Walls of Red Wing". "Walls of Red Wing" was ultimately rejected, but the other four were included in a revised album sequence.
The final drama of recording ''Freewheelin'' occurred when Dylan was scheduled to appear on ''The Ed Sullivan Show
''The Ed Sullivan Show'' is an American television variety show that ran on CBS from June 20, 1948, to March 28, 1971, and was hosted by New York City, New York entertainment columnist Ed Sullivan. It was replaced in September 1971 by the ''CB ...
'' on May 12, 1963. Dylan had told Sullivan he would perform "Talkin' John Birch Paranoid Blues", but the "head of program practices" at CBS Television
CBS Broadcasting Inc., commonly shortened to CBS (an abbreviation of its original name, Columbia Broadcasting System), is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the CBS Entertainme ...
informed Dylan that this song was potentially libelous to the John Birch Society
The John Birch Society (JBS) is an American right-wing political advocacy group. Founded in 1958, it is anti-communist, supports social conservatism, and is associated with ultraconservative, radical right, far-right, right-wing populist, and ...
, and asked him to perform another number. Rather than comply with TV censorship, Dylan refused to appear on the show. There is disagreement between Dylan's biographers about the consequences of this censorship row. Anthony Scaduto writes that after ''The Ed Sullivan Show'' debacle, CBS lawyers were alarmed to discover that the controversial song was to be included on Dylan's new album, only a few weeks from its release date. They insisted that the song be dropped, and four songs ("John Birch", "Let Me Die in My Footsteps", "Rambling Gambling Willie", "Rocks and Gravel") on the album were replaced with Dylan's newer compositions recorded in April ("Girl from the North Country", "Masters of War", "Talkin' World War III Blues", "Bob Dylan's Dream"). Scaduto writes that Dylan felt "crushed" by being compelled to submit to censorship, but he was in no position to argue.
According to Heylin, "There remains a common belief that ylanwas forced by Columbia to pull 'Talkin' John Birch Paranoid Blues' from the album ''after'' he walked out on ''The Ed Sullivan Show''." However, the "revised" version of ''The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan'' was released on May 27, 1963; this would have given Columbia Records only two weeks to recut the album, reprint the record sleeves, and press and package enough copies of the new version to fill orders. Heylin suggests that CBS had probably forced Dylan to withdraw "John Birch" from the album some weeks earlier and that Dylan had responded by recording his new material on April 24. Whether the songs were substituted before or after ''The Ed Sullivan Show'', critics agree that the new material gave the album a more personal feel, distanced from the traditional folk-blues material which had dominated his first album, ''Bob Dylan''.
A few copies of the original pressing of the LP with the four deleted tracks have turned up over the years, despite Columbia's supposed destruction of all copies during the pre-release phase (all copies found were in the standard album sleeve with the revised track selection). Other permutations of the ''Freewheelin'' album include versions with a different running order of the tracks on the album, and a Canadian version of the album that listed the tracks in the wrong order. The original pressing of ''The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan'' is considered the most valuable and rarest record in America,[ with one copy having sold for $35,000.
]
Songs and themes
Side one
"Blowin' in the Wind"
" Blowin' in the Wind" is among Dylan's most celebrated compositions. In his sleeve notes for ''The Bootleg Series Volumes 1–3 (Rare & Unreleased) 1961–1991
''The Bootleg Series Volumes 1–3'' is a box set by Bob Dylan issued on Columbia Records. It is the first installment in Dylan's Bootleg Series, comprising material spanning the first three decades of his career, from 1961 to 1989. It has been ...
'', John Bauldie writes that it was Pete Seeger who first identified the melody of "Blowin' in the Wind" as Dylan's adaptation of the old Negro spiritual "No More Auction Block". According to Alan Lomax's ''The Folk Songs of North America'', the song originated in Canada and was sung by former slaves who fled there after Britain abolished slavery in 1833. In 1978, Dylan acknowledged the source when he told journalist Marc Rowland: "'Blowin' in the Wind' has always been a spiritual. I took it off a song called 'No More Auction Block'—that's a spiritual and 'Blowin' in the Wind' follows the same feeling." Dylan's performance of "No More Auction Block" was recorded at the Gaslight Cafe in October 1962, and appeared on ''The Bootleg Series Volumes 1–3 (Rare & Unreleased) 1961–1991
''The Bootleg Series Volumes 1–3'' is a box set by Bob Dylan issued on Columbia Records. It is the first installment in Dylan's Bootleg Series, comprising material spanning the first three decades of his career, from 1961 to 1989. It has been ...
''.
Critic Andy Gill wrote: Blowin' in the Wind' marked a huge jump in Dylan's songwriting: for the first time, Dylan discovered the effectiveness of moving from the particular to the general. Whereas 'The Ballad of Donald White' would become completely redundant as soon as the eponymous criminal was executed, a song as vague as 'Blowin' in the Wind' could be applied to just about any freedom issue. It remains the song with which Dylan's name is most inextricably linked, and safeguarded his reputation as a civil libertarian through any number of changes in style and attitude."
"Blowin' in the Wind" became world-famous when Peter, Paul and Mary issued the song as a single three weeks after the release of ''Freewheelin''. They and Dylan both shared the same manager: Albert Grossman. The single sold a phenomenal three hundred thousand copies in the first week of release. On July 13, 1963, it reached number two on the ''Billboard
A billboard (also called a hoarding in the UK and many other parts of the world) is a large outdoor advertising structure (a billing board), typically found in high-traffic areas such as alongside busy roads. Billboards present large advertis ...
'' chart with sales exceeding one million copies. Dylan later recalled that he was astonished when Peter Yarrow
Peter Yarrow (May 31, 1938 – January 7, 2025) was an American singer and songwriter who found fame as a member of the 1960s folk music, folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary along with Paul Stookey and Mary Travers. Yarrow co-wrote (with Lenny Lipton ...
told him he was going to make $5,000 from the publishing rights.
"Girl from the North Country"
There has been much speculation in print about the identity of the girl in " Girl from the North Country". Clinton Heylin states that the most frequently mooted candidates are Echo Helstrom, an early girlfriend of Dylan from his hometown of Hibbing, and Suze Rotolo, for whom Dylan was pining as he finished the song in Italy. Howard Sounes suggests the girl Dylan probably had in mind was Bonnie Beecher, a girlfriend of Dylan's when he was at the University of Minnesota
The University of Minnesota Twin Cities (historically known as University of Minnesota) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul, Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint ...
.[An important recording of Dylan playing traditional material was taped in Beecher's apartment in December 1961. Misnamed the "Minneapolis Hotel Tape", the songs were released on the '' Great White Wonder'' bootleg. See . Beecher subsequently married counter-cultural figure Wavy Gravy.] There's no proof of any of this, and musicologist Todd Harvey
Todd Douglas Ross Harvey (born February 17, 1975) is a Canadian former professional ice hockey forward and current director of amateur scouting for the Vancouver Canucks of the National Hockey League (NHL). During his playing career, he played for ...
notes that "the lyrics do not, however, contain enough specific information to suggest that Dylan was leaving clues about his personal life".
Harvey notes that Dylan not only took the tune of " Scarborough Fair", which he learned from Martin Carthy in London but also adapted the theme of that song. "Scarborough Fair" derives from " The Elfin Knight" ( Child Ballad Number 2), which was first transcribed in 1670. In the song, a supernatural character poses a series of questions to an innocent, requesting her to perform impossible tasks. Harvey points out that Dylan "retains the idea of the listener being sent upon a task, a northern place setting, and an antique lyric quality". Dylan returned to this song on '' Nashville Skyline'' (1969), recording it as a duet with Johnny Cash
John R. Cash (born J. R. Cash; February 26, 1932 – September 12, 2003) was an American singer-songwriter. Most of his music contains themes of sorrow, moral tribulation, and redemption, especially songs from the later stages of his career. ...
, and he returned to it again in the studio with an unreleased organ and sax version in 1978.
Later in his book about Dylan, Howard Sounes offers the opinion that Dylan may have been utilizing the largely autobiographical song as a way to gain favor with different girlfriends whom he dated over the years. Sounes states: "... one wondered which girlfriend Bob was singing about... Bob later gave Echo (Helstrom) the impression (that it) was her song. But, no doubt thinking that women were flattered by having songs written about them, Bob led another north country girlfriend, Bonnie Beecher, to think the same... Later in 1963, when he performed the song on a radio show... Bob indicated that the song was about an idealized woman, saying, 'This is dedicated to ''all'' the north country girls.'"
"Masters of War"
A scathing song directed against the war industry, " Masters of War" is based on Jean Ritchie's arrangement of " Nottamun Town", an English riddle song. It was written in late 1962 while Dylan was in London; eyewitnesses (including Martin Carthy and Anthea Joseph) recall Dylan performing the song in folk clubs at the time. Ritchie would later assert her claim on the song's arrangement; according to one Dylan biography, the suit was settled when Ritchie received $5,000 from Dylan's lawyers.
"Down the Highway"
Dylan composed " Down the Highway" in the form of a 12-bar blues. In the sleeve notes of ''Freewheelin'', Dylan explained to Nat Hentoff: "What made the real blues singers so great is that they were able to state all the problems they had; but at the same time, they were standing outside of them and could look at them. And in that way, they had them beat."[ Into this song, Dylan injected one explicit mention of an absence that was troubling him: the sojourn of Suze Rotolo in ]Perugia
Perugia ( , ; ; ) is the capital city of Umbria in central Italy, crossed by the River Tiber. The city is located about north of Rome and southeast of Florence. It covers a high hilltop and part of the valleys around the area. It has 162,467 ...
: "My baby took my heart from me/ She packed it all up in a suitcase/ Lord, she took it away to Italy, Italy."
"Bob Dylan's Blues"
" Bob Dylan's Blues" begins with a spoken intro where Dylan describes the origins of folk songs in a satirical vein: "most of the songs that are written uptown in Tin Pan Alley
Tin Pan Alley was a collection of History of music publishing, music publishers and songwriters in New York City that dominated the American popular music, popular music of the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Originally ...
, that's where most of the folk songs come from nowadays". What follows has been characterized as an absurd, improvised blues[ which Dylan, in the sleeve notes, describes as "a really off-the-cuff-song. I start with an idea and then I feel what follows. Best way I can describe this one is that it's sort of like walking by a side street. You gaze in and walk on."][ Harvey points out that Dylan subsequently elaborated this style of self-deprecatory, absurdist humor into more complex songs, such as "I Shall Be Free No.10" (1964).
]
"A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall"
Dylan was only 21 years old when he wrote one of his most complex songs, " A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall", often referred to as "Hard Rain". Dylan is said to have premiered "Hard Rain" at the Gaslight Cafe
The Gaslight Cafe was a coffeehouse in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York. Also called The Village Gaslight, it opened in 1958 and became a venue for folk music and other musical acts. Al Aronowitz. . Retrieved June 25, 2 ...
, where Village performer Peter Blankfield recalled: "He put out these pieces of loose-leaf paper ripped out of a spiral notebook. And he starts singing Hard Rain'... He finished singing it, and no one could say anything. The length of it, the episodic sense of it. Every line kept building and bursting". Dylan performed "Hard Rain" days later at Carnegie Hall
Carnegie Hall ( ) is a concert venue in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. It is at 881 Seventh Avenue (Manhattan), Seventh Avenue, occupying the east side of Seventh Avenue between 56th Street (Manhattan), 56th and 57th Street (Manhattan), 57t ...
on September 22, 1962, as part of a concert organized by Pete Seeger. The song gained added resonance during the Cuban Missile Crisis
The Cuban Missile Crisis, also known as the October Crisis () in Cuba, or the Caribbean Crisis (), was a 13-day confrontation between the governments of the United States and the Soviet Union, when American deployments of Nuclear weapons d ...
, just one month after Dylan's first performance of "Hard Rain", when U.S. President John F. Kennedy
John Fitzgerald Kennedy (May 29, 1917 – November 22, 1963), also known as JFK, was the 35th president of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963. He was the first Roman Catholic and youngest person elected p ...
gave his warning to the Soviet Union over their deployment of nuclear missiles
Nuclear weapons delivery is the technology and systems used to place a nuclear weapon at the position of detonation, on or near its target. All nine nuclear states have developed some form of medium- to long-range delivery system for their nuc ...
in Cuba. Critics have interpreted the lyric 'hard rain' as a reference to nuclear fallout
Nuclear fallout is residual radioactive material that is created by the reactions producing a nuclear explosion. It is initially present in the mushroom cloud, radioactive cloud created by the explosion, and "falls out" of the cloud as it is ...
, but Dylan resisted the specificity of this interpretation. In a radio interview with Studs Terkel
Louis "Studs" Terkel (May 16, 1912 – October 31, 2008) was an American writer, historian, actor, and broadcaster. He received the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction in 1985 for ''The Good War'' and is best remembered for his oral histor ...
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.
Many people were astonished by the power and complexity of this work. For Robert Shelton, who had given Dylan an important boost in his 1961 review in ''The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...
'', this song was "a landmark in topical, folk-based songwriting. Here blooms the promised fruit of the 1950s poetry-jazz fusion of Ginsberg, Ferlinghetti, and Rexroth." Folk singer Dave Van Ronk later commented: "I was acutely aware that it represented the beginning of an artistic revolution." Seeger expressed the opinion that this song would last longer than any other written by Dylan.
Side two
"Don't Think Twice, It's All Right"
Dylan wrote " Don't Think Twice, It's All Right" on hearing from Suze Rotolo that she was considering staying in Italy indefinitely, and he used a melody he adapted from Paul Clayton's song "Who's Gonna Buy You Ribbons (When I'm Gone)". In the ''Freewheelin'' sleeve notes, Dylan comments: "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".
Dylan's contemporaries hailed the song as a masterpiece: Bob Spitz quotes Paul Stookey saying "I thought it was a masterful statement", while Dave Van Ronk called it "self-pitying but brilliant". Dylan biographer Howard Sounes commented: "The greatness of the song was in the cleverness of the language. The phrase "don't think twice, it's all right" could be snarled, sung with resignation, or delivered with an ambiguous mixture of bitterness and regret. Seldom have the contradictory emotions of a thwarted lover been so well expressed, and the song transcended the autobiographical origins of Dylan's pain".
"Bob Dylan's Dream"
" Bob Dylan's Dream" was based on the melody of the traditional " Lady Franklin's Lament", in which the title character dreams of finding her husband, Arctic explorer Sir John Franklin
Sir John Franklin (16 April 1786 – 11 June 1847) was a British Royal Navy officer, explorer and colonial administrator. After serving in the Napoleonic Wars and the War of 1812, he led two expeditions into the Canadian Arctic and thro ...
, alive and well. (Sir John Franklin had vanished on an expedition searching for the North West Passage in 1845; a stone cairn
A cairn is a human-made pile (or stack) of stones raised for a purpose, usually as a marker or as a burial mound. The word ''cairn'' comes from the (plural ).
Cairns have been and are used for a broad variety of purposes. In prehistory, t ...
on King William Island
King William Island (, ; previously: King William Land) is an island in the Kitikmeot Region of Nunavut, which is part of the Arctic Archipelago. In area it is between and making it the list of islands by area, 61st-largest island in the world ...
detailing his demise was found by a later expedition in 1859.) Todd Harvey points out that Dylan transforms the song into a personal journey, yet he retains both the theme and the mood of the original ballad. The world outside is depicted as stormy and harsh, and Dylan's most fervent wish, like Lady Franklin's, is to be reunited with departed companions and to relive the fond memories they represent.
"Oxford Town"
" Oxford Town" is Dylan's sardonic account of events
Event may refer to:
Gatherings of people
* Ceremony, an event of ritual significance, performed on a special occasion
* Convention (meeting), a gathering of individuals engaged in some common interest
* Event management, the organization of eve ...
at the University of Mississippi
The University of Mississippi (Epithet, byname Ole Miss) is a Public university, public research university in University, near Oxford, Mississippi, United States, with a University of Mississippi Medical Center, medical center in Jackson, Miss ...
in September 1962. U.S. Air Force veteran James Meredith
James Howard Meredith (born June 25, 1933) is an American civil rights activist, writer, political adviser, and United States Air Force veteran who became, in 1962, the first African-American student admitted to the racially segregated Univers ...
was the first black student to enroll at the University of Mississippi
The University of Mississippi (Epithet, byname Ole Miss) is a Public university, public research university in University, near Oxford, Mississippi, United States, with a University of Mississippi Medical Center, medical center in Jackson, Miss ...
, in Oxford, Mississippi
Oxford is the List of municipalities in Mississippi, 14th most populous city in Mississippi, United States, and the county seat of Lafayette County, Mississippi, Lafayette County, southeast of Memphis, Tennessee, Memphis. A college town, Oxford ...
. When Meredith first tried to attend classes at the school, some Mississippians pledged to keep the university segregated, including the state governor Ross Barnett. Ultimately, the University of Mississippi had to be integrated with the help of U.S. federal troops. Dylan responded rapidly: his song was published in the November 1962 issue of '' Broadside''.
"Talkin' World War III Blues"
The "talkin' blues" was a style of improvised songwriting that Woody Guthrie
Woodrow Wilson Guthrie (; July 14, 1912 – October 3, 1967) was an American singer, songwriter, and composer widely considered to be one of the most significant figures in American folk music. His work focused on themes of American Left, A ...
had developed to a high plane. (A Minneapolis domestic recording that Dylan made in September 1960 includes his performances of Guthrie's "Talking Columbia" and "Talking Merchant Marine".) " Talkin' World War III Blues" was a spontaneous composition Dylan created in the studio during the final session for ''The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan''. He recorded five takes of the song and the fifth was selected for the album. The format of the "talkin' blues" permitted Dylan to address the serious subject of nuclear annihilation with humor, and "without resorting to his finger-pointing or apocalyptical-prophetic persona".
"Corrina, Corrina"
" Corrina, Corrina" was recorded by the Mississippi Sheiks, and by their leader Bo Carter
Armenter (or Armentia) Chatmon (March 21, 1893 or January 1894 – September 21, 1964), known as Bo Carter, was an early American blues musician. He was a member of the Mississippi Sheiks in concerts and on a few of their recordings. He also m ...
in 1928. The song was covered by artists as diverse as Bob Wills
James Robert "Bob" Wills (March 6, 1905 – May 13, 1975) was an American musician, songwriter, and bandleader. Considered by music authorities as the founder of Western swing, he was known widely as the King of Western Swing (although Spade C ...
, Big Joe Turner
Joseph Vernon "Big Joe" Turner Jr. (May 18, 1911 – November 24, 1985) was an American blues shouter from Kansas City, Missouri. According to songwriter Doc Pomus, "Rock and roll would have never happened without him". Turner's greatest fa ...
, and Doc Watson
Arthel Lane "Doc" Watson (March 3, 1923 – May 29, 2012) was an American guitarist, songwriter, and singer of bluegrass, folk, country, blues, and gospel music. He won seven Grammy awards as well as a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. His ...
. Dylan's version borrows phrases from a few Robert Johnson songs: "Stones In My Passway", "32-20 Blues", and "Hellhound On My Trail". An alternate take of the song was used as a B-side for his " Mixed-Up Confusion" single.
"Honey, Just Allow Me One More Chance"
" Honey, Just Allow Me One More Chance" is based on "Honey, Won't You Allow Me One More Chance?", a song dating back to the 1890s that was popularized by Henry Thomas in his 1928 recording. "However, Thomas's original provided no more than a song title and a notion", writes Heylin, "which Dylan turned into a personal plea to an absent lover to allow him 'one more chance to get along with you.' It is a vocal tour de force and ... showed a Dylan prepared to make light of his own blues by using the form itself."
"I Shall Be Free"
" I Shall Be Free" is a rewrite of Lead Belly
Huddie William Ledbetter ( ; January 1888 or 1889 – December 6, 1949), better known by the stage name Lead Belly, was an American folk music, folk and blues singer notable for his strong vocals, virtuosity on the twelve-string guitar, and the ...
's "We Shall Be Free", which was performed by Lead Belly
Huddie William Ledbetter ( ; January 1888 or 1889 – December 6, 1949), better known by the stage name Lead Belly, was an American folk music, folk and blues singer notable for his strong vocals, virtuosity on the twelve-string guitar, and the ...
, Sonny Terry
Saunders Terrell (October 24, 1911 – March 11, 1986), known as Sonny Terry, was an American Piedmont blues and folk musician, who was known for his energetic blues harmonica style, which frequently included vocal whoops and hollers and occas ...
, Cisco Houston
Gilbert Vandine "Cisco" Houston (August 18, 1918 – April 29, 1961) was an American folk singer and songwriter, who is closely associated with Woody Guthrie due to their extensive history of traveling and recording together.
Houston was a reg ...
, and Woody Guthrie
Woodrow Wilson Guthrie (; July 14, 1912 – October 3, 1967) was an American singer, songwriter, and composer widely considered to be one of the most significant figures in American folk music. His work focused on themes of American Left, A ...
. According to Todd Harvey, Dylan's version draws its melody from the Guthrie recording but omits its signature chorus ("We'll soon be free/When the Lord will call us home"). Critics have been divided about the worth of this final song. Robert Shelton dismissed the song as "a decided anticlimax. Although the album has at least a half dozen blockbusters, two of the weakest songs are tucked in at the end, like shirttails." Todd Harvey has argued that by placing the song at the close of the ''Freewheelin'' LP, Dylan ends on a note of levity which is a relief after the weighty sentiments expressed in several songs on the album.
Outtakes
The known outtakes from the ''Freewheelin'' album are as follows. All songs released in 1991 on '' The Bootleg Series 1–3'' are discussed in that album's liner notes,[ while songs that have never been released have been documented by biographer Clinton Heylin,] except where noted. All songs written by Bob Dylan, except where noted.
Release
Dylan promoted his upcoming album with radio appearances and concert performances. In May 1963, Dylan performed with Joan Baez
Joan Chandos Baez (, ; born January 9, 1941) is an American singer, songwriter, musician, and activist. Her contemporary folk music often includes songs of protest and social justice. Baez has performed publicly for over 60 years, releasing mo ...
at the Monterey Folk Festival, where she joined him on stage for a duet of a new Dylan song, " With God on Our Side". Baez was at the pinnacle of her fame, having appeared on the cover of ''Time
Time is the continuous progression of existence that occurs in an apparently irreversible process, irreversible succession from the past, through the present, and into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequ ...
'' magazine the previous November. The performance not only gave Dylan and his songs a new prominence, it also marked the beginning of a romantic relationship between Baez and Dylan, the start of what Dylan biographer Sounes termed "one of the most celebrated love affairs of the decade".
''The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan'' was released at the end of May. According to Scaduto, it was an immediate success, selling 10,000 copies a month and bringing Dylan an income of about $2,500 a month (). An article by Nat Hentoff on folk music appeared in the June issue of ''Playboy
''Playboy'' (stylized in all caps) is an American men's Lifestyle journalism, lifestyle and entertainment magazine, available both online and in print. It was founded in Chicago in 1953 by Hugh Hefner and his associates, funded in part by a $ ...
'' magazine and devoted considerable space to Dylan's achievements, calling him "the most vital of the younger citybillies".
In July, Dylan appeared at the second Newport Folk Festival
The Newport Folk Festival is an annual American folk-oriented music festival in Newport, Rhode Island, which began in 1959 as a counterpart to the Newport Jazz Festival. The festival was founded by music promoter and Jazz Festival founder Geor ...
. That weekend, Peter, Paul and Mary's rendition of "Blowin' in the Wind" reached number two on ''Billboard
A billboard (also called a hoarding in the UK and many other parts of the world) is a large outdoor advertising structure (a billing board), typically found in high-traffic areas such as alongside busy roads. Billboards present large advertis ...
''s pop chart. Baez was also at Newport, appearing twice on stage with Dylan. The combination of the chart success of "Blowin' in the Wind", and the glamor of Baez and Dylan singing together generated excitement about Dylan and his new album. Tom Paxton
Thomas Richard Paxton (born October 31, 1937) is an American folk singer-songwriter whose career spans more than sixty years. In 2009, Paxton received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. recalled: "That was a big breakout festival for Bob. The buzz kept growing exponentially and it was like a coronation of Bob and Joan. They were King and Queen of the festival". His friend Bob Fass
Robert Morton Fass (June 29, 1933 – April 24, 2021) was an American radio personality and pioneer of free-form radio, who broadcast in the New York region for over 50 years. Fass's program, ''Radio Unnameable'', aired in some form from 1963 u ...
recalled that after Newport, Dylan told him that "suddenly I just can't walk around without a disguise. I used to walk around and go wherever I wanted. But now it's gotten very weird. People follow me into the men's room just so they can say that they saw me pee".
In September, the album entered ''Billboard''s album charts; the highest position ''Freewheelin'' reached was number 22, but it eventually came to sell one million copies in the U.S. Dylan himself came to acknowledge ''Freewheelin'' as the album that marked the start of his success. During his dispute with Albert Grossman, Dylan stated in a deposition: "Although I didn't know it at the time, the second album was destined to become a great success because it was to include 'Blowin' in the Wind'." Besides "Blowin' in the Wind", "Masters of War", "Girl from the North Country", "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall" and "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right" have all been acclaimed as masterpieces, and they have been mainstays of Dylan's performing repertory to the present day. The album's balance between serious subject matter and levity, earnest finger-pointing songs and surreal jokes captured a wide audience, including The Beatles
The Beatles were an English Rock music, rock band formed in Liverpool in 1960. The core lineup of the band comprised John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. They are widely regarded as the Cultural impact of the Beatle ...
, who were on the cusp of global success. John Lennon
John Winston Ono Lennon (born John Winston Lennon; 9 October 19408 December 1980) was an English singer-songwriter, musician and activist. He gained global fame as the founder, co-lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist of the Beatles. Lennon's ...
recalled: "In Paris in 1964 was the first time I ever heard Dylan at all. Paul
Paul may refer to:
People
* Paul (given name), a given name, including a list of people
* Paul (surname), a list of people
* Paul the Apostle, an apostle who wrote many of the books of the New Testament
* Ray Hildebrand, half of the singing duo ...
got the record (''The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan'') from a French DJ. For three weeks in Paris we didn't stop playing it. We all went potty about Dylan".
The album was re-issued in 2010 as part of '' The Original Mono Recordings'', a Columbia Legacy box set
A boxed set or (its US name) box set is a set of items (for example, a compilation of books, musical recordings, films or television programs) traditionally packaged in a box, hence 'boxed', and offered for sale as a single unit.
Music
Artists ...
that included the monaural versions of Dylan's first eight albums.
Artwork
The album cover
An album cover (also referred to as album art) is the front packaging art of a commercially released album, studio album or other audio recordings. The term can refer to:
* the printed paperboard covers typically used to package:
** sets of a ...
features a photograph of Dylan with Suze Rotolo. It was taken in February 1963—a few weeks after Rotolo had returned from Italy—by CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc., commonly shortened to CBS (an abbreviation of its original name, Columbia Broadcasting System), is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the CBS Entertainme ...
staff photographer Don Hunstein as Dylan and Rotolo walked in the middle of Jones Street, approximately 50 feet from West 4th Street in the West Village
The West Village is a neighborhood in the western section of the larger Greenwich Village neighborhood of Lower Manhattan, New York City. The West Village is bounded by the Hudson River to the west and 14th Street (Manhattan), 14th Street to ...
, New York City, close to the apartment where the couple lived at the time. In 2008, Rotolo described the circumstances surrounding the famous photo to ''The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...
'': "He wore a very thin jacket, because image was all. Our apartment was always cold, so I had a sweater on, plus I borrowed one of his big, bulky sweaters. On top of that I put on a coat. So I felt like an Italian sausage. Every time I look at that picture, I think I look fat." In her memoir, ''A Freewheelin' Time'', Rotolo analyzed the significance of the cover art
Cover art is a type of artwork presented as an illustration or photograph on the outside of a published product, such as a book (often on a dust jacket), magazine, newspaper ( tabloid), comic book, video game ( box art), music album ( album ar ...
:
Critic Janet Maslin
Janet R. Maslin (born August 12, 1949) is an American journalist, who served as a film critic for ''The New York Times'' from 1977 to 1999, serving as chief critic for the last six years, and then a literary critic from 2000 to 2015. In 2000, M ...
summed up the iconic impact of the cover as "a photograph that inspired countless young men to hunch their shoulders, look distant, and let the girl do the clinging".
In popular culture
The album's cover photo was carefully recreated by Cameron Crowe
Cameron Bruce Crowe (born July 13, 1957) is an American filmmaker and journalist. He has received numerous accolades including an Academy Award, BAFTA Award, and Grammy Award as well as a nomination for a Tony Award. Crowe started his career a ...
for his 2001 Tom Cruise
Thomas Cruise Mapother IV (born July 3, 1962) is an American actor and film producer. Regarded as a Cinema of the United States, Hollywood icon, he has received List of awards and nominations received by Tom Cruise, various accolades, includ ...
–starring film ''Vanilla Sky
''Vanilla Sky'' is a 2001 American science fiction psychological thriller film directed, written, and co-produced by Cameron Crowe. It is an English-language remake of Alejandro Amenábar's 1997 Spanish film '' Open Your Eyes'', which was writ ...
'' and by Todd Haynes
Todd Haynes (; born January 2, 1961) is an American film director, screenwriter, and producer. His films span four decades with themes examining the personalities of well-known musicians, dysfunctional and dystopian societies, and blurred gender ...
for his 2007 Dylan biopic ''I'm Not There
''I'm Not There'' is a 2007 musical drama film directed by Todd Haynes, who co-wrote the screenplay with Oren Moverman, based on a story by Haynes. An experimental biographical film, it is inspired by the life and music of American singer-so ...
.'' It also served as a visual reference for the Coen brothers
Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, together known as the Coen brothers (), are an American filmmaking duo. Their films span many genres and styles, which they frequently subvert or parody. Among their most acclaimed works are '' Blood Simple'' (198 ...
' 2013 film ''Inside Llewyn Davis
''Inside Llewyn Davis'' () is a 2013 period black comedy drama film written, directed, produced, and edited by Joel and Ethan Coen. Set in 1961, the film follows one week in the life of Llewyn Davis, played by Oscar Isaac in his breakthrough ...
'' and James Mangold
James Allen Mangold (born December 16, 1963) is an American film director, producer and screenwriter. Noted for his versatility in tackling a range of genres, Mangold made his debut as a film director with ''Heavy (film), Heavy'' (1995), and gai ...
's 2024 film '' A Complete Unknown''.
A copy of the vinyl album itself is an important prop in Jacques Rivette
Jacques Rivette (; 1 March 1928 – 29 January 2016) was a French film director and film critic most commonly associated with the French New Wave and the film magazine '' Cahiers du Cinéma''. He made twenty-nine films, including '' L'Amour fo ...
's 1969 film ''L'Amour fou''. In one key scene, the male lead, Sebastien (Jean-Pierre Kalfon
Jean-Pierre Kalfon (born 30 October 1938) is a French actor and singer.
Selected filmography
External links
*
1938 births
Living people
French male film actors
French male television actors
Male actors from Paris
French male stage a ...
), is in the apartment of his girlfriend, Marta (Josée Destoop), helping her sort through LPs she could potentially re-sell in order to raise some quick cash. He holds up her copy of ''The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan'', which she declines to sell on the grounds that she still listens to it.
In November 2023, ''Rolling Stone
''Rolling Stone'' is an American monthly magazine that focuses on music, politics, and popular culture. It was founded in San Francisco, California, in 1967 by Jann Wenner and the music critic Ralph J. Gleason.
The magazine was first known fo ...
'' cited "Bob Dylan Core", a TikTok
TikTok, known in mainland China and Hong Kong as Douyin (), is a social media and Short-form content, short-form online video platform owned by Chinese Internet company ByteDance. It hosts user-submitted videos, which may range in duration f ...
trend inspired by the album cover, as turning Generation Z
Generation Z (often shortened to Gen Z), also known as zoomers, is the demographic cohort succeeding Millennials and preceding Generation Alpha. Researchers and popular media use the mid-to-late 1990s as starting birth years and the early 2 ...
on to Dylan. According to the article, videos tagged with the #BobDylanCore hashtag had been viewed 11.5 million times.
Legacy
The success of ''Freewheelin transformed the public perception of Dylan. Before the album's release, he was one among many folk-singers. Afterwards, at the age of 22, Dylan was regarded as a major artist, perhaps even a spokesman for disaffected youth. As one critic described the transformation, "In barely over a year, a young plagiarist had been reborn as a songwriter of substance, and his first album of fully realized original material got the 1960s off their musical starting block." Janet Maslin
Janet R. Maslin (born August 12, 1949) is an American journalist, who served as a film critic for ''The New York Times'' from 1977 to 1999, serving as chief critic for the last six years, and then a literary critic from 2000 to 2015. In 2000, M ...
wrote of the album: "These were the songs that established him as the voice of his generation—someone who implicitly understood how concerned young Americans felt about nuclear disarmament
Nuclear disarmament is the act of reducing or eliminating nuclear weapons. Its end state can also be a nuclear-weapons-free world, in which nuclear weapons are completely eliminated. The term ''denuclearization'' is also used to describe the pro ...
and the growing Civil Rights Movement: his mixture of moral authority and nonconformity was perhaps the most timely of his attributes".
This title of "Spokesman of a Generation" was viewed by Dylan with disgust in later years. He came to feel it was a label that the media had pinned on him, and in his autobiography, '' Chronicles'', Dylan wrote: "The press never let up. Once in a while I would have to rise up and offer myself for an interview so they wouldn't beat the door down. Later an article would hit the streets with the headline 'Spokesman Denies That He's A Spokesman'. I felt like a piece of meat that someone had thrown to the dogs".
The album secured for Dylan an "unstoppable cult following" of fans who preferred the harshness of his performances to the softer cover versions released by other singers. Richard Williams has suggested that the richness of the imagery in ''Freewheelin'' transformed Dylan into a key performer for a burgeoning college audience hungry for a new cultural complexity: "For students whose exam courses included Eliot and Yeats, here was something that flattered their expanding intellect while appealing to the teenage rebel in their early-sixties souls. James Dean
James Byron Dean (February 8, 1931September 30, 1955) was an American actor. He became one of the most influential figures in Hollywood in the 1950s, despite a career that lasted only five years. His impact on cinema and popular culture was p ...
had walked around reading James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (born James Augusta Joyce; 2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influentia ...
; here were both in a single package, the words and the attitude set to music." Andy Gill adds that in the few months between the release of ''Freewheelin in May 1963, and Dylan's next album '' The Times They Are A-Changin''' in January 1964, Dylan became the hottest property in American music, stretching the boundaries of what had been previously viewed as a collegiate folk music audience.
Critical opinion about ''Freewheelin'' has been consistently favorable in the years since its release. Dylan biographer Howard Sounes called it "Bob Dylan's first great album". In a survey of Dylan's work published by '' Q'' magazine in 2000, the ''Freewheelin'' album was described as "easily the best of ylan'sacoustic albums and a quantum leap from his debut—which shows the frantic pace at which Dylan's mind was moving." The magazine went on to comment, "You can see why this album got The Beatles listening. The songs at its core must have sounded like communiques from another plane".
For Patrick Humphries, "rarely has one album so effectively reflected the times which produced it. ''Freewheelin'' spoke directly to the concerns of its audience and addressed them in a mature and reflective manner: it mirrored the state of the nation." Stephen Thomas Erlewine
Stephen Thomas Erlewine (; born June 18, 1973) is an American music critic and former senior editor for the online music database AllMusic. He is the author of multiple artist biographies and record reviews for AllMusic, as well as a freelance ...
's verdict on the album in the AllMusic
AllMusic (previously known as All-Music Guide and AMG) is an American online database, online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on Musical artist, musicians and Mus ...
guide was: "It's hard to overestimate the importance of ''The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan'', the record that firmly established Dylan as an unparalleled songwriter ... This is rich, imaginative music, capturing the sound and spirit of America as much as that of Louis Armstrong
Louis Daniel Armstrong (August 4, 1901 – July 6, 1971), nicknamed "Satchmo", "Satch", and "Pops", was an American trumpeter and vocalist. He was among the most influential figures in jazz. His career spanned five decades and several era ...
, Hank Williams
Hiram "Hank" Williams (September 17, 1923 – January 1, 1953) was an American singer, songwriter, and musician. An early pioneer of country music, he is regarded as one of the most significant and influential musicians of the 20th century. W ...
, or Elvis Presley
Elvis Aaron Presley (January 8, 1935 – August 16, 1977) was an American singer and actor. Referred to as the "King of Rock and Roll", he is regarded as Cultural impact of Elvis Presley, one of the most significant cultural figures of the ...
. Dylan, in many ways, recorded music that equaled this, but he never topped it".
In March 2000, Van Morrison
Sir George Ivan "Van" Morrison (born 31 August 1945) is a Northern Irish singer-songwriter and musician whose recording career started in the 1960s. Morrison's albums have performed well in the UK and Ireland, with more than 40 reaching the UK ...
told the Irish rock magazine ''Hot Press
''Hot Press'' is a monthly music and politics magazine based in Dublin, Ireland, founded in June 1977. The magazine has been edited since its inception by Niall Stokes.
History
''Hot Press'' was founded in June 1977 by Niall Stokes, who cont ...
'' about the impact that ''Freewheelin'' made on him: "I think I heard it in a record shop in Smith Street. And I just thought it was incredible that this guy's not singing about 'moon in June' and he's getting away with it. That's what I thought at the time. The subject matter wasn't pop songs, ya know, and I thought this kind of opens the whole thing up ... Dylan put it into the mainstream that this could be done".
''Freewheelin'' was one of 50 recordings chosen by the Library of Congress
The Library of Congress (LOC) is a research library in Washington, D.C., serving as the library and research service for the United States Congress and the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It also administers Copyright law o ...
to be added to the National Recording Registry in 2002. The citation read: "This album is considered by some to be the most important collection of original songs issued in the 1960s. It includes 'Blowin' in the Wind,' the era's popular and powerful protest anthem." The following year (2003), ''Rolling Stone
''Rolling Stone'' is an American monthly magazine that focuses on music, politics, and popular culture. It was founded in San Francisco, California, in 1967 by Jann Wenner and the music critic Ralph J. Gleason.
The magazine was first known fo ...
'' ''Magazine'' ranked it number 97 on their list of the 500 greatest albums of all time
"The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time" is a recurring opinion survey and music ranking of the finest albums in history, compiled by the American magazine ''Rolling Stone''. It is based on weighted votes from selected musicians, critics, and indu ...
,[ maintaining the rating in a 2012 revised list, before dropping to number 255 in a 2020 revised list.
The album was included in ]Robert Christgau
Robert Thomas Christgau ( ; born April 18, 1942) is an American music journalist and essayist. Among the most influential music critics, he began his career in the late 1960s as one of the earliest professional rock critics and later became a ...
's "Basic Record Library" of 1950s and 1960s recordings, published in '' Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies'' (1981). It was also included in Robert Dimery's ''1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die
''1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die'' is a musical reference book first published in 2005 by Universe Publishing. Part of the ''1001 Before You Die'' series, it compiles writings and information on albums chosen by a panel of music criti ...
''. It was voted number 127 in the third edition of Colin Larkin
Colin Larkin (born 1949) is a British music writer. He founded and was the editor-in-chief of ''The Encyclopedia of Popular Music''. Along with the ten-volume encyclopedia, Larkin also wrote the book ''All Time Top 1000 Albums'', and edited th ...
's ''All Time Top 1000 Albums
''All Time Top 1000 Albums'' is a book by Colin Larkin, creator and editor of the ''Encyclopedia of Popular Music''. The book was first published by Guinness Publishing in 1994. The list presented is the result of over 200,000 votes cast by the ...
'' (2000).
Taylor Swift
Taylor Alison Swift (born December 13, 1989) is an American singer-songwriter. Known for her autobiographical songwriting, artistic versatility, and Cultural impact of Taylor Swift, cultural impact, Swift is one of the Best selling artists, w ...
cited the album as the inspiration for her song " Betty" on ''Folklore''. As "Betty"'s co-writer, The National's Aaron Dessner
Aaron Brooking Dessner (born April 23, 1976) is an American musician. He is best known as a founding member of the rock band The National (band), the National, with whom he has recorded nine studio albums; a co-founder of the indie rock duo Big ...
explained to ''Vulture'', "She wanted it to have an early Bob Dylan, sort of a ''Freewheelin' Bob Dylan'' feel".
Track listing
Note:
Some very early first pressing copies contained four songs that were ultimately replaced by Columbia on all subsequent pressings. These songs were "Rocks and Gravel", "Let Me Die in My Footsteps", "Rambling Gambling Willie" and "Talkin' John Birch Blues". Copies of the "original" version of ''The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan'' (in either mono or stereo) are extremely rare.
The original track listing was as follows:
Personnel
*Bob Dylan – acoustic guitar, harmonica, vocals
Additional musicians
*Howie Collins – guitar on "Corrina, Corrina"
* Leonard Gaskin – double bass on "Corrina, Corrina"
* Bruce Langhorne – guitar on "Corrina, Corrina"
*Herbie Lovelle
Herbert Edward Lovelle (June 1, 1924 – April 8, 2009) was an American drummer, who played jazz, R&B, rock, and folk. He was also a studio musician and an actor.
Biography
Lovelle was born in New York City. His uncle was the drummer Arthur H ...
– drums on "Corrina, Corrina"
* Dick Wellstood – piano on "Corrina, Corrina"
Technical
*John H. Hammond
John Henry Hammond Jr. (December 15, 1910 – July 10, 1987) was an American record producer, civil rights activist, and music critic active from the 1930s to the early 1980s. In his service as a talent scout, Hammond became one of the most in ...
– production
* Nat Hentoff – liner notes
Liner notes (also sleeve notes or album notes) are the writings found on the sleeves of LP record albums and in booklets that come inserted into the compact disc jewel case or cassette j-cards.
Origin
Liner notes are descended from the prog ...
*Don Hunstein – album cover photographer
* Tom Wilson – production
Charts
Certifications
Notes
Footnotes
References
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Freewheelin Bob Dylan, The
1963 albums
Albums produced by John Hammond (producer)
Albums produced by Tom Wilson (record producer)
Bob Dylan albums
Columbia Records albums
United States National Recording Registry albums