Monday, May 20, 2013

Monday Music: A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall


In a radio interview in 1963 on The Studs Terkel Program, Dylan tells Terkel that “A Hard Rain’s a Gonna Fall” is not about atomic fallout, even though he wrote the song in a state of anxiety during the Cuban missile crisis. “No, it’s not atomic rain,” Dylan says, “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 their waters,’ that means all the lies that people get told on their radios and in their newspapers.”

Here is a 1971 live performance from The Concert for Bangladesh. That concert, organized by George Harrison, marked the first benefit of its kind where celebrity performers came together to raise money for a cause. It was also Bob Dylan's first public appearance since the fabled motorcycle accident that allowed Dylan, as he stated in his autobiography, opportunity to "get out of the rat race" of rock-and-roll performance and touring.



No comments:

Post a Comment