Music / The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan

How many ears must one person have before he can appreciate this classic? The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind.

The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan is the second studio album by Bob Dylan, released in 1963. It was the first Dylan album where his own material exceeded his covers. It is best remembered for the hits "Blowin' in the Wind", "Masters of War", "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall", "Girl from the North Country" and "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right". It's equally famous for its iconic cover photo of Dylan and his then-girlfriend walking down a New York City street.

"Rocks and Gravel", "Let Me Die In My Footsteps", "Gamblin' Willie's Dead Man's Hand" and "Talkin' John Birch Blues" were originally supposed to appear on the album, but against Dylan's wishes, they were replaced at the last minute with "Girl from the North Country", "Masters of War", "Talkin' World War III Blues" and "Bob Dylan's Dream".

In 2002, the album was among the first sound recordings to be included in the National Recording Registry for its "historical, cultural and aesthetical importance".

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Tracklist:

Side One

1. "Blowin' in the Wind" (2:48)
2. "Girl from the North Country" (3:22)
3. "Masters of War" (4:34)
4. "Down the Highway" (3:27)
5. "Bob Dylan's Blues" (2:23)
6. "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall" (6:55)

Side Two

1. "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right" (3:40)
2. "Bob Dylan's Dream" (5:03)
3. "Oxford Town" (1:50)
4. "Talkin' World War III Blues" (6:28)
5. "Corrina, Corrina" (2:44)
6. "Honey, Just Allow Me One More Chance" (2:01)
7. "I Shall Be Free" (4:49)

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This album offers freewheelin' examples of:

• Adam and Eve Plot and All Women Are Lustful: "Talkin' World War III Blues"
  Well, I spied me a girl and before she could leave
  "Let's go and play Adam and Eve"
  I took her by the hand and my heart it was thumpin'
  When she said, "Hey man, you crazy or sumpin'
  You see what happened last time they started".
• Alliterative Title: "Corrina, Corrina".
• Anaphora: "Blowin' In The Wind" has three different short anaphoras:
  How many roads must a man walk down
  Before you call him a man?
  How many seas must the white dove sail
  Before she sleeps in the sand?
  (...)
  The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind
  The answer is blowin' in the wind
  (...)
  Yes, and how many years can a mountain exist
  'Fore it is washed to the sea?
  Yes, and how many years can some people exist
  Before they're allowed to be free?
  Yes, and how many times can a man turn his head
  And pretend that he just doesn't see?
• And There Was Much Rejoicing: "Masters of War".
  I hope that you die and your death will come soon
  I will follow your casket on that pale afternoon
  And I'll watch as your lowered down to your death bed
  And I'll stand o'er your grave 'til I'm sure that you're dead.
• Black Comedy: "Talkin' World War III Blues" starts out with Dylan surviving a nuclear assault on New York, and then gets bleaker and bleaker without ever losing its sense of humor.
• Break-Up Song:
  • "Honey, Just Allow Me One More Chance"
  Honey, just allow me one more chance to get along with you
  Honey, just allow me one more chance, I'll do anything with you
  Well, lookin' for a woman that ain't got no man
  Is just lookin' for a needle that is lost in the sand
  • "Corrina, Corrina"
  Corrina, Corrina
  Gal, where you been so long?
  Corrina, Corrina
  Gal, where you been so long?
  I been worrying about you, baby
  Baby, please come home
  • "Down the Highway"
  Well, the ocean took my baby
  My baby stole my heart from me
  Yes, the ocean took my baby
  My baby took my heart from me
  She packed it all up in a suitcase
  Lord, she took it away to Italy, Italy
  • "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right"
  I ain't a-saying you treated me unkind
  You could have done better but I don't mind
  You just kinda wasted my precious time
  But don't think twice, it's all right.
• Breather Song: "Bob Dylan's Blues" and "I Shall Be Free", which are far more light than the heavier topics on the album.
• But Now I Must Go: The central message of "Don't Think Twice, It's Alright".
• Continuity Nod: Dylan would later sing a different version of "Girl from the North Country" on his album Nashville Skyline from 1969, in duet with Johnny Cash.
• Cryptically Unhelpful Answer:
  The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind.
• The Diss Track: "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right" is a cutting indictment of a former lover.
  Goodbye's too good a word, babe,
  So I'll just say fare thee well.
  I ain't saying you treated me unkind,
  You could have done better but I don't mind,
  You just kinda wasted all of my precious time,
  But don't think twice, it's all right.
• Epic Rocking: "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall" and "Talkin' World War II Blues" are 7 and 6 and a half minutes, respectively.
• Face on the Cover: A photo of Dylan and then-girlfriend Suze Rotolo walking down Jones Street in Manhattan's West Village.
• Feeling Oppressed by Their Existence: "Blown' in the Wind"
  How many years can some people exist before they are allowed to be free?
• Final Speech: "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall" was written in the midst of 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.
• I Just Want to Be Free: "Blowin' in the Wind"
  Yes, how many years can some people exist before they're allowed to be free?
• Just Ignore It:
  • "Blowin' in the Wind" asks several rhetorical questions, to which "the answer is blowin' in the wind".
  Yes, how many times can a man turn his head
  Pretending he just doesn't see?
  (...) Yes, how many ears must one man have
  Before he can hear people cry?
  Yes, how many death will it take till he knows
  That too many people have died?
  • "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall"
  I heard ten thousand whisperin' and nobody listenin'
• Non-Appearing Title: The album title.
• Nostalgia Filter: "Bob Dylan's Dream", where he dreams from his friends of the past.
  How many a year has passed and gone
  Many a gamble has been lost and won
  And many a road taken by many a first friend
  And each one I've never seen again.
  I wish, I wish, I wish in vain
  That we could sit simply in that room again
  Ten thousand dollars at the drop of a hat
  I'd give it all gladly if our lives could be like that.
• One-Woman Song: "Girl from the North Country", "Corrina, Corrina".
• Please, Don't Leave Me: "Honey, Just Allow Me One More Chance", where Dylan wants his lover to give him one more chance.
• Production Foreshadowing: Electric guitar and drums on "Corrina, Corrina", several years before he officially "went electric."
• Protest Song: "Blowin' In The Wind", "Oxford Town", "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall" and "Masters Of War".
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: "Masters Of War" is one long litany, aimed at warmongers.
  You fasten all the triggers
  For the others to fire
  Then you set back and watch
  When the death count gets higher
  You hide in your mansion
  As young people's blood
  Flows out of their bodies
  And is buried in the mud.
• Self-Titled Album: Sort of: The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan
• Shout-Out:
  • "Girl from the North Country" borrows two lines from the traditional song "Scarborough Fair" (best known to modern audiences from Simon & Garfunkel's arrangement a few years later, though they were hardly the first ones to perform it)
  Remember me to one who lives there
  For she once was a true love of mine
  • "Bob Dylan's Blues"
  Well, the The Lone Ranger and Tonto
  They are ridin' down the line
  Fixin' everybody's troubles, everybody except mine
  Somebody must have told 'em that I was doin' fine
  • "I Shall Be Free" name-drops John F. Kennedy (whom Dylan calls up), Brigitte Bardot, Anita Ekberg, Sophia Loren, baseball player Willy Mays, Martin Luther King and Nigerian musician Babatunde Olatunji, best known for his best-selling album Drums of Passion from 1960. Near the end Dylan also "makes love to Elizabeth Taylor" and "catches hell from Richard Burton".
  Oh, I set me down on a television floor,
  I flipped the channel to number four.
  Out of the shower comes a football man
  With a bottle of oil in his hand.
  Greasy kid stuff.
  What I want to know, Mr Football Man, is
  What do you do about Willy Mays,
  Martin Luther King,
  Olatunji?
  • On the wall of the bathroom graffiti cover of The Rolling Stones' Beggars Banquet from 1968 we can read the text: "Bob Dylan's Dream", a reference to the song of the same name from this album.
  • "I Shall Be Free, No. 10" is referenced during Beastie Boys' song "Car Thief" from Paul's Boutique from 1989
  I'm a writer, a poet, a genius, I know it
  • Vanilla Sky: One scene in this film duplicates the album cover. Which turns out to be the clue to David's character that he has dreamt his memories about Sofia, because his memory of them two walking on Times Square is just a memory of the image on "The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan", which he confused with reality.
• Singer Name Drop: "Bob Dylan's Dream", "Bob Dylan's Blues" and the following line from "I Shall Be Free"
  It's President Kennedy callin' me up
  He said; "My friend, Bob, what do we need to make the country grow?
• Something Blues: "Bob Dylan's Blues".
• Something Else Also Rises: "I Shall Be Free"
  Well, my telephone rang it would not stop
  It's President Kennedy callin' me up
  He said, "My friend Bob, what do we need to make the country grow?"
  I said, "My friend John, Brigitte Bardot! Anita Ekberg! Sophia Loren!
  ...Country'll grow!"
• Spoken Word: The intro to "Bob Dylan's Blues".
• A Storm Is Coming: "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall".
  I'm a-goin' back out 'fore the rain starts a-fallin'
• This Is Unforgivable!: "Masters of War".
  You might say I’m unlearned
  But there’s one thing I know
  Though I’m younger than you
  Even Jesus would never
  Forgive what you do
• Three Chords and the Truth: All the songs are acoustic, but the lyrics are powerful.
• Time Marches On: During "I Shall Be Free" Dylan phones up president John F. Kennedy.
• To Absent Friends: "Bob Dylan's Dream", where Dylan dreams of friends he lost contact with.
• Train Song: "Bob Dylan's Dream"
  While riding on a train goin' west
  I fell asleep for take me a rest
• Uncommon Time: "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall" jumps around a lot, but spends more time in 7/4 (or 21/8) than anything else. (There are also bars of 5/4 and 9/4 in the transitions to and from some of the choruses, plus a few measures of 4/4 in each chorus proper.) Many transcriptions just place the whole thing in ridiculously fast 3/4 (with patterns of mostly seven measures) just to avoid having to notate all the changes, but the song doesn't really play like 3/4 - the chord changes are too important to the impact of the song and don't match up with such a fast tempo.
• Walking the Earth: "Don't Think Twice, It's Alright", "Down The Highway" and "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall".
• War Is Hell:
  • "Masters of War".
  You that never done nothin'
  But build to destroy
  You play with my world
  Like it's your little toy
  You put a gun in my hand
  And you hide from my eyes
  And you turn and run farther
  When the fast bullets fly.
  • "Blowin' in the Wind"
  How many times must a cannonball fly before there forever banned?
• Win Your Freedom: "I Shall Be Free".
• World War III:
  • "Talkin' World War III Blues".
  Some time ago a crazy dream came to me
  I dreamt I was walkin' into World War Three
  I went to the doctor the very next day
  To see what kinda words he could say
  He said it was a bad dream
  I wouldn't worry 'bout it none, though
  They're dreams and they're only in your head.
  I said, "Hold it, Doc, a World War passed through my brain".
  He said, "Nurse, get your pad, this boy's insane".
  • "Masters of War"
  A world war can be won, you want me to believe

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