Isolated vocals from ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ by Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan was said to have had a mind like a sponge in the late 1950s and early ’60s as he soaked up all he could from live gigs and borrowed records. All the while, a filing cabinet with his beloved folk forebears’ chord patterns and lyrics would begin to manifest itself in the hardwiring of his marvellous brain.
Dylan’s particular interest in Woody Guthrie would draw him from Minneapolis to New York in the early 1960s. During his early months of couch surfing and gig wrangling, Dylan managed to meet and befriend his idol in the final years of his life. He would sit at Guthrie’s bedside, where he was tragically dying from Huntington’s disease, and play some of his songs to him. One of these was the touching tribute, ‘Song to Woody’, which based its core structure on Guthrie’s song, ‘1939 Massacre’.
Much of Dylan’s early demos and his eponymous debut album of 1962 would follow a similarly derivative pattern, whether it was the lyric structure or chord pattern. This innovative scaling of giants’ shoulders was a welcomed aspect of folk education, which is known for its countless standards of unknown origin. A prime example of this was his cover of ‘House of the Rising Sun’, a classic folk tale of a life lost to sin in New Orleans.
By the time Dylan returned to the studio to record his follow-up to Bob Dylan in 1963, his songwriting abilities had grown tenfold. The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan showed the young musician at an early peak as he looked to bring more of his own identity to the music. With it came the debut of Dylan’s power for evocative satire and poignant political balladry.
This second album hit a satirical high-point in ‘Talkin’ World War III Blues’, which tells the story of a man who takes himself to the doctors with concern over his apocalyptic dreams. In the dreams, he finds himself as one of very few survivors roaming a desolate landscape after a nuclear war. Throughout the track’s 12 verses, Dylan uses his quick wit to outline the ludicrous reality of 20th-century warfare.
In contrast, the album presents these serious themes in a plaintive mood elsewhere. In ‘A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall’, for instance, Dylan brings a collection of pertinent issues to the fore, including warfare, the struggle for civil rights, pollution and political corruption.
Perhaps the album’s most memorable moment is the era-defining protest song, ‘Blowin’ In the Wind’. To this day, it remains one of Dylan’s most covered songs, with its anti-war message sadly just as relevant today as it was in 1962.
In June 1962, the lyrics were published in Sing Out! with Dylan’s commentary: “There ain’t too much I can say about this song except that the answer is blowing in the wind. It ain’t in no book or movie or TV show or discussion group. Man, it’s in the wind — and it’s blowing in the wind. Too many of these hip people are telling me where the answer is, but oh, I won’t believe that. I still say it’s in the wind, and just like a restless piece of paper, it’s got to come down some … But the only trouble is that no one picks up the answer when it comes down, so not too many people get to see and know … and then it flies away. I still say that some of the biggest criminals are those that turn their heads away when they see wrong and know it’s wrong. I’m only 21 years old, and I know that there’s been too many wars … You people over 21, you’re older and smarter.”
Listen to the classic protest song as never before through Bob Dylan’s isolated vocal tracks below.
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