Bob Dylan – Hard Rain

The band is out of tune and struggling to tune up between songs but it’s The Rolling Thunder Revue in all its ragged glory and a great live album.

I'm not quite sure why the Discogs credits for this album consistently omit Mick Ronson, who was omnipresent throughout both the 1975 and 1976 Rolling Thunder tours. For Heaven's sake, he is listed on the album and RCA thanked for his presence! He was an essential part of the sound, so it's bizarre that he's not listed.

Fantastic album, incidentally. Ignore the Dylan pseuds, it's wonderful.

Did He Really Say What You Think He Said?

Stop worrying that Bob Dylan was clairvoyant, and that the apocalypse is headed our way. His song is not a foreboding message of doom. When his words are examined with a more judicial eye one can see clearly that he is drawing us in to a place where we rarely travel, the world of critical thinking. Barthes and Derrida would both agree that to look at this text with tunnel vision is to miss the mark completely. With language, no author can speak to us and be sure we understand his/her thoughts. So many who reference the lyrics to A Hard Rain is Gonna’ Fall are adamant that the song is about war, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and America. But in fact, this is a mesmerizing voyage into the mystic music of the 60’s where reality is an ephemeral vapor that cannot be captured with mere words or by a single mind. Dylan allows us to drift within our imaginations to places we have never been but are nonetheless familiar.
As an example, I would ask the reader to simply consider just one word in the title of his song “A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall”, the word Hard. How did Dylan intend for us to envision that? Did he mean rigid, impenetrable, solidified, dense, strong, rocklike, or compacted, resistant, inflexible? Would it rain peanut butter or water? Did he tell us it would rain prosperity, education, cats and dogs, or was he talking about a pyroclastic flow from a volcano of love pelting down an acid rain of destruction on all that is unclean, hateful, and cruel. Certainly, we can fall hard in love with someone or something without facing doom and destruction. Sweet success comes to those who try hard. Hard core mountain climbers challenge themselves as the climb to the heights of the planet exhibiting beautiful and enviable determination. To discern the truth in this poetry requires that we explore not only the words, time and space in which the lyrics were written, but also the audience to whom he was appealing, and the culture of all those who would hear both the music and the translations of his prose. That alone, my friends, unwraps a billion different realities, notions, and dreams. Over 5 million copies of this song have been sold.
As we read on, his cryptic message expands and leaves us with only our own imaginations and visions. No two people will see the same “12 misty mountains”. From a mountain of cow dung steaming on a farm, a steep foggy incline in the Congo where gorillas fight for survival, a mountain of textbooks the cost of which will cloud our progress toward our goals, to hazy mountains of stress that fog our brains, these mountains are all possibilities which would have us stumbling. Were those mountains simply tree covered ranges in Appalachia or was he describing the fog of altitude sickness experienced as one stumbles towards Mount Everest’s peak? Is it possible that he meant all the above and more?
Dylan not only leads us on our own recherché journey, but he calls us to use our senses; hearing, seeing, and instructs us to interact with all. Dylan asks us to meet others where they are, not in our own tiny comfort zone. He leads us to not only see a burning body, or wounded heart but sends us into their being and makes us ask questions? Why did she give me a rainbow, who hurt his heart, was her body burning with ion, pain, or positivity? He does not answer our questions rather he lets us dive deep into the bewildering reality of others and throws us no lifeline back to the shores of our accustomed precepts . This hard rain has become a transcendental trip to human nature when we see, hear, and explore all that is both inside and outside of our own beliefs.

The lyrics and music are undervalued if one puts them into a tiny box wrapped in the American flag and dated 20th century music. This song has roots in medieval lyrics and music that transcend any meaning we might want to apply to Dylan’s work. “Lord Randall” and “Billy Boy” are Scottish romantic ballads, how are we to imagine that Dylan took those love songs and made them about the Cuban Missile Crisis? This work calls us to see humanity from all sides of the double helix.
Where some see death and destruction in Dylan’s song, there is a life source pulsating. A Black branch with blood that kept dripping could just as easily be a campfire spit scorched by the flames turning roadkill into sustenance for a starving camper. That the guns and swords are in the hands of children is a wonderful concept, for when they (the activist children of Marjory Stoneman) grow up, they can make the choice for peace and destroy all weapons. The future is in their hands. A swimming pools ladder covered in water is a life saving device and when broken tongues can no longer speak hateful words is it not a wonderful place for us to be? This text is full of enigmatic words with multiple definitions. The question is why?
This song holds hope, joy and optimism and promise for all who are willing to see it. The hard rain? Is it a downpour of opportunity, a thunder of applause, is it the roar of waves no longer polluted, shinning crystal clear and sparkling in the sun? When all the hateful whispers of gossip are no longer heard, will bullying come to am end?
The last stanza is, in fact, the most optimistic of all. Our hero has been awakened, has seen and heard and understands what needs to be done before the hard rain of opportunity and prosperity can fall. He reflects the power of comion, sympathy, pity, empathy, feeling, concern, considerateness, consideration, tenderness, tender-heartedness, kindness, kind-heartedness, sensitivity, insight, fellow feeling, brotherly love, neighborliness, decency, humanity, humanitarianism, humaneness, charity, goodwill, mercy, mercifulness, gentleness, tolerance, lenience, leniency, warmth, warm-heartedness, affection, love so all souls can see it and with that the strong rains of joy will fall on every inch of this amazing planet as he sings his song of redemption. He knows that a profound change will come when all humanity explores the heart and soul of this text, without bias, or preconceived ideas.
In conclusion we can see from the many aspects of this song that we must look beyond our own reality and to see the vision of a new and foreign reality. Words here hold a plethora of meanings and should never be taken at face value. Beyond the words in this paper, beyond this authors opinion, lie many nuances, codes, and symbols constructed by each and every individual who has lived in this earth and yet, this one song has a mystic hold on our imaginations, where ever, whenever, however we live, and transcends time, culture, and codes. This is a text for explorers and adventurers who are seeking to discover the shores of multiple truths in order to understand their own verisimilitude.

This may not be accepted as a great Dylan album, but it was actually one of the first I had along with Highway 61 and I thought they were both great!