“A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall…”

When Columbia Records released the first, self-titled album by Bob Dylan in 1962 it went largely unnoticed by the general public. Only about 5,000 copies were sold at the time.

But Columbia music producer John Hammond, who signed Dylan to the label, had faith in the young folk singer.

He ignored the jibes of other music executives who dubbed Dylan “Hammond’s Folly” and, in eight sessions strung out over the next twelve months, he recorded a second album with Dylan for Columbia.

That album, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, was released on May 27, 1963, three days after Dylan’s 22nd birthday.

It’s now considered one of the greatest and most influential albums in American music history.

The Freewheelin’ LP includes what remain some of Dylan’s best-known songs, such as “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “Girl from the North Country,” “Masters of War,” “Don't Think Twice, It’s All Right” and “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall.”

“Blowin’ In The Wind” became the most famous song from the album. But the one that stuck in my mind even more when I first listened to the album in 1963 was “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall.”

The song’s foreboding title, from a phrase in the chorus, was memorable in itself and has since been widely cited and repurposed.

I believe it struck a special chord with kids from the Baby Boom generation, like me.

We grew up at a time when a nuclear war between the US and the USSR seemed inevitable.

In elementary school, we practiced “duck and cover” drills and watched public service films like the one at right, in which a narrator and “Bert the Turtle” helpfully explain what to do when the A-bombs start falling.

Bert told us: “The flash of an atomic bomb can come at any time, no matter where you may be...When there is a flash, duck and cover, and do it fast!”

It seems a bit humorous now. But back then, during the height of the Cold War years, the possibility of an atomic Armageddon was a serious and constant fear.

Movies, TV shows, books, magazine stories and politically-oriented songs of the era helped stoke that fear by portraying what a nuclear holocaust and the hellish aftermath would be like.

That frightening scenario is also conjured up by “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall.”

Many of the lyrics are early examples of the elliptical, dreamlike language Dylan became better known for later. But the title phrase seemed to be a clear metaphor for falling atomic bombs and nuclear fallout.

This appears to be confirmed by the original liner notes for The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, written by journalist, historian and music critic Nat Hentoff. 

Hentoff said the song “was written during the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962 when those who allowed themselves to think of the impossible results of the Kennedy-Khrushchev confrontation were chilled by the imminence of oblivion.”

Dylan is then quoted as saying: “Every line in it is actually the start of a whole 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.”

Fortunately, Bob and the world survived. On May 24, 2014, he turned 73.

I’m not many years from that age myself.

Today, I can listen to “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” from a less paranoid perspective. But it still gives me the chills.

In case you haven’t read the lyrics, I’m reprinting them below.

By clicking this link or image at left, you can see Dylan perform the song in 1964, in an episode of the Canadian TV show Quest.

And, by clicking this link, you can listen to some of the many interesting cover versions that have been recorded by other musicians and groups over the years.

Here’s to you, Bob.  Hope you had a good birthday! Glad you’ve been wrong about that hard rain … so far.

 

“A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall” by Bob Dylan   

(Copyright © 1963 by Warner Bros. Inc.; renewed 1991 by Special Rider Music)

Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, where have you been, my darling young one?
I’ve stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains
I’ve walked and I’ve crawled on six crooked highways
I’ve stepped in the middle of seven sad forests
I’ve been out in front of a dozen dead oceans
I’ve been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard
And it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, it’s a hard, and it’s a hard
And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall

Oh, what did you see, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, what did you see, my darling young one?
I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it
I saw a highway of diamonds with nobody on it
I saw a black branch with blood that kept drippin’
I saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleedin’
I saw a white ladder all covered with water
I saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken
I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children
And it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard
And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall

And what did you hear, my blue-eyed son?
And what did you hear, my darling young one?
I heard the sound of a thunder, it roared out a warnin’
Heard the roar of a wave that could drown the whole world
Heard one hundred drummers whose hands were a-blazin’
Heard ten thousand whisperin’ and nobody listenin’
Heard one person starve, I heard many people laughin’
Heard the song of a poet who died in the gutter
Heard the sound of a clown who cried in the alley
And it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard
And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall

Oh, who did you meet, my blue-eyed son?
Who did you meet, my darling young one?
I met a young child beside a dead pony
I met a white man who walked a black dog
I met a young woman whose body was burning
I met a young girl, she gave me a rainbow
I met one man who was wounded in love
I met another man who was wounded with hatred
And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard
It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall

Oh, what’ll you do now, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, what’ll you do now, my darling young one?
I’m a-goin’ back out ’fore the rain starts a-fallin’
I’ll walk to the depths of the deepest black forest
Where the people are many and their hands are all empty
Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters
Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison
Where the executioner’s face is always well hidden
Where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten
Where black is the color, where none is the number
And I’ll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it
And reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it
Then I’ll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin’
But I’ll know my song well before I start singin’
And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard
It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall

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Related listening and reading…

“From my cold, dead hands” – Charlton Heston’s most famous and infamous non-movie quote

 

EDITOR’S NOTE: The recent deadly school shooting in Santa Fe, Texas, not long after the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, reminded me of the context of Charlton Heston’s first notable use of his famous/infamous quote “From my cold, dead hands.” It was in a speech at an NRA meeting held a few months after the 1989 Stockton, California schoolyard shooting, in which dozens of children were killed and wounded by a lunatic armed with a semi-automatic rifle. Heston used those words in other speeches after that, including one on May 20, 2000 that gained even wider attention because he aimed them at Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore. If Heston were still around, I suspect he would still be using the same defiant catchphrase to oppose any restrictions on guns in this country today, despite how many lives they have been used to take since 1989.

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For most of his life, Charlton Heston was best known for his long, highly successful career as an actor.

He appeared in more than 100 films, including some of Hollywood’s biggest blockbusters.

By the late 1980s, his movie career was starting to wane. But his prominence as a Second Amendment gun rights activist was just beginning. 

During the ‘60s, Heston had publicly supported Democratic politicians and liberal causes.

He marched with Martin Luther King, Jr. at civil rights events, supported labor union activities, and endorsed gun control legislation, such as President Lyndon Johnson’s Gun Control Act of 1968.

As he got older, Heston became increasingly conservative.

He became a supporter of Republican candidates, like Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan, and spoke out against “political correctness.”

He also became an active, high-profile supporter of the National Rifle Association and its political efforts to block gun control laws. 

In the 1980s, Heston appeared in NRA ads and direct mail campaigns. In 1998, he was elected President of the NRA. He served in that role until 2003.

It was during his years as a prominent NRA supporter that Heston popularized the gun rights slogan: “From my cold, dead hands.”

Those words became his most widely-known non-movie quotation. He is even sometimes credited with coining it. But he didn't.

It’s based on previous slogans used by gun rights groups as early as the mid-1970s.

For example, an old NRA bumper sticker Heston was well aware of said: “I’ll give you my gun when you take it from my cold, dead hands.”

It was a catchy way of suggesting that gun owners were willing to literally fight to the death to prevent the government from “taking away their guns.”

Charlton Heston first used the last five words of the bumper sticker line in a notable public forum on April 29, 1989, at the NRA’s annual convention in St. Louis.

Three months before that, on January 17, 1989, an unemployed welder named Patrick Edward Purdy had used a semi-automatic rifle to shoot and kill five school children and wound 32 others on the playground at the Cleveland Elementary School in Stockton, California.

This shocking and, at the time, still rare example of a mass school shooting generated a media firestorm.

It soon led to calls for state and federal action to ban semi-automatic weapons.

In his speech at the NRA’s April 29, 1989 convention, Heston argued that proposals for such bans were sparked by “media bias” against guns and would be unworkable, unacceptable infringements on the Second Amendment rights of American citizens.

After Heston finished the speech, he was presented with a silver-and-gold plated replica of a flintlock rifle, as a sign of appreciation from the NRA.

Smiling happily, Heston held up the gun and said: “I have only one more comment to make: From my cold, dead hands.”

Heston later used “From my cold, dead hands” in other speeches at NRA events, usually as part of his closing lines.

One particularly high-profile use was in the speech he gave at the NRA’s May 20, 2000 annual convention, which came during the 2000 presidential campaign and garnered considerable media attention.

In that speech, Heston criticized Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore for his support of stronger gun control laws.

At the end, he lifted the flintlock he was given in 1989 over his head and said:

“As we set out this year to defeat the divisive forces that would take freedom away, I want to say those fighting words for everyone within the sound of my voice to hear and to heed, and especially for you, Mr. Gore: ‘From my cold, dead hands!’”             

“From my cold, dead hands” has continued to be a favorite slogan of gun rights advocates — and a target of mockery by gun control advocates.

It has also spawned numerous take-offs and variations involving things other than guns.

Some of my favorite examples are listed in the post on my QuoteCounterquote.com site at this link.

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Related reading and viewing…

“A little learning is a dangerous thing.” (A little knowledge, too, but that’s a misquote.)

Most people have heard the old line of poetry: “A little learning is a dangerous thing.”

It became a proverbial saying that has been — and is still is — used and repurposed in many ways.

The common variation is “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.” However, that’s an misquote of the original line written by British poet Alexander Pope in his work An Essay on Criticism.

This famous “essay” is actually a book-length poem.

Pope first published it anonymously exactly three hundred years ago today on May 15, 1711.

It’s composed in iambic pentameter. That’s the poetic style with words that have an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one, thus sounding like “da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM”.

There are two other famous lines in Pope’s An Essay on Criticism almost everyone knows, even they’ve never read the poem.

One is the “To err is human, to forgive divine.” The other is “Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.”

If you have read Pope’s An Essay on Criticism, you know it’s not an easy task.

It’s composed in a flowery, antique style and full of obscure references that make it hard for modern readers to grasp.

For example, here’s a longer passage that includes the famed “little learning” quote:

“A little learning is a dangerous thing
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.
Fired at first sight with what the muse imparts,
In fearless youth we tempt the heights of arts
While from the bounded level of our mind
Short views we take nor see the lengths behind
But more advanced behold with strange surprise,
New distant scenes of endless science rise!”

This type of poesy is a bit reminiscent of Shakespeare. And, Shakespeare wrote some of his famous sonnets and verses of his plays in iambic pentameter.

But, personally, I find Shakespeare’s work much more enjoyable to read or hear than Pope’s and generally easier to comprehend.

With apologies to my high school and college English teachers, Pope’s poem An Essay on Criticism sounds to me like:

“Blah-BLAH, blah-BLAH...A little learning is a dangerous thing...blah-BLAH, blah-BLAH...To err is human...blah-BLAH, blah-BLAH...fools rush in...blah-BLAH, blah-BLAH.”

Of course, I only absorbed a little learning back in those days. (Hey, it was the Sixties.)

I encourage you to read the entire poem for yourself and draw your own conclusions about its Pierian spring of poetic wisdom.

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