Sept 6 AOTD: Bob Dylan - The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan - The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan

1963




Link to Listen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWwgrjjIMXA&list=PLp4M9H57nRcsq2G1c_60FDeVruqLx0bpx

It's hard to believe that this is not only Dylan's second album, but his FIRST with all his own material (with the exception of one cut).  On his debut "Bob Dylan," he had followed the tradition of folk music artists by covering other's material, hence the passing on of music of the common people - the folk.

Now he was creating the anthems of every kind of folk: those thinking twice about military engagements, those struggling with poverty, and (amongst many other common struggling folks) those seeking equality, justice and freedom.  And he reaches all "folks" - all of us - on the first track, "Blowin' in the Wind" with a series of rhetorical questions that are also images, and rhetorical answers.  Perhaps the most resounding answer is "ENOUGH!" Already! But he was already, at the young age of 20, wise enough to know that people had to find the answers themselves ... they had to "find the wind," he told a Rolling Stone reporter.

Rarely has a song, even in the heaviest metal, so scathing as "Master of War" been written or sung.  He peels back the politics of war to bare the truth of older, aloof, wealthier, soulless men mercilessly discarding the young in the wars they wage.  It's the third song in and he's already earned the Nobel prize for poetry he would not receive till 2016.

For me the apotheosis of the album is reached at "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall," where he, once again, uses a series of questions of some innocent prodigal child returning (Where have you been ...?" and this time another voice answers the questions, and the images are harrowing!  But also entrancing in their poetic strength.

Here was the beginning of a revolution in songwriting that is still being followed today.