08-17-2016, 10:02 AM
(This post was last modified: 08-17-2016, 11:17 AM by Eric the Green.)
This comparative Autumn lull in the winds of the saecular Summer Solstice came between the greatest music explosion ever as the first year of the Awakening arrived, and the summer season before it (mid Spring to mid-Summer 1963) which was also full of great songs. It was the height of the surfing craze, and at the same time the climax of the folk music revival, and the breakthrough arrival of the Motown Sound. Add to that, two of my favorite and most popular country songs.
The climactic song of the folk revival was written by Bob Dylan in April 1962, and released on his album Freewheelin' in May 1963. Next month Peter Paul and Mary (whose manager was also Dylan's) recorded the definitive version of "Blowin' in the Wind"-- just as Governor Wallace stood in the school house door, thus prompting JFK to go on TV and propose the civil rights bill in his greatest speech. And it reached #2 in August, just before the March (or "walk") on Washington where Martin Luther King Jr. gave his greatest speech, called "I Have a Dream," and where Peter Paul & Mary sang the song. Quite a confluence of events.
This song asks all the greatest questions of our time. Even the poetic lines about the dove and about not being able to see the sky were written just as Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring inaugurated the environmental movement. And the line about how many deaths does it take would resonate through the movement to stop the War in Vietnam.
How many roads must a man walk down
Before you call him a man?
Yes, ’n’ how many seas must a white dove sail
Before she sleeps in the sand?
Yes, ’n’ how many times must the cannonballs fly
Before they’re forever banned?
The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind
The answer is blowin’ in the wind
How many years can a mountain exist
Before it’s washed to the sea?
Yes, ’n’ how many years can some people exist
Before they’re allowed to be free?
Yes, ’n’ how many times can a man turn his head
Pretending he just doesn’t see?
The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind
The answer is blowin’ in the wind
How many times must a man look up
Before he can see the sky?
Yes, ’n’ how many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry?
Yes, ’n’ how many deaths will it take till he knows
That too many people have died?
The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind
The answer is blowin’ in the wind
Copyright © 1962 by Warner Bros. Inc.; renewed 1990 by Special Rider Music
http://bobdylan.com/songs/blowin-wind/
Some people say the meaning of the title is ambiguous. But Bob Dylan had already explained (apparently inspired by Woody Guthrie's book) that people can get the word about what needs to change if they are open to see it flying around them like papers blowing around in the wind on the streets. "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."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blowin%27_in_the_Wind
And he sang something similar just months later, that the times are changin,' and two years later, that something's happening here but you don't know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones. The next year I could feel it, and I said to myself "something's in the air." Four years after that in 1970, the group Thunderclap Newman sang "There's something in the air, because the Revolution's here, and you know that it's right" in the movie The Magic Christian. It's what it feels like when any great Revolution comes. And Pope John Paul II, when Bob Dylan performed his song for him, remarked that the idea goes back to Jesus, who said the holy spirit blows like the wind. And Dylan described his song as a "spiritual," its melody partly based on an anti-slavery spiritual from the 1830s. The melody also resembles the other civil rights anthem "We Shall Overcome."
https://youtu.be/RTZoJ01FpD8
"Something in the Air" was a number one hit for The Who's Pete Townshend's other band Thunderclap Newman in 1969. Townshend created the band to showcase songs written by former The Who chauffeur, also a drummer/singer/guitarist/songwriter, John "Speedy" Keen.
The climactic song of the folk revival was written by Bob Dylan in April 1962, and released on his album Freewheelin' in May 1963. Next month Peter Paul and Mary (whose manager was also Dylan's) recorded the definitive version of "Blowin' in the Wind"-- just as Governor Wallace stood in the school house door, thus prompting JFK to go on TV and propose the civil rights bill in his greatest speech. And it reached #2 in August, just before the March (or "walk") on Washington where Martin Luther King Jr. gave his greatest speech, called "I Have a Dream," and where Peter Paul & Mary sang the song. Quite a confluence of events.
This song asks all the greatest questions of our time. Even the poetic lines about the dove and about not being able to see the sky were written just as Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring inaugurated the environmental movement. And the line about how many deaths does it take would resonate through the movement to stop the War in Vietnam.
How many roads must a man walk down
Before you call him a man?
Yes, ’n’ how many seas must a white dove sail
Before she sleeps in the sand?
Yes, ’n’ how many times must the cannonballs fly
Before they’re forever banned?
The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind
The answer is blowin’ in the wind
How many years can a mountain exist
Before it’s washed to the sea?
Yes, ’n’ how many years can some people exist
Before they’re allowed to be free?
Yes, ’n’ how many times can a man turn his head
Pretending he just doesn’t see?
The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind
The answer is blowin’ in the wind
How many times must a man look up
Before he can see the sky?
Yes, ’n’ how many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry?
Yes, ’n’ how many deaths will it take till he knows
That too many people have died?
The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind
The answer is blowin’ in the wind
Copyright © 1962 by Warner Bros. Inc.; renewed 1990 by Special Rider Music
http://bobdylan.com/songs/blowin-wind/
Some people say the meaning of the title is ambiguous. But Bob Dylan had already explained (apparently inspired by Woody Guthrie's book) that people can get the word about what needs to change if they are open to see it flying around them like papers blowing around in the wind on the streets. "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."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blowin%27_in_the_Wind
And he sang something similar just months later, that the times are changin,' and two years later, that something's happening here but you don't know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones. The next year I could feel it, and I said to myself "something's in the air." Four years after that in 1970, the group Thunderclap Newman sang "There's something in the air, because the Revolution's here, and you know that it's right" in the movie The Magic Christian. It's what it feels like when any great Revolution comes. And Pope John Paul II, when Bob Dylan performed his song for him, remarked that the idea goes back to Jesus, who said the holy spirit blows like the wind. And Dylan described his song as a "spiritual," its melody partly based on an anti-slavery spiritual from the 1830s. The melody also resembles the other civil rights anthem "We Shall Overcome."
https://youtu.be/RTZoJ01FpD8
"Something in the Air" was a number one hit for The Who's Pete Townshend's other band Thunderclap Newman in 1969. Townshend created the band to showcase songs written by former The Who chauffeur, also a drummer/singer/guitarist/songwriter, John "Speedy" Keen.