Bob Dylan's The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan - your favourite track?

For this week's poll, we swing back to 1963. Your favourite track? And why's it your favourite?

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Previous polls in this series:
• Bob Dylan's Bringing It All Back Home - your favourite track? »
• Bob Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited - your favourite track? »
• Bob Dylan's John Wesley Harding - your favourite track? »
• Bob Dylan's Self Portrait - your favourite track? »
• Bob Dylan's New Morning - your favourite track? »
• Bob Dylan's Planet Waves - your favourite track? »
• Bob Dylan's Blood on the Tracks - your favourite track? »
• Bob Dylan's Desire - your favourite track? »
• Bob Dylan's Street-Legal - your favourite track? »
• Bob Dylan's Slow Train Coming - your favourite track? »
• Bob Dylan's Saved - your favourite track? »
• Bob Dylan's Shot of Love - your favourite track? »
• Bob Dylan's Infidels - your favourite track? »
• Bob Dylan's Empire Burlesque - your favourite track? »
• Bob Dylan's Down in the Groove - your favourite track? »
• Bob Dylan's Oh Mercy - your favourite track? »
• Bob Dylan's Under the Red Sky - your favourite track? »
• Bob Dylan's Good as I Been to You - your favourite track? »
• Bob Dylan's World Gone Wrong - your favourite track? »
• Bob Dylan's Time Out of Mind - your favourite track? »
• Bob Dylan's Love and Theft - your favourite track? »
• Bob Dylan's Together Through Life - your favourite track? »
• Bob Dylan's Christmas in the Heart - your favourite track? »

Search function round-up: http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/search/38885594/?q=bob+dylan%27s+favourite+track&o=relevance&c[title_only]=1

Thank you for voting.

 

A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall. This was my "hit by a ton of bricks" track in September 1985. Doing some errands on a Saturday afternoon with the car radio on and this came on. As did the lightbulb.

 

Boy, that's a tough one, "Girl from the North Country" or "Don't Think Twice" for me, a pick 'em between those two. I'm taking "North Country" 'cause I'm an old romantic.

 

I'm interested how 'Blowin' in the Wind' rates. It might be an 'important' song and a 'classic', but is it a 'good' song?

 

Girl from the North Country

 

My heart says "Bob Dylan's Dream" but my brain says "Masters of War". My brain won. The problem the song bravely points out has gotten worse in the intervening 53 years, so it is (sadly) eternally relevant. And I love how he doesn't pull punches - "I hope that you die" - man!

 

I like the stark passion written into that line, but doesn't it mean he risks becoming the thing he hates?

 

I think one can differentiate between hoping someone dies and actively seeking their death.

 

"Masters Of War"

 

It's a good song. It may not be the best song on the album. But it's a good song.

 

I was taken aback when I heard Judy Collins' 1963 version of Masters of War -- she left off the entire final "death wish" verse, and ended with the line "your money will never buy back your soul," instead. Judy, or her producer(s), must have considered Dylan's full lyrics to be too far over the line.

 

Dylan himself dropped the "Even Jesus would never forgive what you do" verse, although that may be because he felt he could no longer be accused of being young.

 

Oh it's def a good song, it's a great song. The question was "my favorite" and I chose Hard Rain. It made a big impression on me in both the film and the album of the Concert For Bangla Desh.

 

I really like Girl from the North Country but I had to go with Masters of War.

 

While this album as a whole is deeply special to me, Girl From The North Country still holds the most resonance with me.

 

Neither I nor Bob are particularly violent people, but I share his sentiment about the Masters of War. War-mongering capitalists/imperialists are responsible for the completely unnecessary deaths and doomed lives of many, many people. Such evil for the pursuit of profit for a few warrants a death sentence.

 

"Girl from the North Country"

 

Solid Road

 

Ray, I love your thinking.

I went with Heart on "Bob Dylan's Dream".
Mostly because as an old fart, I lost too many felow travelers along the way, but primarily because I just watched the Levon Helm doc "I Didn't Get Into It For My Health". Which reminded me of all that great fellowship between The Band and The Band's relationship with Dylan in the late 60's early 70's. And how my rose colored glasses of those times turn out to only be a pipe dream. Bit for a time what a dream.

 

In 100 yrs there will be a few songs that carry over as standbys and for the ages. One of those will be "Blowin In The Wind".

My favorite is "Girl From The North Country"

And I also love the picking on "Dont Think Twice"

 

'Hard Rain' for me. It wasn't always so, I would have said 'Don't Think Twice' or 'Masters of War' at one time. Those songs being on there led me to pick up the album, but now its 'Hard Rain' all the way.

 

I really like Freewheelin' possibly the most from his first 4 album acoustic-folk phase. There's a lot of great songs such as "Don't Think Twice...", "Masters of War", "Corrina, Corrina", "Bob Dylan's Blues", "Blowin' in the Wind" and "Oxford Town", but "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall", for me is the definitive cut from this record. Dylan's word imagery is developing and would lead the way for some of his best works when the second phase, electric era kicked in. Even though the song is rather locked into a square chord progression, the lyrical scheme ties in together with the song's simple arrangement and builds it into quite a compelling and soon-to-be legendary Dylan number.

 

So far six songs have no votes at all, making this one 0f the least consistent Dylan albums according to these polls...

Interesting to compare with Highway 61 Revisited or Oh Mercy where even the less popular songs were still much loved.

 

"Don't Think Twice" - difficult emotions expressed with eloquence.
I have always found "Hard Rain" a bit preachy, but loved the Rolling Thunder version and love the version on Bangladesh. I would also like to hear it performed in 3/4 time.


And this is what the album looks like:

 

Honey Just Allow Me One More Chance - that track just jumped out at me the first time I heard it more than 50 years ago. Since it isn't played on the radio at all really, it has remained fresh for me.