A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall

"A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall"
Song by Bob Dylan
from the album The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan
ReleasedMay 27, 1963 (1963-05-27)
RecordedDecember 6, 1962
GenreFolk
Length6:55
LabelColumbia
Songwriter(s)Bob Dylan
Producer(s)John Hammond
Official audio
"A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall" (Official Audio) on YouTube

"A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall" is a song written by American musician and Nobel laureate Bob Dylan in the summer of 1962 and recorded later that year for his second studio album, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan (1963). Its lyrical structure is based on the question-and-answer refrain pattern of the traditional British ballad "Lord Randall", published by Francis Child.

The song is characterized by symbolist imagery in the style of Arthur Rimbaud, communicating suffering, pollution, and warfare. Dylan has said that all of the lyrics were taken from the initial lines of songs that "he thought he would never have time to write."[1] Nat Hentoff quoted Dylan as saying that he immediately wrote the song in response to the Cuban Missile Crisis,[2] although in his memoir, Chronicles: Volume One, Dylan attributed his inspiration to the feeling he got when reading microfiche newspapers in the New York Public Library: "After a while you become aware of nothing but a culture of feeling, of black days, of schism, evil for evil, the common destiny of the human being getting thrown off course. It’s all one long funeral song."[3]

  1. ^ Overbye, Dennis (July 1, 2013). "Timeless Questions About the Universe". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved May 24, 2018.
  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference :0 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ Dylan, Bob (2004). Chronicles: Volume One. Simon & Schuster. p. 85. ISBN 9780743272582.