Bob Dylan ~ Chimes of Freedom ~ cover

© Copyright music and lyrics reproduced by kind permission of Special Rider -- for original, exclusive performances by Bob Dylan, check-out the official channel at www.youtube.com/bobdylan.

"Chimes of Freedom" was written in early 1964, shortly after the release of the The Times They Are a-Changin' album, during a road trip that Dylan took across America with musician Paul Clayton, journalist Pete Karman and road manager Victor Maimudes. It was written at about the same time as "Mr. Tambourine Man", which is similarly influenced by the symbolism of Arthur Rimbaud. There are a number of conflicting stories about exactly when during the trip this song was written. One story is that Dylan wrote the song on a portable typewriter in the back of a car the day after visiting civil rights activists Bernice Johnson and Cordell Reagon in Atlanta, Georgia. However, a handwritten lyric sheet from the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in Toronto, Canada that was reproduced in The Bob Dylan Scrapbook 1956-1966 indicates that this story cannot be entirely true. Dylan was in Toronto in late January and early February, before the road trip on which the song was supposedly written. So, although parts of the song may well have been written on the road trip, Dylan had started working on the song earlier. In any case, the first public performance of the song took place in early 1964, either at the Civic Auditorium in Denver on February 15, or at the Berkley Community Theater in San Francisco on February 22. "Chimes of Freedom" was an important part of Dylan's live concert repertoire throughout most of 1964, although by the latter part of that year he had ceased performing it and would not do so again until 1987, when he revived the song for some concerts with the Grateful Dead and with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.

The master take of the song was recorded by Dylan during the recording sessions for his Another Side of Bob Dylan album on June 9, 1964. It took seven takes before Dylan got the song right, which is somewhat odd since it was one of only three songs that he recorded during the session that he had already performed live in front of a concert audience.

The song is a lyrical expression of feelings evoked while watching a lightning storm. The singer and a companion are caught in a thunderstorm in mid-evening and the pair of them duck into a doorway, where they are both transfixed by one lightning flash after another. The natural phenomena of thunder and lightning appear to take on auditory and ultimately emotional aspects to the singer, with the thunder experienced as the tolling of bells and the lightning bolts appearing as chimes. Eventually, the sights and sounds in the sky become intermixed in the mind of the singer, as evidenced by the lines:

Majestic bells of bolts struck shadows in the sounds,
Seeming to be the chimes of freedom flashing.

Over the course of the song, the sun slowly rises, and the lyrics can be interpreted as a proclamation of the hope that as the sky clears after a difficult night, all the world's people will rise together to proclaim their survival to the sound of the church bells.

In Chimes of Freedom: The Politics of Bob Dylan's Art, author Mike Marqusee notes that the song marks a transition between Dylan's earlier protest song style (a litany of the down-trodden and oppressed, in the second half of each verse) and his later more free-flowing poetic style (the fusion of images of lightning, storm and bells in the first half). In this later style, which is influenced by 19th century French symbolist poet Arthur Rimbaud, the poetry is more allusive, filled with "chains of falshing images." In this song, rather than support a specific cause as in his earlier protest songs, he finds solidarity with all people who are downtrodden or otherwise treated unjustly, including unwed mothers, the disabled, refugees, outcasts, those unfairly jailed, "the luckless, the abandoned and forsaked," and finally in the last verse "the countless confused, accused, misused, strung out ones and worse" and "every hung-up person in the whole wide universe." By having the chimes of freedom toll for both rebels and rakes, the song is more inclusive in its sympathies than previous protest songs, such as "The Times They Are A-Changin'", written just the prior year. After "Chimes of Freedom", Dylan's protest songs would no longer depict social reality in the black and white terms he renounces in "My Back Pages" but would rather use satirical surrealism to make their points.

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[glovemonkey]

have you got a cold bud?

[ramblingamblindavo]

good voice...probly better than bobs...can you spare some grease

[AshAlmond]

Good cover. Please check out my cover version. I like this!

[martinyeomans8]

@MrXreenan fuck yeah brother !, "i have a dream" hahaha

[MrXreenan]

@martinyeomans8 No, but I know we're the only ones who have courage to say what we think about it. hehehehe

[martinyeomans8]

@MrXreenan hahahaha yeah you're right , are we the only ones that think this is horrible and make ears bleed?

[MrXreenan]

@martinyeomans8 I think he swallowed a girl of 8 years old.

[martinyeomans8]

@MrXreenan ME TOO ! HAHAHAHA this sucks ass !

[MrXreenan]

I hope this is a joke.