Dylan Song by Song: "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall" Quiz

Answer: The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan

The song was recorded in 1962 and released on Bob Dylan's second studio album, "The Freewhelin' Bob Dylan" in May of 1963. The album was produced by John Hammond and Tom Wilson and followed Dylan's self-titled debut album.

"Any Day Now" is a Joan Baez album featuring covers of Bob Dylan songs.

Answer: Newspapers on microfiche

In "Chronicles," Bob Dylan recalls the time he spent, at about the age of twenty, in the New York Public Library:

"In one of the upstairs reading rooms I started reading articles in newspapers on microfilm from 1855 to about 1865 to see what daily life was like...You wonder how people so united by geography and religious ideals could become such bitter enemies. 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..."

"A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall" was similarly a "funeral song."

Answer: The Cuban Missile Crisis

JFK was assassinated in 1963. The Berlin Wall came down in 1991. Stalin died in 1953.

The Cuban Missile Crisis was a confrontation between the Soviet Union and the United States that happened when Soviet ballistic missiles were deployed in Cuba. This confrontation, it was feared at the time, could escalate into nuclear war.

Even Dylan himself has been quoted (in the sleeve notes to "The Free Wheelin' Bob Dylan") as saying the song was inspired by the crisis. However, the Cuban Missile Crisis could not have inspired the song, as the crisis occurred in October of 1962 and Dylan first performed the song on September 22, 1962 at Carnegie Hall as part of a hootenanny organized by the folk musician Pete Seeger.

Answer: He has been poisoned by his lover

Lord Randal's lover has fed him poison eels. There are many variations on the ballad in other cultures, but, like Dylan's song, it takes the format of question and answer, mother to son. The ballad, which was published as part of an anthology collected by Francis James Child and is also included in The Roud Folk Song Index, opens:

"O where ha you been, Lord Randal, my son?
And where ha you been, my handsome young man?"
"I ha been at the greenwood; mother, mak my bed soon,
For I'm wearied wi hunting, and fain wad lie down."

Answer: false

Sotheby's catalog note on Bob Dylan's working autograph manuscript of this song notes, "Dylan has naturally provided a wrinkle to his own explanation of the song's origins in this nuclear anxiety, remarking to Studs Terkel in 1963 that 'It's not atomic rain, it's just hard rain. It's not the fall out rain. It isn't that at all. I just mean some sort of end that's just gotta happen.'"

A cover of this song, performed by Edie Brickell & The New Bohemians, was used for the soundtrack of the 1989 war drama "Born on the Fourth of July." The movie was directed by Oliver Stone and starred Tom Cruise.

Answer: Alliteration

Alliteration is when words, arranged in quick succession, all begin with the same letter or sound. This literary device helps create an agreeable cadence in poetry. Bob Dylan also frequently uses anaphora in this song, which is the repetition of a word phrase at the beginning of a series of sentences, as when Dylan repeats "I saw a" at the start of six of the lines in the second stanza, or "I met" at the start of six of the lines of the fourth stanza.

Answer: False

The opening two lines of each stanza rhymes "son" and "one," but the rest of the lines rarely rhyme. For example, the first stanza continues with unrhymed lines:

"I've stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains
I've walked and I've crawled on six crooked highways
I've stepped in the middle of seven sad forests
I've been out in front of a dozen dead oceans."

This is unusual for Dylan song's, which typically follow some kind of rhyme scheme. The blog "Bob Dylan's Skipping Reels of Rhyme" notes that the song "is interesting for its lack of rhyming. . . its cadence and repetition carry it along in a sing-song fashion, the kind we may associate with folk and ballad."

Answer: And what did you eat, my darling young one?

Dylan's song is written in a question and response format, with each of five stanzas beginning with a different question repeated twice with the addressee described first as "my blue-eyed son" and then as "my darling young one." The mother asks where her son has been, what he has seen and heard, who he met, and what he will do now. Each stanza then ends with the same refrain:

"And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard
It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall."

Answer: graveyard

"Ten thousand miles" sticks in the mind, perhaps because it harkens back to the 18th century ballad "Fare Thee Well," which contains the lines:

"Fare you well my dear, I must be gone
And leave you for a while
If I roam away I'll come back again
Though I roam ten thousand miles, my dear
Though I roam ten thousand miles."

This in turn recalls Robert Burns's famous poem, "A Red, Red Rose":

"And fare thee weel, my only luve!
And fare thee weel awhile!
And I will come again, my luve,
Though it were ten thousand mile."

Here, though the blue-eyed son has roamed ten thousand miles from his mother (rather than his sweetheart) and in the "mouth of a graveyard," adding to the sense of isolation the song creates and its end-of-life, end-of-the-world atmosphere.

Answer: hatred

"I met one man who was wounded in love
I met another man who was wounded with hatred."

According to the official Bob Dylan website, Dylan has performed this song live 457 times from September 20, 1962 to June 17, 2017. Versions of the song have been recorded on "The Rolling Thunder Revue," "The Bootleg Series" volume 5, 6, 7 & 9, "Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits Volume II," and the 2007 "Dylan."

Answer: A young boy who gave him a flower

Rather, the son answers, "I met a young girl, she gave me a rainbow":

"Oh, who did you meet, my blue-eyed son?
Who did you meet, my darling young one?
I met a young child beside a dead pony
I met a white man who walked a black dog
I met a young woman whose body was burning
I met a young girl, she gave me a rainbow."

A note on a revised transcript of this song in Sotheby's catalogue says, "There is a consensus that 'A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall' represents the first full blossom of Dylan as poet. The song's 'lines of terror' aren't the finger-pointing literal ballads of the folk movement, but the cascade of symbolist/surrealist images that would later introduce listeners to 'Mr. Tambourine Man' and the bleak 'Desolation Row'."

Dylan may have been inspired by the symbolist poetry of Arthur Rimbaud, whom he mentions in "You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go."

Answer: a newborn baby

"I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it
I saw a highway of diamonds with nobody on it."

"Wild wolves" is another one of the many examples of alliteration in this song.

Rolling Stone magazine rated this song the number two greatest Bob Dylan song of all time, calling it a "seven-minute epic that warns against a coming apocalypse while cataloging horrific visions . . . with the wide-eyed fervor of John the Revelator."

Answer: guns and sharp swords

"I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children
And it's a hard, and it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard
And it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall."

Leon Russell covered "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall" on his second solo album, "Leon Russell and the Shelter People," released in 1971. He also released the cover as a single from the album. The album itself peaked at number 17 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 200.

Answer: eleven pipers whose pipes were all pipin'

"And what did you hear, my blue-eyed son?
And what did you hear, my darling young one?
I heard the sound of a thunder, it roared out a warnin'
Heard the roar of a wave that could drown the whole world
Heard one hundred drummers whose hands were a-blazin'
Heard ten thousand whisperin' and nobody listenin'"

"Eleven pipers piping" is a line from the Christmas carol, "The Twelve Days of Christmas."

Dylan makes frequent use of numbers in this song (seven, one hundred, ten thousand, a dozen, etc.), which is reminiscent of Biblical apocalyptic literature, though it is unclear if there is any symbolic significance attached to Dylan's number choices.

Answer: a poet

"Heard one person starve, I heard many people laughin'
Heard the song of a poet who died in the gutter
Heard the sound of a clown who cried in the alley."

Dylan played "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall" at "The Concert for Bangladesh" held on August 1, 1971 at Madison Square Garden. The concert was held to raise money to aid refugees from East Pakistan after the Bangladesh Liberation War. George Harrison organized it, and Bob Dylan, Badfinger, Eric Clapton, Ringo Starr, Leon Russell, and several other big names participated.

Answer: poison

"Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters
Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison."

Pellets, poison, and prison are alliterative as are damp and dirty.

Dylan initially wrote this song as a poem on a typewriter in the Greenwich village apartment of American folk singer-songwriter Tom Paxton and peace activist Wavy Gravy (Hugh Nanton Romney Jr.). An early draft of the work appeared in the quarterly journal of folk music "Sing Out!"

Joan Baez covered this song on her 1965 folk album "Farewell, Angelina," which takes its title from another Bob Dylan song.

Answer: the executioner's

"Where the executioner's face is always well hidden
Where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten."

Pete Seeger covered this song on his 1963 live album "We Shall Overcome," which was recorded at a live concert at Carnegie Hall on June 8, 1963. On the same album, he covered Bob Dylan's "Who Killed Davy Moore."

Janet Planet recorded a jazzy version of "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall" on her 2010 album "Janet Planet Sings the Songs of Bob Dylan Songbook Volume 1." The song has also been covered by Winston Apple, The Kennedys, David Munyon, and the Peter Viskinde Band, among many others.

Answer: none

"Where black is the color, where none is the number.
And I'll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it
And reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it
Then I'll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin'
But I'll know my song well before I start singin'
And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard
It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall."

Melanie (Safka), known for her cover of the Rolling Stones' "Ruby Tuesday," recorded a cover version of this Dylan song on her 1991 album "Precious Cargo." Anne Wilson, formerly of Heart, also covered this song on her 2007 solo album "Hope & Glory" with American-Canadian singer Rufus Wainwright and American singer-songwriter Shawn Colvin.

Answer: Bryan Ferry

The album "These Foolish Things," peaked at number five on the UK Albums Chart. His version provides a peppy pop contrast to Dylan's version on "Freewheelin' Bob Dylan." American music critic Dave Marsh suggests this treatment of the song is meant to raise the question of what deserves to be "dismissed as trash" and what should be "elevated as art." Roxy Music (roxymusicsongs.com) says, "Bryan Ferry takes Dylan's anti-war anthem and turns it inside out, downplaying and de-emphasizing the poetry while heightening the music and tunefulness of the original."

Answer: Patti Smith

The ceremony was held on December 10, 2016, and Patti Smith performed the song with an orchestra accompanying her. Known as the "punk poet laureate," Smith released her debut album, "Horses," in 1975. She is also a National Book Award recipient.