A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall

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"A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall" is a song written by the American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan. Mischaracterized, even by Dylan, as a response to the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962, he began writing it in June of 1962 and first performed it publicly that September. Its recording debut with Dylan alone on guitar and vocals was on Dylan's The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan (1963). "Hard Rain” borrows from Anglo Scottish ballads, such as Lord Randall, but it also breaks with tradition. The folk singer and close Dylan associate Dave Van Ronk called “Hard Rain” “the beginning of a revolution". To Beat poet Allen Ginsberg the song was Dylan taking up their torch. As for Dylan, he said his disparate readings, including American Civil War newspapers, Balzac, Jonathan Swift, contributed to the song’s "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."

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