"Blowin' in the Wind" is one of the most influential protest songs of all time — but what does the man who wrote it think it's all about?
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00:00Blown in the Wind is one of the most influential protest songs of all time, but what does the
00:06man who wrote it think it's all about?
00:08In April 1962, Bob Dylan came running into Gertie's Folk City, a Greenwich Village
00:14music venue, and found his friend Gil Turner, who was about to go on stage with the New
00:19World Singers.
00:20According to Clinton Halen's book Revolution in the Air, Dylan told Turner,
00:25Gil, I got a new song that I just finished.
00:27Wanna hear it?
00:28That song was Blown in the Wind.
00:30At the time, it marked a significant departure from Dylan's previous songwriting output.
00:35His debut album only had two original songs, and neither had the depth of this new tune.
00:41Turner was blown away by Blown in the Wind, though.
00:44He sang the song that night in what would be its first performance before live audience.
00:48The crowd had the same reaction as Turner when he first heard it, too.
00:52They were awed.
00:53That summer, in an interview with the folk music magazine Sing Out, Dylan tried to explain
00:58the meaning of the song's lyrics.
01:00He told the publication,
01:01There ain't too much I can say about this song except that the answer is blowing in
01:05the wind.
01:06It ain't in no book or movie or TV show or discussion group.
01:09Dylan had written Blown in the Wind in two short stints in April 1962.
01:15He later claimed he composed the original two-verse version in about ten minutes, with
01:19the middle verse coming a few weeks later.
01:22Dylan later told journalist Mark Rowland that the song was based on a traditional spiritual
01:26called No More Auction Block for Me.
01:29When Dylan debuted the original two-verse version at Gertie's Folk City that month,
01:33he started out by trying to explain what the song wasn't about.
01:37Per Revolution in the Air, he said,
01:38This here ain't a protest song or anything like that, cause I don't write protest songs.
01:44I'm just writing it as something to be said, for somebody, by somebody.
01:48Yet in his Sing Out interview, Dylan seemed to espouse moral.
01:51If not explicitly political views, he said,
01:54Some of the biggest criminals are those that turn their heads away when they see wrong
01:58and know it's wrong.
01:59I'm only 21, and I know there's been too many wars.
02:02Even before Dylan recorded Blown in the Wind, Gil Turner and folk legend Pete Seeger published
02:08the song's lyrics in their magazine Broadside, and it soon took on a life of its own.
02:13The folk singer Dave Van Ronk, who initially dismissed the song, heard street singers around
02:18Washington Square Park and Greenwich Village parodying Blown in the Wind.
02:22In the biography Down the Highway, The Life of Bob Dylan, he recalled,
02:26If the song is strong enough, without even having been recorded, to start generating
02:30parodies the song is stronger than I realized.
02:33With Blown in the Wind, Dylan supercharged his career and catapulted himself into becoming
02:38the voice of his generation.
02:40But it wasn't his version that made it happen.
02:42Peter, Paul and Mary, a popular folk trio, recorded the song in the summer of 1963.
02:48With their version shooting to the number two spot on the Hot 100, whether Dylan intended
02:52it or not, Blown in the Wind quickly became a protest song.
02:56Bob Cohen of the New World Singers told Sean Kernan of the Cinch Review,
03:00We would go on to sing it in Mississippi in 1963-64, where it became a civil rights anthem.
03:06Cohen felt the song reflected a yearning for justice and for peace.
03:10The high-water mark of Blown in the Wind as a protest song came in August 1963 during
03:15the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, the same iconic event at which the Reverend
03:20Martin Luther King gave his famous I Have a Dream speech.
03:23Peter, Paul and Mary performed the song on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial after being
03:27introduced to a crowd of more than 250,000 people by the actor and activist Ossie Davis.
03:34Before bringing the band on, Davis told the crowd,
03:37And now a group of singers who have come to help express in song what this great meeting
03:41is all about.
03:42I give you now, Peter, Paul and Mary.
03:49The activists who marched to Washington that day clearly gave Blown in the Wind its own
03:54meaning.
03:55But Dylan was always steadfast about his thoughts on the song.
03:59Just a year before the event, he had told a reporter,
04:01I'm not politically inclined.
04:04Blown in the Wind was just a feeling I felt because I felt that way.
04:12Blown in the Wind was just a feeling I felt because I felt that way.