Let Me Die in My Footsteps
"Let Me Die in My Footsteps" | |
---|---|
Song by Bob Dylan | |
from the album The Bootleg Series Volumes 1–3 (Rare & Unreleased) 1961–1991 | |
Released | March 26, 1991 |
Recorded | April 25, 1962 |
Length | 3:33 |
Label | Columbia |
Songwriter(s) | Bob Dylan |
Producer(s) | Jeff Rosen |
"Let Me Die in My Footsteps" is a song written by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan in February 1962.[1] The song was selected for the original sequence of Dylan's 1963 album The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, but was replaced by "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall".[2] This version was recorded at Columbia studios on April 25, 1962, during the first Freewheelin' session, and was subsequently released in March 1991 on The Bootleg Series Volumes 1–3 (Rare & Unreleased) 1961–1991.[3][4]
A later version, recorded as a demo for M. Witmark & Sons publishing company in December 1962, was released in October 2010 on The Bootleg Series Vol. 9: The Witmark Demos: 1962–1964.[4][5][6] The song's first release, however, was in September 1963 on The Broadside Ballads, Vol. 1, an album of topical songs compiled by folk musician Pete Seeger and Sis Cunningham, publisher of Broadside magazine. This version was recorded on January 24, 1963, with Dylan performing as "Blind Boy Grunt" (for contractual reasons), backed by his friend Happy Traum.[7] Broadside had published the song's lyrics under its original title, "I Will Not Go Down Under the Ground", in the magazine's third issue in April 1962.[8]
Background
In the booklet that accompanied The Bootleg Series Volumes 1–3, Todd Harvey wrote that "Let Me Die in My Footsteps" has no clear melodic precedent and suggests that this may be the first song for which Dylan created an original melody.[2] However, Dylan later revealed the song's origins in Chronicles: Volume One, indicating it was based on an old Roy Acuff ballad. According to Dylan, the song was inspired by the construction of fallout shelters, a widespread practice in the U.S. during the Cold War political climate of the 1950s when he was growing up.[9]
In 1963, Dylan gave this account of how he came to write "Let Me Die in My Footsteps" to critic Nat Hentoff, who wrote the liner notes for The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan:
I was going through some town and they were making this bomb shelter right outside of town, one of these sort of Coliseum-type things and there were construction workers and everything. I was there for about an hour, just looking at them build, and I just wrote the song in my head back then, but I carried it with me for two years until I finally wrote it down. As I watched them building, it struck me sort of funny that they would concentrate so much on digging a hole underground when there were so many other things they should do in life. If nothing else, they could look at the sky, and walk around and live a little bit, instead of doing this immoral thing.[10]
The liner notes to Broadside Ballads, Vol. 1 included this comment on the song:
[This is] Bob Dylan's blunt answer to the yawping of Madison Avenue Pitchmen trying to sell fallout shelters. He shines a light into the murky darkness of our age and shows us in one bright instant what it might have taken a less impatient philosopher a lifetime to discover: namely that instead of learning to live, we are learning to die. What he says was never more evident than in the recent crisis over Cuba, when millions of Americans sought desperately to think of some dignified way to meet death in an obscene atomic holocaust.[11]
Footnotes
- ^ Heylin 1996, p. 30.
- ^ a b Bauldie 1991.
- ^ Gray 2006, p. 73.
- ^ a b Heylin 2003, p. 738.
- ^ Shelton 2003, pp. 145–146.
- ^ Escott 2010.
- ^ Gray 2006, p. 668.
- ^ Dylan, Bob (April 1962). "I Will Not Go Down Under the Ground" (PDF). Broadside. No. 3. Archived from the original (PDF) on July 8, 2011. Retrieved November 30, 2010.
- ^ Dylan, Bob (2004). Chronicles: Volume One. Simon & Schuster. pp. 270–271. ISBN 0-7432-2815-4.
- ^ Hentoff, Nat (1963). The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan original liner notes, from Bauldie, The Bootleg Series Volumes 1–3. The commentary was cut when the song was dropped from the album.
- ^ Harvey 2001, p. 62.
References
- Bauldie, John (1991). The Bootleg Series Volumes 1–3 (Rare & Unreleased) 1961–1991 (Booklet). Bob Dylan. New York: Columbia Records.
- Escott, Colin (2010). The Leeds & Witmark Demos (Media notes). Columbia Records.
- Gray, Michael (2006). The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia. Continuum International. ISBN 0-8264-6933-7.
- Harvey, Todd (2001). The Formative Dylan: Transmission & Stylistic Influences, 1961–1963. The Scarecrow Press. ISBN 0-8108-4115-0.
- Heylin, Clinton (2003). Bob Dylan: Behind the Shades Revisited. Harper Entertainment. ISBN 0-06-052569-X.
- Heylin, Clinton (1996). Bob Dylan: A Life in Stolen Moments: Day by Day 1941–1995. ISBN 0-7119-5669-3.
- Shelton, Robert (2003) [1986]. No Direction Home. Da Capo Press. ISBN 0-306-81287-8.
External links
- Lyrics on BobDylan.com
- v
- t
- e
- Bob Dylan
- The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan
- The Times They Are a-Changin'
- Another Side of Bob Dylan
- Bringing It All Back Home
- Highway 61 Revisited
- Blonde on Blonde
- John Wesley Harding
- Nashville Skyline
- Self Portrait
- New Morning
- Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid
- Dylan
- Planet Waves
- Blood on the Tracks
- The Basement Tapes
- Desire
- Street-Legal
- Slow Train Coming
- Saved
- Shot of Love
- Infidels
- Empire Burlesque
- Knocked Out Loaded
- Down in the Groove
- Oh Mercy
- Under the Red Sky
- Good as I Been to You
- World Gone Wrong
- Time Out of Mind
- "Love and Theft"
- Modern Times
- Together Through Life
- Christmas in the Heart
- Tempest
- Shadows in the Night
- Fallen Angels
- Triplicate
- Rough and Rowdy Ways
- Shadow Kingdom
Contemporary |
|
---|---|
Archival |
|
Hits |
|
---|---|
Themed |
|
Box sets |
|
- Volumes 1–3 (Rare & Unreleased) 1961–1991
- Vol. 4: The Royal Albert Hall Concert
- Vol. 5: Bob Dylan Live 1975, The Rolling Thunder Revue
- Vol. 6: Bob Dylan Live 1964, Concert at Philharmonic Hall
- Vol. 7: No Direction Home: The Soundtrack
- Vol. 8: Tell Tale Signs: Rare and Unreleased 1989–2006
- Vol. 9: The Witmark Demos: 1962–1964
- Vol. 10: Another Self Portrait (1969–1971)
- Vol. 11: The Basement Tapes Complete
- Vol. 12: The Cutting Edge 1965–1966
- Vol. 13: Trouble No More 1979–1981
- Vol. 14: More Blood, More Tracks
- Vol. 15: Travelin' Thru, 1967–1969
- Vol. 16: Springtime in New York 1980–1985
- Vol. 17: Fragments – Time Out of Mind Sessions (1996–1997)
- From Newport to the Ancient Empty Street in L.A.
- Great White Wonder
- List of Basement Tapes songs
- 1967
- 1975
- England Tour (1965)
- World Tour (1966)
- Isle of Wight Festival (1969)
- Tour with the Band (1974)
- Rolling Thunder Revue (1975–1976)
- World Tour (1978)
- Gospel Tour (1979–80)
- European Tour (1984)
- True Confessions Tour (1986)
- Tour with the Grateful Dead (1987)
- Temples in Flames Tour (1987)
- Never Ending Tour
- Rough and Rowdy Ways World Wide Tour (2021–2024)
- Dont Look Back
- Eat the Document
- Renaldo and Clara
- Hard to Handle
- The 30th Anniversary Concert Celebration
- MTV Unplugged
- Masked and Anonymous
- No Direction Home
- I'm Not There
- Soundtrack
- 65 Revisited
- The Other Side of the Mirror: Bob Dylan Live at the Newport Folk Festival 1963–1965
- Trouble No More – A Musical Film
- Rolling Thunder Revue
- Shadow Kingdom
- A Complete Unknown
- Tarantula
- Writings and Drawings
- Chronicles: Volume One
- The Philosophy of Modern Song
- The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia
- Bob Dylan, Performing Artist
- Invisible Republic
- Down the Highway: The Life of Bob Dylan
- The Cambridge Companion to Bob Dylan
- Bob Dylan: Mixing Up the Medicine
- Sara Dylan (first wife)
- Carolyn Dennis (second wife)
- Jesse Dylan (son)
- Jakob Dylan (son)
- Recording Sessions
- The Band
- Traveling Wilburys
- Electric Dylan controversy
- Artists who have covered Dylan songs
- Joan Baez
- Suze Rotolo
- Helena Springs
- The Telegraph magazine
- Festival
- The Concert for Bangladesh
- Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid
- Hearts of Fire
- Highway 61 Interactive
- Theme Time Radio Hour
- Gotta Serve Somebody: The Gospel Songs of Bob Dylan
- Chimes of Freedom (album)
- The Lost Notebooks of Hank Williams
- Lost on the River: The New Basement Tapes
- Bob Dylan Center
- Category