Someone needs to make a current hit covering "Blowing in the Wind"

[jimmyz]

Cool! Great find Dr. Who. Thanks

[Dr. Who]

I think he is referring to the official start date of the war , not when our actual involvement began

I don't know. I remember all of the protest songs and Vietnam was a major focus, regardless of when it started. It lasted 20 years ('55-'75).

[donttread]

The meaning of Dylan's lyrics seem open to interprattion -

From Wiki - "Blowin' in the Wind" is a song written by Bob Dylan in 1962 and released as a single and on his album The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan in 1963. Although it has been described as a protest song, it poses a series of rhetorical questions about peace, war, and freedom. The refrain "The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind" has been described as "impenetrably ambiguous: either the answer is so obvious it is right in your face, or the answer is as intangible as the wind".^[2]In 1994, the song was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. In 2004, it was ranked number 14 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the "500 Greatest Songs of All Time"

Thank you. The nature of the questions asked certainly gives credence to it being a protest song. As for "the answer is blowin in the wind " I take to mean the winds of change.

[jimmyz]

Thank you. The nature of the questions asked certainly gives credence to it being a protest song. As for "the answer is blowin in the wind " I take to mean the winds of change.

That is the cool thing about song lyrics which are basically sung poems. Every listener takes away what they get out of it. There is no only one or correct opinion. I remember this song and many folk songs being directly aimed toward protest. Well, when I was born years after its release anyway. True story, I drew a picture of Nixon and asked him to bring our boys home. I still have the reply letter and glossy WH hand-out. I was in Kindergarten in 1972. It probably was a terrible rendition of him lol

[Ethereal]

You likely associate the old 60's protest hit with Bob Dylan or Peter, Paul and Mary but it has been sung by too many artist to name including Cher and Elvis. It has been done in a dozen or more languages but some of you have probably barely ever heard it. I'd like to see that change.
I'm wondering what some of today's artist could do with it. I'm not sure if Little Big Town can go that soft but if the song didn't offend Eddy Arnold's fans it should not offend theirs as long as they make it clear that they respect the foot soldier. Alison Krauss would be my first choice though. She would kill it, like she does everything she sings and she is that type of non-sell out singer this song deserves.
Any other ideas who could make this peace song climb the charts again for a new generation? Either here or abroad or hopefully both?

I don't know what it would take for that song to obtain mainstream appeal again, but there are always good modern artists who fly under the radar that produce great covers. Here are a few good ones I found on YouTube:

[Ethereal]

The world is not at war.

That must upset you deeply.

The intended audience was idiot Americans easily swayed during the 1960s.

What irony!

[Ethereal]

We weren't at war in 1962.

Right, there were just thousands of US troops involved in a war in Vietnam at the time.

[Chris]

Dylan claims that he wrote this song in about 10 minutes one afternoon. He put words to the melody of an old slave song called "No More Auction Block," which he might have learned from Carter family records. In the evening, Dylan took the song to the nightclub Gerde's Folk City in Greenwich Village, where he was due to play a set. Before playing it, he announced, "This here ain't no protest song or anything like that, 'cause I don't write no protest songs." During this first performance, Dylan couldn't read some of his own handwriting and made up some of the lyrics as he went along.

BLOWIN' IN THE WIND by BOB DYLAN

There ain’t too much I can say about this song except that the answer is blowing in the wind. It ain’t in no book or movie or TV show or discussion group. Man, it’s in the wind – and it’s blowing in the wind. Too many of these hip people are telling me where the answer is but oh I won’t believe that. I still say it’s in the wind and just like a restless piece of paper it’s got to come down some …But the only trouble is that no one picks up the answer when it comes down so not too many people get to see and know . . . and then it flies away. I still say that some of the biggest criminals are those that turn their heads away when they see wrong and know it’s wrong. I’m only 21 years old and I know that there’s been too many . . . You people over 21, you’re older and smarter.

BOB DYLAN – BLOWIN’ IN THE WIND (LYRICS REVIEW & SONG MEANING)


Dylan's songs are music. There's no message.

[Captdon]

Thank you for addressing the OP. Do you remember the line "How many times must the cannon balls fly before they are forever banned" ? Or the white dove reference? We may not have been officially at war, but war and related actions were always on the horizon as they are now and the Korean War was still a recent memory. Certainly there is a CR aspect to the song , but the lyrics speak volumes to other inspirations.

No. Dylan says it was about the civil rights movement. You can use it and interpret being about war but it isn't. I always thought it was about war. It certainly sounds that way.

With Dylan you don't always get what you think he's saying.

[Captdon]

Right, there were just thousands of US troops involved in a war in Vietnam at the time.

Again you say something that isn't true. We had a handful of Green berets there in 1952. The next year we sent 15,000 Marines to guard two bases. They did no fighting. In 1965 LBJ went to war.

God, if you could only google. I don't expect you to actually read a book but you could Google. I was 15 at the time and in a military family and it must have got past me. You know, the fighting and all.