"With God on Our Side" is a song by Bob Dylan, released as the third track on his 1964 album The Times They Are A-Changin'. Dylan first performed the song during his debut at The Town Hall in New York City on April 12, 1963. Dylan is known to sing the song only rarely in concert. (More from Wikipedia)
On the following album, The Times They Are A-Changin', the targets are even more diffuse. "With God on Our Side" relates a litany of various wars, the Cold War and other historical events – such as the slaughter of Native Americans in the 19th Century and the Holocaust – in the context of the oft-believed notion that God or some other higher power is "with us". Tellingly, nothing is said about the Vietnam War at all in the song originally, although a verse was added for live performances in the 1980's. I had never heard that before, and I doubt you had either; here is the added verse: "In the nineteen-sixties came the Vietnam War / Can somebody tell me what we're fightin' for? / So many young men died / So many mothers cried / Now I ask the question / Was God on our side?"
(May 2013)
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A bit of serendipity occurred when Bob Dylan and Joan Baez appeared together at the 1963 Monterey Folk Festival singing a duet of a newly written song, "With God on Our Side" (which would appear on Dylan's next album, The Times They Are A-Changin'). The Festival was in the same month as the release of The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan. Wikipedia states: "Baez was at the pinnacle of her fame, having appeared on the cover of Time magazine the previous November. The performance not only gave Dylan and his songs a new prominence, it also marked the beginning of a romantic relationship between Baez and Dylan, the start of what Dylan biographer [Howard] Sounes termed 'one of the most celebrated love affairs of the decade'."
(March 2015)
