TEARS OF RAGE
“Tears of Rage” is a song written by Bob Dylan (lyrics) and Richard Manuel (melody) and recorded by Dylan and The Band on The Basement Tapes and by The Band on Music from Big Pink. (More from Wikipedia)
What attracted the most attention on Great White Wonder were seven songs recorded by Bob Dylan with the Band, probably at a house called Big Pink that is referenced in the name of the debut album released by the Band, Music from Big Pink (1968). They are clustered mostly on Side 4 and also include the last two songs on Side 2; in order (as listed on the Great White Wonder labels), they are “Mighty Quinn”, “This Wheel’s on Fire”, “I Shall Be Released”, “Open the Door, Richard!”, “Too Much of Nothing”, “Nothing Was Delivered”, and “Tears of Rage”. All great songs, no question; but this was barely a quarter of the music, and many people seem to think that the earlier acoustical songs that I loved equally well didn’t matter. I have never felt that way myself; Great White Wonder is great from one end to the other to these ears.
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When I started playing the albums, early on I didn’t recognize any of the music. That wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, but if The Basement Tapes is what you were supposed to buy instead of Great White Wonder, it sure wasn’t filling the bill. At the end of Side 2, I finally heard one of the songs from GWW, “Tears of Rage”; and then “Too Much of Nothing” to start Side 3, but no more again until Side 4. In a way, The Basement Tapes was structured like Great White Wonder, except that other “basement-tape” songs were provided in the parts of the discs where the early Bob Dylan songs were slotted on GWW.
(September 2017)
