Released January 13, 1964 Genre Folk Label Columbia | Recorded August 7, 1963 Length 7:08 Writer(s) Bob Dylan | |
"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.
Contents
Lyrics
The lyrics address the tendency of nations, tribes, or societies to believe that God will invariably side with them and oppose those with whom they disagree, thus leaving unquestioned the morality of wars fought and atrocities committed by their country. Dylan mentions several historical events, including the slaughter of Native Americans in the nineteenth century, the Spanish–American War, the American Civil War, World Wars I and II, the Holocaust, the Cold War and the betrayal of Jesus Christ by Judas Iscariot; the song made no explicit reference to the Vietnam War until live renditions in the 1980s, when an additional verse ran thus:
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?
Music critic Tim Riley once wrote: "'With God on Our Side' manages to voice political savvy mixed with generational naivete" as it "draws the line for those born long enough after World War I to find its issues blurry ('the reasons for fightin'/I never did get') and who view the forgiveness of the World War II Germans as a farce."
Controversy over composition
The melody of "With God on Our Side" is essentially identical to the traditional Irish folk song "The Merry Month of May", which was also used by Dominic Behan in his song "The Patriot Game". The opening verse is also similar to the second verse of Behan's song, in which the narrator gives his name and age. Behan criticized Dylan publicly by claiming the melody as an original composition. Behan took the view that the provenance of Dylan's entire body of work must be questioned. Behan exercised the same folk tradition as Dylan in writing the song, having himself borrowed the melody.
In the introduction to the song at the Newport Folk Festival in 1963, Dylan had the following to say, "Yeah. You know, Jean Redpath sang a song here awhile ago which I heard Liam Clancy sing about two years ago and I was listening to her sing it and I thought that I never, uh, I thought I wrote this song called 'With God on Your Side'. And it must have somewhere stayed in the back of my mind hearing Liam Clancy singing 'The Patriot Game'."
Live recordings
Dylan and Joan Baez performed the song as a duet at the Newport Folk Festival in July 1963 and July 1964, and their July 27, 1963 performance was released on Newport Broadside: Topical Songs at the Newport Folk Festival 1963 (Vanguard VSD-79144). The liner notes by Stacy Williams mention Dominic Behan's "Patriot Game", which Williams points out that Behan had borrowed from the traditional "The Merry Month of May". Another live recording of Dylan and Baez performing "With God on Our Side", recorded on October 31, 1964, can be found on the album The Bootleg Series Vol. 6: Bob Dylan Live 1964, Concert at Philharmonic Hall, released in 2004.
Dylan's performance of the song on the album Bob Dylan Unplugged, released in 1995, significantly omits verses about the Germans and the Holocaust, and the Russians and the Cold War, for unspecified reasons.