The song has been covered many times by different artists, including the Byrds, Jefferson Starship, Youssou N'Dour, Bruce Springsteen, and U2.
[1] It was written at about the same time as "Mr. Tambourine Man", which author Clinton Heylin has judged to be similarly influenced by the symbolism of Arthur Rimbaud.
Some Dylan biographers state that he wrote the song on a portable typewriter in the back of a car the day after visiting civil rights activists Bernice Johnson and Cordell Reagon in Atlanta, Georgia.
The entire album Another Side of Bob Dylan was recorded in one long session on June 9, 1964, with Tom Wilson as producer.
[2] The entirety of the first (and only) recording session was held June 9 at Columbia's Studio A, located at 799 Seventh Avenue in New York City.
According to Heylin, "while polishing off a couple of bottles of Beaujolais," Dylan recorded 14 original compositions, in a single three-hour session between 7pm and 10pm that night, 11 of which were chosen for the final album.
"[10] Nat Hentoff's article on Dylan for The New Yorker, published in late October 1964, includes remarkable descriptions of the June 9 session.
[2][15][16] A version sung by Dylan and Joan Osborne in 1999 appears on the original television soundtrack album of the film titled The 60's.
[17] A recording of Dylan performing the song at the 1964 Newport Folk Festival was included on the 2005 album The Bootleg Series Vol.
[23] "Chimes of Freedom" has been widely discussed by Dylan's many interpreters, including biographers, journalists, academics and music historians.
[4] In his 2003 book, Chimes of Freedom: The Politics of Bob Dylan's Art, Mike Marqusee notes that the song marks a transition between Dylan's earlier protest song style (a litany of the down-trodden and oppressed, in the second half of each verse) and his later more free-flowing poetic style (the fusion of images of lightning, storm and bells in the first half).
[25] In this later style, which is influenced by 19th century French symbolist poet Arthur Rimbaud, the poetry is more allusive, filled with "chains of flashing images.
"[26] In this song, rather than support a specific cause as in his earlier protest songs, he finds solidarity with all people who are downtrodden or otherwise treated unjustly, including unwed mothers, the disabled, refugees, outcasts, those unfairly jailed, "the luckless, the abandoned and forsaked," and, in the final verse, "the countless confused, accused, misused, strung out ones and worse" and "every hung-up person in the whole wide universe.
[26][27] After "Chimes of Freedom", Dylan's protest songs no longer depicted social reality in the black and white terms which he renounced in "My Back Pages", but rather use satirical surrealism to make their points.
[2] By the time Dylan wrote the first draft of "Chimes of Freedom" the following February, it contained many of the elements of his poem from the end of Autumn after the death of the president, except that the crippled ones and the blind were changed to "guardians and protectors of the mind.
[31] Bell also notes that the song echoes the imagery of "The Drunken Boat /Le Bateau ivre" by Arthur Rimbaud: "I know skies split by lightning, waterspouts/ And undertows, and tides: I know the night/ And dawn exulting like a crowd of doves".
Bell suggests the theme of the song is that liberty took many forms, personal and political, civic and artistic, spiritual and physical.
[33]In In Search of the Real Bob Dylan, David Dalton, one of the founding editors of Rolling Stone magazine, commented that the song was written at the same time as "Mr Tambourine Man".
"[34] Dalton continues with a comparison of Dylan's writing of the lyrics in "Chimes" to Jack Kerouac and states: "The scenes in 'Chimes of Freedom' are lit up as if by strobe light—the way the Bible was written, they say, in brilliantly illuminated pictures.
[37] After the band had completed the song's instrumental backing track, guitarist and harmony vocalist David Crosby announced that he was not going to sing on the recording and was quitting the studio for the day.
"[39] According to a number of people in the studio that day, Crosby burst into tears, but finally completed the song's harmony part with sterling results.
[42] The song was also performed by a reformed line-up of the Byrds featuring Roger McGuinn, David Crosby, and Chris Hillman in January 1989.
[43] "Chimes of Freedom" has also been covered by artists as diverse as Phil Carmen, Jefferson Starship, Youssou N'Dour, Martyn Joseph, Joan Osborne, Starry Eyed and Laughing, Bruce Springsteen, Warren Zevon, and The West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band.
[45] Bruce Springsteen's cover version reached #16 on the Billboard Hot Mainstream Rock Tracks chart in 1988, though it was never released as a single.