"Restless Farewell" is a song by Bob Dylan, released as the final track on his third studio album The Times They Are a-Changin' in 1964.
[3] Svedberg’s article also repeated the false rumor that Dylan was not the true author of "Blowin' in the Wind" and the song had been composed by a New Jersey high school student.
[4] As biographer Clinton Heylin puts it, “Dylan’s response was fast, furious and unsparing.” He rapidly composed the song "Restless Farewell" and booked a CBS studio for the next day, October 31, to record it.
[5] Dylan expressed his distaste for the Newsweek type of journalism in 11 outlined epitaphs, the sleeve notes he wrote for the album The Times They Are a-Changin': “I do not care t’ be made an oddball/ bouncin’ past reporters’ pens/ cooperatin’ with questions/ aimed at eyes that want t’ see/ ‘there’s nothin’ here/ go back t’ sleep/ or look at the ads/ on page 33.’”[6] According to Robert Shelton, the Newsweek interview caused Dylan to withdraw from public life for three weeks, and "resulted in him breaking off nearly all contact with his parents for years… Dylan turned from an accessible subject into a cagey game-player who toyed with interview questions, who developed the "anti-interview" saying shocking things he often didn’t believe.
"[7] Heylin writes the original title of the song was “Bob Dylan’s Restless Epitaph” and so makes plain "this is one instance where narrator and writer are one and the same".
"The singer realises that his times are also changing: "Oh a false clock tries to tick out my time/ To disgrace, distract, and bother me/ And the dirt of gossip blows into my face/ And the dust of rumors covers me”.