1976 · Behind the Songs
A boxer, a violin and the protest song of the decade.
“Hurricane” is Bob Dylan’s great protest song of the 1970s — eight and a half minutes about Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, the boxer imprisoned for murders he insisted he did not commit. Driven by Scarlet Rivera’s blazing violin, it is the sound of Dylan the crusader, back on the barricades.
Dylan co-wrote the song with Jacques Levy after reading Carter’s autobiography and visiting him in prison. Recorded in the autumn of 1975 for the album Desire, it names names — the witnesses, the police, the courts — with a directness that made Columbia’s lawyers nervous. Rivera’s violin, cut live with the band, gives the track its gallop.
Released as a single, it reached number 33 in America. Dylan played a benefit concert, the “Night of the Hurricane,” at Madison Square Garden in December 1975. A decade later, Carter’s convictions were overturned and the charges dismissed — the song had helped keep his case in the light.
What to listen for: Rivera’s violin, the song’s engine; Dylan’s rapid-fire delivery, spitting out names and dates; and the chorus, simple and certain — the hurricane as a man, not a storm.