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.
The song was first recorded in rehearsal sessions at The Band's upstate New York residence, Big Pink, in 1967, with Dylan on lead vocal and The Band backing him. These sessions were not officially released until the 1975 double-album The Basement Tapes, although they were widely bootlegged in the late 1960s and early '70s. "Tears of Rage" appeared at the end of Side Two of The Basement Tapes and all three takes of the song from 1967 were included on The Bootleg Series Vol. 11: The Basement Tapes Complete in 2014. It is considered one of the most widely acclaimed tracks from The Basement Tapes.
The first official release of the song was as the first track on The Band's debut, 1968 album Music from Big Pink, without Dylan and featuring Manuel on lead vocal. According to Levon Helm, "Richard sang one of the best performances of his life."
Andy Gill likens the song to King Lear's soliloquy on the blasted heath in Shakespeare's tragedy: "Wracked with bitterness and regret, its narrator reflects upon promises broken and truths ignored, on how greed has poisoned the well of best intentions, and how even daughters can deny their father's wishes." He suggests that Dylan is linking the anguish of Lear’s soliloquy to the divisions in American society apparent in 1967, as the Vietnam War escalated: "In its narrowest and most contemporaneous interpretation, the song could be the first to register the pain of betrayal felt by many of America’s Vietnam war veterans. … In a wider interpretation [it] harks back to what anti-war protesters and critics of American materialism in general felt was a more fundamental betrayal of the American Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights."
...
Wikipedia