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I Shall Be Released

Written by Bob Dylan in 1967 during the Basement Tapes sessions, and closing track on Music from Big Pink, where it became the song most identified with the Band's version rather than Dylan's own. Dylan's original recording, with Manuel harmonizing on the chorus, stayed unreleased until 1991. The Band's own version, cut for their debut a year later, gave Richard Manuel the vocal performance he's most remembered for: a high, aching falsetto over a slow, hymn-like arrangement, with Danko and Helm underneath on the chorus.

The lyric works as both a literal prisoner's lament and a broader metaphor for anyone trapped by circumstance, and Dylan has never pinned down which he meant. "Now yonder stands a man in this lonely crowd," it opens, "a man who swears he's not to blame." Some listeners read it as a wrongful-imprisonment ballad in the tradition of Johnny Cash's prison songs; others hear something closer to the gospel promise of a hymn like "I'll Fly Away," release from earthly struggle rather than from an actual cell. Rolling Stone ranked it sixth on its list of the 100 greatest Dylan songs.

The song took on additional weight after Manuel's death in 1986. Rick Danko played it at his funeral, and listeners have heard the lyric ever since as something close to an accidental epitaph, a song about wanting release from suffering sung, in retrospect, by a man who did not find peace any other way.

Notable versions