"I Shall Be Released" is a 1967 song, written by Bob Dylan. The Band recorded the first officially released version of the song for their 1968 debut album, Music from Big Pink, with Richard Manuel singing lead vocals, and Rick Danko and Levon Helm harmonizing on the chorus. The song was also performed near the end of The Band's 1976 farewell concert, The Last Waltz, in which all the night's performers except Muddy Waters, plus Ringo Starr and Ronnie Wood, appeared on the same stage. Additional live recordings by The Band were included on the 1974 concert album Before the Flood and the 2001 expanded CD reissue of Rock of Ages. Dylan recorded two primary versions. The first recording was made in collaboration with The Band during the Basement Tapes sessions in 1967, and released on The Bootleg Series Volumes 1–3 in 1991. A remixed version of the 1967 recording was rereleased with a preliminary take on in 2014. Of the initial demo, Rolling Stones Jann Wenner said, "Curiously enough the music in this song and the high pleading sound of Dylan's voice reminds one of the Bee Gees." In 1971, Dylan recorded the song a second time with a different arrangement and altered lyrics. He was accompanied by Happy Traum and the song was released on Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits Vol. II.
Style and content
The song is influenced by gospel music, combining images of religious redemption with implied literal release from prison. David Yaffe described the song as a song about redeemed prisoners. The song describes life behind a wall, hearing a man who "swears he's not to blame" and is "crying out that he was framed". While the narrator reflects on "every man who put me here", and says that "any day now I shall be released". Author Mike Marqusee observed that the cruelty of the justice system is a recurring theme in Dylan's work, but that Dylan broadens the idea of imprisonment to social issues with an urge for freedom. Clinton Heylin writes in his book Revolution In The Air:
Prisons of the body and the mind seem to have preyed on Dylan's mind throughout his time spent with the boys on retainer. Among the songs recorded at early basement sessions were covers of "Folsom Prison Blues" and "The Banks of the Royal Canal", both songs written—metaphorically—from inside prison walls. Dylan then takes a leaf from Johnny Cash and Brendan Behan, authors of those earlier songs, by writing his own prison song, "I Shall Be Released." He is characteristically careful not to confuse simplicity of construction with a commensurate simplicity of meaning. The release that he is singing about—and that Richard Manuel echoes—is not from mere prison bars but rather from the cage of physical existence, the same cage that corrodes on "Visions of Johanna".
