| John Wesley Harding | |
| Artist: | Bob Dylan |
| Album: | John Wesley Harding |
| Recorded: | November 6, 1967 |
| Genre: | Folk rock, country rock |
| Length: | 2:59 |
| Label: | Columbia |
| Producer: | Bob Johnston |
"John Wesley Harding" is a song by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan that appears as the opening track on his 1967 album of the same name.
Dylan told Jann Wenner in a 1969 Rolling Stone interview that the song "started out to be a long ballad. I was gonna write a ballad on ... like maybe one of those old cowboy ... you know, a real long ballad. But in the middle of the second verse, I got tired. I had a tune, and I didn't want to waste the tune; it was a nice little melody, so I just wrote a quick third verse, and I recorded that."[1] Biographer Clinton Heylin states that Dylan has had a well-documented interest in outlaw cowboys, including Jesse James and Billy the Kid, and in the past Dylan has said that his favorite folk song was "John Hardy", whose real-life title character in 1893 murdered another man over a game of craps. John Wesley Hardin was another late-19th century outlaw. Dylan has stated that he chose John Wesley Hardin for his protagonist over other badmen because his name "[fit] in the tempo" of the song.[1] Dylan added the g to the end of Hardin's name by mistake.
The song was recorded in two takes on November 6, 1967, in Studio A of Columbia Music Row Studios in Nashville, Tennessee. Both of these were considered for the album, but the second take was ultimately chosen.
Dylan has said that he did not have a clear notion of what the song was about.[1] He told Cameron Crowe in 1985 that after recording the John Wesley Harding album, he "didn't know what to make of it. ... So I figured the best thing to do would be to put out the album as quickly as possible, call it John Wesley Harding because that was the one song that I had no idea what it was about, why it was even on the album. So I figured I'd call the album that, call attention to it, make it something special..." It was the only title that he considered for the album.[1] He told a Newsweek interviewer in 1969 that the songs on his country Nashville Skyline album: "These are the type of songs that I always felt like writing. The songs reflect more of the inner me than the songs of the past. They're more to my base than, say, 'John Wesley Harding'. There I felt like everyone expected me to be a poet so that's what I tried to be."[2]
"John Wesley Harding" has been covered by McKendree Spring on their 1969 eponymous album, as well as Tom Russell and Wesley Willis.