“Tears of Rage” by Bob Dylan (the Band Version on Big Pink)

"Tears of Rage" opens Music from Big Pink, the Band's 1968 debut, and that was the first official release for a song Bob Dylan and the group had worked up a year earlier at Big Pink, their house in upstate New York. Dylan wrote the words and Richard Manuel the music, and on the Band's record it's Manuel who sings it. John Simon produced.

The 1967 take with Dylan on lead stayed unreleased until The Basement Tapes in 1975, though bootleggers kept it in circulation, and it was a gentler, folkier thing. By the time the Band cut their own version they had slowed it down into what AllMusic's Bill Janovitz heard as a passionate lament steeped in gospel and New Orleans. Levon Helm rated Manuel's vocal among the best singing of his life.

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