Hurricane is a protest song by Bob Dylan co-written with Jacques Levy, about the imprisonment of Rubin "Hurricane" Carter. It compiles alleged acts of racism and profiling against Carter^[1], which Dylan describes as leading to a false trial and conviction.

Background

Dylan's Desire opens with "Hurricane". Named after former middleweight contender Rubin Carter, Dylan had been inspired to write it after reading Carter's autobiography, The Sixteenth Round, which Carter had sent him "because of his prior commitment to the civil rights struggle."

Carter and a man named John Artis had been charged with a triple murder which occurred in the Lafayette Grill, Paterson, New Jersey in 1966. Carter and Artis were found guilty of committing the murders, which were widely reported as racially motivated crimes, and both were sentenced to four consecutive life sentences. In the years that followed, a substantial amount of controversy emerged over the case, ranging from allegations of faulty evidence and questionable eyewitness testimony to an unfair trial. In his autobiography, Carter maintained his innocence, and his story eventually led Dylan to visit him in Rahway State Prison in Woodbridge Township, New Jersey.

Dylan had written topical ballads before, including, "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll" and "The Death of Emmett Till", but according to Jacques Levy, he wasn't sure that he could write a song.... "He was just filled with all these feelings about Hurricane. He couldn't make the first step. I think the first step was putting the song in a total storytelling mode. I don't remember whose idea it was to do that. But really, the beginning of the song is like stage directions, like what you would read in a script: 'Pistol shots ring out in a barroom night.... Here comes the story of the Hurricane.' Boom! Titles. You know, Bob loves movies, and he can write these movies that take place in eight to ten minutes, yet seem as full or fuller than regular movies."^{[cite this quote]}

After meeting with Carter in prison and meeting a group of his supporters, Dylan began to write "Hurricane" in a "cinematic" style. This song was one of Dylan's few protest songs of the 1970s and was his fourth most successful single of the 70s, reaching #33 on the Billboard chart^[2] and #43 in the UK chart.