Bonnie Dobson would end up creating an anti-nuke protest song, “Morning Dew,” that went through various changes since its release and became a rock classic for many artists.
A contemporary folk singer from Canada, Dobson was in her 20s when she wrote the track centered around a fictional conversation between a man and a woman after an apocalyptic catastrophe. While her vocals sound angelic, the topic of the song’s creation came from her and her friends talking about nuclear destruction.
According to LouderSound, Dobson recalls how everyone at the time was “gloomy” long before the Cuban Missile Crisis. It wasn’t out of the ordinary for people to believe that “atomic annihilation” was imminent. Dobson would also be inspired by a 1959 sci-fi war film titled On the Beach, starring Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner, Fred Astaire, and Anthony Perkins.
“A few months earlier I’d seen the movie On The Beach. It describes the end of the world viewed from the southern hemisphere, and they’re waiting for the fallout. Anthony Perkins plays a character in the navy and he’s talking to his wife about committing suicide and killing their daughter before the radiation hits. It’s extremely bleak,” she explained.
“That evening I went back to my little room. I had the lines and the chords in my head. I wrote Morning Dew in minutes. It was the first song I’d ever written. I played it down the phone to a girl I knew, and she said: ‘Yeah, not bad.’”
The track never actually landed on the charts and was included in her album Bonnie Dobson at Folk City. What no one expected was for the track to be covered by rock artists like the Grateful Dead and to go through some legal issues. One of the earliest known covers was by The Briarwood Singers, and a few more were recorded before being released by Tim Rose in 1967.
Dobson once admitted she was a bit naive for having performed the song live before it was recorded, as Rose claimed he had written the majority of “Morning Dew.” He solicited permission to revise the song, with a resultant co-writing credit.
“I never met Tim Rose, but I went to see him at the Half Moon, Putney. When he announced the song, I shouted: ‘How about giving the writer some credit?’ He was conciliatory, then he turned testy and said: ‘Why the… should you complain? You get your 75 per cent!” recalls Dobson.
After some legal intervention, Dobson regained some creative control over her song. In 1966, the Grateful Dead was introduced to the Fred Neil version of “Morning Dew,” which they gave an electrifying rock edge for their own released cover as part of their self-titled debut album. The track became a live show staple for the band and was performed over 200 times in the span of their career.
Other covers included Ian Gillan’s pre-Purple Episode Six and the Jeff Beck Group with Rod Stewart. There was an early Allman Brothers cut, as well as covers by Lulu, Lee Hazlewood, Nazareth, Blackfoot, the Screaming Trees and Einstürzende Neubauten.
Related: 1964 Pop Song, Covered by Dolly Parton 20 Years Later, Became a No. 1 International Hit
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