AYD Weekly | Bob Dylan, Harvard Square, 1963

The true story of "Talkin' World War III Blues" and how the past gets saved

Sometime around the start of the gig, that Sunday evening in 1963, someone went downstairs at Club 47, in Harvard Square, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and performed a typical before-show task. They turned on a reel-to-reel recorder.

Upstairs, a microphone — probably suspended from the ceiling, according to Betsy Siggins, who helped manage the club at the…