Dylan wanted to hire an actual school marching band for the opening track on Blonde on Blonde so that the backing music had that amateurish, “ramshackle” sloppiness – but the marching band he heard played way too strict and tight.

The studio musicians in Nashville played it like they didn’t know what they were doing – because they were good enough to do so, although some musicians claim that they smoked a “huge amount” of marijuana and “got pretty wiped out”.

Dylan biographer, Robert Shelton, wrote in his book that he was told by Phil Spector that the inspiration for the song came when Spector and Dylan heard a Ray Charles song, “Let’s Go Get Stoned”.

The song is cryptic, and found some controversy as a “drug song”. Time magazine, on July 1, 1966, wrote:

In the shifting multi-level jargon of teenagers, ‘to get stoned’ does not mean to get drunk but to get high on drugs… a ‘rainy-day woman’, as any junkie knows, is a marijuana cigarette.

Despite reaching the top 10 in the US, UK, Canada and The Netherlands, the controversy caused the song to stop being played on some radio stations. Dylan lashed back, saying:

I’m not going to play any more concerts in England. I’d just like to say that the next song is what your English musical papers would call a ‘drug song’. I have never and never will write a ‘drug song’. I just don’t know how to. It’s not a ‘drug song’. It’s just vulgar.

(from No Direction Home: The Life and Music of Bob Dylan)

The title could also be a Biblical reference, taken from the Book of Proverbs “which contains a huge number of edicts for which one could genuinely get stoned”. In particular; chapter 27, verse 15:

A continual dropping in a very rainy day and a contentious woman are alike.

(from Gathered from Coincidence: A Singular History of Sixties' Pop)

According to some sources, the song got its name after two women, a mother and daughter, came in to the studio from the rain. Dylan guessed their ages correctly as 12 and 35.

In a 2012 interview with Rolling Stone, Dylan said when asked if he ever worries about people interpreting his work in misguided ways:

It doesn’t surprise me that some people would see it that way. But these are people that aren’t familiar with the Book of Acts.