There’s something unholy about how familiar the opening chords of “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” feel. You don’t just hear them: you remember them, even if you’ve never actually listened before. The first strum slides under your skin like déjà vu. The guitar doesn’t introduce itself; it arrives like a memory you didn’t know you’d lost. It’s simple, steady, and so human. It sounds like truth humming through old wood.
I like to think Bob Dylan didn’t write that song as much as he accidentally caught it mid-flight, like a butterfly landing on a guitar string. The story goes he wrote it for Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, a western about outlaws and endings, which already explains the ache stitched into every note. It’s about death, sure, but not in a tragic way. It’s the kind of death that feels like taking off heavy boots after a long day. The body’s tired, the soul’s ready. It’s the peace kind of dying, not the punishment kind.
And yet, what Dylan gave us isn’t a death song, it’s a doorway song. That repeating refrain, that soft “knock-knock-knockin’,” it’s the sound of someone between worlds. Not begging to be let in, not running away, just standing there in that quiet space where endings meet beginnings. The guitar strums like a heartbeat learning how to slow down. The chorus floats, like gospel, like grace, like maybe heaven is not a place but a moment.
I first heard the song when I was way too young to understand it. My dad was cleaning his cupboard, harmonising along, while the air smelled of detergent and petrichor. It was Dylan’s version, warm and golden like a Sunday evening. Back then, I thought it was just another “old person song,” the kind adults pretend to understand. I liked the GNR version more. But years later, I played it again accidentally, a new life freshly brewing, and suddenly it wasn’t background noise. It was prophecy.
That’s the curse of music, isn’t it? Songs wait patiently until you’ve lived enough to meet them properly. And when you finally do, they hit you like a memory from the future. That’s what this one did. It made me sit down mid-laundry, tears threatening mutiny, because suddenly I got it. The peace, the ache, the whisper of something ending but not gone. Dylan’s voice felt like someone patting my back saying, “Yeah, love, life hurts, you move on to better things, and that’s how it’s supposed to be.”
“Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” isn’t loud. It doesn’t beg for attention. It knows it’s immortal. The simplicity of its chords (G, D, Am, G again — see, even the progression feels like a return) gives it this hypnotic quality. It’s minimalism with meaning. There’s nowhere to hide. Every strum exposes something in you. It’s the kind of song that fills silence without overpowering it. It’s the friend who sits next to you when you’re crying and says nothing, because they know words won’t help.
And then, decades later, came the Guns N’ Roses version. Loud, electric, dripping with eyeliner and existential crisis. Suddenly, that same door Dylan knocked on so softly was being kicked down. And somehow, that made sense too. Because the thing about heaven is: we all imagine it differently. For Dylan, heaven was calm. For Axl Rose, heaven was chaos. Both versions, both heavens, both truths.
There’s poetry in that duality. The same song, the same lyrics, yet completely different emotional galaxies. Dylan’s voice sounds like a sunset exhale; Axl’s like a thunderstorm with a hangover. One whispers, “I’m ready.” The other screams, “I’m not done yet.” Both are honest, and both are devastating.
Hello? Which heaven am I knockin’ for?
Music has that alchemy. It transforms the same set of words into a hundred lives. It turns grief into rhythm, confusion into melody. Every person who sings it leaves fingerprints on it, and every person who listens leaves fingerprints back. That’s why this song doesn’t age. It doesn’t belong to 1973 or 1992. It belongs to everyone who’s ever stood at a metaphorical door wondering if they’re allowed to rest yet.
When I listen now, I can almost see it: a long hallway of lives, each one holding something different. Dylan stands there with a weary smile, hat tipped, saying it’s alright to let go. Axl stands there, wild-eyed, saying don’t you dare. And then there’s me, somewhere in between, knocking with one hand and holding my heart together with the other, not sure which heaven I’m hoping answers.
That’s where it all began. With one song, two doors, and a thousand people standing in front of it, hearts full and trembling. The song isn’t a soundtrack to endings, it’s an anthem for trying. For reaching. For still believing there’s something worth knocking for.
Because at the end of the day, whether you’re Dylan-soft or Axl-screaming, we’re all doing the same thing: standing at life’s front porch, hair messy, mascara questionable, whispering to the universe, “It’s me. I’m still here. Please open up.”
Bob Dylan’s heaven: the art of soft dying
Bob Dylan’s version drifts into a room like smoke curling from a candle that’s just gone out. You barely notice it at first, until suddenly it’s everywhere. The guitar is quiet but sure of itself, those soft G-D-Am7 progressions like a steady breath. You could almost believe the instrument is the one singing, not him.
The first time I really heard Dylan’s version, like, properly heard it, it hit me how intimate it feels. It’s not some cinematic choir number or a flashy rock ballad. It’s small. It’s personal. It sounds like someone sitting on the edge of a bed, guitar in lap, just trying to make sense of goodbye.
There’s a slowness to it that makes you stop rushing. Dylan’s voice cracks in all the right places, in that imperfectly human way that’s never trying too hard. It’s the sound of surrender. Not in the tragic sense but in the honest one. Like someone who’s fought too many battles and finally says, “Alright, I’ve done what I can.” It’s resignation without defeat.
And the thing is, it’s not a sad song. Not really. People call it melancholic, but I think it’s peaceful. It’s that Sunday evening feeling when you’ve done all your chores, the light is warm, and the world is briefly kind. There’s a little ache there, sure, but it’s gentle. The kind that makes you close your eyes and hum along because words would ruin it.
The beauty lies in its restraint. Dylan doesn’t crowd you with instruments or layers. He leaves space. Every pause, every slow inhale of the song gives you room to think. To remember. To feel your own quiet heartbreaks without them swallowing you whole. There’s something incredibly sacred about that kind of simplicity and the courage to not fill the silence.
Also, those harmonies and that soft gospel-like backing… they sound like forgiveness itself. The kind that doesn’t need to be earned. It’s like the universe saying, “I know you tried.” It’s music that forgives you for being human. For not being ready. For not having all the answers.
It’s wild, isn’t it, how something written for a Western film about outlaws feels like a lullaby for the soul? The context makes it even more powerful: Dylan composed it for a dying lawman. But the way he sings it, it’s not just about one man, it’s about every man. Every person standing at the threshold of something ending, something unknown.
There’s a weightless quality to it, like he’s not just playing chords but untangling emotions. You can almost see the dust in the air, the sunset bleeding into the sky, the slow acceptance that this is it. This is the moment to let go. The guitar feels like the sun dipping behind the horizon, the voice like the last word before silence.
And maybe that’s why it feels like love, too. The best kind of love; the one that doesn’t need to scream to be heard. The love that lingers without possession. That says “I hope you’re happy” and means it. Dylan’s heaven isn’t about reaching a divine afterlife; it’s about reaching peace within yourself. It’s the sigh after years of chaos.
I think that’s what draws me to it the most. It doesn’t punish you for wanting rest. It doesn’t glorify pain. It just accepts it as part of being alive. There’s a holiness in that kind of calm and the idea that not everything has to be fireworks. Sometimes it’s just a flicker, a whisper, a quiet knock.
If Guns N’ Roses are the storm before healing, Dylan is the rain that comes after — soft, necessary, and cleansing. His version doesn’t ask you to relive your grief; it teaches you how to sit with it. It’s not a song you cry to in public. It’s the one that plays softly in the background while you wash dishes, and you suddenly realise you’re okay again.
Listening to Dylan is like talking to someone who’s already been through everything you’re terrified of. He doesn’t promise answers. He just sits with you, quietly, until the world stops hurting quite so loudly.
That’s the power of his heaven: not golden gates, not choirs of angels. Just a worn guitar, a tired heart, and a voice saying it’s alright now, you can rest.
Guns N’ Roses’ hell: the beauty of breaking loud
If Bob Dylan’s version of “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” is a soft exhale after a lifetime of holding your breath, then Guns N’ Roses’ take is the gasp right before the scream. It’s the same song, sure, same lyrics, same structure, but where Dylan’s door is gently pushed open, Axl Rose kicks it off its hinges in a fit of chaos. And you know what? Sometimes you need that. Sometimes peace just doesn’t cut it.
The first second hits you like an adrenaline rush; that sharp electric riff slicing through the quiet like a siren. It doesn’t ease you in; it pulls you under. You can hear the ache dripping from every string, the guitars crying louder than any human possibly could. And when Axl’s voice comes in? My God. It’s not a voice, it’s a wound that learned how to sing. He stretches every word until Heaven’s no longer a place but an ache echoing across a soundscape of everything you never said out loud.
This version doesn’t knock, it pounds. It doesn’t wait for heaven to answer, it demands an audience. There’s no calm acceptance here, no closure, no tidy bow. This is heartbreak in stereo, grief in eyeliner, a meltdown disguised as a masterpiece. And that’s the beauty of it. It’s unfiltered, raw, brutally human. Dylan’s version says “I’ve made peace with the pain.” Guns N’ Roses says “No, I haven’t, and I don’t plan to.”
And honestly? That’s just as sacred.
There’s something holy about refusing to go quietly. Something poetic about how loud survival sounds. Every guitar solo is an emotional tantrum, every drumbeat feels like the pulse of someone trying to outrun their own memories. Also, the gun clocking and burying bit isn’t just a sound effect. It gives texture and serves as a reminder that love and loss don’t happen cleanly. They’re messy, jagged, uncomfortable. The song builds, crashes, then rebuilds itself, like a heart refusing to stop beating no matter how many times it breaks.
The lyrics don’t change. But the meaning does. When Dylan sings “Mama, take this badge off of me,” it sounds like a whisper of surrender, a quiet laying down of burdens. When Axl sings it, it’s defiance. It’s “I never wanted this in the first place.” It’s a rebellion against pain itself. He’s not just knocking on heaven’s door, he’s banging on it with both fists, shouting “why did you make me feel this much?”
The genius of this version lies in its contradiction. It’s angry in pain, but it’s vulnerable. It’s desperate, but it’s beautiful. The guitar solos spiral into chaos, but somehow you feel held in it. It’s the musical equivalent of crying so hard you start laughing, because the only other option is breaking.
It reminds me of the kind of love that burns instead of soothes. The one that leaves you both destroyed and alive in the same breath. The one that makes you feel like you’re living in all caps. The one that doesn’t fade quietly; it explodes. My ex was this kind of love. Fireworks in a thunderstorm. We fought like we were auditioning for a rock opera, and when we loved, it felt like our skin was on fire; and somehow that was the point.
And that’s what the Guns N’ Roses version is. It’s the sound of two people loving each other too hard, too wrong, too humanly. It’s passion disguised as pain and pain disguised as art. You listen and think, this hurts, but you also think, this is what it means to be alive.
What I adore most is that it doesn’t apologise for being dramatic. It doesn’t try to sound polished or polite. It’s wild. It’s indulgent. It’s the musical embodiment of I’m fine when you are very clearly not fine. And yet, it’s not wallowing. It’s surviving out loud. It’s the proof that chaos can be catharsis, that heartbreak can be harmony.
By the time the final notes fade, you’re exhausted. It’s not the peaceful release of Dylan’s goodbye, rather it’s the emotional hangover of screaming yourself empty. But there’s beauty in that too. Because sometimes you need to break loud before you can heal quiet. Sometimes heaven doesn’t answer, and you sing anyway.
That’s the thing about Guns N’ Roses. Because they didn’t just cover Dylan’s song, they possessed it. They turned it from a prayer into a protest, from a whisper into a wail. And in doing so, they made it universal all over again. For everyone who’s ever been too much, felt too much, loved too much: this version says, yeah, same.
So maybe heaven isn’t just for the peaceful. Maybe it’s also for the loud. For the messy, the angry, the ones who refuse to fade quietly. Maybe heaven’s door has dents in it from all our pounding, but maybe that’s what makes it beautiful.
The door itself: what are we really knocking on?
There comes a point when you’re listening to “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” for the fiftieth time in one sitting, lying upside down on your bed like some Victorian ghost having a dramatic episode, when you suddenly wonder: what even is this door we’re all knocking on? What is this mythical threshold that Dylan approaches like a quiet whisper and Guns N’ Roses storms like a riot in skinny jeans?
Because here’s the real gag, babes. The door isn’t about heaven. Not really. It’s about wanting something you’re not sure you’re allowed to have. Peace. Rest. Closure. Permission to stop aching. Permission to start anew. It’s that universal moment when life squeezes your heart too tight and you ask the universe, with a shaky voice, “Can I come in now?”
Dylan’s knock feels like someone who’s lived enough to know that endings aren’t punishments. He knocks softly, as if heaven already recognises him. His door is the kind you walk up to barefoot, carrying memories instead of burdens. It’s wooden, warm, maybe a bit chipped, smelling faintly of sunlight and faith. You touch it and it hums back, like the universe telling you, “You’re nearly there, love. Just breathe.”
Axl’s door? Oh, that thing is fortified. Big metal slab, rust on the edges, glowing ominously like it’s straight out of some rock opera biblical crossover. He doesn’t knock, he hammer-fists. His heaven isn’t letting him in without a fight, and he’s fully prepared to go twelve rounds with the angels if he has to. It’s less “I’m ready” and more “let me in before I combust out here, babes.”
But the truth beneath both versions is the same. The door symbolises that liminal space where you’re not in the past but not quite in the future either. You’re hanging in the doorway, suspended between what was and what could be. It’s the emotional version of buffering. It’s the spiritual loading screen. And oh boy, do we live there more often than we admit.
We knock on all sorts of heavens.
The heaven of finally letting something go.
The heaven of acceptance.
The heaven of someone loving us back.
The heaven of healing after chaos.
The heaven of peace that doesn’t expire after one good cry.
Every time you’ve stood at 3 AM staring at your ceiling asking “Why did it end like that?” you’ve been knocking. Every time your chest felt too heavy and you prayed for one moment of clarity, you’ve been knocking. Every time you hoped a certain someone would text back with something other than “lol,” yep, babes, that’s knocking too. Heaven isn’t a place. It’s a feeling. A promise of relief. And we all want it so badly it hurts.
Dylan’s heaven represents a soft acceptance that things happen the way they’re meant to. His door is a pivot, not a punishment. You don’t knock because you’re running away. You knock because you’re ready to turn the page. This version of heaven is warm tea, fairy lights, and closure. It’s the grown up you wish you had the emotional capacity to be.
Guns N’ Roses’ heaven is the opposite. It’s not peaceful; it’s desperate. You’re knocking because something is breaking inside you and you can’t hold it together anymore. It’s crying in the bathroom at a party and pretending you just needed to pee. It’s heartbreak that refuses dignity. It’s vulnerability that crackles. It’s emotion in its rawest form, begging to be witnessed.
And that’s the thing. Heaven isn’t one place because we aren’t one person. We’re patchwork creatures. On Monday, we’re Dylan’s soft-souled philosopher, accepting life’s flow like a poetic river bend. On Tuesday, we’re Axl’s emotional pyrotechnics, knocking so hard the neighbours think we’re starting a riot. Both versions are true. Both versions are valid. Both versions are us.
The real magic of the door is that it stands for the threshold between what you feel and what you want to feel. You knock because you want something to shift. You knock because you want the ache to ease. You knock because you’re human and humans are chronically plagued by hope, even when we pretend not to be.
Sometimes the door opens. Sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes it opens a crack and you peek in and it’s just a dusty hallway with a flickering bulb and you’re like, “Oh brilliant. I suffered emotionally for this?” But you still walk through because you need to. Because your soul keeps urging you forward. Because you can’t stay standing outside forever.
And sometimes the door stays shut. You knock, and knock, and knock, but there’s no answer. That silence? That’s also a kind of message. It’s the universe saying, “This isn’t your room. Try another door.” And that hurts. It burns. But it also protects you from rooms you were never built for.
So what are we really knocking on?
Not heaven.
Not death.
Not even closure.
We’re knocking on the chance to feel whole again. To feel seen. To feel like the noise inside our ribcage might stop long enough for us to breathe without flinching. The door symbolises the part of us that still believes, despite everything, that peace is possible. That love is possible. That the version of us who survives all this will be softer, wiser, and maybe, just maybe, a tiny bit happier.
And darling, isn’t that the most heartbreakingly hopeful thing of all?
Two loves, two versions.
There are songs that explain your love life better than therapy ever could, and “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” is absolutely mine. Actually, scratch that. It’s the dual nature of this song that defines my entire romantic history. Because I have lived both versions. I have loved like Bob Dylan, soft and steady, breathing in warmth like it was oxygen, and I have loved like Guns N’ Roses, loud and doomed and running entirely on chaos calories. The funniest part, and by funny I mean cosmically ridiculous, is that the loud, dramatic, emotionally carnivorous love was the relationship, and the soft, tender, sunlit love is the man who doesn’t even like me back. Honestly, if that isn’t the most British tragicomedy energy known to womankind, Shakespeare better start taking notes.
My ex was my certified, government-issued Guns N’ Roses era. With him, every day felt like tuning a guitar that kept snapping its own strings. We were volume. We were tension. We were the emotional equivalent of a fire hazard warning. It was the kind of love that makes you feel like you’re being rescued and drowned at the same time. One minute we were laughing like absolute idiots in the rain, dramatic as if we were filming a music video that absolutely no one asked for, and the next minute we were crying in a random hallway trying to decode each other like malfunctioning software updates. We weren’t compatible; we were combustible. And because I was young and deeply committed to the aesthetic of tragic romance, I thought that was normal. I thought passion was supposed to hurt like that, like how a paper cut hurts more than a wound because it’s so small yet so unnecessarily painful. I thought love was supposed to feel like high-voltage electricity and slight nausea. The Guns N’ Roses version made perfect sense then, with its screaming guitar, emotional costume changes, and that melodramatic sensation that the world was ending, then beginning again, then ending again because someone said something in the wrong tone. We were a rock ballad without rehearsal. And it was intoxicating. Terrifying. Addictive in all the wrong ways.
And then came this new person. This man who doesn’t even love me back, who probably doesn’t even know the emotional Olympics he has put me through, yet somehow he makes my heart feel like Dylan’s warm acoustic strum. Tell me why unreciprocated love is the healthiest love I’ve experienced. Tell me why the person who isn’t mine is the one who feels like peace, while the one who was mine felt like a demolition site with mood swings. It’s comical. It’s spiritual. It’s mathematically incorrect. With him, everything is in lowercase. Soft, warm, comfortable in the way a sunlit morning feels when you wake up without an alarm. It’s hopeful without being delusional, gentle without being passive, and even the hurt doesn’t sting sharply. It settles.
He is not mine, but he feels like coming home to myself. He feels like a deep breath I didn’t know I’d been holding for years. The affection isn’t loud or obsessive or demanding. It’s simple. It’s private. It’s the kind of love that doesn’t make you question your worth every five minutes. It’s unreciprocated, but never humiliating. It’s not a scream; it’s a hum, a warmth that exists because it wants to, not because it needs to be validated. Dylan’s version plays in my head whenever I think of him: that slow, weary softness, that warmth that sits heavy but not painfully so, that sense that even if this never becomes anything, it is still good, still pure, still something that left me better instead of burnt.
The silence between the knocks.
There is a moment in every heartbreak, every unfinished love, every chapter that refuses to close neatly where everything suddenly goes quiet. Not peaceful quiet. Not comforting quiet. It’s the kind of quiet that feels like your soul is holding its breath. This is the silence between the knocks. The space where you’re not knocking anymore, but the door hasn’t opened either. You’re just standing there, keyless, clueless, and emotionally jet-lagged, trying to decide whether to keep hoping or finally walk away. And the worst part is that the universe gives you nothing. No sign. No divine whisper. Just that stillness where your heart echoes back at you like a sad little drum.
I think this is the part of the song most people overlook. Dylan gives us that soft resignation. Guns N’ Roses gives us the dramatic screaming. But the real emotional battlefield is the space between those knocks. When you’re exhausted, but you still care. When you’re hopeful, but you’re not delusional. When you’re hurt, but you can’t quite hate. It’s that maddening in-between space where you’re not crying, you’re not angry, you’re not healed, you’re not moving on. You’re just existing. Just floating. Just trying to understand what to do with the feelings that didn’t get the memo that the relationship ended or the crush never began.
The silence between the knocks is where you meet yourself for the first time. Not the version of you who performs for love, or fights for love, or falls apart because of love. No. This part is raw. It’s honest. It’s the emotional backstage where the makeup has melted and the spotlight is finally off. You start hearing the questions you’ve been running from. Why do I stay? Why do I care? Why does this hurt? Why can’t I let go? Why do I want something that doesn’t want me back? And the silence answers every single one of those questions with the same irritating spiritual shrug: because you’re human, babes.
This silence is where I realised the difference between my two loves. My ex existed in the noise. He thrived in the loudness, the conflict, the tension, the constant knocking. With him, silence was scary because it meant something was wrong. Silence was a warning sign. Silence meant love was slipping. We used noise to avoid confronting the truth that we were falling apart. So when that relationship ended, the silence felt like being dropped into emotional outer space with no oxygen tank.
But with the new person, the one who feels like Dylan’s version even though he doesn’t love me, the silence is completely different. The silence is… kind. It’s gentle. It’s not a void; it’s a pause. It’s the breath before a sunrise. I don’t have to fill it with drama or noise or begging the universe for signs. I can sit with the feeling and it doesn’t swallow me. It just exists, like a soft ache that doesn’t demand anything from me. And that’s how I know this love, even if unreciprocated, is a healthier one. The silence doesn’t hurt. It holds me. It gives me space to grow instead of space to panic.
The silence between the knocks is also where maturity sneaks in, uninvited, like a lecturer who decides today’s the day for a surprise sermon. It’s where you learn not all doors are meant to open. Not all knocking is meant to be answered. Not every feeling needs to become a love story. Some feelings just exist to teach you something quietly. The silence teaches you patience. Teaches you restraint. Teaches you that love doesn’t always need to turn into fireworks. Sometimes love is just a warm light left on inside you, even if the person it’s for never sees it.
And the silence makes you brave. Because it is in this stillness that you choose whether to keep knocking or walk away. Not because you’re tired, but because you’ve accepted that your worth is not dependent on the sound of a latch turning from the other side. The silence teaches you that your heart isn’t a burden; it’s a compass. It points you towards doors that will open someday. Ones that don’t make you wait in the cold. Ones that don’t punish you for wanting good things.
The silence between the knocks is the emotional purgatory none of us want but all of us need. It’s the space where your heart resets. Where your soul recalibrates. Where you realise you’re not breaking; you’re becoming. And the wildest part? This silence is where you finally understand something that neither Dylan nor Axl explicitly tells us: sometimes heaven isn’t a door at all. Sometimes heaven is the quiet room you build inside yourself while you wait.
Here’s a bonus Lana Del Rey version for you!
If you want to knock on more doors to chaos that you can actually read, head over to Her Campus at MUJ. And if you ever wonder whether I’m gently knocking or fully roundhouse-kicking a metaphorical door, you’ll find all the evidence at Niamat Dhillon for HCMUJ. I log every emotional plot twist like it’s my full-time job.