dobro; Russ Kunkel, drums; Ron Cornelius, guitar. Release and charts The song was released as a single on June 3, 1971. In the US, Columbia Records' promotion included a full-page Billboard advertisement, declaring the track as "A unique new single by Bob Dylan." The advertisement contained a photograph of Dylan holding a camera to his eye. It reached the top 30 in Canada, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom, and reached No. 41 on the US Billboard charts. Billboard writer Paul Grein has noted that it was the second consecutive American Dylan single, after 1970's "Wigwam", to miss the top 40 by one spot. On November 17, 1971, "Watching the River Flow" appeared on Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits Vol. II. It was later included on the compilations Greatest Hits, Vol. 1–3 (2003), Playlist: The Very Best of Bob Dylan '70s (2009), and Beyond Here Lies Nothin': The Collection (2011). Critical comments Biographer Robert Shelton wrote that in the early 1970s, Dylan was frequently criticized for "selling out" and that people were pressuring him to go back to his earlier trend of composing protest songs. For Shelton, who noted the promotional photo for "Watching the River Flow" depicting Dylan looking through a camera, the track expressed Dylan's wish just to be an observer, and not a political activist. Author Seth Rogovoy similarly interpreted the song as Dylan's desire to ignore politics and avoid getting involved in people's disputes. The line "[This ol' river] keeps on rollin', though/No matter ... which way the wind does blow" has been heard by writers Peter Vernezze and Carl J. Porter as evidence of Dylan's conviction that "the river of time, the flow of facts, in reality remains unaffected by winds of beliefs, the flow of changing opinions." Greil Marcus highlighted the importance of disregarding one's initial reading of the song. "The first impression is that Bob Dylan is setting up the usual private scene: 'I'll sit here and watch the river flow.' Well, that's certainly a boring idea." He went on to describe how Dylan explores the difficulty of retaining privacy while making public art; the singer is coming to terms with unwanted attention inherent in stardom, without giving up his connection to his fans. Marcus argued that the reason the single was not a hit in the US was because "the time has passed when people are interested in hearing Bob Dylan say he'll