By Tony Attwood
Here is a thought: how interesting today, is a 1960s commentary made by Bob Dylan about the future?
Now I come at that question through a whole range of different experiences and thoughts, starting from my days as a youngster learning to play the classics on the piano, and realising that JS Bach did not give us indications of speed or volume of the 48 Preludes and Fugues (of if you prefer “The Well-Tempered Clavier”).
I would ask you not to press delete at this point on the basis that you don’t want to know anything (or anything more) about Johann Sebastian and his work, his two wives or his 20 children, for there is a point in my opening question. For as everyone who has come to play any of the “48” (as they are known), will be aware there are no indications in the music as to the speed at which Bach felt the works should be played. If your copy has a speed indication, it has been added by an editor at a later date.
Now classical musicians accept this as the reality, and will choose the speed at which they (or their pupils) play the compositions. And suddenly I wondered if we can legitimately give ourselves the same right in terms of choosing the speed at which we perform the works of Bob Dylan. In that, is there a set speed for each Dylan song, just because that was the speed he performed it at on a recording that has been kept?
My answer would be no – simply because we all know that Bob has often changed his own works while performing them on tour – he has shown us that his songs can be performed in multifarious ways. And that of course is accepted.
But what about further changes to Bob’s work: to take a more extreme example Billy Bragg’s “The Times They Are A Changing Back”
Bragg is making a particular point in the song of course, and the comment that the times are changing back to the way they were and all progress is lost, has become ever more important and forceful. As a result the musical quality of song he performs becomes of necessity rather dull.
But consider other songs, or indeed, if you prefer, just one element of a Dylan song. If we take, “It’s alright ma” that can be performed as a seemingly endless list of all that is going wrong. The doom-laden lyrics are there from the very start with, “There is no sense in trying.” But the song can retain its strength and vigour, especially for those who want to say to the rest of the world, “Wake up; look at what’s happening.”
In the song Dylan tells us how awful the contemporary situation has become, until the climax is reached and we hear that the reason there is no sense in trying is because this simply is how life is. And thus, although I know many disagree with me, “It’s alright ma” has always sounded like the opposite of “Times they are a changin” because it says life doesn’t change, life just goes on. For if anyone knew what Bob was really thinking, they’d chop his head off.
So did Bob, in his early days as a songwriter, think that things really were getting better because the times were changing or is there nothing to be done, because if we really knew what Bob was dreaming about, we would indeed chop his head off? Is Bob helping us to a better future, or is he just mapping an appalling and dismal present which ensures that we will have an appalling and dismal future?
There was only one year between the release of “Times they are a changing” and “It’s alright ma” and that doesn’t really seem very long for such a profound change of thought to happen – from everything will be ok, to we’re all doomed to live as we are living forever and ever.
The only way out of the conundrum that the two songs appear to present is to accept that times change without us doing anything, which is why it’s all right to suggest that the world is ok, because it changes by itself. (And indeed the more complex our world gets the faster it changes).
But, and this is the real issue – such debate depends on one accepting that Bob writes lyrics that a) mean something and b) he believes in. If either of those concepts is not true, then the debate falls apart. Bob just writes words and we are the ones who make up the meanings.
Clearly in some ways times they are a changing in that England – the country in which I live – has changed radically during my lifetime. What is allowable and what is legal now is nothing like what was allowable and legal during the first decade of my life. How we spend our days is utterly different. Everything has changed.
But in realising that, what value do we still find in Bob’s earlier songs? Is it just the fact the message “The Times they are a Changing” is as valid now as it was in the 1960s? Is it just that the final verse of Times has total relevance to today as it did when it was composed?
The line it is drawnThe curse it is castThe slow one nowWill later be fastAs the present nowWill later be pastThe order is rapidly fadin'And the first one nowWill later be lastFor the times they are a-changin'
Indeed each day as I awake and listen to the news, I hear more and more stories of change and how it is affecting our daily lives in the UK. There is a growing panic about technology, arguments about who should be allowed into the country, worries about social cohesion…. In short a worry about times changing, not because they are changing but because they are changing in a way that we don’t like.
In fact as I listen again to Times it seems Bob got it right…
The line it is drawnThe curse it is castThe slow one nowWill later be fastAs the present nowWill later be pastThe order is rapidly fadin'And the first one nowWill later be lastFor the times they are a-changin'
And it struck me, maybe that is one reason why the music of Bob Dylan continues to be so relevant – for he was able to pick out themes which were not just related to the era in which he wrote them, but that despite a welter of changes would still be of significant concern (at least in my country) some seventy years later.
Which now I come to think about it, was rather clever.