By Tony Attwood
In April 2023 the song “Watching the River Flow” by Dylan (originlly released in 1971) was released as a single – it was taken from Shadow Kingdom, which Wiki helpfully tellus was the the fortieth studio album and second soundtrack album by Bob Dylan. The songs were recorded in 2021.
Watching the River Flow is (for me if no one else) interesting as it takes us back to what was for many people their first fulsome awareness of Bob Dylan: the song “Times they are a changing”. And it is the similarity of the message of those two songs that I would like to take up a cople of minutes of your time in exploring.
The point about “Times they are a changing” as I have suggested a number of times in these articles, is that it is about non-revolution. It is not about rising up and defeating the forces of conservatism, but rather it is about sitting back and watching things change.
There is indeed a fight going on
The battle outside ragin' Will soon shake your windows
but there is no chance to influence the change, the fight, the battle… it is happening. This is not a call for us to rise up and join the revolution, but rather a song telling us not to get in the way because if you don’t you might get hurt…
Your old road is rapidly agin' Please get out of the new one
There are of course even a couple of biblical elements with line such as
The slow one now Will later be fast
but for the most part this is a song about change happening and being unstoppable. And this made it a particularly challenging song for the previous generation who had in their millions fought against the the fascist version of change . So many had given their lives to preserve the world their believed in, and yet here again they were being told that there was a change on the way, for having got rid of the fascists they were now faced with the hippies who had a totally opposite view of the world.
And indeed there were also Christian images in this song as with
The order is rapidly fadin' And the first one now Will later be last...
Both “Watching the river flow” and “Times they are a changing” contain the same fundamental message in fact – that the world naturally changes as time goes by, and really we don’t have to worry about that. It will happen..
So there is no emphasis on rising up and fighting on behalf of the revolution. Rather times passes, people change, the world changes. The implication is that sudden and dramatic changes that we read about in books and watch in films, don’t lead us to the new glorious land. Change comes along slowly, and happens all the time.
Of course some of the changes can be enormous – the first one now will later be last – but it is the timing that is the issue. It happens, but slowly, and in many ways this notion of slow change is perfectly captured by watching the river flow.
And here, perhaps most interestingly, we have the notion that not only is the river (symbolising change) just flowing along, but also the singer is quite happy to watch the river flowing along
But this old river keeps on rolling, though No matter what gets in the way and which way the wind does blow And as long as it does I’ll just sit here And watch the river flow
The song was clearly one of Bob’s favourites – he performed it 784 times in concerts between 1978 and 2026.. It is the 17th most performed song in his repertoire. “Times they are a changing,” that other song of just letting the world evolve without doing anything, was played 634 times giving it a place four songs below “Watching” in the “times played” chart.
In fact when we come to look at the songs Bob has played most on his eternal tours, we find that the songs about just being part of the world and either drifting through it, or watching the world go by, feature very strongly at the top of the list. As Bob’s most played song says, in its opening line “There must be some way out of here”, except somehow he can’t ever find it, so does instead spend his time just sitting there watching the river flow.
Indeed very few of Bob’s most performed songs are works that call for change. Instead they are songs about just rolling along, or indeed just watching the world go by. Bob’s character is directed to Highway 61 by God, but as far as we can see, he doesn’t actually get there.
And indeed the lyrics are disparaging of the people who he sees endless trying to make it through, always moving on Like a Rolling Stone. Driving the car out west merely leads to getting Tangled up in Blue, because travel doesn’t really tell us anything – the answer is always just Blowing in the Wind.
The point of so much of this writing is that everyone is looking for something – but we needn’t be, because things change of their own accord. We don’t have to think twice because in the end everything is resolved through a simple twist of fate.
In fact if one starts looking through Dylan songs for those moments when he tells us to get up and change the world, the number of songs we find this instruction (or even suggestion) within the lyrics, is small. Mostly the lyrics suggest that the world changes, and that we really don’t have to think twice, it’s all right.
In short, this issue of change really is most curious. The image that Bob created was one of the artist challenging the world, and the way we see the world. But actually, look a little deeper and he’s not doing this… he’s just tell us
To sit down on this bank of sand And watch the river flow