Can a Dylan song be a life changing experience? “Things have changed”

• Restless Farewell
• Long and Wasted Years
•  Mississippi
• Foot of Pride

As I have confessed, a few Dylan songs have given me more than the pleasure of listening to them.  Rather, they have been part of a change within my life, in a way that the music of other composers has not.   This little series sets out a few examples of how Dylan’s work been for me a life-changing experience.

But I must stress, I have not started writing this little series with a list of Dylan songs that changed my life, nor do I know how many such songs there are – although I don’t think there are that many more.   At least not that many if I take the notion of “life-changing” seriously.  By which I mean going far beyond, “Oh I love that song,” and moving into a world in which the song has not only stayed with me across the years, but also somehow affected me, and moved me in the way that maybe a handful of novels have ever done.

And I am helped as I find myself able to think about “life changing” now in a broader way, both because I am old, and because, as I am retired from my mainstream work, and only take on anything akin to work because I want to, not because I need to financially or because I have a boss telling me what to do.

Also I don’t know how many Dylan songs really can be said to have changed my life.  I’m fairly happy with the list selected so far – I know the impact they had.  But were there any others that really, really made me see the world in a different way?

But looking through the list of 500+ Dylan compositions, yes one does strike me this bright and warm summer’s morning where I live in the middle of rural England.  And I include it as a life changer because it challenged me.  But not when I first heard it, and first enjoyed it, but later, as I got older and approached retirement.   Bob getting the Academy Award for the song helped as well, as did his acceptance speech.

Musically this song it has always fascinated me as a musician because it is a positive upbeat piece, but is written in a minor key, normally associated with sadness.  Further the apparent change to the major key with the “Standing in the gallows” couplet, although using major chords is still in the key of Em minor – I am not sure if any other Dylan songs do this.  Besides, putting the line about “gallows” with the major chords, is just… weird.

How many composers would choose the line about the gallows to move from the normally mournful, sorrowful minor key into a major key – it is exactly the opposite of what composers normally do.

But more to the point is the feel of the whole song, which is for me, summarised in the lines

A worried man with a worried mind
No one in front of me and nothing behind

That is not how I am now, but it was how I was for a number of years, as I worried if I was any good as a musician, as a writer, as a husband, as a father…  And most certainly, I had my critics, as I plodded along getting work and just sometimes finding I had created something that everyone seemed to like in its own very specialist field.  Although even then, I never really convinced myself.

OK the next line of the song didn’t have anything to do with me – I never had a “woman on my lap and she’s drinking champagne” but the overall impression of the song was one I carried with me.

So I loved the music itself, but in terms of the song overall, it was the chorus that grabbed me and indeed ultimately changed me.

People are crazy and times are strange
I'm locked in tight, I'm out of range
I used to care but - things have changed.

I came across the James Baldwin quote “You write in order to change the world,” early on in my life as a writer, but knew of course, that nothing I was writing was going to change anything.  But I stayed with the lines and kept on writing, as well as being a musician and hence a composer.

Obviously, over the years, such a quote faded; I had found a way of making a living which I enjoyed, and yes, a few of the things I wrote did indeed seem to have a bit of an impact.  But then I heard, “Things have changed,” and it really did strike me that while I had started out as an artist who cared about the world and wrote songs and books in the vague hope that I might change someone’s view of the world, on that level, of course, I had failed every step of the way.

Indeed, I had stopped caring because things had changed.  I had a family and was making enough money to live in comfort.  Actually, I did still care, but not enough to make me change my life.  Things had changed around me, and I had become comfortable in a middle-class existence.

Now, such thoughts made the song much more accessible to me.

Got white skin, blood in my eyes
I’m looking up into the sapphire-tinted skies
I’m well dressed, waiting on the last train

Waiting on the last train seemed to imply that by that time, I had done it all.  And so, I asked myself, if I had done all I could, what had I done?   Had I made anyone’s life any better?   Was I a person that anyone would think of and say, “He really influenced me…”?   I most certainly doubted it.

So in this regard, I really did think that I was, if not

"Standing on the gallows with my head in a noose"

I was trying to do my best.   I knew I really had not put such talent as I might have to that much use, and if at some stage all hell did break loose, well it was probably just about what I deserved.   But  I realised, I didn’t quite know what else to do, for it has felt in various parts of my life that “Any minute now I’m expecting all hell to break loose.”

But – and this is where I start finding probably implausible links between my life and Bob Dylan, I made a real connection with the “This place ain’t doing me any good” section of the song.

Which is not to say that I spent my life listening to Dylan and then seeing it as a not too difficult to break codes which could direct my life.   Rather, it is to say that I knew I wanted to be doing something else.   Did I take “take dancing lessons just because Bob said so in a song?   I doubt it; I don’t know why I did, but I did start taking dancing lessons at this time, and to my absolute surprise, I found I was a natural.  I had never danced before apart from a bit of jigging up and down at wedding receptions and the like, but I learned quickly.

But not, I would stress, to show off, because I also remembered the line, “Only a fool in here would think he’s got anything to prove.”   I didn’t need to prove anything because I knew I was a good dancer, largely because the form of dancing I do (modern jive) is not centred on couples always dancing together, but couples changing partners dance by dance.  And yes, to my surprise, women wanted to dance with me.

So I started to move from club to club, (Don’t get up, gentlemen, I’m only passing through), dancing with different partners night after night.   And yes, the lines came back to me

People are crazy and times are strange
I’m locked in tight, I’m out of range
I used to care, but things have changed

I stopped caring about changing the world around me.  Tru,e I tried to be a decent person, helping those less fortunate than myself, but whenever possible, I travelled and danced.

Now the point here is that dance, like so many art forms, does not represent the world as it is, because there is no point in that.   Dance is a reinterpretation of the world, just as all art is.   And in accepting that, I accepted the fact that “All the truth in the world adds up to one big lie.”

And so I would like to think if the occasion arose, I would stop and help anyone in need of help.   But I stopped thinking I could improve the world.  Instead, I danced.  And I remembered these lines.

People are crazy and times are strange
I’m locked in tight, I’m out of range
I used to care, but things have changed

And once more Bob changed my world.