The one song Phil Collins said “everybody should hear”
Every music fan has a list of songs that they believe could enhance everybody else’s life by hearing them. Phil Collins, despite being one of the best-selling artists of all time, also feels this way with a particularly Bob Dylan song.
Dylan has been responsible for creating an oeuvre of material that has led to thousands of imitators; nobody has ever come close to matching his originality. He’s never claimed to have the best voice in the world or to be the most skilled guitarist; his songwriting capabilities have made Dylan a one-of-one artist.
There are plentiful songs in his canon that every person should hear, whether this be his epic storytelling masterpiece ‘Hurricane’ or the heartwrenching ‘Hurricane’. However, for Collins, at the top of his list is ‘The Times They Are A-Changin’, which he believes deserves a place on the national curriculum.
The politically-charged anthem, which soundtracks an entire chapter of history, was released in 1964 and appeared on the seminal album of the same name. Immediately, the song showed Dylan was cut from a different cloth than the other stars of the Greenwich Village music scene.
Not only was he creating delightful music pleasurable to the ear, but Dylan was making an important societal message which epitomised life in America in the 1960s. For the first time, they had someone to hang their hat on to say how they were feeling, and he also showed songwriters that they could tackle subjects of all shapes or sizes within their work.
The sense of optimism that he crammed into the song signalled how life was moving into the light from the dark and powerfully suggested positivity always overcomes negativity. With ‘The Times They Are A-Changin’, Dylan provided a voice to the voiceless and simultaneously made himself their saviour.
In the liner notes of Biograph, Dylan wrote: “I wanted to write a big song, some kind of theme song, with short, concise verses that piled up on each other in a hypnotic way. This is definitely a song with a purpose. I knew exactly what I wanted to say and who I wanted to say it to.”
Collins wasn’t an early adopter of Dylan, but heard about him thanks to The Beatles, who regularly talked about how he was a key source of inspiration during interviews. In his mind, if Dylan was good enough for The Beatles, he needed to hear ‘The Times They Are A-Changin’, and it has stayed with him ever since.
In 2017, he told BBC Radio 4’s Inheritance Tracks: “The track that I would pass on is ‘The Times They Are A-Changin’ by Bob Dylan. I was a bit late coming to Dylan but The Beatles liked him. I bought this single, played an awful lot, the lyrics they are very honest and real.”
“‘Come senators, congressmen, Please heed the call, Don’t stand in the doorway, Don’t block up the hall’,” Collins quoted from the song’s lyrics, in awe.
Explaining why he wanted this track to be passed onto future generations, the Genesis frontman said: “Because there is a change coming and this spell it out, poetically, the situation of the time of the change that is was going on in music, culture, America and politics. I pass this song to anybody that forgotten. I think you could almost do an essay or a thesis at school.”
He concluded: “I’m saying listen to this and then write down what you think. I would definitely pass it on to my kids but it’s a song that I think everybody should hear it every six months or certainly every general election.”
‘The Times They Are A-Changin’ is more than a song; it’s a missile of hope for a bright and joyous future. Sadly, over 60 years on from its release, the world now feels further away from achieving the change that Dylan promised, but the need for hope is even more necessary.
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