The song Bob Dylan wrote to be a “big” anthem: “What the people like to hear”
There are many things that can be attributed to the name of Bob Dylan. But while “voice of a generation” is a moniker he would rather shake off, one thing that can name that will be on the great man’s epitaph is “songwriter”.
Contrary to popular belief, songwriters rarely pause to consider the destiny of their songs. Sure, they might be overwhelmed by a sense of achievement, but this is usually felt in retrospect. In the moment of creation, all they tend to be thinking about is putting one foot in front of the other.
Well, not Bob Dylan. Some songwriters possess such clarity of vision that they’re able to imagine the kind of song they want to write and then quickly execute that song strictly as they’d intended. It’s a rare gift, and Bob Dylan had it. Indeed, without this skill, he wouldn’t have written what is arguably his most famous song.
The moment it was released, ‘The Times They Are A-Changin’ became an anthem for an entire generation of Americans fighting for a peaceful, more equal world. Joan Baez always maintained that Dylan never intended to write a political anthem. “It’s impossible to write an anthem,” she told NPR. “I would never attempt it. I mean, I think there are a lot of well-meaning, politically intelligent musicians who’ve written a lot of songs. But to get people to really relate to it and sing along and have this sort of universality of time and place, that’s different, you know? That’s difficult.”
Baez’s view is one shared by many – that Dylan’s song was an inevitable byproduct of a society on the cusp of great change. In the same way Dylan found much of his inspiration from the books he plucked from the bookshelves of his Greenwich Village compatriots, so too was ‘The Times They Are A-Changin’ an act of absorption. But here’s the thing: Dylan has often said he intentionally set out to write a political anthem with the cultural clout of that 1964 single, so perhaps it wasn’t an accident after all.
One of Dylan’s friends, a man called Tony Glover, once recalled visiting Dylan’s apartment in September 1963, where he saw an early lyric sheet for ‘The Times They Are A-Changin’ lying on the table. On reading the words, “come senators, congressmen, please heed the call”, Glover turned to Dylan and asked: “What is this shit, man?” to which Dylan replied: “Well, you know, it seems to be what the people like to hear”.
In the liner notes to his 1985 Biography compilation album, Dylan describes the process of writing the song as a deliberate attempt to create an anthem for the civil rights movement: “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”.
In a conversation with Cameron Crowe the same year the compilation was released, Dylan made almost the exact same comment: “This was definitely a song with a purpose. It was influenced of course by the Irish and Scottish ballads…’Come All Ye Bold Highway Men’, ‘Come All Ye Tender Hearted Maidens’. The civil rights movement and the folk music movement were pretty close for a while and allied together at that time.'”
The story of ‘The Times They Are A-Changin’ contradicts the view we hold of Bob Dylan. At the height of his fame, Dylan rejected the idea that he was some sort of spokesperson for America’s liberal youth. And yet, he actively strove to establish himself as the narrator of one of post-war America’s greatest liberal victories.
The duality of Dylan can be found in this very album and song. Thought of as the “voice of a generation”, Dylan has regularly rejected the ideal, but it would seem that, given half the chance, Dylan would leap at such a chance to establish himself as just that. But there’s no point being the voice if you don’t have anything to say.
You can revisit ‘The Times They Are A-Changin’ below.
Never Miss A Tale
The Far Out Bob Dylan Newsletter
All the latest stories about Bob Dylan from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.