CD Odyssey Disc 399: Bob Dylan

I suppose it is fitting that after reviewing Steve Earle we take a step twenty-five years back to someone he would have grown up listening to.

Disc 399 is…The Times They Are A-Changin’

Artist: Bob Dylan

Year of Release: 1964

What’s Up With The Cover?:  Bob as a young man.  He looks a little gaunt in this picture, reminding me of Alice Cooper’s strung out photos on the “Flush the Fashion” album.  It wouldn’t kill Bob to crack a smile and eat a sandwich here, but that’s not the mood of this album.

How I Came To Know It: Although this is the remastered version, the original CD release of this album is one of the first CDs I ever bought, and definitely my first Bob Dylan album in any format (I was a late bloomer).  I bought it because I’d grown up listening to a remake of “Ballad of Hollis Brown” by Nazareth, and wanted to hear the original.  Also, I really dug the title track, as everyone with ears does.

How It Stacks Up:  I have seventeen Bob Dylan albums and competition at the top is stiff.  Still, this is a damned fine record.  I’ll say it is 5^th or 6^th best, depending on my mood.

Rating: 5 stars

At some point everyone has a moment when their social conscience starts to blossom, or at least everyone should.  “The Times They Are-Changin’” (hereafter referred to as “Times”) is as good a companion for the experience as you’ll find.

If you’re looking for Dylan’s trademark humour as part of the social commentary, look elsewhere.  “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan” had “Talking World War III Blues” the year before, and “Another Side of Bob Dylan” would give us a satirical laugh on “Motorpsycho Nitemare” later in 1964, but “Times” is an album devoid of any such emotional let-up.

If an album is going to be this heavy in tone, it better be a damned fine album, and “Times” delivers, starting with the iconic title track.  A song that had me thinking about New Testament forgiveness, social upheaval, and the Taoist Wheel of Fortune, and the common threads between them.

It is a song about how the last shall be first, and if you aren’t ready for the rising flood, then you should either step out of the way or risk being swept away by it.  Whatever level of revolutionary zeal you might be feeling in your life, “The Times They Are A-Changin’” reminds us that there is always a new generation with something to teach us.  What’s more, it deftly manages that revolutionary zeal without ever feeling angry.

Not so with other songs on “Times” where Dylan unloads heavy, unpleasant cargo with a full dose of fury.  “With God On Our Side” speaks to the pointlessness of war, and the ever-present efforts to justify it with misplaced religion.

“Only A Pawn In Their Game” highlights how the disenfranchised can be so easily turned against one another with hate and fear, and “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll” calls out a justice system that Dylan perceives as being different based on wealth and place in society. 

“Hattie Carroll” is a great track, telling the tale of socialite William Zanzinger kills a poor, black barmaid.  Dylan’s repeated, pleading refrain of:

“But you who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fears
Take the rag away from your face
Now ain’t the time for your tears”

implies that while the grief over a pointless crime is great, the need for justice needs to take precedence over sorrow.  That is until the very end, when Zanzinger receives a mere six month sentence for the crime, at which point the final chorus alters to:

“Oh, but you who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fears
Bury the rag deep in your face
For now’s the time for your tears”

Justice has failed poor Hattie Carroll, and all that’s left now is our sympathy.  Dylan makes it clear he doesn't think it's enough.

Not all the characters have defined heroes and villains to go with their misery however.  “Ballad of Hollis Brown” and “North Country Blues” are stories of people living subsistence lives and scraping to hold onto their dignity through poverty.  Both are about impoverished parents trying to put food on the table.

Hollis Brown is a dirt farmer, facing drought and starvation with a wife and five children to feed.  The female protagonist in “North Country Blues” has three children of her own, and has to raise them through the deaths of her father, mother, brother, husband and – ultimately – the mining industry that supports them all.

Hollis Brown seeks his dignity in seven shotgun shells, murdering himself and his whole family rather than let them starve.  While he gets escape with his crime, Dylan is quick to point out:

“There’s seven people dead

On a South Dakota Farm

Somewhere in the distance

There’s seven more people born.”

In “North Country Blues” a woman raises her children through all adversity, only to be left with the knowledge they will leave the dying town of their birth – and her with it – as soon as they’re old enough to do so.

But if you thought Dylan was done laying a heavy trip on you, then you don’t know Dylan.  He doesn’t do half-measures, and on “One Too Many Mornings” he delivers one of the greatest break up songs of all time (and one of “Times” greatest songs musically as well, with gentle guitar picking holding a wistful, mournful tune).  Dylan concludes the song with some of my favourite lines of poetry:

“It’s a restless hungry feeling
That don’t mean no one no good
When ev’rything I’m a-sayin’
You can say it just as good.
You’re right from your side
I’m right from mine
We’re both just one too many mornings
An’ a thousand miles behind.”

Musically, Dylan perfectly matches the stark topics of the record with bare guitar playing and insistent, demanding harmonica solos.  These solos can downright annoy you until you realize that’s just Dylan making sure he still has your attention.

When I first bought this album, I was only twenty, fresh from being one too many mornings behind on both my grocery bill and my first love affair, and filling up the empty spaces in my heart and stomach with ideas and ideals.  All these songs spoke to me.

 “Times” is an album for those early hard times, when life is red and raw, just as effective on twenty year olds in 1990 as it was on twenty year olds in 1964.  I expect it is impacting twenty year olds right now as well.  It isn’t just an album for those times, though, because as I approach the age of 42, it speaks just as strongly as it ever has.

It is fitting that an album that begins with a call for change, and ranges through such human misery, ends with “Restless Farewell,” a song that could well serve as Dylan’s eulogy on that dark day when he leaves us.  He sings:

“Oh ev’ry girl that ever I’ve touched
I did not do it harmfully
And ev’ry girl that ever I’ve hurt
I did not do it knowin’ly
But to remain as friends
And make amends
You need the time and stay behind
And since my feet are now fast
And point away from the past
I’ll bid farewell and be down the line.”

At this point, two stanzas in, it almost feels like Dylan’s apologizing to his listeners for the dark journey he’s taken us on.  But it isn’t Dylan’s way to apologize.  The last three lines of the same song end the album with:

“So I’ll make my stand
And remain as I am
And bid farewell and not give a damn.”

 “The Times They Are A-Changin’” is uncompromising greatness that still punches me in the solar plexus more than two decades after I first heard it.  The day it is no longer appreciated – that’s the time for our tears.

Best tracks: all tracks, but my favourites are The Times They Are A-Changin’, With God On Our Side, One Too Many Mornings, The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll, and Restless Farewell.