. Dylan's first collection to feature only original compositions, it consists mostly of stark, sparsely-arranged story songs concerning issues such as , , and .
characterized the 1960s.
Some critics and fans were not quite as taken with the album as a whole, relative to his previous work, for its lack of humor or musical diversity. Still, The Times They Are a-Changin' entered the United States chart at twenty, eventually going gold, and belatedly reaching four in the in 1965.
Columbia's Studio A in .
Once again, was the producer, this time for the entire album.
Eight songs were recorded during that first session, but only one recording of "North Country Blues" was ultimately deemed usable and set aside as the master take. A master take of "Seven Curses" was also recorded, but it was left out of the final album sequence.
Another session at Studio A was held the following day, this time yielding master takes for four songs: "Ballad of Hollis the final album sequence.
usable. However, three recordings taken from the third session eventually saw official release: "master" takes of "Paths of Sessions did not resume for more than two months.
During the interim, Dylan toured briefly with , performing a number of key concerts that raised his profile in the media. When Dylan returned to Studio A on , he had six more original compositions ready for recording. Master takes for "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll" and "When the Ship Comes In" were both culled from the session.
A master take for "Percy's Song" was also recorded, but it was ultimately set aside and was not officially released until in 1985.
They Are a-Changin'" and "One Too Many Mornings" were recorded and later included in the final album sequence. A master take for "Lay Down Your Weary Tune" was also recorded, but ultimately left out of the final album; it was eventually released on .
Two more outtakes, "Eternal Circle" and "Suze (The Cough Song)", were The sixth and final session for The Times They Are a-Changin' was held on . The entire session focused on one song, "Restless Farewell", whose melody is again, taken from an folk song, " ", and it produced a master take that ultimately closed the album.
The Times They Are a-Changin' opens with its title track, one of Dylan's most famous songs and certainly one of his best-known song titles.
Dylan's friend, Tony Glover, recalls visiting Dylan's apartment in September 1963, where he saw a number of song manuscripts and poems lying on a table. "The Times They Are-a Changin'" had yet to be recorded, but Glover saw its early manuscript. After reading the words "come senators, congressmen, please heed the call", Glover reportedly asked Dylan: "What is this shit, man?
", to which Dylan responded, "Well, you know, it seems to be what the people like to hear".
A self-conscious protest song, it is often viewed as a reflection of the generation gap and of the political divide marking American culture in the 1960s. Dylan, however, disputed this interpretation in 1964, saying "Those were the only words I could find to separate aliveness from deadness.
It had nothing to do with age." A year later, Dylan would say: "I can't really say that adults don't understand young people any more than you can say big fishes don't understand little fishes. I didn't mean ['The Times They Are a-Changin'] as a statement.
.. It's a feeling.
"
Thirty years after it was first released, "The Times They Are a-Changin'" created some controversy for Dylan when he allowed a Canadian merchant bank to feature it in its advertising campaign.
" " was originally recorded for Dylan's previous album, and free will' culled from the folk idiom", it is a grim, rural Gothic story of a father killing his starving family ("There's Although Dylan claims it is an original composition, the melody to "With God on Our Side" bears a striking resemblance to " ", the lyrics of which were written by and the melody borrowed from the traditional Irish folk song, "The Merry Month Of May". Behan called Dylan a plagiarist and a thief, in an attempt to goad Dylan into a lawsuit; Dylan made no response.
"The Patriot Game" was originally introduced to Dylan by Scottish folksinger Nigel Denver. English folksinger Jim McLean recalls Dylan asking him in late 1962: "'What does it mean, 'Patriot Game'?'.
.. I explained – probably lectured him – about Dr Johnson, who's one of Dominic's favourite writers, and that's where Dominic picked up [the] saying: 'Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.
'" Germans as a farce."
Dylan follows "With God on Our Side" with a soft, understated ballad: "One Too Many Mornings". "It's the sound of someone too smitten by love to harbor regrets, grown too independent to consider a reunion," writes Riley.
One of the more celebrated songs electric band.
company's decision to outsource its labor to other countries. (Dylan would return to this theme in "Union Sundown" on his 1983 album, .
) It also marks the first time Dylan wrote a song exclusively from the point-of-view of a woman, in this case, the wife of an unemployed worker.
as victimized by discrimination as the poor black. The Greenwood people didn't know that Pete [Seeger], Theo[dore Bikel] and Bobby [Dylan] were well known.
(Seeger and Bikel were also present at the registration rally.) They were just happy to be getting support. But they really like Dylan down there in the cotton country.
"
Fair" (which was also the melodic source of an earlier Dylan composition, "Girl from the North Country"). Dylan learned Carthy's arrangement during his first trip to England in late 1962. After finishing his obligations in England (including a brief appearance in a drama, ), Dylan traveled to Italy looking for his girlfriend, , apparently unaware that she had already returned to America (reportedly the same time Dylan left for England).
While in Italy, Dylan created The song tells the story of a woman who is going abroad, and she asks her lover if there's anything she can send back to him. Her lover refuses to answer, even when she insists on sending back something as he is too distraught over her imminent departure; he only wants her to be with him. After she leaves, she eventually writes him a letter where it's implied that she may never return.
Her lover believes that her love for him is either fading or already gone, and in the last line of the song, he asks her to send him " of Spanish leather." critic Bill Wyman called the song "an abstract classic and one of the purest, most confounding folk songs of the time."
According to Heylin, "When The Ship Comes In" was written in August 1963 "in a fit of pique, in a hotel room, after his unkempt appearance had led an impertinent hotel clerk to refuse him admission until his companion, , had vouched for his good character.
" Heylin speculates that "Jenny's Song" from Brecht and Weill's destruction of all her enemies by a mysterious ship, so Dylan envisages the neophobes being swept aside in 'the hour when the ship comes in'." Dylan's former girlfriend Suze Rotolo recalls that her "interest in Brecht was certainly an influence on him. I was working for the Circle in the Square Theater and he came to listen all the time.
He was very affected by the song that Lotte Lenya's known for, 'Pirate Jenny'."
"Possibly the most focused and precise and persuasive of [Dylan's] protest songs", according to Wyman, "'The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll' tells the story of a rich tobacco-farm owner (William Zantzinger, who is called "William Zanzinger" in the song) who kills his African-American servant (Hattie Carroll). Based on actual events, the song portrays as a privileged individual who kills Carroll by striking her with his cane at a society gathering, escaping with a nominal sentence because of his political connections.
Zantzinger was intoxicated and began striking people with a wooden carnival cane. One of the people he struck was Carroll, then a fifty-one-year-old barmaid with an enlarged heart and severe hypertension. When she questioned his need for another drink, Zantzinger became verbally abusive.
He succeeded in upsetting Carroll, and on returning to the kitchen she complained about Zantzinger to a co-worker. Carroll then collapsed, and she was taken to a hospital where she died the following morning. Though there were no severe marks reported on Carroll's body, no autopsy was performed to determine the exact cause of death.
Zantzinger was charged with involuntary manslaughter since his actions, according to the courts, contributed to "a tremendous emotional upsurge" that ultimately killed her; on , Zantzinger was sentenced to six months in prison, which he began serving on , and paid $25,000 in damages to Carroll's family.
sentencing. His father, Richard C.
Zantzinger, had served a term in the Maryland legislature and on the state planning commission.
A few critics like Clinton Heylin would take issue with the facts portrayed in the song, but even Heylin himself conceded that the song is "a brilliant evocation of the kind of miscarriage of justice the color of a woman's skin could bring..
.[it is] Dylan's 'Vanity of Human Wishes'..
.a masterpiece of drama and wordplay..
."
The sessions for The Times They Are a-Changin' produced a large surplus of songs, many of which were eventually issued on later compilations. According to Clinton Heylin, "perhaps the two best songs, "Percy's Song" and "Lay Down Your Weary Tune", would not make the final album, failing to fit within the narrow bounds Dylan had decided to impose on himself.
"
"'Lay Down Your Weary Tune'...
along with 'Eternal Circle'...
marked a new phase in Dylan's songwriting", writes Heylin. "It come the following year. A celebration of song itself, 'Lay Down Your Weary Tune' was also an admission that there were certain Riley describes "Lay Down Your Weary Tune" as "a hymn to music's instrumental spectrum.
.. it's about the heightened awareness rich in natural imagery, often in surreal, musical terms ("The cryin' rain like a trumpet sang/And asked for no applause").
on their critically acclaimed second album, Turn! Turn! Turn!
.
"Percy's Song" is sung from the point of view of a man who visits a judge in a futile, last-ditch attempt to save his friend from a severe prison sentence. The accused was behind the wheel in a major car accident that claimed the lives of four individuals; for this, he was found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to ninety-nine years in Prison.
It is based on a tune taken from "The Wind and the Rain", a song introduced to Dylan by Paul Clayton. "'Percy's Song', along with ..
. 'Seven Curses' and 'Moonshine Blues', showed that Dylan's command of traditional themes, housed in traditional melodies, remained undiminished by the topicality of other efforts", writes Heylin. recorded their own celebrated rendition of "Percy's Song" on their critically acclaimed third album, .
Written some time in late 1962 or early 1963, "Only a Hobo" was also recorded during these sessions but ultimately set aside. dead in a gutter. later released his own celebrated version of "Only a Hobo" on the critically acclaimed in 1970.
Dylan himself re-recorded "Only a that version as well. He eventually released his own version in 1991 on
Columbia recorded the entire concert, not been released). Nevertheless, the performance was well received by the press and audience alike, but its success was to be On that day, at 12:30, President was assassinated in , . Dylan's friend, , was sitting with Dylan in 's apartment the day of the shooting.
According to Fass, Dylan was deeply affected by it and said: "What it means is that they are trying to tell you 'Don't even hope to change things'." Dylan later claimed that Kennedy's death did not directly inspire any of his songs, but in a manuscript written shortly after the assassination, he wrote: "it is useless t' recall the day once more". In another, he repeatedly wrote: "there is no Three weeks to the day after Kennedy's assassination, the Emergency Civil Liberties Committee gave Dylan their annual Tom Paine award for his contribution to the civil rights movement.
Dylan gave a disastrous acceptance speech at the awards ceremony held at Hotel Americana in New York, at one point claiming he saw something of himself in , Kennedy's assassin. After the ceremony, a number of eyewitnesses reported that Dylan seemed very nervous and was drinking quite heavily before giving his speech.
Nelson into someone determined to write only songs that 'speak for me'.
.. Dylan's ambitions as a writer for the page.
..may have familiar with Ginsberg's work since growing up in Minneapolis.
By now, beat poetry and French symbolists had become an enormous influence on Dylan's work, as Dylan "passed from immediate folk sources to a polychrome of literary styles". In an interview taken in 1985, Dylan said that he didn't start writing poetry until he was out of high school: "I was eighteen or so when I and those guys. Then I went back and started reading the French guys, They Are a-Changin' weakened as the years passed, but the overall consensus continued to be positive.
Nevertheless, by the time it was released on , Dylan was already entering a new phase in his career, pulling further away from his popular image as a protest singer.
All songs by Bob Dylan.
News RSS