Record: The Times They Are a-Changin'
Release: January 1964
Label: Columbia
Songs / length: 10 / 45:36
In less than two years, Dylan was already on to his third album, and the Witmark Demos bootleg shows just how prolific his songwriting was during this time. Apparently, according to reports from people who knew Dylan at the time, he was writing down song lyrics pretty much anywhere and everywhere. Also, on the back of the deserved success of Freewheelin', Dylan's stock was rising nationally and internationally, and 1963 in particular was a breakthrough year for him. He performed, along with Joan Baez, Mahalia Jackson and Odetta, at the Washington March in August 1963 (famous for Martin Luther King Jr's "I Have A Dream" speech).
He also made an appearance at the Newport Folk Festival that same summer, where he was invited on to perform during Joan Baez's slot. Baez became his champion and their friendship helped to boost Dylan's profile, especially among the folk community, enormously. Scorsese's No Direction Home documentary is worth checking out for many reasons, but Baez's note perfect impressions of Dylan are among my favourite moments. Another Dylan documentary of note is Pennebaker's Don't Look Back, and this film features a clip of another notable Dylan performance in summer 1963, playing Only A Pawn In Their Game in the fields behind the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in Greenwood, Mississippi. All three videos summon up the spirit of Dylan's third record, which is more earnest and less varied in tone than his two earlier LPs.
Dylan's willingness to tackle civil rights issues was already evident on Freewheelin' with the song Oxford Town, about the first black student who attempted to gain entry to the University of Mississippi, and early unreleased song The Death of Emmett Till, but on this LP his efforts reach a whole new level of maturity. Only A Pawn In Their Game and The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll are the two songs that most directly address race relations in America. For his topical songs, Dylan had picked up a technique from Woody Guthrie of scouring the national newspapers for subject matter which he could expand and dramatise into songs, and the murder of civil rights activist Medgar Evans was the inspiration for Only A Pawn In Their Game. The case of Hattie Carroll was more ambiguous (see this article for more) but no less sad in its outcome.
Dylan's civil rights focus was not just on race, but class and inequality more widely, and the middle three verses of Only A Pawn In Their Game are about how some powerful people seek to divide and conquer by instilling the idea of white supremacy in poor folk. The Ballad of Hollis Brown is also about inequality, this time focusing on a poor white farmer who ends up killing himself, his wife and his five children out of desperation and poverty. The song's final lines are arguably the bleakest moment on the record, and the atmosphere it summons up is reminiscent of Woody Guthrie's Dust Bowl Ballads. Rural poverty is also at the heart of another song on the record, North Country Blues, which is set in Dylan's home state of Minnesota and is about the impact of a mine closure on a woman and her family. It's probably my pick of those three tracks; in it, I can hear the inspiration for outlaw country musicians like Townes Van Zandt.
The title track and With God On Our Side (which I think loses its way in some verses) are two of the most widely-known Dylan songs from this record, and both are of the deeply political, "finger-pointing" variety. They're part of the reason Dylan got his "spokesman of a generation" mantle, leading some people to think he knew all the answers, though Dylan might have responded, "I don't even know the questions". In his own words, Dylan said at the time: "I was more a cowpuncher than a Pied Piper". That said, The Times They Are a-Changin' is especially prophetic in tone and one of the most influential songs of the 60s. Music writer Andy Gill put it best when he described it as a "battle hymn of the new republic of youth, bursting with images of overturned order. The line about the loser winning; and the slow becoming fast, echo the air of patient inevitability in such Biblical promises of revolution."
There are lighter moments on the record too. When The Ship Comes In is one of my favourite tracks, and it's like a rare ray of optimism among the predominantly serious and gloomy songs on the record. One Too Many Mornings is another choice cut, its early morning simplicity a welcome change of mood from the heavy atmosphere of many tracks. Dylan's sadness at his lover Suze's departure for Italy is still plain to hear, and even more evident on Boots of Spanish Leather, which sounds very similar (almost a part two) to Girl From The North Country. On the Live at Carnegie Hall 1963 album, Dylan introduces Boots of Spanish Leather as a "'when you can't get what you want, you have to settle for less' kinda song"; in this case the "less" equates to leather boots and the "more" would have been his lover returning home. The album closes with Restless Farewell, on which Dylan sings goodbye to this period of his life, and all the finger-pointing songs that were his stock in trade at this time. Next up we'll see a very different side to his character.
Album rating: B+
Release: January 1964
Label: Columbia
Songs / length: 10 / 45:36
In less than two years, Dylan was already on to his third album, and the Witmark Demos bootleg shows just how prolific his songwriting was during this time. Apparently, according to reports from people who knew Dylan at the time, he was writing down song lyrics pretty much anywhere and everywhere. Also, on the back of the deserved success of Freewheelin', Dylan's stock was rising nationally and internationally, and 1963 in particular was a breakthrough year for him. He performed, along with Joan Baez, Mahalia Jackson and Odetta, at the Washington March in August 1963 (famous for Martin Luther King Jr's "I Have A Dream" speech).
He also made an appearance at the Newport Folk Festival that same summer, where he was invited on to perform during Joan Baez's slot. Baez became his champion and their friendship helped to boost Dylan's profile, especially among the folk community, enormously. Scorsese's No Direction Home documentary is worth checking out for many reasons, but Baez's note perfect impressions of Dylan are among my favourite moments. Another Dylan documentary of note is Pennebaker's Don't Look Back, and this film features a clip of another notable Dylan performance in summer 1963, playing Only A Pawn In Their Game in the fields behind the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in Greenwood, Mississippi. All three videos summon up the spirit of Dylan's third record, which is more earnest and less varied in tone than his two earlier LPs.
Dylan's willingness to tackle civil rights issues was already evident on Freewheelin' with the song Oxford Town, about the first black student who attempted to gain entry to the University of Mississippi, and early unreleased song The Death of Emmett Till, but on this LP his efforts reach a whole new level of maturity. Only A Pawn In Their Game and The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll are the two songs that most directly address race relations in America. For his topical songs, Dylan had picked up a technique from Woody Guthrie of scouring the national newspapers for subject matter which he could expand and dramatise into songs, and the murder of civil rights activist Medgar Evans was the inspiration for Only A Pawn In Their Game. The case of Hattie Carroll was more ambiguous (see this article for more) but no less sad in its outcome.
Dylan's civil rights focus was not just on race, but class and inequality more widely, and the middle three verses of Only A Pawn In Their Game are about how some powerful people seek to divide and conquer by instilling the idea of white supremacy in poor folk. The Ballad of Hollis Brown is also about inequality, this time focusing on a poor white farmer who ends up killing himself, his wife and his five children out of desperation and poverty. The song's final lines are arguably the bleakest moment on the record, and the atmosphere it summons up is reminiscent of Woody Guthrie's Dust Bowl Ballads. Rural poverty is also at the heart of another song on the record, North Country Blues, which is set in Dylan's home state of Minnesota and is about the impact of a mine closure on a woman and her family. It's probably my pick of those three tracks; in it, I can hear the inspiration for outlaw country musicians like Townes Van Zandt.
The title track and With God On Our Side (which I think loses its way in some verses) are two of the most widely-known Dylan songs from this record, and both are of the deeply political, "finger-pointing" variety. They're part of the reason Dylan got his "spokesman of a generation" mantle, leading some people to think he knew all the answers, though Dylan might have responded, "I don't even know the questions". In his own words, Dylan said at the time: "I was more a cowpuncher than a Pied Piper". That said, The Times They Are a-Changin' is especially prophetic in tone and one of the most influential songs of the 60s. Music writer Andy Gill put it best when he described it as a "battle hymn of the new republic of youth, bursting with images of overturned order. The line about the loser winning; and the slow becoming fast, echo the air of patient inevitability in such Biblical promises of revolution."
There are lighter moments on the record too. When The Ship Comes In is one of my favourite tracks, and it's like a rare ray of optimism among the predominantly serious and gloomy songs on the record. One Too Many Mornings is another choice cut, its early morning simplicity a welcome change of mood from the heavy atmosphere of many tracks. Dylan's sadness at his lover Suze's departure for Italy is still plain to hear, and even more evident on Boots of Spanish Leather, which sounds very similar (almost a part two) to Girl From The North Country. On the Live at Carnegie Hall 1963 album, Dylan introduces Boots of Spanish Leather as a "'when you can't get what you want, you have to settle for less' kinda song"; in this case the "less" equates to leather boots and the "more" would have been his lover returning home. The album closes with Restless Farewell, on which Dylan sings goodbye to this period of his life, and all the finger-pointing songs that were his stock in trade at this time. Next up we'll see a very different side to his character.
Album rating: B+
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