Notes on Times They Are A-Changin'
This album and the title track are considered emblematic of the '60s: its sense of social upheaval, of things getting better, of hippies and young and black people fighting in the streets for a better day. But this album is anything but an anthem to these things. Just listen to Dylan's voice as the soon as the opening lyrics arise: come gather round people wherever you roam . He sounds just as old as the mothers and fathers throughout the land- don't criticise what you can't understand . Young wise, old naive. Never did Dylan sound so weary, so fucking tired and battered by the circus of being a folk musician, by the circus of American society than in the Times They Are A-Changin album. The album, having opened with the claim that the tables are surely turning, then goes on to cough up the blood and infected guts of America, tales of forgotten Americans going mad in communities where the work has dried up, where the red iron pits ran a-plenty, but the cardboard-f