As noted in the intro to my review of Bringing It All Home, I was a serious Dylan skeptic because my Boomer father had elevated his status to something resembling sainthood. That review was published in 2013, and I wouldn’t review another Dylan album until the height of the pandemic in 2020, when I covered The Freewheeling Bob Dylan and Highway 61 Revisited. Those reviews softened my resistance somewhat, but not enough to continue my exploration of his discography. I was still turned off by Dylan worship, and recently, I learned that I was not alone.

There is a thread on the Steve Hoffman Music Forums that asks, “Is Bob Dylan’s Appeal Generational?” The query itself implies that Bob Dylan’s music and poetry are largely considered a Baby Boomer thing. Some argued that “you had to have been there to appreciate Dylan,” while others cited some examples of his appeal to Gen-Xers and Millennials. Others said, “I like his songs when performed by other singers,” and a few thought his work was dated and no longer relevant—a claim vehemently rejected by the Boomers in the forum, who remained true to their generational hero. The best answer came from user Wondergrape:

All music is generational.
Casual music listeners will listen to new music.
Serious music listeners will seek out good music, regardless of their generation. Most of these people find Dylan.

Looking back to my teens, I think I was using Dylan as part of Jung’s process of individuation, in an attempt to differentiate myself from my parents and their generation. I loved most of the music from their era, but I had to pick on someone. I had to find Dylan on my own, without parental interference, and it happened a couple of months ago when I picked up a copy of The Lyrics: 1961-2012 and read the lyrics as poetry. That experience completely changed my opinion of Bob Dylan.

To put it mildly, unless you characterize Bob Dylan as dated because he doesn’t use programmed beats, you have to be a fucking imbecile to claim that his work is dated and has no relevance in today’s world. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m pretty sure that racism is still a thing, that the justice system in the United States still favors those with lots of money, and when it comes to war, the Journal of Peace Research noted that “The number of state-based conflicts reached a record high of 65 (in 2025), with interstate conflicts doubling for the second consecutive year, highlighting an increasing trend in international tensions.” Dylan’s work covers a wide swath of the human condition, from love songs to fucked-up-relationship songs, from the suffering of the poor to the corruption of the rich, from the price of fame to . . . well, just about anything that captured his interest. Bob Dylan is a big-picture guy, and even when he writes about a specific historic incident (like “George Jackson”), he expands the theme to call out the systemic problems that facilitated the tragedy. Though his rise to fame coincided with the Vietnam era and his anti-war songs were frequently sung at protest rallies, Bob Dylan never wrote a song that specifically dealt with the Vietnam War. Most of his work is not period-specific, and though his vast discography contains a fair share of turkeys, his best songs are timeless and universal.

The Times They Are a-Changin’ is his most protest-oriented album, and the first to contain all originals. Still in his folk period, Dylan is the only musician on the album, handling the vocals, acoustic guitar, and harmonica. The timing of the recording and release was eerily prescient, due to a combination of luck and standard procedure. The recording period began on August 6, 1963, shortly before the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom culminated in MLK’s “I Have a Dream” speech on August 28. After a break of nearly two months, the album was completed on October 31. Fortunately, Columbia’s standard production schedule pushed back the release to February 1964, avoiding the JFK assassination and mourning period. The Times They Are a-Changin’ finally made it into the record stores on February 10, one day after the Beatles made their initial appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show.

The times were indeed a-changin’, and the pace would soon quicken like wildfire.

The most common criticism of The Times They Are a-Changin’ involves the melodies; some are lifted from old folk songs, and the melody in the title track is repurposed for “One Too Many Mornings.” Joni Mitchell freaked out about his “plagiarism,” but in Dylan’s defense, borrowing melodies from old folk songs is standard practice because using familiar melodies helps to keep the cultural heritage of folk alive. In any case, the music hardly matters—the stunning power of the album is found in the lyrics. For those who are turned off by Dylan’s voice, while it is true that Dylan would never earn comparisons to Sinatra or McCartney, he is a first-rate storyteller. If Dylan’s voice bothers you, have patience. The guy was a musical ventriloquist who changed his tone and delivery frequently throughout his career.

As for my delayed embrace of Bob Dylan, all I can say is, “I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now.”

*****

All songs written by Bob Dylan, Copyright © 1963, 1964 by Warner Bros. Inc.; renewed 1991, 1992 by Special Rider Music.

“The Times They Are a-Changin’: Though the civil rights protesters were the primary harbingers of change in the early 60s, other developments during that period would eventually fuel a burning desire to break free from the status quo. The Pill became available in 1960, facilitating the Sexual Revolution. Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962) would ignite the environmental movement. Betty Friedan’s The Feminist Mystique (1963), influenced by Simone de Beauvoir’s 1949 publication of The Second Sex, brought feminism to America. In addition to several decisions in support of civil rights, the Warren Court ruled that official, state-mandated prayers in public schools violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, and in a separate ruling, declared that “obscenity is not within the area of constitutionally protected speech or press,” setting a high threshold for censorship.  The “Second Folk Revival” began in 1960 in Greenwich Village, and folk songs finally pierced the pop charts in 1962 with two songs on the year-end Billboard 100 written by formerly blacklisted Pete Seeger: “If I Had a Hammer” by Peter, Paul and Mary, and “Where Have All the Flowers Gone” by The Kingston Trio.

Dylan viewed all those developments as proof positive that a major cultural shakeup was underway, and he intended to create an anthem of change. In the liner notes for the Biograph compilation, he explained, “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’. I wanted to write a big song, with short, concise verses that piled up on each other in a hypnotic way. The civil rights movement and the folk music movement were pretty close for a while and allied together at that time.” That purpose is clearly stated in the stirring opening verse:

Come gather ’round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You’ll be drenched to the bone
If your time to you is worth savin’
Then you better start swimmin’ or you’ll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin’

British critic Michael Gray whined in the Bob Dylan Encyclopedia that “the language of the song is nevertheless imprecisely and very generally directed,” and suggested that “the song has been made obsolete by the very changes that it predicted and hence was politically out of date almost as soon as it was written.” Oh, bullshit. The truth is that you can apply those words to the many forms of social disruption we have experienced since the song was written: the digital revolution, globalization, the conservative backlash, the pandemic, and Trumpism. Dylan’s advice may suggest that he believed the loosening of norms and the fight for equal rights were inevitable, but he was not stupid, and he knew there were plenty of Americans who would resist those changes. His words were directed to those who cared about equal rights, justice for all, and genuine personal freedom. In the context of the song and the decade, “swimmin'” meant “fight for your rights and the rights of others.” The corollary is this: when facing a situation where the people in charge and their followers are determined to turn back the clock, “swimmin'” means fight like hell and never give up. We all have to play with the cards we’re dealt, but we can’t let a shitty hand lead us to despair.

The next three verses deal with the entities who are unlikely to get it and/or likely to stand in the way of change because retaining their power depends on the continuation of the status quo. The second verse is directed at “writers and critics who prophesize with your pen,” warning them that the coming changes are likely to turn the social hierarchy upside down: “For the loser now will be later to win.” In other words, don’t expect the Establishment to provide you with fodder—dig deeper and find the people who are determined to shake up the world order. Other than the four African-American representatives in the House serving in 1964 (none from the South), I don’t think too many members of Congress in 1964 would have paid much attention to the third verse, where Dylan warns members in both houses, “Don’t stand in the doorway/Don’t block up the hall/For he that gets hurt/Will be he who has stalled.” That said, the Democrats did capture thirty-six seats in the 1964 election, so Dylan gets credit for prognostication. Verse four brings us to those most likely to resist change:

Come, mothers and father
Throughout the land
And don’t criticize
What you can’t understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is rapidly agin’
Please get out of the new one if you can’t lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin’

The Generation Gap became a big deal in the 60s, with dads in white shirts and moms in aprons freaking out about pre-marital sex, long hair on boys, and more visible skin on the girls, though they did have legitimate concerns regarding drug use. It’s no wonder that the phrase gained acceptance in the 60s, as Silent Generation parents generally embraced tradition, while many Baby Boomers thought tradition was meant to be broken (except for the Young Republicans and other religiously-oriented Boomers). Sorry to disappoint anyone, but the Boomers do not have legal title to the term “generation gap.” Gen X were the “latchkey kids” who spent less time with their hard-working parents. Some liked raising themselves, others felt the loss of an emotional connection to mom and dad. While my Baby Boomer parents imbued me with many Boomer values, we did have a few minor Boomer-Millennial generational conflicts. It took me years to get my dad to play a video game, and my mother thought I was nuts for wasting my time with that crap. I took to computers like a fish to water, and so did my mother, but my dad’s skills are still rudimentary—and neither of them has ever touched a Kindle. Minor differences aside, I will say that defying parental authority was harder for the Boomers than for any other generation, and I’m proud to have parents who stood up for what is right, despite parental disapproval.

The closing verse serves to reinforce Dylan’s belief that major change is inevitable, that the world will be turned upside down, and there ain’t a damn thing you can do about it. All that matters is how you choose to deal with it: swim, sink, or resist.

The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is rapidly fadin’
And the first one now will later be last
For the times they are a-changin’

And now is the time to resist with all your might.

“Ballad of Hollis Brown“: This is not a true story in the historical sense, but it is a true story from the human perspective.

There are two competing views regarding the origins of the song. In the excellent line-by-line analysis from Object History on YouTube, the narrator places the events at the height of the Great Depression/Dust Bowl period. That view is plausible when you consider that Woody Guthrie, the “Dust Bowl Troubadour,” was a major influence on Dylan’s development as a songwriter. The alternative view is much closer to home. From the essay “Hollis Brown’s South Dakota” on The Celestial Monochord.

When Bob Dylan was 13 years old, one of the century’s worst epidemics of black stem rust struck the upper midwest — particularly North and South Dakota and Minnesota. Up to 75% of the wheat harvest was lost to the disease, which blackens the crop with a powdery, sooty fungus. The economic consequences were severe, and the incident became legendary within the science of plant pathology. There’s no way young Bob Zimmerman of Hibbing, Minnesota wouldn’t have heard about it . . .

Dylan’s “Ballad of Hollis Brown” is an exercise in empathy — its power is in the vividness of its vantage point within the head of a desperately bad-luck South Dakota farmer, and in the way the song dares you to turn away. Having lived in Minnesota for almost 20 years, or about as long as Dylan did before he moved to New York, and I can almost see how the young songwriter might have found the empathy to write such a convincing song.

Which is it—A or B? If you guessed “both,” congratulations! Here’s your virtual pat on the back!

The Guthrie theory is supported by factual information. The CDC archives tell us that “The largest increase in the overall suicide rate occurred in the Great Depression (1929-1933)—it surged from 18.0 in 1928 to 22.1 (all-time high) in 1932 (the last full year in the Great Depression)—a record increase of 22.8% in any four-year period in history.” Despite Herbert Hoover’s stubborn insistence that no one in America was going hungry under his watch, people were dying of starvation and malnutrition in places all over the map, from New York City to the hard-hit Midwest, where crops wilted away and many farmers struggled to feed their families.

The Black Stem Rust theory is supported by the empathy expressed in the lyrics. Though the outbreak resulted in losses totaling $365 million, there were no reports of deaths due to the agricultural pandemic. That said,  I doubt that Dylan could have written such a powerful song without some in-the-moment awareness of the struggles faced by the farming community.

After beginning the song in the third-person by introducing Hollis and “his wife and five children” who live in “a cabin fallin’ down,” Dylan shifts to second person, reflecting Hollis Brown’s inner dialogue. The family is in dire straits, to say the least:

You looked for work and money
And you walked a rugged mile
You looked for work and money
And you walked a rugged mile
Your children are so hungry
That they don’t know how to smile

Your baby’s eyes look crazy
They’re a-tuggin’ at your sleeve
Your baby’s eyes look crazy
They’re a-tuggin’ at your sleeve
You walk the floor and wonder why
With every breath you breathe

The rats have got your flour
Bad blood it got your mare
The rats have got your flour
Bad blood it got your mare
If there’s anyone that knows
Is there anyone that cares?

Certainly not in the Oval Office: “Congress pushed for a more direct government response to the hardship. In 1930–1931, it attempted to pass a $60 million bill to provide relief to drought victims by allowing them access to food, fertilizer, and animal feed. Hoover stood fast in his refusal to provide food, resisting any element of direct relief. The final bill of $47 million provided for everything except food but did not come close to adequately addressing the crisis.” As a last resort, Hollis turns to the man upstairs for some assistance.

You prayed to the Lord above
Oh please send you a friend
You prayed to the Lord above
Oh please send you a friend
Your empty pockets tell yuh
That you ain’t a-got no friend

God remains silent, and by this time, the crumbling cabin has turned into hell on earth.

Your babies are crying louder
It’s pounding on your brain
Your babies are crying louder now
It’s pounding on your brain
Your wife’s screams are stabbin’ you
Like the dirty drivin’ rain

As he assesses his situation, Hollis’ thoughts turn dark—very dark.

Your grass it is turning black
There’s no water in your well
Your grass is turning black
There’s no water in your well
You spent your last lone dollar
On seven shotgun shells

Way out in the wilderness
A cold coyote calls
Way out in the wilderness
A cold coyote calls
Your eyes fix on the shotgun
That’s hangin’ on the wall

Your brain is a-bleedin’
And your legs can’t seem to stand
Your brain is a-bleedin’
And your legs can’t seem to stand
Your eyes fix on the shotgun
That you’re holdin’ in your hand

His choices are far harder than Sophie’s. He can watch his wife and children die of starvation or quickly put and end to their suffering—and his own.

There’s seven breezes a-blowin’
All around the cabin door
There’s seven breezes a-blowin’
All around the cabin door
Seven shots ring out
Like the ocean’s pounding roar

There’s seven people dead
On a South Dakota farm
There’s seven people dead
On a South Dakota farm
Somewhere in the distance
There’s seven new people born

Seven new people who will suffer as well until people start to care.

Bob Dylan’s command of narrative in this song is beyond remarkable. The tension and anxiety rise slowly from verse to verse, and while you get the sense that something terrible is going to happen, the seven shots still come as a shock. I think that reaction reflects both the classic human hope that a savior will arrive to make things right and a belief that no one in their right mind would resort to murder-suicide as a solution. Dylan never comes close to damning Hollis for his actions; he simply reveals the inevitable outcome of indifference to human suffering. That Bob Dylan could write such a powerful and meaning-packed song at the age of twenty-one is simply amazing.

“With God on Our Side”: Bob Dylan is not relevant today? Really? Take a look at the sick fuck who runs the Department of War, who firmly believes that god is on his side, consistently violates the Establishment Clause by forcing members of the military to attend prayer meetings, and whose favorite pastime is removing women and blacks from the promotion lists. Even worse . . .

“One Too Many Mornings”: Dylan takes a break from protest with a relationship song that might have been a better fit on Another Side of Bob Dylan, but I have to admit that the song gives listeners a welcome break from things like mass murders and nuclear war. The song finds Dylan at his most vulnerable as he sings of lost love, and I love it when a man expresses those non-macho feelings. The song has been covered by many artists, such as Joan Baez (meh), the Association (terrible), Burl Ives (too weepy-sappy), and the Beau Brummels (yuck). The two artists who captured the emotional essence of the song were Johnny Cash and Dion, bless their broken hearts.

“North Country Blues”: I think everyone knows that Dylan’s formative years were spent in Hibbing, Minnesota, but what people may not realize it that Hibbing is part of the Mesabi Iron Range, where mining has been the dominant source of jobs for over a century. Mining is not only hard and dangerous work, but the industry is also subject to boom-or-bust phases that present major challenges for workers and their families. Iron mining has a significant impact on the environment and human health.

Dylan’s main concern is the havoc wreaked upon families stuck in the boom-or-bust cycle, and his choice to use a flashback narrative immediately engages the listener by evoking curiosity regarding what went wrong. The story begins at the end of the story:

Come gather ’round friends
And I’ll tell you a tale
Of when the red iron pits ran plenty
But the cardboard filled windows
And old men on the benches
Tell you now that the whole town is empty

Later in the tale, we will learn that the narrator is a woman, and she has already been through enough pain to last a lifetime:

In the north end of town
My own children are grown
But I was raised on the other
In the wee hours of youth
My mother took sick
And I was brought up by my brother

The iron ore poured
As the years passed the door
The drag lines an’ the shovels they was a-humming
’Til one day my brother
Failed to come home
The same as my father before him

After her marriage, the boom part of the cycle returns, but it doesn’t last long.

Oh the years passed again
And the givin’ was good
With the lunch bucket filled every season
What with three babies born
The work was cut down
To a half a day’s shift with no reason

Then the shaft was soon shut
And more work was cut
And the fire in the air, it felt frozen
’Til a man come to speak
And he said in one week
That number eleven was closin’

’
They complained in the East
They are paying too high
They say that your ore ain’t worth digging
That it’s much cheaper down
In the South American towns
Where the miners work almost for nothing

That last verse reminded me of the time I sat between my parents and watched the second presidential debate, during which Ross Perot uttered his prediction of “a big sucking sound” of jobs heading to Mexico if NAFTA was approved. I asked my parents, “Is it legal for companies to do that? What happens to the people who work there? Do they help them find other jobs?” My dad shook his head and said, “Yes, companies do that all the time, and no, they don’t help them find jobs. The workers get unemployment pay for a while, but they have to find other jobs on their own.” My eleven-year-old self swore that if I ever became president, I would require companies to find workers new jobs before allowing them to move anywhere—and I still hold that view today. Firing workers who did nothing to deserve it creates despair, tension in the family, destroys a sense of community and eventually leads to social unrest—and I think Bob Dylan would agree with me.

So the mining gates locked
And the red iron rotted
And the room smelled heavy from drinking
Where the sad, silent song
Made the hour twice as long
As I waited for the sun to go sinking

I lived by the window
As he talked to himself
This silence of tongues it was building
Til’ one morning’s wake
The bed it was bare
And I’s left alone with three children

The story ends with the abandoned wife reluctantly accepting cold reality: “My children will go
/As soon as they grow
/Well, there ain’t nothing here now to hold them.” I checked the recent population stats for Hibbing and Virginia (the leading mining town), and the number of residents in both places has shrunk for several years in a row.

“Only a Pawn in Their Game”: The story of Medgar Evers’ assassination and aftermath is sickening. Dylan’s take on the murder was controversial.

Dylan performed the song at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on August 28, 1963, where Martin Luther King Jr. gave his “I Have a Dream” speech. Dylan stated of the experience, in the documentary No Direction Home, “I looked up from the podium and I thought to myself, ‘I’ve never seen such a large crowd.’ I was up close when King was giving that speech. To this day, it still affects me in a profound way.” Nevertheless, he received only scattered applause for the song, reflecting that many marchers did not agree with the sentiments of the song which exonerate Evers’s murderer as a poor white man manipulated by race-baiting politicians and the injustices of the social system. (Wikipedia)

Realizing that his perspective didn’t land well with the marchers, Dylan stopped performing the song after October 1964. In this case, the “big picture” approach might have been a mistake. It was certainly insensitive to the people still mourning the death of one of the bravest civil rights activists of them all.

Still, Dylan’s analysis of the system rings true, and the method of manipulation used by the era’s Southern politicians is still in use today. Race-baiting in the form of dog whistles has been standard practice for the GOP since Reagan, and Voldemort has taken it to a new level by openly whining about discrimination against white people. MAGA is essentially the result of the same form of manipulation employed by the good ol’ boys in the South of the 60s:

A South politician preaches to the poor white man
“You got more than the blacks, don’t complain
You’re better than them, you been born with white skin,” they explain.
And the Negro’s name
Is used it is plain
For the politician’s gain
As he rises to fame
And the poor white remains
On the caboose of the train
But it ain’t him to blame
He’s only a pawn in their game

The deputy sheriffs, the soldiers, the governors get paid
And the marshals and cops get the same
But the poor white man’s used in the hands of them all like a tool
He’s taught in his school
From the start by the rule
That the laws are with him
To protect his white skin
To keep up his hate
So he never thinks straight
’
Bout the shape that he’s in
But it ain’t him to blame
He’s only a pawn in their game

As I firmly believe that human beings are responsible for the choices they make, I cannot exonerate the assassin, but I will admit that the brainwashing contributed to the assassination.

“Boots of Spanish Leather”: This tender and beautiful song about one lover traveling to Spain while the other stays behind has become one of my favorite Bob Dylan songs and vocals. While I think Dylan does an excellent job of expressing the emotional fragility of the relationship, I have to admit I prefer Richie Havens’ take on Electric Havens with its Spanish-influenced arrangement. What strikes me the most is that it is the woman who is “sailin’ away in the morning” while the man awaits her return, an acknowledgement that part of the changing times involves recognition of women as equals.

The first six verses form a conversation between the two, with the woman speaking in the odd-numbered verses while the man responds in the even-numbered verses. Thoughtful lass she is, she asks him, “Is there something I can send you from across the sea
/From the place that I’ll be landing?
” and he responds from the heart:

No, there’s nothin’ you can send me, my own true love
There’s nothin’ I wish to be ownin’
Just carry yourself back to me unspoiled
From across that lonesome ocean

When she tempts him with “something fine
 made of silver or of gold
 , either from the mountains of Madrid
 or from the coast of Barcelona
,” he lovingly holds his position. She gives it one more try, but the man is unmovable:

I might be gone a long time
And it’s only that I’m askin’
Is there something I can send you to remember me by
To make your time more easy passin’

Oh, how can, how can you ask me again
It only brings me sorrow
The same thing I want from you today
I would want again tomorrow

It seems she’s trying to let him down easy, hinting that she may not come back. That bit of foreshadowing is confirmed in the letter she sends from Spain.

I got a letter on a lonesome day
It was from her ship a-sailin’
Saying I don’t know when I’ll be comin’ back again
It depends on how I’m a-feelin’

In the end, he reluctantly writes back that “I’m sure your mind is roamin'” and “your thoughts are not with me,” then requests boots of Spanish leather to remember her by. A sad ending for him, but he realizes that she feels she can manifest her true self in a country far, far away—a loving acceptance of her independence.

“When the Ship Comes In”: Sorry, but this song doesn’t grab me. “Joan Baez states in the 2005 documentary film No Direction Home that the song was inspired by a hotel clerk who refused to allow Dylan a room due to his “unwashed” appearance (he was not famous outside of the folk movement at this time). The song then grew into a sprawling epic allegory about vanquishing the oppressive “powers that be.” Another inspiration was the Bertolt Brecht/Kurt Weill song, “Pirate Jenny.” (Wikipedia) I’m happy that Dylan got something off his chest, but I don’t think an encounter with an asshole hotel clerk was worth an epic.

“The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll”: This story is hard to take, but it had to be told. Unfortunately, the song changed nothing, and the American justice system is still rotten to the core.

William Zanzinger killed poor Hattie Carroll
With a cane that he twirled around his diamond ring finger
And the cops were called in and his weapon took from him
As they rode him in custody down to the station
And booked William Zanzinger for first-degree murder
But you who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fears
Take the rag away from your face
Now ain’t the time for your tears

William Zanzinger, who at twenty-four years
Owns a tobacco farm of six hundred acres
With rich wealthy parents who provide and protect him
And high office relations in the politics of Maryland
Reacted to his deed with a shrug of his shoulders
And swear words and sneering, and his tongue it was snarling
In a matter of minutes on bail was out walking

As Voldemort has proven time and time again, the rich can get away with anything in America.

Zanzinger’s story should make you angry, but Hattie’s story should make you cry, in large part due to the empathetic storyteller:

Hattie Carroll was a maid in the kitchen
She was fifty-one years old and gave birth to ten children
Who carried the dishes and took out the garbage
And never sat once at the head of the table
And didn’t even talk to the people at the table
Who just cleaned up all the food from the table
And emptied the ashtrays on a whole other level
Got killed by a blow, lay slain by a cane
hat sailed through the air and came down through the room
Doomed and determined to destroy all the gentle
And she never done nothing to William Zanzinger

From Time Magazine, September 6, 1963:

Early this year, William Devereux Zantzinger, 24, a prosperous tobacco farmer in southern Maryland, went on a bender with his wife, ended the evening charged with homicide (TIME, Feb. 22). At a restaurant, Zantzinger whacked two employees with a cane. Later that evening, at a white-tie dance in a Baltimore hotel, he used the cane again on a Negro bellhop and a Negro waitress. Then he scolded a Negro barmaid, Mrs. Hattie Carroll, 51. “What’s the matter with you, you black son of a bitch,” he snarled, “serving my drinks so slow?” With that, he beat the woman with his cane. She collapsed and was taken off in an ambulance. Eight hours later Mrs. Carroll, mother of eleven children, died of a brain hemorrhage. She had had high blood pressure and an enlarged heart.

In June, after Zantzinger’s phalanx of five topflight attorneys won a change of venue to a court in Hagerstown, a three-judge panel reduced the murder charge to manslaughter.

The verdict was predictable.

In the courtroom of honor, the judge pounded his gavel
To show that all’s equal and that the courts are on the level
And that the strings in the books ain’t pulled and persuaded
And that even the nobles get properly handled
Once that the cops have chased after and caught ’em
And that the ladder of law has no top and no bottom
Stared at the person who killed for no reason
Who just happened to be feelin’ that way without warnin’
And he spoke through his cloak, most deep and distinguished
And handed out strongly, for penalty and repentance
William Zantzinger with a six-month sentence

And according to Wikipedia, “The judges considerately deferred the start of the jail sentence until September 15, to give Zantzinger time to harvest his tobacco crop. After the sentence was announced, the New York Herald Tribune conjectured he was given a short sentence meant to keep him out of the largely black state prison, reasoning his notoriety would make him a target for abuse there. Zantzinger served his time in the comparative safety of the Washington County jail, some 70 miles (110 km) from the scene of the crime. In September, the Herald Tribune quoted Zantzinger on his sentence: “I’ll just miss a lot of snow.” His then-wife, Jane, was quoted as saying, ‘Nobody treats his niggers as well as Billy does around here’.”

Jesus fucking Christ.

The rich racist asshole never showed a hint of remorse. “In 2001, Zantzinger discussed the song with Howard Sounes for Down the Highway, the Life of Bob Dylan. He dismissed the song as a “total lie” and claimed ‘It’s actually had no effect upon my life’, but expressed scorn for Dylan, saying, ‘He’s a no-account son of a bitch; he’s just like a scum of a scum bag of the earth. I should have sued him and put him in jail.'”

I keep thinking about Hattie and those motherless children, and how “she never done nothing to William Zantzinger
.” And sometimes I wish I’d never been born a white person with all the phony privileges many white people think they deserve.

“Restless Farewell”: This song is based on the old Scottish folk tune “The Parting Glass,” which is also quite popular in Ireland (the first line is repeated in the Dylan composition). The incident that inspired the song was a rather unpleasant interview with a Newsweek reporter, and when the slanted review was published, Dylan hit the fucking roof. In response, he wrote the song in the studio on the last day of recording. I like the song about as much as I like “When the Ship Comes In,” another in-the-moment reaction to injustice. Lucky for us, he would chill out and write a much better song about critics and jerks in “Rainy Day Women #12 & #35.”

*****

The time was ripe for Dylan to make a breakthrough, but it took a while for him to achieve commercial success in the States. For the Brits, it was love at first sight. Dylan’s maiden album was largely ignored in the USA but made it to #13 in the U.K., and nearly all of the albums that followed scored higher in the U.K. than in the USA. Some say it was because the U.K. has a much longer folk tradition, but the Brits still bought his records in droves when he went electric. My theory is that the British had embraced the ethos of the changing times before the Americans, thanks in large part to the Beatles, Stones, and the embrace of blues. Americans needed more time to process the Kennedy assassination, and after the Beatles conquered America, they were ready to move on. In the end, Bob Dylan became a major influence on American music and culture, and hundreds of artists would cover his songs.

And he finally made a breakthrough with me!

Postscript

I have officially entered a period of political burnout, so my next few reviews will be completely apolitical. I haven’t given up the fight and never will, but right now I need the kind of music that soothes the soul.