You're right, Bob. Things HAVE changed

Does Dylan have a song for every occasion?

It must be nice — if somewhat unsettling at times — to have a repertoire like Bob Dylan’s. Whatever happens in this world, whether it’s heart-pounding joy or deep, sad disappointment or  complete and bitter disillusionment, he can reach into that seemingly endless songbook and find just the right song for the right moment.

Though the angry, sloppy slam-bang rendition of “Masters Of War” on the Grammy’s in 1991 confused everyone, Bob’s whiny delivery hid the political comment of the song. He later explained he had the flu but picked that song for a purpose… “War going on and all.”

Shortly after Barack Obama won the election of 2008, I remember catching a Dylan show in Ontario and I swear that the song selection of some of that show was an indirect comment — and an approving one — of the result of Obama’s win. Bob, of course, has pretty much stayed out of political debate for years and years. You sure wouldn’t catch him doing a Bruce Springsteen rally appearance or putting out a Taylor Swift endorsement.

On this Friday morning in Florida, a few days after an event so unsettling for many of us that it seemed necessary to change our standard TV viewing channels, to listen only to music on the radio and deeply editing most phone conversations to hide the hurt, there seemed something unusually affirming just now, hearing Bob’s craggy voice sing out in his Academy Award-winning song --“I used to care but…things h-a-v-e changed.” You notice again how Bob intentionally stretches out that word “have” as if to infuse it with extra weight and feeling.

It's hard to say exactly how or why but at this moment, the song seemed somehow soothing and forward-looking and maybe even distance-putting. Good. Of course, it’s goofy to think a song written 23 years ago could apply to this particular moment but…at least to me, it does.

“A worried man with a worried mind…” it begins, the perfectly clipped words instantly conveying an apparent moment of crisis. You could relate.

“No one in front of me and nothing behind…” You feel alone all right. Millions of us, I suspect, feel that way as if our country has left us behind.

“There’s a woman on my lap and she’s drinking champagne…” SHE has something to celebrate, evidently, WE sure as hell don’t. And notice the disconnect, a woman on his lap, normally something a man would work for, be excited about, but his worried mind — like ours — is somewhere else.

   It was 23 years ago that Dylan composed his Academy Award-winning song “Things Have Changed” for the soundtrack of the film “Wonder Boys,” an adaptation of Michael Chabon’s wonderfully irreverent novel of the same name.

   Whether Dylan had read Chabon’s original novel about the troubled college professor Grady Tripp, a blocked writer rambling through an endless, meaningless follow-up novel or not, the lyrics of the song do seem to capture that sense of desperation, learning day by day, painfully it seems, that all the things that used to matter to you, the things that should still matter to you, suddenly are shallow and empty and pointless. As it says in that resonant, memorable chorus “I used to care but things h-a-v-e changed.”

According to Clinton Heylin’s “Still On The Road, The Songs of Bob Dylan, Part Two,” Bob did have an idea about the main character. Curtis Hanson, the director of “Wonder Boys,” explained that when “I learned that Dylan might be interested in contributing an original song, when I came back from filming in Pittsburgh, Bob came by the editing room to see some rough-cut footage. I told him the story and introduced him to the characters. We talked about Grady Tripp and where he was in life, emotionally and creatively. Weeks later a CD arrived in the mail.”

That ominous feeling carries throughout the rest of the song. The narrator explains he’s “well-dressed, waiting on the last train.” Or “standing in the gallows with my head in a n-o-o-s-e. Any minute now, I’m expecting all Hell to break loose…” A situation perhaps some of us might have found ourselves a couple of days ago.

 And then, unconsciously prophetical for a moment twenty-plus years into our future, Bob laid out exactly how many of us are feeling right now: “People are crazy, times are strange. I’m locked in tight, I’m out of range. I used to care but, things h-a-v-e changed…”

When Dylan wrote that song, he had no idea what lie ahead for his country, his fans, for him. He didn’t imagine he’d win an Academy Award or a few years later, “Album of The Year” or after that, The Nobel Prize for Literature.

The song’s universality, anticipating and capturing one of those moments in time when it seems the planet or your world momentarily stops spinning. When everything in front of you seems hauntingly clear and frightening unless and perhaps until, you follow the directions and Bob’s example --  “I used to care but things have changed.”

 There is some debate when the song was actually recorded. According to what you can find on the Internet, Olof Bjorner claims Bob recorded it in May of 1999 at Sterling Sound Studio in New York. Heylin says it was recorded at Sony Studios in July, on a day off from his tour with Paul Simon.

    Drummer David Kemper told Heylin Dylan said: "We were touring and had a day off in New York. Bob said, "Tomorrow let's go into the studio. I got a song I want to record. We went in and played "Things Have Changed" with only an engineer. We did two takes. The first was a New Orleans thing. The second was what you hear. So in about five hours we learned it, recorded it, mixed it.”

    Bob was certainly proud of the song and his Academy Award, displaying the trophy onstage. And for some of us on this November morning, he found words and music years ago that would come in handy, you know, just when you really need it. Bob might laugh at the idea that what he said then could apply now. But give it a listen yourself. It might help. It helped me.