The “Bob,” the Byrds, and Our “Back Pages” - A Lenten Anthem?
I’ve been intrigued of late by the reflection entwined in the lyrics of Bob Dylan’s 1964 song “My Back Pages.” Prophet of protest for my generation, the “Bob” marked our national transition to or trauma of what many call postmodernism. It was a time of political sloganeering and intellectual certainty of all sides of what appeared to all as the unraveling of America. Dylan was the poster boy on the left for all this. Yet, in “My Back Pages,” the “Bob” takes a self-reflective look at what was happening around him and in some measure through him. The title “My Back Pages” signals the mood. The great front-and-center balladeer puts himself on the “back page” where he believes he belongs because, as the song’s refrain has it, he was “older then, but I’m younger than that now.” The Byrd’s cover of “My Back Pages” is the version of the song most of us know, and, incidentally, was that group’s last hit. Here are its lyrics. Crimson flames tied through my...