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Bob Dylan - My Back Pages

Copright - 1964 Columbia Records

"My Back Pages" is a Bob Dylan song from the album Another Side of Bob Dylan (1964). It is stylistically similar to his earlier protest songs, with only a solo acoustic guitar. However its lyrics and in particular the refrain ("Ah, but I was so much older then/I'm younger than that now.&quot seem intended to mark a rejection of much of Dylan's earlier personal idealism, and disillusionment with the "protest scene" he was associated with.

Dylan's disenchantment with "the movement" had surfaced in a ranting speech he gave in 1963 when accepting an award from the Emergency Civil Liberties Committee (ECLC) in New York.[1] Mike Marqusee writes: "No Song on Another Side distressed Dylan's friends in the movement more than 'My Back Pages' in which he transmutes the rude incoherence of his ECLC rant into the organized density of art. The lilting refrain ... must be one of the most lyrical expressions of political apostasy ever penned. It is a recantation, in every sense of the word." [2]

Others have not fully agreed with Marqusee's interpretation, instead seeing the change of Dylan's philosophy as part of a slow transition. Pointing to the fact that Dylan still performed many of his earlier songs after "My Back Pages" was written, and in fact still does. In an interview with the Sheffield University Paper in May 1965, Dylan himself made the following comments on the situation;[3]

Q: Your songs have changed a lot over the last couple of years. Are you consciously trying to change your style, or would you say that this was a natural development?

A: Oh, it's a natural one, I think. The big difference is that the songs I was writing last year, songs like "Ballad in Plain D", they were what I call one-dimensional songs, but my new songs I'm trying to make more three-dimensional, you know, there's more symbolism, they're written on more than one level.

Q: How long does it take you to write a song? Say a song like "Hard Rain"?

A: Well, I wrote "Hard Rain" while I was still on the streets, I guess that was the first three-dimension song I wrote. It took me about - oh, about two days.

Lyrics:
Crimson flames tied through my ears
Rollin' high and mighty traps
Pounced with fire on flaming roads
Using ideas as my maps
"We'll meet on edges, soon," said I
Proud 'neath heated brow.
Ah, but I was so much older then,
I'm younger than that now.

Half-wracked prejudice leaped forth
"Rip down all hate," I screamed
Lies that life is black and white
Spoke from my skull. I dreamed
Romantic facts of musketeers
Foundationed deep, somehow.
Ah, but I was so much older then,
I'm younger than that now.

Girls' faces formed the forward path
From phony jealousy
To memorizing politics
Of ancient history
Flung down by corpse evangelists
Unthought of, though, somehow.
Ah, but I was so much older then,
I'm younger than that now.

A self-ordained professor's tongue
Too serious to fool
Spouted out that liberty
Is just equality in school
"Equality," I spoke the word
As if a wedding vow.
Ah, but I was so much older then,
I'm younger than that now.

In a soldier's stance, I aimed my hand
At the mongrel dogs who teach
Fearing not that I'd become my enemy
In the instant that I preach
My pathway led by confusion boats
Mutiny from stern to bow.
Ah, but I was so much older then,
I'm younger than that now.

Yes, my guard stood hard when abstract threats
Too noble to neglect
Deceived me into thinking
I had something to protect
Good and bad, I define these terms
Quite clear, no doubt, somehow.
Ah, but I was so much older then,
I'm younger than that now.