Change Is Now

From The Byrds, one of my favorite bands in the 60s.  I still like the band and their music, but wanted to write about the lyrics in this song; how they relate to their times and today.

Here are the full lyrics.  Wait a minute!  Don't forget to enjoy the music - the drone bass, Roger McGuinn's guitar solo which sounds like it was beamed in from outer space, the (unusual for the time) country music interlude, and the harmonies.

Change is now, change is now
Things that seemed to be solid are not
All is now, all is now
The time that we have to live

 

Gather all that we can
Keep in harmony with love's sweet plan

 

Truth is real, truth is real
That which is not real does not exist
In and out roundabout
Dance to the day when fear it is gone

 

Gather all that we can
Keep in harmony with love's sweet plan

 

Change is now, change is now
Things that seemed to be solid are not
In and out roundabout
Dance to the day when fear it is gone
Fear it is gone

What does it mean?

Let's set the context.  The Notorious Byrd Brothers album was released in January 1968 and recorded in the second half of 1967, just after the birth of hippiedom during The Summer of Love, and its lyrics reflect that sensibility.

Change is now, change is now
Things that seemed to be solid are not
All is now, all is now
The time that we have to live

There was a sense we had entered a new era.  Not me, them.  I was about to turn 17 and though my hair grew longer in the late 60s and I loved the music, I never considered myself a hippie.  The old paradigm was gone ("things that seemed to be solid are not").  Everything was up for grabs ("all is now").    There is no past we need to know about, nothing to learn from experience, it's in our hands to create a New World. 

Gather all that we can
Keep in harmony with love's sweet plan

Everybody is welcome.  Get on the Love Train.  If we simply love each other, all will be well.  No more details needed.  Did I mention there's nothing to learn from the past?

Truth is real, truth is real
That which is not real does not exist
In and out roundabout
Dance to the day when fear it is gone

That first line is very intriguing.  Notice they don't say "science is real" or "I believe in science" (that would also have been harder to rhyme) that ridiculous slogan of the past few years.  It is "Truth" that is real.  There is a reality so maybe everything is not up for grabs.  And the truth they are referring to is not necessarily a materialistic or scientific one, in fact since they're hippies it probably isn't.  It's likely a spiritual truth, a truth that man cannot just create, though they would hesitate to specifically call Christian or Jewish.  Of course, as Tom Holland points out in Dominion, whether they acknowledge it or not, the Christian worldview which permeates our civilization, is the springboard for that truth. 

 

"That which is not real does not exist" tells us that reality and belief may be separate, reminding me of Philip K Dick's notion that "reality is that which still exists when you stop believing in it".   The phrase is also contra to the creed of today's New Racists who believe that the manipulation of language can, in and of itself, create a new reality.  It's why belief is so essential for the NRs, and any deviation is such a threat it requires expulsion and branding as a heretic.  The hippies, in contrast, were content with folks "doing their own thing"; there was no cult from which one could be expelled.

 

Dancing was very important to the hippies.  It was an individual rite, or sometimes a group rite, but not something for couples to do.  It was liberating and the act of dancing could bring about change.  And the most important change needed was drive fear away, so that love could fill the world.  It was a simple view and seemingly easy to accomplish, a perspective that Elvis Costello, the noted foreign policy realist, rejected in 1977 when he told us "fear is here to stay, love is here for a visit".

The phrase "fear it is gone" is repeated three times during the song.  One of the reasons I didn't care for the hippie ethos at the time was the simple mindedness required, the deliberate avoidance of deep thinking, a mindset that allowed naive people to be easily manipulated by charismatic figures with evil intent.

Or maybe I'm reading too much into the lyrics and it was just all about the drugs.

 

In any event, the placid dream of peace and love ended quickly.  The milk of human kindness had curdled by August of 1968 when Jefferson Airplane released its fourth album, Crown of Creation, with the title song's mixture of narcissism, self-righteousness, and intolerance:

In loyalty to their kind

They cannot tolerate our minds

In loyalty to our kind

We cannot tolerate their obstruction!

A sentiment that would fit well in 2023 America.

Things deteriorated quickly in the late 1960s and early 70s.  A year after Crown of Creation, the Airplane were preaching revolution, and the Black Panthers and Weathermen were rolling.  Peace and love were over.  The difference between that period and now was that the revolutionaries were mostly rejected by the institutions, though they were able to grab a beach head in academia which they would exploit over the next few decades.  Today, people with those more revolutionary, intolerant, and violent beliefs are the ones running the institutions.  We've gone from "Don't Trust The Man" to "Trust Authority and You're Fired If You Don't". It's why today is a much more dangerous time.  For my reflections and personal experience with that earlier period read The Company You Keep.