Cosmic Slop

 Sometimes it get weird with George Clinton's Funkadelic.  Well, actually, it gets weird very frequently with anything George Clinton does.  From 1973, this is Cosmic Slop, and I think that's George in whiteface.  Although it is definitely weird, it is also pretty representative of New York City in the early 70s.  Also, I swear I've never been at a party like this.

For all the craziness it's a sobering lyric:

I was one of five born to my mother
An older sister and three young brothers
We've seen it hard, we've seen it kind of rough
But always with a smile, she was sure to try to hide
The fact from us that life was really tough 

The weirdness, seriousness at times, and musicianship is what makes Funkadelic, Parliament, and Parliament/Funkadelic memorable. 

Features Garry Shider on vocals and guitar, Ron Bykowski on lead guitar, Tyrone Lampkin on drums, and bass by Boogie Mosson. 

Cold Sweat - Part 1

Considered by some to be the first funk song, 1967's Cold Sweat by James Brown runs for seven minutes, with Part 1 as the A side single.  Whether it is or not, it's a penetrating groove.  You can find both parts here.  At the beginning of Part 2 you can hear James call out "Maceo", a reference to tenor saxophonist Maceo Parker.  Also featured on the track are Bernard Odum on bass and drummer Clyde Stubblefield. 

Harvest Moon

From Neil Young in 1992.  Background vocals on the recording by Linda Ronstadt.  Bringing back beautiful dreamy memories.  Think I can stay there for awhile.

Because I'm still in love with you
I want to see you dance again
Because I'm still in love with you
On this harvest moon 

 

If You Want Me To Stay

From Fresh, Sly and the Family Stone's 1973 album.  That bass line is by Rustee Allen, who replaced long time band bassist Larry Graham (see Fat Bass).  The group's final album would be released the following year as Sly descended into drug induced madness.  The grove and Sly's vocal are so good I can listen to it ten times in a row.

Tomorrow Never Knows

On this date sixty years ago, The Beatles began recording Tomorrow Never Knows, the revolutionary and groundbreaking track from the album Revolver, released in August 1966.  Though it was the last song on the second side of that album, it was the first song recorded in the sessions for the record, something I was surprised to discover decades later.  At the time, we'd never heard anything remotely like this before, and thought its placement as the closing song was a signal that big musical changes were coming for The Beatles.  As with A Hard Day's Night, the title is from an off hand remark by Ringo.  Before settling on Tomorrow Never Knows was called The Void and Mark 1.

Tomorrow Never Knows is primarily a one-chord song with a droning tone, interspersed with weird, swirling snippets from something strange, and backwards guitar bits.  Behind it is Ringo's drum pattern, which remains unchanging throughout.  I've seen recent commentary from younger listeners thinking that because the drum pattern is so unerringly accurate Ringo must have played a small part that was then digitally repeated.  However, the technology did not exist at the time and it really is Ringo from start to finish.  George Harrison plays sitar or tamboura, depending on the analysis, on the track.

Topping it off are Lennon's lyrics, "turn off your mind, relax and float downstream/ All play the game
Existence to the end, of the beginning".  John's instruction to George Martin was to make his voice sound like he was the Dalai Lama singing from a mountaintop, which, with some studio ingenuity, Martin accomplished by feeding the vocal through a revolving Leslie speaker inside a Hammond organ (the effect starts 87 seconds into the song).

The most innovative aspect was the use of tape loops  This description is from The Beatles Recording Sessions: The Official Abbey Road Studio Session Notes by Mark Lewisohn (1988):

Perhaps the most striking sound on Tomorrow Never Knows is one of tape loops [the sound achieved by tape saturation, by removing the erase head of a machine and then recording over and over on the same piece of tape]. . . .  The seagull-like noise on Tomorrow Never Knows is really a distorted guitar. (According to studio documentation, other loops used included the sounds of a speeded up guitar and a wine glass.)  "We did a live mix of all the loops," says George Martin. "All over the studios we had people spooling them onto machines with pencils while Geoff [Emerick] did the balancing.  There were many other hands controlling the panning." . . . "It was done totally off the cuff.  The control room was as full of loops as it was people".  "I laid all of the loops onto the multi-track and played the faders like a modern day synthesizer" says Emerick.

You can watch a video about the recording here which contains additional details and differs in some respects from the Lewisohn book.  You can listen to the isolated tape loops here.

Godspeed

ARTEMIS II AS SEEN BY THE OFFICIAL NASA CESSNA

THIS IS THE BEST LAUNCH VIDEO AND IT ISN'T CLOSE pic.twitter.com/ikLxSYbHKW

— Chris Combs (iterative design enjoyer) (@DrChrisCombs) April 3, 2026

 

It's good to see America returning to the moon with the launch of Artemis II, after an absence of more than a half-century.  Though this mission only entails a fly around, future missions will be landing.

Twenty four Apollo astronauts flew around or landed on the moon between December 1968 and December 1972.  Of the twelve who remained in the command module, only one still survives; Fred Haise (92).  Of the twelve who walked on the moon, four are living; Buzz Aldrin (96), David Scott (93), John Young (87) and Harrison Schmitt (90).

The astronauts were selected in part, because of their good health, and it is reflected in their longevity.  All were born between 1923 and 1936 and were in their 30s and 40s at the time. Even in a worst case assumption that all of five living moon astronauts die this year, the average age for the moon walkers would be 82.7 years and for the circumnavigators 82.3.  Under the same assumptions the median age for moon walkers is 86 and for orbiters 89.  Ten of the 24 made it to 90, with one more possible, and another five between 87 and 89.

Godspeed and may the mission be a success.

We'll close with The Byrds' tribute to Armstrong, Alden, and Collins;  "The team below, that gave the go, they had God's helping hand" 

Thoughts For Another Day

 "If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change.  Do you understand?"

- The young Tancredi to his uncle and guardian, the Prince of Salina, explaining why he is joining the rebels seeking to unite Italy in the 1860s.  From The Leopard, the masterpiece by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa which I am currently reading for the second time. (1958)

The quote is well-known.  What is less known are the passages just before and after Tancredi's remark:

Before:

"You're mad, my boy, to go with those people! They're all in the maffia, all troublemakers.  A Falconeri should be with us for the King."

"The eyes began smiling again. 'For the King, yes, of course.  But which King?'" 

After: 

"What a boy!  Talking rubbish and contradicting it at the same time. . . . The Prince jumped up  . . . and rummaged in a drawer.  'Tancredi, Tancredi, wait!'.  He ran after his nephew, slipped a roll of gold pieces into his pocket, and squeezed his shoulders." 

"On his way downstairs, he suddenly understood that remark of Tancredi's, 'If we want things to stay as they are . . .'  Tancredi would go a long way: he had always thought so."  

----------------------------- 

There's nothing in the streets
Looks any different to me
And the slogans are replaced, by-the-bye
And the parting on the left
Is now parting on the right
And the beards have all grown longer overnight

Meet the new boss
Same as the old boss

 

- Pete Townshend, Won't Get Fooled Again by The Who (1971)

------------------------------- 

 

"Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes it rains" 

 

-  Rookie Ebby Calvin "Nuke" Laloosh in Bull Durham (1988), explaining to a reporter about what  a good friend told him of the common understanding required of citizens in order to preserve stability in a democracy; the necessity of accepting occasional defeats along with a lot of muddling through.

Thought For The Day

 

Hey, nineteen
That's 'Retha Franklin
She don't remember the Queen of Soul
It's hard times befallen
The soul survivors
She thinks I'm crazy
But I'm just growin' old

 

Hey, nineteen
No, we got nothin' in common
No, we can't dance together
No, we can't talk at all

When Hey Nineteen was released by Steely Dan in 1980, composer Donald Fagen was 32 and Hey Nineteen was, well, 19.

 

It occurred to me that Nineteen is turning 65 this year and applying for Medicare while Fagen is now 78.  They probably now have something in common to talk about.  Time heals everything! 

Apeman

To note the recent death of Paul Ehrlich, it seemed appropriate to reference Apeman, a song from The Kinks 1970 album Lola Versus Powerman and the Money Go Round, Part One (for my ridiculously compulsive exploration of a little known period in The Kinks discography read Kinkdom).  It was the lyrics in the first two verses that made me think of Ehrlich and gave me an excuse to show the band playing the entire song.

I think I'm sophisticated
'Cause I'm living my life
Like a good homo sapiens
But all around me
Everybody's multiplying
And they're walking round like flies, man
So I'm no better than the animals
Sitting in the cages in the zoo, man
'Cause compared to the flowers
And the birds and the trees
I am an apeman

 

I think I'm so educated
And I'm so civilized
'Cause I'm a strict vegetarian
And with the over population
And inflation and starvation
And the crazy politicians
I don't feel safe in this world no more
I don't want to die in a nuclear war
I want to sail away to a distant shore
And make like an apeman

 

The Population Bomb, Ehrlich's enormous best seller, was published in 1968, a book in which he predicted mass famine by the end of the 1970s and global environmental deterioration.  He had a distinguished academic career at Stanford University and received countless awards and recognition over the decades for his work.

 

The problem is that Ehrlich was wrong, incredibly wrong, but it never seemed to impair his academic credibility.  I read The Population Bomb during my freshman year of college (1969-70) and, in my naivete, was impressed with his thesis, though even at the time, found some of his language overwrought.  By the end of the 70s it was clear to me Ehrlich was wrong and became baffled by the continuing respect accorded him and those who adopted his views.

 

The most dramatic evidence of Ehrlich's wrongness was his 1980 bet with economist Julian Simon, summarized by Wikipedia:

The economist Julian Simon argued in 1980 that overpopulation is not a problem as such and that humanity will adapt to changing conditions. Simon argued that eventually human creativity will improve living standards, and that most resources were replaceable.^[50] Simon stated that over hundreds of years, the prices of virtually all commodities had decreased significantly and persistently.^[51] Ehrlich termed Simon the proponent of a "space-age cargo cult" of economists convinced that human creativity and ingenuity would create substitutes for scarce resources and reasserted the idea that population growth was outstripping the Earth's supplies of food, fresh water and minerals.^[8]

This exchange resulted in the Simon–Ehrlich wager, a bet about the trend of prices for resources during a ten-year period that was made with Simon in 1980.^[8] Ehrlich was allowed to choose ten commodities that he predicted would become scarce and thus increase in price. Ehrlich chose mostly metals, and lost the bet, as their average price decreased by about 30% in the next 10 years.

Ehrlich's prognostication failings reminds me of the quote attributed to Nobel Prize winning physicist Wolfgang Pauli after reviewing the paper of a young physicist, "That is not only not right, it is not even wrong". 

I never met Ehrlich but did have the opportunity to sit with one of his acolytes (they'd co-authored papers and was involved in setting up the Ehrlich-Simon bet), Paul Holdren, at a small dinner in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 2008.  Like his mentor, Holdren has had a distinguished academic career with positions at Harvard and Berkeley and receiving a MacArthur Foundation "genius" Fellowship.  In 2009, President Obama appointed Holdren as his chief science advisor and director of the White House's Office of Science & Technology, a role he served in both of Obama's administrations.

While I don't remember most of the details of the dinner discussion, my overall impression was Holdren fit the pattern found in Harvard academics in encounters during my twelve years working in Cambridge and, for a decade after, being a frequent visitor; they tended to be close-minded, provincial, and intolerant of dissenting opinions, not something I would have predicted when I began working in the city in 1980. Most found it incomprehensible that anyone would disagree with their political opinions or general thoughts on the world out of anything other than ignorance and/or bigotry, and automatically devalued the views of anyone lacking the "right" credentials.  

In the wake of Ehrlich's death I came across a tweet he'd sent on January 3, 2023 after a 60 Minutes appearance, which explains how he and Holdren maintained their academic reputations. It is quite an indictment of academia:

"60 Minutes extinction story has brought the usual right-wing out in force. If I'm always wrong so is science, since my work is always peer-reviewed, including the POPULATION BOMB and I've gotten virtually every scientific honor." 

Notice one of the tactics he, and many other academics, employs is to call any criticism "right-wing" thus casting those criticizing him into the outer darkness where the substance of the criticism can be completely disregarded.  The funny thing is I came across the quote in a tweet from Roger Pielke Jr, a traditional liberal and critic of Ehrlich.  Pielke wrote a longer piece, Gravediggers of Science, on Ehrlich in his substack, relating his encounter with Ehrlich in 2010, in which Ehrlich and the scurrilous climate scientist Michael Mann engaged in their favorite smearing tactic and making completely false allegations.

Ehrlich and others employ these tactics because in the circles they swim in it works.  There is no price to pay for being wrong or for trying to destroy others with false innuendo and worse.  In fact, they are rewarded for doing so. 

Rereading The Population Bomb and some of Ehrlich's other work one is struck by what a miserable and misanthropic view of humanity he holds.(1)  It probably explains his desire of widespread sterilization and a powerful world government to enforce his views.

I'll give the last word to this summary from The Free Press.  They are unfortunately correct that his worldview has infected society:

Imagine getting almost everything wrong and still transforming the world with your ideas. That, more or less, is what happened to economist and professional eco-pessimist Paul Ehrlich, who died this week at 93. Ehrlich shot to fame in 1968 with his bestseller The Population Bomb. It predicted an explosion in humankind, draining the planet’s resources and triggering a near apocalypse.

Thankfully, Ehrlich would be proven wrong—stunningly wrong—by events. But even if Ehrlich lost the argument, his Malthusian mindset still won him award after award and, in many ways, became conventional wisdom.

Today, we’re bringing you two pieces on Ehrlich’s ideas and why they matter.

Up first, the British science writer Matt Ridley details the callous policy proposals Ehrlich’s thinking led him to support—including forced sterilization programs that Ehrlich called “coercion in a good cause”—and the policymakers who listened to him.

Up next, Larissa Phillips. She was born to parents beholden to Ehrlich’s theories. In fact, she says, she almost wasn’t born because of them: Her parents were trying to model their own family planning on his prescription for zero population growth. Thankfully, they didn’t quite get it right. Ehrlich’s death caused Larissa to contemplate not just the impact of his ideas on her family but also where the line falls—where idealism becomes pretentious, or pessimistic, or harmful.

----------------------------------------------------

(1)  In that regard, Ehrlich reminds me of the leaders of the AI crowd.  Though Ehrlich preached scarcity and the AI dudes abundance, at heart they are all anti-humanists.  If AI can perform better than humans, of what use are people?  The AI leaders have clearly said this and don't care about the implications.  In February 2025 I summarized Elon Musk's worldview but it can be said for all of the AI proponents:

Musk and a small group of "creatives" run society, with robots operating our factories, and AI, using Musk-designed algorithms, running everything else.  Enough wealth is created to fund a Universal Basic Income for the rest of Americans, who live in a ketamine and cannabis induced haze. 

Eight Miles High

Nowhere is there warmth to be found
Among those afraid of losing their ground
Rain gray town, known for its sound
In places, small faces unbound

Round the squares, huddled in storms
Some laughing, some just shapeless forms

Released as a single 60 years ago this month by The Byrds.  I'd never heard anything like this on AM radio before.  Composed by band members Roger McGuinn, David Crosby, and Gene Clark.  A very heavy song for its time, featuring the weirdest, chaotic, atonal lead guitar (inspired by Coltrane according to McGuinn) ever heard on a rock recording, peaking on the last part of the second solo.

Beyond that is Chris Hillman's pounding bass, Crosby's strong rhythm guitar, the harmonies of Clark, McGuinn and, above all, Crosby, and the finest drumming of Michael Clark's career with the group.  The song is pulsating and relentless. 

Between 1965 and 1968 The Byrds pioneered folk rock, introducing Dylan to a wider audience (Mr Tambourine Man), psychedelic music (Fifth Dimension), and gave many rock fans their first taste of country music (Sweetheart of the Rodeo).  

I Can't Get Next To You

 One of my favorites from The Temptations from among their cascade of hits from the mid-60s into the early 70s.  Composed by Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong, released in 1969, hitting #1 and ranked by Billboard as the third most popular single of the year.  From their appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show in September 1969. 

Prodigal Son

Ry Cooder has been playing slide guitar since the mid-1960s with the Rolling Stones, Linda Ronstadt, Taj Mahal, Randy Newman, Van Morrison, the Doobie Brothers and about a thousand others.  This is Ry in the late 60s on Randy Newman's first album with the spooky Let's Burn Down the Cornfield, and with Mick Jagger on Memo From Turner from the bizarre, hallucinatory film Performance.  Here he is 2017 sounding just as good as ever. 

My Funny Valentine

Let's celebrate the day with a tune from the Great American Songbook.  Composed in 1937 by Richard Rogers and Lorenz Hart, this chilling rendition by Elvis Costello is from 1979.

Take Five

I've always enjoyed Take Five by the Dave Brubeck Quartet.  Recorded in 1959, the song with its distinctive 5/4 time signature went on to become the best selling jazz single of all time after the album was rereleased in 1961.  The Quartet consisted of Brubeck on piano, Paul Desmond on the smooth sax, Eugene Wright (bass), and Joe Morello on drums. One thing I thought weak on the recorded version was Brubeck's repetitive piano pattern which continued throughout the tune except during the drum solo.

I just came across this 1964 video of a live performance on Belgian TV which is much superior to the recorded version.  Brubeck performs a terrific solo, followed by Morello's remarkable drum solo which is very different from the recorded version.  The whole performance avoids the static aspects of the recording.

Cold Irons Bound

I'm beginning to hear voices and there's no one around
Now I'm all used up and I feel so turned-around
I went to church on Sunday and she passed by
And my love for her is taking such a long time to die
God, I'm waist deep, waist deep in the mist
It's almost like, almost like I don't exist
I'm 20 miles out of town, Cold Irons bound

 

From 1997's Time Out of Mind album.  This live version is superior to the album cut.  I enjoy seeing how Dylan manages to look ill at ease and like Mr Cool at the same time.  That is one tight band backing him up. 

 

Becoming Led Zeppelin

On the recommendation of the THC Daughter (a huge Zep fan) I watched Becoming Led Zeppelin, a recent documentary covering the founding of the band and its first two album and initial tours.  The Daughter gets A+ for her recommendation.

Becoming features recent interviews with Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, and John Paul Jones, as well as a previously unheard late 1970s interview with John Bonham (who died in 1980) along with incredible footage of early Zeppelin gigs which I'd never seen before.

We get the origin stories for the band members, including Bonham and Plant who were friends before Zeppelin.  I knew about Page's background as a studio musician and Yardbird but little about the others and found it quite interesting - Plant was studying to be a chartered accountant!  I also hadn't been aware of the extent to which putting the band together and its initial recordings were a Jimmy Page driven project.

The performance footage shows Zeppelin as a overpowering sonic powerhouse right from the start and Bonham sure hits those drums hard.  The documentary is also a reminder that the rock critics, particularly the influential Rolling Stone, hated Led Zeppelin, but despite that the band quickly built a huge following. 

Page, Plant, and Jones were engaging in their Old Guy interviews and watching them listening to the Bonham interview (which they'd never heard) was touching.

I was also happy to see Page give a public nod to Jake Holmes as the inspiration for Dazed and Confused.  You can read about the specifics of how Page was "inspired" by Holmes here.

Tiny Desk Concert

Billy Strings and company on NPR's Tiny Desk last month performing four tunes, Red Daisy, a traditional bluegrass, and three originals by Billy from his recent Highway Prayers album, the Appalachia themed My Alice, Malfunction Junction an instrumental with a lot of changes, and my favorite, Gild The Lily.

A nice way to start off the New Year. 

Merry Christmas Baby

 It's that time of the year again when THC posts the Otis Redding version.

 

I Meant To Say Cheerio

The final scene from Local Hero.  I've loved this movie since seeing it with Mrs THC more than 40 years ago.  The soundtrack by Mark Knopfler is an integral part in creating the unique feel of the film.  During the early 80s Scottish director Bill Forsythe made a magical trio of small budget offbeat films - Gregory's Girl, Local Hero, Comfort & Joy.

Forever Young

Bob Dylan recorded Forever Young in December 1973 and it appeared the following month on the album Planet Waves.  One of his best known songs, he released another version in 2023 on the album Shadow Kingdom.  Dylan was 32 when he wrote and recorded the song.  He was 82 when he recorded it for the second time.  It hits differently.  I know it did for me listening to it at 72.  The original is a song of aspiration and hope for his young ones.  Fifty years later he knows how it turned out and it shows in his voice and informs how we react.

Dylan married Sarah Lownds in 1965 and four children were born between 1966 and 1969 (3 boys, one girl), while Bob also adopted his wife's daughter from a prior marriage.  He had last toured in 1966, using the excuse of his injuries from a motorcycle accident that fall to stop his hectic recording and touring schedule.  While releasing several albums in the following years he only played a couple of one-off concerts and become a mysterious, remote figure.

In his eccentric and revealing autobiography, Chronicles Vol. 1, Dylan describes the reasons for his withdrawal in two passages.  The first in a conversation with The Band's Robbie Robertson while driving around Woodstock:

He says to me, 'Where do you think you're gonna take it?"  I said, "Take what?".  "You know, the whole music scene."  The whole music scene! . . . No place was far enough away.  I don't know what everybody else was fantasizing about, but what I was fantasizing about was a nine-to-five existence, a house on a tree-lined block with a white picket fence, pink roses in the backyard.  That would have been nice.  That was my deepest dream.

The second in which he writes of moving several times to avoid the plague of reporters seeking him out: 

Even if these reporters had been allowed in the house, what would they find?  A whole lotta stuff - stacking toys, push and pull toys, child-sized tables and chairs - big empty cardboard boxes - science kits, puzzles and toy drums.

Whatever the counterculture was, I'd seen enough of it.  I was sick of the way my lyrics had been extrapolated, their meaning subverted into polemics and that I had been annointed as the Big Bubba of Rebellion, High Priest of Protest [etc] . . .  What the hell are we talking about?  Horrible titles any way you want to look at it . . .  What mattered to me most was getting breathing room for my family.(1)

The lyrics, written for his young children:

May God bless and keep you always
May your wishes all come true
May you always do for others
And let others do for you
May you build a ladder to the stars
And climb on every rung
May you stay forever young
Forever young, forever young
May you stay forever young.

May you grow up to be righteous
May you grow up to be true
May you always know the truth
And see the lights surrounding you
May you always be courageous
Stand upright and be strong  (Chorus)

May your hands always be busy
May your feet always be swift
May you have a strong foundation
When the winds of changes shift
May your heart always be joyful
And may your song always be sung  (Chorus)

Bob and Sarah divorced in 1977 (she is now 86 and has never spoken publicly about the marriage).  I don't know anything about their children, but son Jacob said in a 2005 interview, "My father said it himself in an interview many years ago: 'Husband and wife failed, but mother and father didn't.' My ethics are high because my parents did a great job." (2)

Forever Young also reflects a different viewpoint than that expressed in some of his earliest recordings.  From 1962 through 1964 Dylan developed a reputation as a "protest singer", a label he bitterly resented and ultimately rebelled against.   Though he is still sometimes called the "voice of his generation", Dylan never spoke publicly about the Vietnam War, either in opposition or support, despite it being the rallying point of protest in the second half of the 60s into the early 70s.  

The song that marked that transition was My Back Pages from Another Side of Bob Dylan, released in August 1964, with lyrics acknowledging that issues and life were more complicated than he had previously portrayed.

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

 

In a soldier's stance, I aimed my hand
At the mongrel dogs who teach
Fearing not I'd become my enemy
In the instant that I preach
My existence led by confusion boats
Mutiny from stern to bow
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 

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

Bringing It All Back Home (March 1965) would be his first album containing no songs that could be classified as "protest". 

 

When Dylan sings "may you stay forever young" he circles back to the chorus of My Back Pages, "I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now".   In Back Pages, he is saying that he is dropping the posed sophistication of someone pretending to be a wiser and older man in exchange for becoming the young man with still a lot to learn.  Ironically, Dylan is wise enough to know he needs to be younger, or perhaps, as young as he actually is, a lesson many of his compatriots failed to learn.

 

Eight years later, with four young children, when he sings "may you stay forever young" it means always being open to learning and gaining wisdom, not closing themselves off or thinking that they know it all.  What Dylan is driving it is revealed in this lyric, "May you have a strong foundation/ When the winds of changes shift".  He knows that things change (as does THC), in October 1963 having recorded The Times They Are-a-Changin'.  But that powerful anthem contains these lyrics: 

And you better start swimmin'
Or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'

 

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 song was written at the time of a great moral crusade, the need to admit black Americans to the full panoply of rights afforded to other American citizens.  But moral crusades are few and far between, though many mistake other issues for crusades.  In Times They Are-a-Changin', Dylan warns everyone to support the change or be swept away.

 

Ten years later, a wiser Dylan sings of the importance of a "strong foundation" because all "winds of change" are not necessarily good, each requiring careful evaluation against a moral framework, recognizing it takes great internal moral strength to withstand those winds.  Lacking a strong foundation leaves one vulnerable to manipulative charismatic leaders, too easily swayed by peers, public opinion, or media, or blindly willing to follow the lead of credential wielding experts. 

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(1) While rereading some of Chronicles in preparation for writing this post I came across another passage which explained something else I've written about - how terrible Dylan was in concert with Tom Petty during the 80s, the only time I've ever seen him perform in person:

I'd been on an eighteen month tour with Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers.  It would be my last.  I had no connection to any kind of inspiration. . . . Tom was at the top of his game and I was at the bottom of mine. . .  My own songs had become strangers to me.  I didn't have the skill to touch their raw nerves, couldn't penetrate the surfaces.  It wasn't my moment of history anymore.  There was a hollow singing in my heart and I couldn't wait to retire and fold the tent.  One more big payday with Petty and that would be it for me.  I was what they called over the hill.  If I wasn't careful I could end up ranting and raving in shouting matches with the wall.

I had written and recorded so many songs, but it wasn't like I was playing many of them.  I think I was only up to the task of about twenty or so.  The rest were too cryptic, too darkly driven, and I was no longer capable of doing anything radically creative with them.  It was like carrying a package of heavy rotten meat.  I couldn't understand where they came from.  The glow was gone and the match had burned right to the end.  I was going through the motions. 

(2) Dylan wrote at least two songs about his marriage; Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands from Blonde On Blonde (1966) and Sara from Desire (1977), the latter as his marriage was collapsing, and which includes the lyric "Staying up for days in the Chelsea Hotel/Writing "Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands' for you".  Sara is searing and emotionally wrenching.  On the other hand, Dylan makes a lot of stuff up, so did he really write Sad Eyed Lady for Sara, or did he make it up as part of his last ditch appeal to his wife?