PHOTO Original Bob Dylan “Times They Are A-Changin'” hand-written lyrics up for auction

On December 10 Sotheby’s auction house is giving you the chance to not only own a piece of rock and roll history, but one of the most historically significant and culture-altering documents of the last 100 years! Going under the hammer are the original hand-written lyrics to Bob Dylan’s “The Times are A-Changin'” originally recorded by Dylan for the album of the same name 1963. (Click the above image for a larger photo)

You might think I’m being a bit liberal with hyperbole, but few would argue that Bob Dylan changed the landscape of popular music in the 1960s, and it was this song in particular that spear-headed the entire folk revival and ignited the spirit of rebellion in a generation of people not content to accept the status quo.

Bob has always distanced himself from being a “protest singer” and I’m sure he would be the first to point out that the ones singing this song almost 50 years ago are the ones having it sung back to them now, but that doesn’t change the fact that the words scrawled on this yellowed and torn unruled sheet of notebook paper capture perfectly the manifest destiny in our souls that pulls us towards making the world a better place.

Come gather ’round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You’ll be drenched to the bone
If your time to you is worth savin’
Then you better start swimmin’ or you’ll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin’

Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won’t come again
And don’t speak too soon
For the wheel’s still in spin
And there’s no tellin’ who that it’s namin’
For the loser now will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin’

Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don’t stand in the doorway
Don’t block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There’s a battle outside and it is ragin’
It’ll soon shake your windows
and rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin’

Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don’t criticize
What you can’t understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
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 line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is rapidly fadin’
And the first one now will later be last
For the times they are a-changin’

The lyrics are expected to fetch up to $300,000 according to preliminary estimates from Sothebys. Here’s Bob performing the song in 1965:

And Bob performing it earlier this year at the White House Celebration of Music from the Civil Rights Movement. (For those unwilling to do the math, that’s 45 years later!)

I don’t know about you, but I busted my piggy bank and counted up my change! Sadly, I think my total falls a bit short of being able to score the original lyrics for “The Times They Are A-Changin'” but I may have just enough for when “Wiggle, Wiggle” hits the block!

Photo: SplashNews.com