"Change is now"

The Byrds most commonly appear as the poster boys of the 60’s peace rock revolution as it appears in the sweeping montage of love-ins and the mass hippy momentum that is all somehow signified in their 1965 song “Turn, Turn, Turn.” But this collapsing of image, historical moments and song is deeply unstable, just as are most representations of the complex decade of the 1960’s. Bob Dylan is of course the most idolized figure of this moment of “change,” one defined by a scale of mass cultural production and consumption very difficult to understand today. The Byrds made hits by making electrified pop versions of Bob Dylan songs like Mr. Tambourine Man and the Time Are A-Changin’, thus solidifying their “peace band” image. Of note however is that the majority of the songs from their ’65-’66 period albums are basically songs that demand anonymous sex with women that they encounter as world traveling peace-rockers. Intertwined with raw sexual pleas and peace anthems are also psychedelic romps like Wild Mountain Thyme, Fifth Dimension, Renaissance Fair, Mind Gardens that derive their content from the mainstream culture of “change” and contribute to it. I mention this loose outline of their role in that moment for the Byrds offer a stark contrast with the present situation of cultural production. At both the mainstream and the emergent sub-main field of cultural production, there has been no similar capitalization of “protest music” “peace music” or any other form that can engage the complexities of the present as naively as the Byrds once did. Any discussion of this particular group should also point out the popularity of the group at the sub-mainstream level which adores their pleasant sound and has spawned a handful of pastiche bands since Beachwood Sparks onwards.

But here I turn to the 1968 song “Change is Now” from the Byrds album “The Notorious Byrd Brothers”, released Janurary 3, 1968. Minimal pounding drums, a single note bass line, and a electric twelve string guitar line lay the foundation for this mind-blowing jam that demands not the fleeting pleasures of free love, but insists “Change is now.” This chanted prioritization of the present as the locus of “change” seems common sensical enough, and merely reasserts the urgency of the mass culture of “change” produced and consumed by a society conventionally represented as torn between “change” and the “status quo.” This opposition was on some level a political one for the same clearly meant war, racism and other bad stuff like the military-industrial complex. But not only is change now, the lyrcis continue to state that in this mass moment “things that seemed to be solid are not,” and thus possibilities abound. In fact, “All is now, all is now, The time that we have to live” which totalizes the present as the only moment in which reality exists. History and future utopia be damned, all is now is the infinite possibility of the present, now freed from that which was solid by the mass forces of “change.” But then the song’s driving chant is interrupted by its chorus, filled with harmonious country slide guitar and the simple lyrics, “Gather all that we can, Keep in harmony with love's sweet plan.” This chorus here presents a profound contradiction for the infinite possibilities of the present must be gathered to our ability as they accord with “love’s sweet plan.” There is order in the liberating possibilities of the present produced by “change ” and it demands we comply with an unknowable plan that is sweet and belongs to love. Luckily, while we are briefly thrown aback by this ambiguous demand to accumulate according to the invisible designs of agreeable pleasure evoked by the rush of slide guitars, we return to the driving foundation where fuzz guitars illuminate an expansive terrain with their aleatory harmonies. This middle passage offers a more concrete space representative of the possibilities stipulated by the phrase “Change is now.” For it is one that could go on forever, locked in a groove driving and pounding through the extensive immediacy of the present.

Coming aground in the second verse, from this brief glance at the abyss of the infinite groove, we come to the truth: “Truth is real, truth is real/ That which is not real does not exist”. This could be reduced to the phrase, “That which is not true it does not exist”, or “all that exists is truth, and it is real”. This logic of pure immediacy locates truth in the infinite present, forever bringing into existence the real and then instantly becoming untrue as it becomes past, where it no longer exists. Next we encounter a different temporal dimension: “In and out roundabout/ Dance to the day when fear it is gone” A day will come, (as a result of the change perhaps) when fear it is gone, and we can dance in and out, roundabout until then.

The circular form of the truth of the present, the bringing in and out of existence is oriented towards a future when “fear it is gone”. This phrase is the trajectory of “change” promised by this song. Rather than simply saying change will bring the day when “fear is gone” it seems that it could also say “‘fear it’, is gone” or “fear of ‘it is’, is gone”. The present tense ‘is’ reproduces the time of the present which here, although displaced to a future to come, embodies an immediacy without fear, where fear is not. However, the ‘it’ inserts a further ambiguity that is compounded by the chorus which reasserts itself at this point, almost as if from an entirely different sonic universe. “Gather all that we can/ Keep in harmony with love's sweet plan” The two interruptions by the chorus inscribe a thought provoking contradictory form within this anthem of change. Are we gathering the present, accumulating change in compliance with some divine plan that will bring the day when fear is gone? Is this a Buddhist ethics of karmic accumulation? Do we have here a primordial formulation of the experience economy which prioritizes the consumption of experiences and emotional intensities so well in tune to the marketing of extreme culture? Can we detect herein the deeply contradictory origins of present?

What is the point of confusingly unfolding the contents of a naive mainstream hippy jam? That “Change” is ambiguous, and to understand the present we might be able to trace its key features to specific moments of contradictions within the very fabric of aesthetic production and consumption (here I use the dictionary meaning of aesthetic that includes decorative and affective functions). Popular music seems to be a form ripe for these questions regarding the political. For example the present absence of self-described “political” music may be a fascinating point of departure for further inquiry. As DM demonstrated in his use of ZZ top, these forms have a very concrete way of illustrating abstract contradictions that define the recent past and present in complex but interesting ways.

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Lyrics:
Change Is Now (Hillman/McGuinn)
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
Fear it is gone