There’s been a flood of handwritten lyrics go on sale lately, including a number from John Lennon, but these ones are pretty influential historical documents. A scrap of paper torn from a notebook with five hand written verses of Bob Dylan’s epoch defining ‘The Times They Are a-Changing’ are about to go on sale at auction house Sotheby’s next week, where some estimates suggest they could fetch up to $US300,000.
Penned in capital letters by Dylan, some experts think that they could be the original manuscript, and if so there are barely any corrections – perhaps testimony to his brilliance as a songwriter capturing the mood of the time. The lyrics apparently passed through the hands of friends Kevin Krown and after his death, a couple who were also friends – Mac and Eve McKenzie.
A Sotheby’s spokesperson says of the artefact of 60s generational change: “Although Dylan also seems to have had a capacity for dropping people, forgetting them and moving on, in the case of Krown and the MacKenzies, they got something tangible out of it, at least.”
