I’m afraid I am one of those who think Dylan’s songs were nearly always better performed by other artistes. Alan disagrees.
Most of the lyrics of this song are impenetrable to me, but it contains one of my favourite lines: ‘Ah, but I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now’. As I approach the age of 70 its resonance increases.
My Back Pages appeared on the Byrds’ 1967 album Younger than Yesterday, and a shorter version was released as a single. It reached 30 in the American charts, the last of their singles to reach the top 40. It did not enter the British charts.