One Final Serenade: Songs of Billy Joel
 Download "The Times They Are A Changin'"
Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land And don’t criticize What you can’t understand Billy had been a fan of Bob Dylan as a teen, and signed with Columbia Records in the early 1970s rather than Atlantic Records in part because Dylan was on Columbia. So it was natural that Billy performed Dylan's classic song "The Times They Are A Changin'" while in Russia in 1987. When Dylan released the song back in the 1960s in the United States, it perfectly captured the changing cultural and political climate of the United States including the Civil Rights movement and Free Speech movement. Billy aptly saw that something similar was happening in Russia at the time.
As Rolling Stone reported: "Every night, he performed a cover of Bob Dylan's 'The Times They Are-A Changin'' and gave a speech (with the aid of a translator) about the song. 'I have a feeling that what's going on in your country right now is very much like the 1960s," he said one night. "This song has been going around and around my head since I've been here.'" Ten years later, in 1997, Billy would cover another Dylan tune, "To Make You Feel My Love" on Billy's Greatest Hits, Volume III. Billy's version actually was released before Dylan's own version. Billy has also recorded Dylan's "Highway 61 Revisited" on My Lives. 
Michael Jackson, Christie Brinkley, Bob Dylan and Billy Joel at the recording of "We Are The World" (1985). Photo: Sam Emerson.
If a folk music version of Billy's songs were ever recorded, here is a list of his "folk songs":
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(Words and music by Bob Dylan)
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’ Copyright © 1963, 1964 by Warner Bros. Inc.; renewed 1991, 1992 by Special Rider Music. Billy performs the Bob Dylan song "The Times They Are A Changin'" on Russian television in 1987. It was the perfect song for the moment and time.
Bob Dylan performing "The Times They Are A Changin'" on U.S. television in 1964.
Billy performs Dylan's "To Make You Feel My Love" and discusses the time Dylan came to Billy's home with his daughter who was a fan of Billy's music, from Late Night with David Letterman (1997).
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