Dylan's switch to electric instruments is rightly considered a pivotal moment in rock history. Both Don't Look Back (1967) and No Direction Home (2005) do a good job of documenting some of the fallout. But just as significantly, Dylan's lyrics were undergoing a radical transformation at approximately the same time. He was moving from the tangible world to a symbolic one, and his lyrics became both more puzzling and more direct - quite an achievement. When songs become symbolic, the listener is called upon to do much of the work, i.e. to return the descriptions and events back to the physical plane of existence. Let's take a look at a song performed in Don't Look Back - "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" from Bringing It All Back Home (1965):

You must leave now, take what you need, you think will last
But whatever you wish to keep, you better grab it fast
Yonder stands your orphan with his gun
Crying like a fire in the sun
Look out the saints are comin’ through
And it’s all over now, Baby Blue

The highway is for gamblers, better use your sense
Take what you have gathered from coincidence
The empty-handed painter from your streets
Is drawing crazy patterns on your sheets
This sky, too, is folding under you
And it’s all over now, Baby Blue

All your seasick sailors, they are rowing home
All your reindeer armies, are all going home
The lover who just walked out your door
Has taken all his blankets from the floor
The carpet, too, is moving under you
And it’s all over now, Baby Blue

Leave your stepping stones behind, something calls for you
Forget the dead you’ve left, they will not follow you
The vagabond who’s rapping at your door
Is standing in the clothes that you once wore
Strike another match, go start anew
And it’s all over now, Baby Blue

No doubt there are some wonderful lines in this song (the one about the lover and his blankets, for example, has always struck me as hilarious). But without symbolic interpretation, the listener might feel a little stranded. The first verse, for example, tells us about "[our] orphan with his gun/ Crying like a fire in the sun", who might be thought of as representing something that has been abandoned during a life, but which now has a brooding or even threatening presence and can't be ignored. And the second part of the line ("Crying like a fire in the sun") asks if one more person crying really matters in a world like this one. But of course, these are only some of the possibilities. The fun and usefulness of this type of writing is found by each individual listener (or reader), and the meanings keep on changing, and adding up.

At this point in his career, Dylan was probably looking for a way of expressing his ideas without giving himself away entirely - many of the confrontations in Don't Look Back seem to emanate from this point, it seems to me. He had already written "Blowin' in the Wind". What else needed to be said in a song about civil rights? Some have said that Baby Blue is Dylan himself, and that this song was written to keep himself bucked up in the face of the many gathering storms ahead. I doubt we'll ever know if that's true, but I do know that it can do so for us, if we want it to.