Yes, the lyric should be "easy then" rather than "easier than." This seems to me to be a statement on the experience of the Sixties, a time of massive upheaval and change, a time when people questioned authority, and "the old road rapidly faded." Ideas and mores that seemed so simple and so cut-and-dry about right and wrong and black and white in the Fifties quickly and stunningly were thrown to the wind in the Sixties. Only shades of gray remained.
Yes, the lyric should be "easy then" rather than "easier than." This seems to me to be a statement on the experience of the Sixties, a time of massive upheaval and change, a time when people questioned authority, and "the old road rapidly faded." Ideas and mores that seemed so simple and so cut-and-dry about right and wrong and black and white in the Fifties quickly and stunningly were thrown to the wind in the Sixties. Only shades of gray remained.