Latest / Booked On Rock with Eric Senich / [EP 376] Dylan & The Beatles: How They Changed Each Other—and Rock Forever with Jim Windolf

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[EP 376] Dylan & The Beatles: How They Changed Each Other—and Rock Forever with Jim Windolf · Booked On Rock with Eric Senich

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: His next album, John Wesley Harding. Rolling Stone did a
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: story about that album cover and they said, if you
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: look at the tree on the cover, the faces of John, Paul,
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: George and Ringo are carved into the tree. Notice that
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: he's standing with three other guys, right. I think he
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: made that album partly as a response to Sergeant Pepperick
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: in the wards. You guys are going over the top.
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: I'm stripping it down to simplicity. Jilla's next album, Nashville Skyline.
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: There's the Beatles message on that cover. Do you know
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: what it is? We're totally rocking roll. I mean, I'll
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: leave you.
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: You're reading Little Hans says it's time to rock and roll.
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: Rock, Roll up.
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: We are totally booked.
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  Speaker 3: Welcome back to book don Rock, the podcast for those
• 0:41
  Speaker 3: about to read and rock on Eric Sinitch before we
• 0:43
  Speaker 3: get started. If you'd like to support the podcast and
• 0:46
  Speaker 3: get episodes commercial free, sign up for the backstage Pass
• 0:50
  Speaker 3: from Patreon just five dollars a month the link in
• 0:53
  Speaker 3: the show notes, or he can go to book down
• 0:54
  Speaker 3: rock dot com. Now on to our guest. This is
• 0:57
  Speaker 3: a fascinating topic. Jim Windolph, the author of the brand
• 1:01
  Speaker 3: new book Where the music had to go. How Bob
• 1:03
  Speaker 3: Dylan and the Beatles changed each other and the world. Jim,
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  Speaker 3: Welcome to the podcast.
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  Speaker 2: Hey Eric, thanks for having me on. I really appreciate it.
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  Speaker 3: I appreciate it as well. Your book it argues that
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  Speaker 3: Bob Dylan and the Beatles didn't just influence music but
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  Speaker 3: each other, and the relationship was deeper and more consequential
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  Speaker 3: than has been noted by earlier writers. What do you
• 1:25
  Speaker 3: think the biggest misconception about the relationship is.
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: Well, I think the misconception is that, I guess rock
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: fans know that people used to think the big rivalry
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: was between the Beatles and the Stones, but really I
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  Speaker 1: think they had more of a competition with Dylan and
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  Speaker 1: had more to do with them creatively. They were in
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  Speaker 1: a creative dialogue. And I don't think a lot of
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  Speaker 1: even some fans of each group, or you know, Dylan
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  Speaker 1: and the Beatles, are aware of how deep it went,
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: how often they saw each other, how well they knew
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: one another, and how they had each other in mind
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  Speaker 1: when they were writing songs and recording Sometimes.
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  Speaker 3: At what point did the relationship shift from admiration to
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  Speaker 3: competition or was it always both?
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: Maybe from the minute they became bands of each other,
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  Speaker 1: which was sixty four.
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  Speaker 2: Maybe it had a bit.
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  Speaker 1: Of competition built into it from the start, you know,
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: there's a bit of a bit of admiration, but also like, hey,
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: wait a minute, maybe what if you know, Lenin had
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: some insecurity about Tolan from the start. He was seemed
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: to be a little bit in awe of him, and
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: with that awe came to worry like maybe this guy's
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  Speaker 1: better than me, you know, so even when they're admiring him,
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: they might feel like he has something we don't. And
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: that's how Dylan felt about the Beatles. You know, while
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  Speaker 1: they're doing something that's really catching on, why am I
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  Speaker 1: not doing?
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  Speaker 2: That's what's wrong with me?
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  Speaker 1: You know? And they and another way to look at
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  Speaker 1: that as they complimented each other and they decided like,
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: I'll take a little bit of what the other one
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  Speaker 1: has to improve what I do or make it more interesting.
• 2:59
  Speaker 3: You kind of He came to Dylan after the Beatles.
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: Right, yeah, a little bit both when I was a kid,
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: but slightly older kid when I came to Dylan. So
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: I was about eleven years old when Dylan made sense
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  Speaker 1: to me, and it was a song Hurricane from seventy five,
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  Speaker 1: and that was not a very big hit, but it
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: was on the radio. I grew up in New York,
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: New Jersey, and so I grew up in New Jersey
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  Speaker 1: and listened to New York stations and it was on
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  Speaker 1: there a little bit, and it really grabbed me.
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  Speaker 2: And from there I went deep into Dylan.
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  Speaker 1: Among the first records I had, I got Desire, that's
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  Speaker 1: the album Hurricane is on, and also the one that
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: was out at the time, Hard Rain, which is a
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: live album of his Rolling Thunder Review period. And I
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: love that Rolling Thunder Review stuff. I think that sound
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: is so rough and like just great and I love
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  Speaker 1: that record when I was eleven, and I feel the
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  Speaker 1: same about it now. And the Beatles started for me
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: when I was a little, you know, kind of a
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: little kid. I was like five years old. It was
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: really Uncle Albert Admiral Halsey, a Paul McCartney song that
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  Speaker 1: got me into their sound. And then from there I heard, oh,
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: he was in the Beatles, and then you start to
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: learn the lore and all that stuff, and I went
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: back worked backward from there and remained a fan of
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: you know, Lennon as a solo artist. I had Shaved Fish,
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: you know, when I was like ten years old, that
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  Speaker 1: compilation album and the George Harrison album thirty three and
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: a third from seventy six. That's an album I still love,
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: and those records. You know, I'm a seventies kid, so
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: I'm like a second generation fan, I guess. And the
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  Speaker 1: solo records got me into it, and then I went
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: back into the Beatles from there, and same with Dylan.
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  Speaker 1: Go back to his early stuff and learn the whole
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  Speaker 1: story and how the sound evolved.
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  Speaker 3: The majority of people would say it was it'd be
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  Speaker 3: the Beatles first, then Dylan specifically, because of the Beatles'
• 4:51
  Speaker 3: early album is very pop, very easy to absorb. As
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  Speaker 3: somebody who is younger, you don't necessarily have to understand
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  Speaker 3: the lyrics as much as you just, I mean what
• 5:00
  Speaker 3: you're hearing and seeing.
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  Speaker 1: I think a lot of parents I know, and even
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: me having kids, the Beatles still appeal to kids, you know,
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  Speaker 1: so you can put on you know something early, or
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: you can put on I Am the Walrus, and kids
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  Speaker 1: just are are still fascinated by that sound. Getting kids
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  Speaker 1: into Dylan when they're eight and nine years old might
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  Speaker 1: be a little more of a challenge, sure so so
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  Speaker 1: So I don't know if they got to be a
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  Speaker 1: certain age for Dylan to start to make sense to you,
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  Speaker 1: but it did to me when I was about eleven.
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  Speaker 3: Lenin and Dylan's relationship is fascinating you right, quote Lenin
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  Speaker 3: and Dylan laugh. But their relationship was more charged, two
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  Speaker 3: lines circling each other. Their dynamic seems most fascinating. Talk
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  Speaker 3: about that relationship that they had.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's really funny. I mean it starts with this,
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  Speaker 1: you know, Lenin when he first gets into Dylan. It's
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  Speaker 1: with the other Beatles in Paris in January sixty four.
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  Speaker 1: They're playing a three week engagement at the Olympia Theater
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  Speaker 1: and Paul brings back the first two Dylan albums to
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  Speaker 1: the hotel suite, and Lennon, even as he's falling for Dylan,
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  Speaker 1: he tells this reporter who's there, like he notices the
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  Speaker 1: hat that Dylan's wearing on his first album, and he
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  Speaker 1: wears a similar hat, and he's like, oh no, people
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  Speaker 1: are gonna think I stole this from Dylan.
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  Speaker 2: You know.
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  Speaker 1: So he already has this anxiety about Dylan from the
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  Speaker 1: very start and just continues through his whole life. I
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: mean his last home recording session, his last known home
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: recording session. Three weeks before his death, he recorded Serve Yourself,
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  Speaker 1: which is his parody of God to serve somebody. So
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: Dylan's on his mind to his last days, and even
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: that song, it began as a parody, but he worked
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  Speaker 1: on it for a year, so it's not like a
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  Speaker 1: throwaway track. I kind of argue in the book that
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: I think it's, you know, one of his last great creations.
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  Speaker 2: That song. It's so.
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  Speaker 1: Unhinged and goes all over the place and it's kind
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  Speaker 1: of profane. It reminds me in a way of like
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  Speaker 1: an Elvis Costello's song like I Want You, you know,
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  Speaker 1: that kind of song where it's, you know, really venting something.
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  Speaker 1: And so he kind of started off with, you know,
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  Speaker 1: this desire to make fun of Dylan's religious period, but
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  Speaker 1: it led him to writing a really interesting song, and
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  Speaker 1: he recorded it twelve different times that we know of
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: on cassette. That those leaked out of the out of
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: the Dakota building and collectors came upon them.
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  Speaker 2: So it's something that stretchs through his whole life.
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  Speaker 3: What's the specific moment where you can clearly hear Dylan
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  Speaker 3: influencing the Beatles sound.
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  Speaker 1: I think it comes in two songs, Things We Said
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  Speaker 1: Today by Paul and I'm a Loser by John I mean,
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  Speaker 1: I mean they're the chief songwriters of both of those.
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  Speaker 1: So Lennon in late sixty four gives an interview to
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  Speaker 1: Melody Maker and he says, this is when he announces
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  Speaker 1: that he and the other Beatles are fans of Dylan,
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: and Melody Maker gives it this great headline Beatles say,
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  Speaker 1: Dylan shows the way, and then Lennon says that he
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  Speaker 1: wrote I'm a Loser and A Hard Day's Night inspired
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  Speaker 1: by Dylan.
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  Speaker 2: I don't really hear it in the Hard.
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  Speaker 1: Day's Night myself, but but John said said it so,
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  Speaker 1: so in his mind there's some some connection to Dylan
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  Speaker 1: with A Hard Day's Night.
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  Speaker 3: Maybe a stripped down version of it.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, maybe maybe we could hear it. Yeah, I
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  Speaker 1: don't know if we have. I don't know what the
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  Speaker 1: latest box set is of A Hard Day's Night. Maybe
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: maybe they're gonna really track And then for me, for
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  Speaker 1: Things We Said Today, McCartney wrote that that's one of
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  Speaker 1: the first songs he wrote after becoming a Dylan fan,
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  Speaker 1: and he wrote it while on vacation in I think
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  Speaker 1: he was in I think he's in the Bahamas and
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  Speaker 1: he was in the hull of a boat.
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  Speaker 2: And just the lyrics, I mean, you think of the.
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: Leap from She Loves You a year earlier to Things
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  Speaker 1: We Said Today, that's quite a leap lyrically. I don't
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  Speaker 1: think it's so much from the sound, but it's it's
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: like McCartney's deciding to write a song about love that's
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  Speaker 1: more complicated than the early rush of adrenaline that you
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: feel or the heartbreak at the end, which is the
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: stuff of more typical love songs. Things we Said Today
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  Speaker 1: is like a meditation on Oh, the love we're having
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  Speaker 1: now is eventually going to go away, and he imagines
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: a future version of himself looking back on this moment
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  Speaker 1: and it helps him appreciate what he's going through in
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  Speaker 1: the moment. And I kind of connect that song in
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  Speaker 1: my mind to a song called Bob Dylan's Dream that's
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: on the Free Wheel in Bob Dylan Dylan's second album,
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  Speaker 1: And on that song, Dylan is falls asleep on a
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  Speaker 1: train and falls into a dream of his old friends
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  Speaker 1: that he had before he was a somebody, you know,
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: before he was famous, and he kind of longs for
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  Speaker 1: those simpler times.
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  Speaker 3: Lenin read a lot, you know that in the book.
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  Speaker 3: As far as Dylan, he read a lot as well.
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  Speaker 3: I mean, I think that's the other similarity there with
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  Speaker 3: Lennon and Dylan, right literally.
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they're both Yep, they both are. Paul read a
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: lot too, but they also have literary ambitions. And from
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: the start, you know, in one of Dylan's first interview
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: is that he gave to Stud's Turtle in like sixty two,
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: he talks about, Yeah, I'm working on my autobiography.
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  Speaker 2: You know.
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  Speaker 1: He didn't end up writing it until two thousand and four,
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: you know, and he talked he would talk often about
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: like like after the times they were a change and
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: came out, he was kind of lost his way for
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: a minute, and he didn't know what he's going to do.
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: When he's telling people it might be a playwriter, might
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: become a novelist. Now and Lenin is the first one
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: to publish. He published the book in his own right
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: in sixty four and people might forget now. But when
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: that book came out, the reviews were like ecstatic. British
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: eyebrow critics were comparing him to Chaucer and James Troyce
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: and Lear and Lewis Carroll, who was one of Lennon's heroes,
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: Lewis Carroll. And so it's funny because his literary ambitions
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: made like the gatekeepers in Britain or the highbrow critics
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: think like, wait a minute, if this guy can write
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: like this, maybe we were wrong about this music that
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: we considered dispol was a boy, you know. And and
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: then Dylan when he finally writes his book Tarantula, which
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: he starts writing, it's funny because soon after when Lennon's
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: book is released in America, right after that, as I
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: had note in the book, Dylan writes a letter to
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: Lawrence Ferlngetti, who was a poet but also ran a
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: publishing company, City Lights, out of the City Lights bookstore
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: in San Francisco, which had published Alan Ginsberg's book How
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: And Dylan says, yeah, you know that book we were
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: talking about. I'm still going to get it to you.
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: You know, that was the start of Tarantula. Had ended
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: up with a different publisher, and it took Dylan a
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: lot of torturous back and forth, you know, of whether
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: it was good or not, and he didn't end up
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: publishing it until nineteen seventy one. But he often said
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: he often invoked in his own right when he talked
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: about Tarantula, saying that you know he was he kind
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: of would put it on other people say like, yeah,
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: when Lenin had that book, they were asking me to
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: write one, so I did it.
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: But it was something he wanted to do himself.
• 11:59
  Speaker 3: I asked him, when you hear Dylan his influence in
• 12:02
  Speaker 3: the Beatles sound the flip side of that, Where do
• 12:04
  Speaker 3: you hear the Beatles pushing Dylan in a new direction?
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: Well, I really, I mean you hear it first of
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: all in it's not a very beatly sound, but subterranean
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: homesick blues, which was really Dylan's version. You know, I
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: feel like it's a rewrite of Chuck Berry's Too Much
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: Monkey Business, where Dylan throws a new kind of lyrics
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: onto the old rock and roll structure that he gets
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: from Chuck Berry from Too Much Monkey Business and frozen
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: like absurd social commentary and all these aphorisms. That's like
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: the vandalstick, the handles and all that stuff. So that's
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: when he decides that's about less than a year after
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: he's become a Beatles fan when he records that, and
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: he's made the decision there, like, I mean, people love
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: him as the solo folk troubadour and he has a
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: very solid audience, and he could stick with that if
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: he wanted to. But he's getting a little tired of
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: the rules and regulations of the folk world and just
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: the general atmosphere by that point, and they're trying to
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: fit him into this role he doesn't want to play,
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: which is like to be. You know, even though he
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: loved what he Guthrie, you're going to.
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: Keep being what.
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: You're going to keep being the guy who sings protest
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: songs and you know, when there's a strike, you're going
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: to be you know, we want you on our side.
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: And songs like the Times they Are change in, which
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: is so clear, you know, and its aims. Now he's
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: starting to write songs before subtrading homesick blues like Mister
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: Tambourine Man and Chimes of Freedom that are they're hard
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: to figure out what, you know, what is he saying?
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: And these these songs disappointed a lot of his folk fans,
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: not all of them, but a lot of them because
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: they were like What are we going to do with
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: these lyrics? I mean, he's got so much talent. He
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: should be helping society with his lyrics, not expressing his
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: innermost feelings. What are we going to do with that?
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: You know?
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: And so that was kind of like one step on
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: his way to going to rock and roll and subtrating
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: homesick blues is the first time he does it, and that,
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: you know, it is a new thing for Dylan. It's
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: a hit single. You know, his songs before that. Peter,
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: Paul and Mary had a hit single with Blowin' in
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: the Wind, but Dylan didn't himself.
• 14:08
  Speaker 3: I wonder how much of the sense of melody and
• 14:11
  Speaker 3: that type of songwriting structure the Beatles had that made
• 14:14
  Speaker 3: them so popular that maybe that rubbed off on Bob
• 14:17
  Speaker 3: Dylan too.
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: It did.
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: I mean, one super obvious example is later, so I'm
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: trying to let me get the year straight. It's after
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: like a rolling stone comes out. So that's sixty five
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: and he wants it and that went to number one
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: on cash Box in America. Some people say it wasn't
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: a number one hit, but cash Box had a very
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: accurate chart at the time. That was the rival to
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: Billboard and so like a Rolling Stone was number one,
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: and he wanted a nice follow up to that, And
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: when he did a recording session, you know, when he
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: was trying to record a new single, he recorded I
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: Want to Be Your Lover, which was basically a rewrite
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: of the Beatles I Want to Be Your Man, which
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: had been a hit for the Rolling Stones and kind
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: of a highlight light of their live shows when Ringo
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: would sing it from behind the drums.
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: And I Want to Be Your Lover is.
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: He has a lot musically in common with I Want
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: to Be Your Man and and but it's different in
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: the verses. And this is where Dylan, this is where
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: the competition comes in, because Dylan's kind of I think
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: what he's his message to the Beatles or anybody listening
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: to the song, is you think a rock and roll
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: song has to have these kind of throwaway lyrics. Actually
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: they can be kind of heavy, and he throws in
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: all these surreal images into the to the lyrics. Now,
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: the thing is, nobody knew about it at the time
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: because Columbia Records shelved it, so it wasn't his follow
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: It didn't end up being his follow up single, but
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: it was there. He was in the fall of sixty
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: five recording that. Then he did Positively Fourth Street right
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: after that, and that became his follow up to Like
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: a Rolling Stone. But there he was, you know, recording
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: a very beatlesque song.
• 15:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah, how much of his experimentation was influenced by the Beatles,
• 15:58
  Speaker 3: The Sergeant Pepper album Things, I mean Self Portrait, I'm
• 16:01
  Speaker 3: thinking of that. That really that album was like whoa
• 16:04
  Speaker 3: okay falls up? Yeah, Nashville Skyline self Portrait.
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think they did in a weird way and
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: that and people critics pointed this out at the time
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: that like Robert Chriscau, who was a big critic even
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: back then for The Village Voice, when he heard John
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: Wesley Harding, he said he described it as, this is
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: Dylan's reaction to Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club band. He's
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: taking their baroque sound and all that maximalist thing that
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: the Beatles are doing, and he's like, no, that's not
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: the way to go. Let's boil it down to you know,
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: the ultimate simplicity. And at the same time, right before
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: John Wesley Harding, the band was recording music from Big Pink,
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: which was also going in that other direction, and and
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: that had a huge influence. You know that that turn
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: that the band and Bob Dylan took made everybody think twice.
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: Eric Clapton was like in cream saying what are we doing?
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: You know, like or should we keep? And then Lennon
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: said year later, while the Beatles were recording the White Album,
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: you know, he said in some interview right then, like
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: you know, we all got a little funny and you know,
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: Dylan went, Dylan May, John Wesley Harding and now we're
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: making We're back to making music again as opposed to
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: rely so much on production. Although the White Album has
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: a lot of production on it, but they were on
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: their way toward that more stripped down sound that you
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: hear on the in the Get Back sessions.
• 17:24
  Speaker 3: You mentioned Chuck Barry. The chapter Disciples of Little Richard
• 17:28
  Speaker 3: gets into the influence of Dylan and the Beatles if
• 17:31
  Speaker 3: they followed the same a similar path, right.
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's amazing they're going up four thousand miles apart.
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: And this is something Dylan mentioned in an interview in
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: like twenty fifteen. You know, they had the same even
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: though they're growing up, they're going away, growing up far
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: from like the big cities, far from where the cultural
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: centers of their nations, but they fall for the same
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: exact music just about you know, Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly,
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: Little Richard, Elvis Presley, and Dylan says when he first
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: heard Elvis Presley, great quote he gave once was that
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: he felt like he was busting out of jail, and
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: he knew he was never gonna work for anybody. And
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: then Lennon had the same thing, like when he heard
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: Elvis Presley and McCartney too, they were just like, that's it,
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: this is what we're gonna do with our lives. But
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: two weeks after Lennon heard Elvis Presley, he heard Little
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: Richard for the first time, and he said he was
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: dumbfounded because in his mind he thought Little Richard was better.
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: And even in his own mind, he didn't want to
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: say something against Elvis Presley, who'd become like a religion
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: to him. So and then Dylan had the same thing
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: where he loved Little Richard so much that one of
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: the very first songs he wrote as a teenager, and
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: there is a recording of this, is called Hey Little Richard.
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: And then he played piano in his high school band,
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: so he was playing. He was not a guitar player.
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: So if he pictured Dylan when he was the leader
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: of high school rock bands, he's on piano. And people
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: said that he really went crazy, kind of in the
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: manner of Little Richard, which shocked his classmates because he
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: was pretty quiet in school. And then he get on
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: stage and there's one time where he broke a pattle
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: on the piano and the principal the cut the electricity,
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: and he loved and he loved Little Richard so much
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: that when Little Richard had a car crash in the
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: mid eighties, Dylan was there at his bedside in the
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: hospital for you know, seven eight hours, and Little Richard
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: said that Dylan was like his blood brother. Cool and yeah,
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: and you can hear Little Richard and the Beatles solo
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: stuff too. I mean, whatever gets you through the night
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: is kind of It isn't around much anymore, but the
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: saxophone lad rocker, you know, with a whole team of saxes,
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: and Little Richard had that sound on a lot of
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: his records, a lot of his hits.
• 19:43
  Speaker 3: That first meeting in sixty four, you did allude to it.
• 19:45
  Speaker 3: What is there a detail about that night. Maybe that
• 19:48
  Speaker 3: stands out to you most in your research for the book.
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: Well, that's kind of a your listeners might know that story.
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: That's kind of the famous night where the Beatles and
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: Dylan get high together. Kind of a myth about it
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: is that Dylan Dylan is the one who turned them
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: onto pot, which is kind of true, kind of not true.
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: I mean, he didn't bring the pot. It was his
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: right hand man, Victor Mimutus, brought the pot. And it
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: was at the behest of this journalist al Aronowitz, who
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: was close with Dylan and wrote two great stories on
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: the Beatles in sixty four, and he was telling John Lennon, like,
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: you got to stop taking uppers and downers. Synthetic drugs
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: are no good. You got to start smoking pot because
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: this guy aleronowit's although he was older, he was thirty five,
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: he'd learned to smoke pot from like Jack Kerouac and
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: Miles Davis, and you know, he was from that world.
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: And so that night, that was the plan. The Beatles
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: were gonna smoke pot with with Dylan, or that's what
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: al Aronowitz hoped, more so than Dylan himself.
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: I don't think Dylan really cared, so they did.
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: So they lit up joints and that's the night that
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: they really got high for the first time. The Beatles
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: have said that they had tried pot before that, but
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: I think it never kicked in, you know, maybe they
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: had weak stuff or something.
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: So that night it worked. Lot of funny hijinks, you know,
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: that night. But the thing that stands out for.
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: Me really is is the lenks Dylan had to go
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: to to get there, because the night before, Lennon called Alerono,
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: it's this journalist, and he said, all right, I'm ready
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: to meet Dylan, Now get him over here. Dylan was
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: up in Woodstock at the time, and the next day,
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: you know, he had to with his friend Victor. He
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: had to drive down. They picked up Ale Ronowitz, who
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: lived in New Jersey, and they drove into Manhattan and
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: then al had to go to the hotel to check
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: and make sure everything was okay. Dylan and Victor waited
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: in the car for another hour, you know, so this
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: is like a five six hour excursion just to get there.
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: They finally get to the hotel room at like eleven
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: at night. The Beatles have already played a show that
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: night at Forest Hills Tennis Stadium where like fans have
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: passed out and there's a Red Cross tent because there's
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: so many fans who've like fainted and all that.
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: Kind of screaming.
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: And then so then Dylan finally arrives, you know, and
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: and there are thousands of people on the street outside.
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: Is just hard to fathom now.
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: And so if if they stepped close to the window,
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: which they did, a roar would go up, you know,
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: because if because the people on the street knew which
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: which window was theirs, and then they were they were
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: partying all night and at dawn they Victor Mammunez writes
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: that they took turns going to the window to make
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: the crowd roar, and he said it was like making
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: a song.
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: So that's another thing that sticks out to me.
• 22:27
  Speaker 3: This surprises me, but maybe it doesn't surprise you. I'm
• 22:30
  Speaker 3: curious what your thought on this is. But the Beatles
• 22:33
  Speaker 3: were as you're right, Luke warre them in their initial
• 22:35
  Speaker 3: reaction to Dylan's Highway sixty one Revisited, and Bob Dylan
• 22:39
  Speaker 3: was at first dismissive of the Beatles album Revolver. In
• 22:43
  Speaker 3: the groundbreaking sonic experiments, he was skeptical of Tomorrow and
• 22:47
  Speaker 3: never knows. Did that surprise you?
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: Not so much? Yeah, it didn't.
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: So so they were you know, they didn't they didn't like,
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: they didn't move in lockstep. They didn't agree on everything musically.
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: But I still think they still had an influence in
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: each other. And it is interesting when Dylan hears the
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: Beatles taking advantage of the studio, it's just not something
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: that really interest him, you know, He's like, why would
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: why would I bother with that?
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: He doesn't.
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: Dylan doesn't even really like even on a song like
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: You've Got to Hide Your Love Away or Norwegian would
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: the Beatles Already at that point Lennon is recording a
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: separate guitar track then doing his vocals. You know, Dylan
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: would never do that, I'm not. He didn't do that
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: until much later, where he starts overdubbing and doing separate
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: you know, recording of instruments and things like that. He
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: liked to play as a band, you know, all the
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: way through Street Legal. That's how he that's how he recorded.
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: For the most part, he didn't He didn't want to
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: be like a studio expert. He didn't really care. But
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: so the beatles are kind of using the studios like
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: a compositional tool, and you know, I feel like it's
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: really cool because the recording becomes the song. It's like
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: what you know, the demo was so far from the
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: finished version that like the recording like almost like in
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: dance music, that's what the song is. It's not the
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: original inspiration for it. But Dylan used the studio in
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: a in a way too because he had the privileg
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: or to do, to take out as long as he wanted.
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: So when he's recording Blonde on Blonde, he's doing sometimes
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: thirty takes, you know, with the band to get the
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: exact right take. And other groups at that time didn't
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: have that luxury. They were expected You go into a
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: Nashville recording studio, you have two to three hours to
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: record your song and that's it. But Dylan had the
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: backing of Columbia Records. He was starting to sell records,
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: and he was so highly praised even back then that
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: he had kind of privileges that other artists didn't have
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: at the time. So even though he wanted to capture spontaneity,
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: I feel like you know, when you're when you get
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: twenty five shots of the song. You're going to get that,
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: you know, Spontaneous's not exactly spontaneous because it wasn't your
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: first take, but you're going to get that group sound
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: without overdubbing. But yeah, it's not exactly as rough rough
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: as it seems, you know what I mean, it's it's
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: something he did on purpose.
• 25:06
  Speaker 3: What was his response to because we know Dylan to
• 25:08
  Speaker 3: this day is touring. I mean, he is a guy
• 25:11
  Speaker 3: that's that's his life on the road. What he thought
• 25:14
  Speaker 3: of the Beatles deciding to get off the road. I'm
• 25:17
  Speaker 3: sure he understood they had two different types of audience.
• 25:20
  Speaker 3: I mean, Dylan never had that problem the Beatles had
• 25:22
  Speaker 3: where people are screaming so loud they're not listening to
• 25:24
  Speaker 3: his songs.
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he did have this period though, He had a
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: three year period where he was not on the road,
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: and that was sixty six to sixty nine. Yes, and
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: then he and then he only did one concert in
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: sixty nine and then he was off the road again
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: until seventy four. So so now we think of him
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: as the wandering troubadour who's never off the road, you know,
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: the never ending tour guy. But back then he had
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: a young family, and the sixty six tour where he
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: was booed really wore him out. You know, he might
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: have worn himself out a bit, you know, But after
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: he played the Royal Albert Hall in May sixty six,
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: the Beatles were in the audience and the audience was
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: booing him and heckling, and the Beatles run their box.
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: A journalist is one row forward. I found this buried
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: in some article and like Record Mirror magazine, this journalists
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: heard them saying, got up, leave them alone, you know.
• 26:11
  Speaker 2: And then and then Dylan goes back home.
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: He still kind of seems a bit drugged out or something,
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: you know, so it seems like and then and then
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: he has his motorcycle accident, and then after that he's
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: really lying low. And then he then he's there's this
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: thing he refers to in an interview where he was
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: in the woods one night and he just said to himself,
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: like something's got to change, and and that thing was
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: I'm gotta I got to get off the road and stuff,
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: living this insane life. The Beatles reached very much the
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: same conclusion for many of the same reasons.
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: I mean, we forget now.
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: But like both Dylan and the Beatles, they received death
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: threats constantly as they were touring. There was, you know,
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: in addition to all the other annoyances that they had
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: to deal with, like being chased and you know, swarmed
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: and all that stuff. And so the Beatles reached their
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: decision basically after their disaster in the Philippines, where Neil
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: aspinall the Beatles road manager, tells them, you know, we've
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: already were already working up a nice set of shows
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: for sixty seven, and Lennon says, no more for me,
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: and the other Beatles agree. What's one thing in that
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: regard that did surprise me was that the Beatles were
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: the first pop back to headline the stadium when they
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: did Chase Stadium in sixty five. They played there again
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: in sixty six, and a month after they played there,
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: Dylan was scheduled to play in August sixty six. There
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: were like ads printed up and everything, and after the
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: motorcycle accident, that concert was canceled, so was another one
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: at the Yale Bowl, which held seventy thousand people in
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: New Haven, Connecticut. So he was going to become a
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: stadium act, you know, and that's what he was heading toward.
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: And you know, he was not in a place where
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: he wanted to do that kind of thing.
• 28:03
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Interesting though that with the Beatles. Yeah, the cheering
• 28:07
  Speaker 3: got so loud that frustrated Then the booze got so
• 28:10
  Speaker 3: bad that frustrated Dylan. But yeah, but again the Beatles
• 28:14
  Speaker 3: with the death threats and we're bigger than Jesus statement
• 28:17
  Speaker 3: and that all that. I do see that now, the
• 28:20
  Speaker 3: similarity there. Never even thought about that because I always
• 28:23
  Speaker 3: see Dylan as yet, like I say, he's the guy
• 28:24
  Speaker 3: he's on the road all the time, the Trouba Door.
• 28:26
  Speaker 3: But there was that period and that was when he
• 28:28
  Speaker 3: was also working with the band at the Big Pink.
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so he really did he kind of, I mean,
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: he did a great thing which was He's like, true it,
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: I'm not going into recording studio.
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: What do I want to do that for.
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: So he didn't even got into a professional recording studio
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: until late sixty seven. So he spends the rest of
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: sixty six and most of sixty seven just recording in
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: the basement with the band at their house, Big Pink
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: or else there's another place, the red room of his
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: own house called Hiloh, and they recorded over one hundred
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: and fifteen songs, a lot of them that he wrote,
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: a lot of them old rock and roll songs or
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: old folk songs. And the guys in the band and
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: Robbie Robertson says like, we didn't know if Bob wrote
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: it or if it was something he remembered, you know,
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: because and the songs he was writing were meant to
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: sound that way, like you can say it was a
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: song written in nineteen oh six or his here is
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: this coming from Bob's imagination now, And there's a very
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: different way of going at music where he wasn't thinking
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: about the charts or touring or anything like that. So
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: then his manager at the time, Albert Grossman, like, geez,
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: how are we going to you know, make money now?
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: And they what they did was that he gave the
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: demos to a lot of performers who had good luck
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: with covers, and Manford Man did Quinn the Eskimo and
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: they had a big hit with that in England, and
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: the Birds did you Ain't Going Nowhere? And you know,
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: so those that batch of songs he wrote did yield
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: some hits even so that even though Dylan wasn't interested
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: in that at the time.
• 29:59
  Speaker 3: Described the relation ship as a kind of call and response,
• 30:01
  Speaker 3: the relationship between the Beatles and Dylan. What did you
• 30:03
  Speaker 3: mean by that? What's the best example of that back
• 30:05
  Speaker 3: and forth.
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: Well, one great example is, and some people might know
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: this already, there's when the Beatles wrote Norwegian Wood. That's
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: mainly a Lenin song that McCartney helped him complete. So
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: that's Norwegian Wood. This burd has flown And when Dylan
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: heard that it was a second track on Rubbert Soul,
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: he thought, they're too much in my territory. This sounds
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: like my kind of song. So he records a song
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: called Fourth Time Around. This is early in the Blonde
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: on Blonde sessions in Nashville, and Fourth Time Around sounded
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: so much like Norwegian Would that even Al Cooper, who
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: was in his band that night, on the night that
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: he debuted at Al Cooper said, what's the deal with
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: the song? It sounds so much like Norwegian Would. And
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: Dylan says, I'm afraid Norwegian Would sounds like one of
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: my songs, so I feel I must reclaim it.
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: You know, that's not the exact quote, but something like that.
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: And Dylan started playing that song on tour before came
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: out on an album, and there are different British writers,
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: you know, in their reviews of Dylan shows in sixty
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: six that were like, and then Dylan played a song
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: that must must have been Norwegian. Would if the Beatles
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: were there, they must have been flattered or embarrassed to
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: hear him playing it. I mean people thought it was
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: Norwegian would some some critics even at the time, that's
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: how close it was. So that's one version of a
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: call and response. And another one is I Want You.
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: Dylan had a song I Want You on Blonde and Blonde. Yeah,
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: that's great, right, And so then the Beatles when they're
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: doing the get Back sessions, they played fifteen Dylan songs
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: in pole or in part more than more than more
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: than any other songwriter songs they played, and Chuck Berry
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: was second with thirteen. So they played fifteen Dylan songs.
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: They played I Want You twice, and in those rough
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: bootlegs you can find them online, George is doing this
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: nice approximation of the organ part, which is like, you know,
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: he does that guitar, So they they work up a
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: pretty some of these arange. Some of these versions are
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: just kind of throwaway one offs. But there I Want
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: You was pretty serious. They did two different times, and
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: a month later is the first time they begin recording
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: I Want You. She's so heavy the Lenin song and Wow,
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: it's strange that it's strange to me that nobody's like
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: associated them with each other, but they both have the
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: lyrics Wow, yeah, I want you so bad, you know,
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: And and so this is what I say is like
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: the call in response in this area. So like in
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: fourth time Around, Dylan has the same subject matter as
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: Lenin does in Norwegian Wood, which is basically a guy
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: visits a girl's apartment and it goes wrong. But in
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: the Dylan song, it's rough, like the woman falls on
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: the floor, they're screaming at each other. It's it's it's
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: a pretty rough scene. And the Lenin song is kind
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: of funnier and lightly ironic, and he crawls off to
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: sleep in the bath when the woman turns him down,
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: and that's the end. Dylan is saying like, well, if
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: you're going to write about a romantic fight, this is
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: how it should go right And then and I Want
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: You Dylan has like these lovely verses in the middle,
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: like like the refrain is I want you, I want
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: you so bad. But in the verses, you know, he's
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: talking about your child in his Chinese suit and all
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: these kind of surreal poetic images, right, and Lenin's I
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: Want You is like the lyrics are ut down to
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: the bone, and I think he's saying like, if you
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: really want to write about love or lust, you wouldn't
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: fool around with poetry because that's like an evasion, you know,
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: like you would just say all you would do would
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: be like I want you, I want you so bad.
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: And then she's so heavy. That's about all the lyrics are.
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: And when that song came out, a lot of critics said, like, boy,
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: this is like these are the dumbest lyrics we've ever heard.
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: But to me, they're incredibly great lyrics because they're they're
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: just so direct. It's like that's what Lenin at that
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: point was like doing away with all frills in a songwriting.
• 33:52
  Speaker 2: You know, that song Cold Turkey.
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: There's some other ones that are, you know, just really raw,
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: and he wasn't interested in, like, you know, years before,
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: he'd written Across the Universe, which is kind of lovely
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: in frilly in its lyrics, but he was on a
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: different Trail by then so is Dylan because the songs
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: on Nashville Skyline are very stripped down and the lyrics
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: are very concise. You know, Dylan was famous for, you know,
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: Desolation Rows, an eleven minute song. Lay Lady Lay is
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: a two and a half minute song with three verses,
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: you know what I mean.
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: He like he changed how he was writing songs.
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: Not so sorry to blab on, but another thing he
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: did was the first time Dylan ever wrote a bridge
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: in a song was Ballad of a Thin Man in
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: sixty five. So before that he'd never written a bridge.
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: The Beatles always wrote bridges, and the Lennon McCartney anyway
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: in their songs, and the first time they didn't write
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: a bridge or it was was You've Got to Hide
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: Your Levelway and that's a DYLANUS song, you know. So
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: so the folk and blues tradition that Dylan was writing
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: out of those tend not to have bridges. The Beatles
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: kind of combined fulk blues, rock and roll, whatever you
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: call it, with that Tim Penalley tradition where you always
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: have a bridge, which they called a middle eight, and
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: you know, they're taking care of their listeners, like oh,
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: you got to give him something different in the middle,
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: or their ears are going to get bored.
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: You know, Dylan didn't really care about that.
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's amazing to me that Dylan a lot
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: of these songs that don't have bridges, and he can
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: do verse after verse after verse and still keep you interested.
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: That's because of the intensity of his delivery, and because
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: the lyrics are so interesting and so cool and good.
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: You know, so like a rolling stone. There's no he's
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: not going to break away and do a bridge in
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: the middle of it. He didn't have to bother.
• 35:34
  Speaker 3: You're so right though, people he takes his hits as
• 35:37
  Speaker 3: a singer, but as a vocalist, the way he emotes
• 35:41
  Speaker 3: and the way he presents the lyrics is yeah, like
• 35:45
  Speaker 3: nobody else, And you're right, he just carries those those
• 35:49
  Speaker 3: lyrics right through. I told you there was a Dylan
• 35:50
  Speaker 3: author who was talking about just how great he got
• 35:53
  Speaker 3: at writing lyrics, that it became so easy to him.
• 35:55
  Speaker 3: He was just just playing around with him where he
• 35:57
  Speaker 3: would just try to fit as many words into one verse,
• 36:01
  Speaker 3: and then the next verse it wouldn't be as many.
• 36:03
  Speaker 3: He'd let it breathe I mean just kind of messing
• 36:05
  Speaker 3: with it like a kid playing with a toy.
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: There's a fancy term that music cologists now, I forget
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: the name of it. That it's it's it's for jamming
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: too many syllables into a line. And Dylan is great
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: at doing that and he can he can just he
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: just doesn't bother him. I'll just go ahead and do it,
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: and he can get away with it somehow with his phrasing.
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: He doesn't stumble and it just he just powers through it. Yeah,
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: I also think like that thing about is singing to me,
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: he's never off pitch, like even like you might say,
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: he doesn't have like a huge vocal range, but sometimes
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: he do, you know, certain songs like simple Twist of Fate.
• 36:39
  Speaker 2: You know, he goes up and but.
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: I always think he makes the right decision and it's
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: not corny like the choices he makes when he's singing.
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: So like there's a song his version of House of
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: the Rising Sun, which is on his very first album
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: when he's twenty years old. Dave van Ront, this other
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: folk singer in Greenwich Village, was very mad because he
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: said Dylan took my version. You know, he's took my
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: arrangement of that song, and when I listen to them
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: back to back, I'm just like, to me, Dylan's is
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: so much better because it sounds real, where Dave van
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: Rock to me, sounds like I'm going to do an
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: old timey folk song for you people now, whereas Dylan
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: makes it sound like it happened yesterday and it's just
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: like conversational and you believe it.
• 37:19
  Speaker 2: To me, I believe it more the way he.
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: Sings it, even though, and it's funny because he's singing
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: this kind of made up accent that he came up with,
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: you know, because he's just a kid from Minnesota and
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: he's singing like he's like from Oklahoma. But even so,
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: he just there's something just to me convincing about his
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: singing ever since he was like twenty, you know.
• 37:37
  Speaker 3: It was quite a bit of that in the early
• 37:40
  Speaker 3: days there in New York with the folks singers like
• 37:43
  Speaker 3: Hey Joe was one that a lot of people were
• 37:46
  Speaker 3: singing in clubs, and then there was a little bit
• 37:48
  Speaker 3: of a battle over Hey, that's mine, No, that's mine,
• 37:50
  Speaker 3: you know, and then it's like there's five different recordings
• 37:52
  Speaker 3: of it. But that seemed to happen a lot those
• 37:55
  Speaker 3: in those days.
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think if you stake out your territory and
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: you did the best version of a certain old song,
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: you know that's yours now you can claim it.
• 38:05
  Speaker 3: The Book Down Rock podcast is part of the Boneless
• 38:07
  Speaker 3: Podcasting Network. If you're a fan of classic rock and
• 38:10
  Speaker 3: classic film like I am, go to Boneless dot lovable
• 38:13
  Speaker 3: dot app to find over twenty great shows there that's
• 38:17
  Speaker 3: Boneless don lovable dot app, or just go to bookdown
• 38:20
  Speaker 3: rock dot com the Boneless podcasting network. It is what
• 38:24
  Speaker 3: you want to be listen with confidence. Jim Windolph is
• 38:29
  Speaker 3: the author of Where the Music Had to Go. How
• 38:31
  Speaker 3: Bob Dylan and the Beatles changed each other and the world.
• 38:35
  Speaker 3: Dylan never made a big explicit statement about being included
• 38:39
  Speaker 3: on that cover of Sergeant Pepper's Lonelyhearts Club Band. Did
• 38:42
  Speaker 3: he see it as a sign of respect? You think?
• 38:45
  Speaker 2: I don't know, you know, that's an interesting question. He
• 38:49
  Speaker 2: didn't mention. I've not seen him mention it.
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: He's been asked about the album itself, and so it's
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: like nineteen seventy eight where Dylan gives an interview and
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: he says he found it over indulgent, but I like
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: there's an interview his mom gave. Dylan's mother didn't give
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: many interviews in her life, but she gave it a
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: really She gave a couple of great interviews to this
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: writer Toby Thompson, who wrote a terrific book called Positively
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: main Street that Dylan fans should check out. And she
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: was in Dylan's house a lot in the late sixties
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: in Woodstock, and she said, oh, Bob loves Sergeant Pepper.
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: He loves the Beatles.
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: So it's funny to me to think that it was
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: always on, you know, in there, even though Dylan would
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: later say like, that's not my thing, you know so,
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: but and I don't know if he mentioned that, the
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: fact that he's on the cover. But the funny thing
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: is his next album, John Wesley Harding. Rolling Stone did
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: a story about that album cover and they said, if
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: you look at the tree on the cover, the faces
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: of John, Paul, George and Ringo are carved into the tree.
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: And and and then they asked a photographer and he said, well,
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: I wasn't aware of it, but yeah, if you if
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: you look, you I agree, you can.
• 39:55
  Speaker 2: See that in there.
• 39:57
  Speaker 3: O God.
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: And then not only that, but when when Dylan did
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: the cover of John Wesley Harding noticed that he's standing
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: with three other guys, right, So it's like he wanted
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: that album cover. So I think he made that album
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: partly as a response to Sergeant Pepper, like, in other words,
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: you guys are going over the top. I'm stripping it
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: down to simplicity, right. And when he put that album out,
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: he said he told the record label, no single, no
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: tour because and Dylan said, this was the season of hype,
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: and I didn't want to have anything to do with
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: any hype. And I think that's a dig at the Beatles.
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: And then the cover that album, aside from the Beatles,
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: may or may not be in the tree barker.
• 40:35
  Speaker 3: He's standing, so he.
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: Stayed there with three other guys. These are just friends
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: of his. One is like a Stonemason who lived in
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: the area. The two other guys are these musicians. They're
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: called the Balls of Bengal and they were making an
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: album of uh, their their music, Indian music for Albert
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: Grossman had signed them to like a management deal, and
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: they made a pretty cool album called The Balls of Bengal.
• 40:59
  Speaker 2: I believe is name of that album.
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: And one of them, especially Dylan was very close with
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: and that's one guy, uh and his brother. And but
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: the fact that Dylan is standing on the cover as
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: a foursome, to me, is kind of a parody of
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: the Beatles. Like it's four of us on the cover here,
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: you know. And yet yet the shot is this, He said,
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: he wanted it to look like a snapshot and a
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: family photo album, and that's what it looks like. It's
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: just like it's not a very elaborate picture. It's just
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: like kind of a crummy picture in a way.
• 41:26
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: It's just like so to me, it's kind of a
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: parody of a Beatles album cover.
• 41:31
  Speaker 3: It's just the kind of thing he would do.
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, exactly because he's fun I mean, he is
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: funny as hell. They're all in Lantin's right. So there's
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: like another a funny thing he said was when the
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: Beatles visited him in sixty six at his hotel in London.
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: Dylan said, Dylan said, are the are the girls still
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: screaming for you? And John said, yeah, they sure are.
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: We're hoping to get away, get it, get off of that,
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: how about you? And Dylan said, yeah, they're screaming, they're
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: screaming for us, but in a different way, meaning they're booing.
• 41:59
  Speaker 3: They're booing right, somebody. There's a website here. Somebody put
• 42:04
  Speaker 3: up a blog, I think, and they zero in on
• 42:07
  Speaker 3: the album cover and they circle where supposedly the Beatles are.
• 42:11
  Speaker 3: I don't know. I don't know, but now.
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: There's I didn't go this and it is in the
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: weeds and nothing this When I wrote about that in
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: the book. There are some people who say that the
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: British edition of that album on the vinyl, if you
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: can find it, it's more it's easier to see. So
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: I don't put my hands on a on a nineteen
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: sixty eight British copy of the album. You know, I've
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: seen pictures of it online, so now it did the more.
• 42:37
  Speaker 3: I look at it, now I'm seeing George, I'm seeing Ringo.
• 42:41
  Speaker 3: I don't know, man, I may have to put that
• 42:43
  Speaker 3: up on the screen for the video version of this interview,
• 42:45
  Speaker 3: because maybe that's like what they call that confirmation bias,
• 42:48
  Speaker 3: like I want to see it. I don't hope it.
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: Could be that that's maybe that's what happened that photographer
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: when they asked him, like do you see it's like
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: geeze The weird thing is when I look at it,
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: I think I do see it.
• 42:56
  Speaker 3: Maybe I do. It's like in the nineties there's books
• 42:59
  Speaker 3: where if you should stare at it long enough, something
• 43:01
  Speaker 3: comes out.
• 43:04
  Speaker 2: And just another album cover thing.
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: The next Dylan's next album, Nashville Skyline, there's a Beatles
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: message on that cover. You do you know what it is? No,
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: it's incredible. So the guitar he's holding on that cover,
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: George gave it to him as a gift. So George
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: stayed with Dylan and his family and for Thanksgiving sixty eight,
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: Dylan and George wrote two songs at least together the
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: night George after Thanksgiving, George wrote all Things Must Pass,
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: you know, and Patty Boyd, his wife, Patty Boyd Harrison said,
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: George felt so good. He was so confident after spending
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: time with Dylan and Dylan approving of him as a
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: as a singer and songwriter. You know, he felt great
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: because the Beatles had been, you know, trashing him, or
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: he felt that way anyway, disrespecting him. So George gives
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: Dylan this Gibson guitar, this lovely starbards finished guitar, and
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: Dylan's holding it on the cover of Nashville Skyline and
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: he told the photographer took that picture that he doffed
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: his cap. You know, he's smiling, he's doffing his cap
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: a bit. That's that's to say thank you to George
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: for the guitar.
• 44:10
  Speaker 3: Unbelievable.
• 44:11
  Speaker 2: Isn't that amazing?
• 44:13
  Speaker 3: Unbelievable looking at it here and.
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: George, Now there's a lot you know, guitar geeks. I
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: went deep into this guitar stuff. There is a lot
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: of confusion because George that guitar at Gibson, She's and
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: that's somebody's gonna kill me and said that Gibson, it's
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: not a three sixty because that's the name of the Rickenbacker.
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: I forgot what it's called. Anyway, that specific gets and guitar.
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: George got another one when he got back to England
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: that he shared with Lennon. So there's some confusion over like, wait,
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: if George gave Dylan this guitar and then he's playing
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: it on Here comes the Sun, did he take it
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: back or what it's like? No, the answer is he
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: gave Dylan the guitar when he got back to London.
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: I and Lennon got the same kind of guitar that
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: they shared, and George did record Here Comes the Sun
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: with that very guitar, but a different a different one,
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: but the same model. So it's a lovely guitar.
• 45:03
  Speaker 3: These are great stories. There's so much to the world
• 45:06
  Speaker 3: of Dylan and the Beatles.
• 45:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's the kind of thing.
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: That's actually what surprised me going into it, Like that's
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: how much they were in dialogue with each other, you know,
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: they were just on each other's minds.
• 45:17
  Speaker 3: Is this the first full length book to really dive in.
• 45:20
  Speaker 2: It's the first?
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, nobody's I mean I thought when I started
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: doing it, looking into it, I almost felt like somebody
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: must have done this by now, but you know, it
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: almost seemed so.
• 45:29
  Speaker 2: I thought the idea was so obvious.
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: I actually wrote over one hundred pages before I even
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: showed it to an agent or anybody, because I thought, like,
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: no one would believe that it hadn't been done before
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: if there was something there to be done. So I
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: feel like I had to prove that there was enough there.
• 45:42
  Speaker 3: I think you said just brief articles here and there
• 45:44
  Speaker 3: that you saw.
• 45:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 45:45
  Speaker 3: Yeah, So John openly expressed interesting collaborating with not Dylan
• 45:50
  Speaker 3: in the early seventies. We know Dylan and Harrison they
• 45:53
  Speaker 3: worked together and most famously the Wilburys traveling Wilberries. Was
• 45:56
  Speaker 3: there ever a possibility of a collaboration in the sixties
• 45:59
  Speaker 3: or they were on two different paths, right, There was
• 46:01
  Speaker 3: really no way that that was going to line up.
• 46:03
  Speaker 2: They came close, actually did go close.
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, So aside from George and Bob writing together, at
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: sixty eight, Dylan decides, you know, it's so funny because
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: he's always so contrary. He's asked to play Woodstock and
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: he's like, no, I don't think I'll do.
• 46:18
  Speaker 3: That, right, he's right down the road.
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he's annoyed. He's right down the road. And also
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: he's annoyed that people are associating. He knows that Woodstock
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: is kind of cashing in on the fact that he
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: lives up there and he's made Woodstock hip just by
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: being there, which is getting it on his nerves because
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: he has all these stalkers coming to his house. So anyway,
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: he decides instead, I'll play the Isle of Wight in
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: you know, the south of England, and that festival is
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: huge too, It's two hundred and fifty thousand people there
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: and when he goes there, he says in a press conference,
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: the Beatles have asked me to play with them, and
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: I think it would be a good idea to do
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: a jam session and John, George and Ringo stay with
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: Dylan or visit with him. At the he was just
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: staying at a house long before Airbnb. That's basically what
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: he was doing is staying at a house with the
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: head of tennis court. And this is so hilarious that
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: they actually played tennis one day. It's just the funniest thing.
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: Dylan and John against George and Ringo. And then that
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: that that journalist Ala Ronowitz, who was always seems to
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: be popping up when they get together, he was watching
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: it and he said, sadly, they smoked so much that
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: they were huffing and puffing after like one game and
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: they had to get off the court. But anyway, photo there.
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: You know, they are these photos online. This is interesting.
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: I wanted to get them in my book. There are
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: photos online that show George with incredibly long hair that
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: he had and Bob on either side of the tennis court.
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: So people can find online. So I found that they
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: are belonged to the Harrison Estate, and they for some
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: reason denied me permission to use them. I don't know why,
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: but and I did write to them, I said, by
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: the way, are these pictures real? Because I kind of
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: thought they might be faked. And specifically they looked to
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: me like, when I look at those pictures, Bob Dylan
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: looks so much like Jacob Dylan and George Harrison, And
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: I was like, is that Jacob Dylon and George Harrison's
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: son doing like some play acting or something, because it
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: looks like almost too perfect to be real. But the
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: Harrison estates told me know it's they're real, So they
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: just wouldn't give it to me. Maybe they have some
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: other plan for it, you know, maybe they're maybe they're
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: going to do a Tennessee in the Netflix movie and
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: they want it to be a surprise or something.
• 48:24
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 48:26
  Speaker 3: Thanks so much for checking out the Book Down Rock podcast.
• 48:29
  Speaker 3: If you've just found the podcast, welcome. If you've been listening,
• 48:33
  Speaker 3: thank you so much for your support, and make sure
• 48:35
  Speaker 3: you tell a friend, a family member, share on social
• 48:38
  Speaker 3: media and let people know about Booked on Rock. And
• 48:41
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• 48:44
  Speaker 3: Give a five star review, wherever you listen to the
• 48:46
  Speaker 3: book Done Rock Podcast. We're on Amazon, Apple, iHeart, Spotify, Spreaker,
• 48:51
  Speaker 3: tune in in on YouTube music. You can check out
• 48:54
  Speaker 3: the full episodes on video, along with video highlights from
• 48:56
  Speaker 3: episodes on the Booked on Rock YouTube channel. Find it
• 49:00
  Speaker 3: Booked on Rock. Thanks again for listening. Now back to
• 49:03
  Speaker 3: the show. Well, you pulled from a huge range of
• 49:07
  Speaker 3: sources for the book, but you also include an interview
• 49:09
  Speaker 3: that you did with Sir Paul Paul McCartney August twenty eighth,
• 49:13
  Speaker 3: twenty twenty five. What stands out to you the most
• 49:16
  Speaker 3: about what.
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: He had to say about Dylan A couple of things,
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: like I tried to you know, I think rock fans
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: know that Paul does have certain favorite stories that he
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: tells again and again, so I wanted to make sure
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: I steered clear. You know, I knew all those stories
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: and didn't want to I didn't want to get a repeat.
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: So one thing I asked him was he played that
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: Desert Trip festival at twenty sixteen and Dylan was on
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: the same festival at a different night, And I just said,
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: did you happen to see his show? And I didn't
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: know what the answer was going to be and he
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: had talked about it and it turned out that he
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: had so he told, you know, a nice full version
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: of what happened when he saw Dylan there and they
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: hung out and that was nice. And the other big
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: thing I think he said this before, but he said
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: it again to me that he's opened to a collaboration
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: with Dylan. And he says, when he's tried to do
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: it in the past, just logistics getting away, like they're
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: always like, he says, Dylan's people send them a note
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: and say like, well, you can wait two weeks and
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: then meet here and then meet there. And he says,
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: McCartney's kind of like, if it's complicated, I'm not going
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: to do it. But if we can easily do it,
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: let's do it. And even when I did that interview,
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: I thought like, that's never going to happen. But now
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: you know McCartney's in the middle of releasing his new album.
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: You know, it's just he put out the first track
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: a couple of days ago. I actually think it's good.
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: And he's playing good guitar on it too. That's him
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: on guitar, and anyway, so I don't think it's impossible and.
• 50:38
  Speaker 2: It's highly unlikely, but who the hell knows. And Dylan
• 50:42
  Speaker 2: supposedly was.
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: Recording and I think I saw online somewhere that people
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: noticed that he was recording in Poughkeepsie, New York about
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: six months ago or something, and nobody knows what he
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: was up to or why. So I wouldn't be shocked
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: if he has another album. His Rough and Rowdy Ways
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: came out in twenty twenty, so now it's.
• 51:02
  Speaker 2: Been a while.
• 51:03
  Speaker 3: I love Murder Most Foul.
• 51:05
  Speaker 2: Oh man. And that's also, by the way, the Beatles
• 51:07
  Speaker 2: were mentioned on that song.
• 51:08
  Speaker 3: And that's where I'm going. Yeah, I mean he mentions
• 51:11
  Speaker 3: them directly. How often has you mentioned them? There are
• 51:15
  Speaker 3: some moments right roll on John and.
• 51:17
  Speaker 2: Roll On John.
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: Not only does he not only is it for John Lennon,
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: but in the song he mentions the quarry man that
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: you know, Liverpool Docks Bromberg. Also, he also quotes part
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: of Come Together, and he quotes a battle John and Yoko.
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: If you look closely at the lyrics there, as Dylan's
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: so adept at doing like little phrases from those songs
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: pop up in the middle of his tribute to John Lennon.
• 51:39
  Speaker 3: Yeah, those are obvious ones there.
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the first time he did it was on a
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: song called Bob Dylan's one hundred and fifteenth Dream. So
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: this is the same day he recorded Subterranean Homesick Blues.
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: This is the day that Bob Dylan really went electric.
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: It's ten months before Newport, right, it's a It's in
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: the recording studio in New York in January sixty five,
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: and in the middle of Bob Dylan's one hundred and
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: fifteenth Stream, which is a shaggy dog story kind of song,
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: you know, and there's a mention of an Englishman, and
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: then Dylan yells out the word fab you know. It's
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: everybody back then who was a reference to the Fab four.
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: So that's a little indirect line.
• 52:19
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I came around to Dylan very late, so you may,
• 52:23
  Speaker 3: you know, so that you may you may pick up
• 52:25
  Speaker 3: on I mean, there are things about Dylan. I still
• 52:27
  Speaker 3: just I really need to read more about him, and
• 52:30
  Speaker 3: I've read. I don't have three or four books on Dylan,
• 52:32
  Speaker 3: but there's so much to learn, so you know, it's
• 52:35
  Speaker 3: it's just fascinating. I'm just now really just getting into
• 52:39
  Speaker 3: his music, and really I don't.
• 52:42
  Speaker 2: Know what are you starting with what records are, It's.
• 52:45
  Speaker 3: It's the early ones to start everything from the second
• 52:50
  Speaker 3: album right up through let me just go to his Uh,
• 52:53
  Speaker 3: there are a few things on that debut, but I
• 52:57
  Speaker 3: think everybody could agree that's even Dylan. That was not
• 53:01
  Speaker 3: really one hundred percent Bob Dylan. It's the free will
• 53:05
  Speaker 3: and Bob Dylan, so that times of change in the
• 53:07
  Speaker 3: other side of Bob Dylan. Bring it all back Home,
• 53:10
  Speaker 3: Highway sixty one, revisited, Blonde on Blonde, I mean all
• 53:13
  Speaker 3: of those right up through right up through Nashville Skyline,
• 53:17
  Speaker 3: self Portrait. There are some moments there that I like,
• 53:21
  Speaker 3: but I know that kind of yeah, that's like you
• 53:23
  Speaker 3: have to really really it's an acquired taste, I suppose.
• 53:26
  Speaker 3: But then as we get into well Blood of the tracks, desire,
• 53:36
  Speaker 3: let's see what's uh, what else am I missing?
• 53:39
  Speaker 2: Oh?
• 53:40
  Speaker 3: Mercy is the one from the eighties that I really enjoy.
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: I love that record. Yeah, that's that's eighty nine. I mean,
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: some Dylan fans have a problem with Danielle Lenwil's production.
• 53:49
  Speaker 2: I just don't.
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: And I also think part of that production is capturing
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: Dylan's voice, and Dylan's voice was amazing on that record.
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: I mean, he's he's the first producer that really captures
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: a pure, deep Dylan voice and it's really well.
• 54:03
  Speaker 2: And I love those songs, you know, just as songs.
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: I think there's ten songs and album's like thirty two
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: minutes long.
• 54:09
  Speaker 2: It's like, I think that's a great album.
• 54:11
  Speaker 3: And I skipped over one that they have Infidels I enjoy. Yeah,
• 54:15
  Speaker 3: Neighborhood Bully is on there, I think.
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: Right, yep, yeah, and that's Mark Knopfler's involved in that one.
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: In Sli and Robbie. Everybody hates Down in the Groove
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: that's supposed to be. You know a lot of people
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: think down in the Groove and knocked outloaded for a
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: lot of fans are at the very bottom. I enjoy
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: both of those records, you know, I just I just
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: like them, what can I say? And especially you know,
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: the Brownsville Girl is on there. It's like an eleven
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: minute fract that Dylan co wrote with Sam Shephard. Ha's
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: got you know, crazy horns on it and the whole thing.
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: But it's a lot of fun.
• 54:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 54:48
  Speaker 3: How about this for my first Dylan album that I owned,
• 54:50
  Speaker 3: Time out of Mind.
• 54:52
  Speaker 2: Oh, that's great. You know, there's a writer.
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: Actually, there's there's a book about that album that is
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: so much fun to read, and it's very hard to
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: find because it's self published. It's called Whirligig and I
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: totally recommend it to you, and it's just it's about
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: Dylan's fights with Danielle Lenois making that record, and it's
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: really it's very you know, people should know about that book.
• 55:14
  Speaker 2: It's really really cool.
• 55:16
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, is absolutely mesmerizing. And I did have the
• 55:22
  Speaker 3: chance to interview. Let me just see. I think it
• 55:25
  Speaker 3: was the engineer. It's been a while, but let me
• 55:28
  Speaker 3: just sh oh I heard that. Yeah, Mark Howard. He
• 55:31
  Speaker 3: was the engineer and a fantastic guy. A fantastic book
• 55:36
  Speaker 3: recording Icon's Creative Spaces, which was a fascinating book because
• 55:40
  Speaker 3: he was getting into all the places that he likes
• 55:42
  Speaker 3: to record albums at, like old churches.
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: And I suppose he was also involved in a mercy
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: because they took a house in New Orleans and that's
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: where they you know, retrofitted it for a recording studio.
• 55:53
  Speaker 3: I think you're right. And that book has all these
• 55:55
  Speaker 3: pictures of all the artists that were there that he
• 55:59
  Speaker 3: was with but anyway, yeah, you could find actually, if
• 56:02
  Speaker 3: anybody's interested in that episode, it's way back episode ninety three.
• 56:05
  Speaker 3: It's like November of twenty twenty two. Time flies. Find
• 56:10
  Speaker 3: the bookdown Rock website at booked on Rock dot com.
• 56:13
  Speaker 3: There you can find all the back episodes of the show,
• 56:16
  Speaker 3: the latest episode in video and audio, links to all
• 56:19
  Speaker 3: of the platforms where you can listen to the podcast,
• 56:21
  Speaker 3: plus all the social media platforms were on Blue Sky, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok,
• 56:27
  Speaker 3: and x. Also check out the Booked on rockblog. Find
• 56:30
  Speaker 3: your local independent bookstore, find out all the latest hot
• 56:33
  Speaker 3: rock book releases, and before you go, check out the
• 56:36
  Speaker 3: Booked on Rock online store. Pick up some booked on
• 56:38
  Speaker 3: Rock merch. It's all at booked on Rock dot com.
• 56:43
  Speaker 3: So after writing this book, do you see either Dylan
• 56:46
  Speaker 3: or the Beatles differently than you did before? Or did
• 56:49
  Speaker 3: it confirm what you thought?
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: No, some new things came to mind to me weirdly enough.
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: I mean, not necessarily about their I mean I just
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: learned more about their relationship, so that in itself surprised me.
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: The more I learned, you know, kind of learning how
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: deep Dylan's bandom went of the Beatles. I mean you
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: can almost say like he invented beadle tourism because in
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: sixty six he goes to Liverpool and he asked this guy,
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: Bill Harry, who was the editor of Mercy beat magazine,
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: and you give me a tour of the Beatles sites,
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: and he took him to the cavern. And then Dylan
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: on his own went to a place where the Beatles
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: had done a photo shoot in sixty two outside of warehouse,
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: and these pictures were pretty well known at the time,
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: so he went to this exact same place recreated their
• 57:34
  Speaker 1: photo shoot himself where he's standing in front of this
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: abandoned warehouse, and it goes all the way through, like's
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: when Dylan's playing with Tom Petty in eighty five they
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: recorded during a rehearsal section Come Together. And then in
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: nineteen ninety Dylan played Nowhere Man in a concert in Vancouver,
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: and then like twenty oh four, he's singing Tiers of
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: Rage and he's cracked me up. He's like in Boone,
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: North Carolina, singing Tears of Rage and it's growing in
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: new lyrics that mentioned Strawberry Field and Penny Lane, so
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: the Beatles, and then soon after that he goes in
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: The Lennon Child, the Beatles Child at Homes tour, and
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: then he writes role on John, so it's something that
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: continues through his life. So that kind of surprised me.
• 58:16
  Speaker 3: The final question, big picture kind of question here, if
• 58:18
  Speaker 3: Dylan had never met the Beatles, Beatles never met Dylan,
• 58:22
  Speaker 3: what kind of a music world would we be living
• 58:24
  Speaker 3: in today?
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: I think they both would have been great anyway, but
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: they might not have had quite this extra thing that
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: they got from each other, So it's kind of hard
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: to imagine. I think of like the Beatles before Dylan.
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: That's a Hard Day's Night. That's a great album, right,
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: that's and I think of that like that's also before
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: Paul McCartney really starts asserting himself in the studio with
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: the Beatles. And also he hadn't he wrote Camp by
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: Me Left, but hadn't quite come into his own as
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: a songwriter. So that's kind of like the John Lennon Beatles,
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: and they could have remained like that, Like what if
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: they stuck with that kind of sound and style and
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: didn't push themselves as lyricists. You know, there are a
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: lot of great groups that made it into sixty eight
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: without trying to write adventure some lyrics and you could
• 59:12
  Speaker 1: still you know, get by.
• 59:14
  Speaker 2: So I don't know, they're just too smart.
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: They probably wouldn't have you know, if it wasn't Dylan,
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: it probably would have been something something else that pushed
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: them to to to go further.
• 59:24
  Speaker 2: And you know, there were other influences on Dylan too.
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: It wasn't just the Beatles, as they note in the book,
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: like when he heard the Animal's version of the House
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: of the Rising.
• 59:31
  Speaker 2: Sun, he was like, oh man, you know, why why
• 59:35
  Speaker 2: is this not me? You know what I mean? So
• 59:37
  Speaker 2: they've got electric instruments on the song that I know
• 59:39
  Speaker 2: very well.
• 59:40
  Speaker 3: Maybe that was the best part of the sixties to
• 59:42
  Speaker 3: the late sixties. Seemed like everybody was influencing everybody. I mean,
• 59:46
  Speaker 3: Roger Waters talks about music from the Big Pink, you know,
• 59:50
  Speaker 3: Roger Waters, Pink, Floyd, you know, they all just it's
• 59:53
  Speaker 3: like they hear that pets that sounds influenced.
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: Paul yeply on John too, So yeah, more Paul, I think,
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: but yeah.
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, Well thanks Jim for coming on. And this
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 3: book really, I mean, there's so much more to it,
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 3: and people can get the copy now it is out
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 3: now where the music had to go? How Bob Dylan
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 3: and the Beatles changed each other in the world. Find
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 3: out wherever books are sold right all the usual places yep, yeah,
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 3: your nearest bookstore Amazon, go to book down rock dot
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 3: com if you want to find your nearest independent bookstore.
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 3: So where can people find you?
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: Online?
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 3: Gym if they want to reach out?
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: I'm not really I'm on Twitter, I guess as Jim Windahl. Yeah,
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: I used to have more fun on there than I
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: do now, so I don't know. So in there that's
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: I don't know. I'm just around cool. You can find
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: my email addresses there if people want to ask me
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: a question about the book or something somewhere.
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 2: So, yeah, that's about it.
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 3: Why not I'll put the link in the notes, if
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 3: you know, just in case if somebody wants to reach out,
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 3: because I'm sure so many people are going to enjoy
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 3: this book and they're going to have some great things
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 3: to tell you about it. I'm assuming did some of
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 3: the word already kind of trickle in As to what
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 3: the response has been for those who've gotten her early copy.
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: First reviews have come in, and so far I'm surviving
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: that they were good, so that's good. And I heard
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: and I gave a reading last night, and actually Paul
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: McCartney's manager was there, and he told me that he
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: was facetiming with Paul and showed him the book cover
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: and Paul said.
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 2: Well, it looks it looks interesting, so that was nice
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 2: to hear.
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 3: That's good. That's cool. Jim Windolph, thank you for coming
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 3: on the show. And I hope to have you back
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 3: on again in the future.
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 2: I'd love to have you. That'd be great. Okay, thanks Eric.
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 2: That's it.
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 3: It's in the books.