Dylan and the Beatles

Quicksearch

Blog Administration

Open login screen

RSS Readers

Wednesday, October 28. 2020

The song Bob Dylan wrote to make fun of John Lennon:

Bob Dylan even claimed that ‘Norwegian Wood’ was so similar to his style that he even made a parody of the song called ‘Fourth Time Around’ which appeared to deliberately mock John Lennon. Listening to Rubber Soul, Dylan replied: “What is this? It’s me, Bob. [John’s] doing me! Even Sonny & Cher are doing me, but, fucking hell, I invented it.”

Bob has inspired many. By the way, Rubber Soul is still a good record.

Posted by Bird Dog in The Song and Dance Man at 14:52 | Comments (7) | Trackbacks (0)

Trackbacks

Trackback specific URI for this entry

No Trackbacks

Comments

Display comments as (Linear | Threaded)

The old Spy Magazine ca. 1991 or so ran an article on Bob Dylan and had a chart iChildren of a Lesser Bob/i documenting all the musicians who followed or were iinfluenced/i by various Dylan styles. Quite a bunch of them!

#1 Nathan Redshield on 2020-10-28 15:52 (Reply)

I never liked Bob Dylan. I always thought that he was just a beatnik wannabe, with a guitar. There were a few songs of his that I liked, but he always tried so hard to put on that "I'm a poet." thing. Maybe in Greenwich Village, but not in Louisville.
I even went to see him in concert, thinking that maybe I just didn't understand his style. He was so bad. But I thought it was money well spent, because he really did suck; it wasn't just my imagination. I never bought into the "new consciousness" of the 1960's. To me, the whole thing looked fraudulent. All the drugs, and homeless hippies, and black people with headbands. The whole counterculture movement, with Allen Ginsberg and Janis Joplin was a mistake. Young people had every right to look for a better way, but they didn't do that. They just looked for a good time. Nobody was sitting around talking about economics, or parenthood, or theology. Those kids just wanted to screw and get high, but they claimed to be the "architects" of a new deal. As far as I'm concerned, Bob Dylan was just an example of how a social movement can be fake. Just like Back Lives Matter today. Anybody can claim heroic rejection of society. But that doesn't make them correct. Or cool. Before we had a bunch of white assholes; now we have a bunch of black assholes. Is this crap supposed to be music? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V901REqSnD8

#2 Ron Liebermann on 2020-10-29 05:46 (Reply)

Thank you. I never have understood the praised heaped on Dylan. His songs are incomprehensible as messages. They are simply sometimes interesting processions of words and a decent tune, and sometimes not. [ All Along The Watchtower ] isn't even his, even though he wrote it. It belongs to Jimi Hendrix.

#2.1 barnhill on 2020-10-29 09:47 (Reply)

I think that Norwegian Wood was influenced by English folk music, while Dylan's style was influenced by music with the same origins, but filtered through the Irish and Appalachian influences that distinguished American Folk music.

Dylan's parody was taking this stripped-down version and piling six layers of himself back onto it.

This reminds me, probably appropriately, of the concept of "Minnesota nice", a form of damning with faint praise. It's epitomized as "It's nice. Not how I would have done it, but nice."

#3 Another guy named Dan on 2020-10-29 09:08 (Reply)

Well, one difference between Lennon's Rubber Soul songs and Dylan's is that Lennon could sing. Dylan never really mastered that. He is in the Jimmy Durante/Louis Armstrong league of people that shouldn't have sung, but did.

While Dylan did have a FEW songs I enjoyed, I always felt he was the most overrated musician in popular music. He got good publicity from the New York music press and people need to feel like they are in the know, so they just repeated those platitudes. As far as his lyrics, he could write massive amounts of verses. But, when you examined the meaning of his songs, there really wasn't any. Just a song that sounded like it was saying something, but really didn't. The listener just imposed his own believe structure on what he thought Dylan meant. Some anonymous person once said that they thought Dylan was just a speed freak, cranking out tons of words while the buzz was on. Sort of tweaking with words. I tend to agree.

#4 Anonymous White Male on 2020-10-29 12:48 (Reply)

I'd call "Rubber Soul" Peak Beatles.

Middle Dylan played the game, like so much poetry, of not making LOGICAL sense but somehow making emotional sense.

You'll drive yourself crazy by attempting a logical story out of much of Dylan's lyrics. You'll sound nuts if you try to explain it.

Some of his latter stuff is fine rock 'n roll - like in "Modern Times."

But as a poet, he proved his skills by making a rhyme of "Ashtabula"

#5 Whitehall on 2020-10-30 03:50 (Reply)

Every musician with any standing hated the Beatles back in the day. Who could blame them? My father was a jazzman; he hated on them.
Mr Bob was threatened by them too.
The Byrds did Dylan proud. But Maggie's Farm is best by Mr Bob.

I always liked Norwegian Wood when I was young; now I cringe when I hear it and see John stuffing the fireplace with Danish Modern furniture, walnut, dovetailed joints, hand sanded and finished. The design is hard to fit in, but as design, it is triumphant - thin and curved, light but strong, natural wood, organic and simple.

#6 Theo on 2020-10-30 21:26 (Reply)

Add Comment

Name
Email	(Your e-mail will not show in your comment)
Homepage
In reply to
Comment	By commenting on this site you agree to the site rules listed here. Email addresses will not be displayed and will only be used for email notifications. Quick reference guide: [i] italics [/i], [b] bold [/b], [u] underline [/u], [url] (web address) [/url]. More tips here. Enclosing asterisks marks text as bold (word), underscore are made via _word_. E-Mail addresses will not be displayed and will only be used for E-Mail notifications. To prevent automated Bots from commentspamming, please enter the string you see in the image below in the appropriate input box. Your comment will only be submitted if the strings match. Please ensure that your browser supports and accepts cookies, or your comment cannot be verified correctly. Enter the string from the spam-prevention image above: BBCode format allowed
	Remember Information? Subscribe to this entry

Maggie's Farm

Our Recent Essays Behind the Front Page

Categories

Quicksearch

Links

Blog Administration

RSS Readers

Wednesday, October 28. 2020

Dylan and the Beatles