The Mid-1960s Beatles Track John Lennon Wrote to Embody Bob Dylan (And No, It’s Not the One Everyone Thinks It Was)

Of all the lore surrounding the relationship between The Beatles and Bob Dylan, one of the better-known stories is the alleged jab the latter songwriter took at John Lennon in his 1966 track, “4th Time Around”. The line, “I never asked for your crutch, now don’t ask for mine,” has largely been regarded as Dylan’s response to feeling like Lennon was overzealously copying him in The Beatles’ track “Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)” from their late 1965 album, Rubber Soul.

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Varying timelines—and Dylan’s signature opacity—put the validity of this story into question. However, the Minnesotan-born songwriter wouldn’t have been wrong to assume the Liverpudlian rock band was taking cues from him. To be fair, the vast majority of musicians in the mid-1960s were, in one way or another. However, the song that Lennon was really trying to embody Dylan on wasn’t “Norwegian Wood” at all. It came several months earlier on The Beatles’ fifth album, Help!

John Lennon Admitted This Beatles Track Was His Attempt at “Doing” Bob Dylan

The Beatles’ fifth album, Help!, marks an interesting point in John Lennon’s songwriting career. Notably, the title track presented Lennon in his most vulnerable state thus far in The Beatles, and the musician would later cite “Help!” as one of his favorite, most authentic songs for that very reason. But Help! also saw Lennon move his musical influences forward a few years, from the early rock ‘n’ roll pioneers like Chuck Berry to more contemporary influences, like Bob Dylan.

In one of his final interviews with David Sheff in 1980, Lennon called “You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away” as one of the songs from his “Dylan period.” He continued, “I am like a chameleon. If Elvis can do it, I can do it. If the Everly Brothers can do it, me and Paul can. Same with Dylan.”

During an earlier interview for the making of Anthology, Lennon elaborated on how Dylan helped him unlock a lyrical perspective he had only previously entertained in his literary writing. “Instead of projecting myself into a situation, I would try to express what I felt about myself, which I’d done in my books. I think it was Dylan who helped me realize that—not by any discussion or anything, but by hearing his work.”

Maybe “4th Time Around” Wasn’t About “Norwegian Wood” at All

The writing of Bob Dylan and John Lennon certainly bears a striking resemblance. The first lines of The Beatles’ “You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away”, “Here I stand, head in hand, turn my face to the wall / If she’s gone, I can’t go on, feeling two-foot small”, sound awfully similar to Dylan. In “I Don’t Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met)”, Dylan sings, “I can’t understand, she let go of my hand, an’ left me hee facing the wall / I’d sure like t’know why she did go, but I can’t get close t’her at all.”

In hindsight, perhaps “4th Time Around” wasn’t about “Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)” at all. Maybe Dylan had already picked up on these similarities after the release of Help!, and Rubber Soul just confirmed what he already knew: Lennon was taking notes from Dylan, consciously or otherwise. But as Dylan argued in his scathing Blonde on Blonde track, he was decidedly not taking notes from Lennon.

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