By the time Bob Dylan released his second album The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan in ’63, his influence on the Beatles had become evident. The opening harmonica blaze on the Beatles’ “I Should Have Known Better” from A Hard Day’s Night was the band adding a semblance of Dylan’s sound. “That’s me in my Dylan period again,” admitted John Lennon on the band’s Help! track “You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away.”
Though competitive contemporaries at the time, there was always a mutual respect between the two forces. The Beatles even jammed and covered some of Dylan’s songs—”I Want You,” “Please, Mrs Henry,” and “Like a Rollin’ Stone.” Ringo Starr, who first heard about Dylan through John Lennon, added, “Bob was our hero. … He’d [Lennon] played the records [Dylan’s] for me and it was just great.”
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The Beatles Meet Dylan
Dylan first met the Beatles in August of 1964 at their hotel, Delmonico on Park Avenue in New York City, near Central Park, and had a “crazy party” with them, according to Paul McCartney. That night, Dylan introduced the band to marijuana. Paul McCartney, who once called Dylan “our idol,” recalled how their conversation took him to another level.
“I thought I got the meaning to life that night,” said McCartney, who even asked the Beatles’ road manager Mal Evans for a pen and paper so he could write it down. On the paper, he wrote, “There are seven levels.”
Talking to Dylan was another experience for McCartney. “I could feel myself climbing a spiral walkway as I was talking to Dylan,” recalled McCartney. “I felt like I was figuring it all out, the meaning of life.”
Lennon’s Ride With Dylan
The band met Dylan again a year later while he was on tour in England. During this time, filmmaker D. A. Pennebaker was following Dylan and filming the tour for his documentary Don’t Look Back. After the success of their first film together, Pennebaker rejoined Dylan for his 1966 tour in Europe with the Band‘s early iteration, the Hawks, with two nights at the Royal Albert Hall in London on May 26 and 27.
Following Dylan’s first concert in London, he visited Lennon at his Kenwood home in Weybridge. After a night of partying, in the early morning hours of May 27, 1966. Pennebaker, along with sound operator and Dylan associate, Bob Neuwirth, filmed the two during a limousine ride back to Dylan’s hotel, the May Fair in London.
Johnny Cash and the “Mighty Thames”
Pennebaker’s reel showed Lennon and Dylan in sunglasses, trying to recover from their previous night of revelry. “There’s the mighty Thames,” said Dylan at the beginning, peering out the window and mostly slurring his words. “That’s what held Hitler back, the mighty Thames. Winston Churchill said that.”
During their ride, the conversation jumps all over the place from talking to the driver Tom Keylock to thoughts on Johnny Cash, and Dylan wishing he could “talk English.”
Dylan: Have you spent much time around him [Johnny Cash]? He moves great. He moves like that. You gotta cut that part of the film, man, ‘cos I really like him. He moves like all good people. Like prize fighters. Johnny!
Lennon: Johnny! “Big River.” “Big River.”
At one point, Dylan says he feels sick and wants to go back. “Do you suffer from sore eyes, groovy forehead, or curly hair?” Lennon asks Dylan at one point. ” Come, come, boy, it’s only a film,” added Lennon. “Pull yourself together.”
Lennon later explained their state during the filming. “I just remember before that we were both in shades and both on f–king junk and all these freaks around us and Ginsberg and all those people,” recalled Lennon in a 1971 interview with Rolling Stone. “I was anxious as s–t, we were in London, when he came.”
The Final Cut
In the final cut of Eat The Document, Pennebaker only used a few minutes of the footage. Further production on the film was halted again in July of ’66 when Dylan was in a motorcycle accident. Dylan later decided to edit the film himself once he was well enough to work again.
Eat the Document was initially commissioned by ABC, but when the network later rejected the film it was never widely released. First screened on February 8, 1971, at the New York Academy of Music on February 8, 1971, Eat the Document was shown again internationally in 1972, including another screening at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York in December 1972.
Director Martin Scorsese used some footage from Eat the Document in his 2005 Dylan documentary, No Direction Home. Eat the Document was never theatrically released, nor did it get a video release, and has been viewed mostly via bootlegs.
Photo: Bob Dylan holds court at a press conference on December 16, 1965, in Los Angeles, California. (Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)
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