Bob Dylan remembers the first time he heard The Beatles
Although honing in on rhythm and blues influences early on in their career, it was Bob Dylan and his politically charged folk musings struck a chord with The Beatles towards the mid-1960s. While playing a concert at Forest Hills Tennis Stadium in Queens, New York, in late August 1964, the Beatles caught wind that Dylan was in the area. After the show, they jetted off to the other side of town, where they met their new American hero for the first time.
During this first meeting, Dylan famously introduced the Liverpool lads to cannabis in what proved to be a seismic moment in music history. During an evening of giggling and trivial conversation, Paul McCartney reportedly got so stoned he was convinced he’d found the meaning of life.
“I could feel myself climbing a spiral walkway as I was talking to Dylan,” McCartney recalled in a promotional video for Pure McCartney, his compilation album of 2016. “I felt like I was figuring it all out, the meaning of life… I was going, ‘I’ve got it!’ and wrote down the key to it all on this piece of paper. I told [Beatles roadie Mal Evans], ‘You keep this piece of paper; make sure you don’t lose it because the meaning of life is on there.”
“Mal gave me the piece of paper the next day,” McCartney continued. “And on it was written, ‘There are seven levels.’ Well, there you go, the meaning of life…”
After becoming well acquainted and figuring out the meaning of life, relations between the Fab Four and Dylan were put under a great deal of strain the following year when the former released their folk-infused sixth album, Rubber Soul. After hearing John Lennon’s track ‘Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)’, Dylan couldn’t help feeling he was being ripped off. “What is this? It’s me, Bob. [John’s] doing me! Even Sonny & Cher are doing me, but, fucking hell, I invented it,” Dylan famously said upon hearing Rubber Soul in 1965.
Thankfully, Dylan’s misgivings regarding the suspiciously derivative Rubber Soul abated over time. Although mutual admiration between the two parties remained strong over the decades, Dylan only maintained a fruitful relationship with George Harrison, with whom he worked on some music in the early 1970s. The pair later regrouped to form the Traveling Wilburys with Jeff Lynne, Roy Orbison and Tom Petty.
Given Dylan’s early infatuation with rhythm and blues artists of the 1950s, it’s no surprise that he was partial to The Beatles’ early sound. In a 2014 interview with Rolling Stone, Dylan remembered the moment he first heard The Beatles and claimed to have sensed the band’s significance and longevity earlier than most.
“We were driving through Colorado, we had the radio on, and eight of the top ten songs were Beatles songs…’I Want to Hold Your Hand’, all those early ones,” Dylan remembered. “They were doing things nobody was doing. Their chords were outrageous, just outrageous, and their harmonies made it all valid.… But I just kept it to myself that I really dug them. Everybody else thought they were for the teeny-boppers, that they were gonna pass right away. But it was obvious to me that they had staying power. I knew they were pointing the direction of where music had to go.”
Never Miss A Beat
The Far Out Beatles Newsletter
All the latest stories about The Beatles from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.