‘Talkin’ New York’: The early Bob Dylan song written in tribute to his hero Woody Guthrie
Bob Dylan’s story begins when he landed in New York. Dropping out of college and leaving behind his small-town life in Minnesota, he hitched a ride to ‘The Big Apple’, where his legacy was locked in. But this wasn’t Dylan coming to seek out fame and fortune. To him, the trip was a pilgrimage to pay his respects to his idol, which he did in song, too.
In May 1960, when Dylan travelled East to New York, he made a stop on the way. Before landing in the big city, embedding himself within the Greenwich Village folk scene there and slowly making his name as he played gigs around town, he needed to go slightly further south, to New Jersey.
“I said to myself I was going to be Guthrie’s greatest disciple,” he said of his early motivations as an artist, positioning folk singer Woody Guthrie as his God. So, when he heard that his God or guru was sick, Dylan’s journey to the East Coast was as much a holy expedition as anything else. He went to the Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital to visit Guthrie, whose Huntington’s disease was worsening rapidly ahead of his death in 1967, wanting to pay his respects and meet his idol.
Two years later, having struck up an incredibly special friendship with Guthrie and made his name around the folk crowd in the city, Dylan made his self-titled debut album. As was tradition at the time, his label only wanted him to do covers or versions of classic, well-known folk songs. He largely obliged but demanded two original compositions be on the record, both of which honour his hero, Guthrie.
‘Song For Woody Guthrie’ makes its inspiration known explicitly as Dylan wrote a song to and for the folk star, singing directly to him in the song as he articulates what his hero taught him about the world. But ‘Talkin’ New York’ is more subtle in its celebration of his idol’s legacy.
“Now, a very great man once said, that some people rob you with a fountain pen,” Dylan sings. It harks back to Guthrie’s own lyrics from ‘Pretty Boy Floyd’ as he wrote, “Yes, as through this world I’ve wandered / I’ve seen lots of funny men; / Some will rob you with a six-gun, / And some with a fountain pen.”
It’s a song that Dylan would reference again later, borrowing Guthrie’s opening line, “If you’ll gather ’round me, children,” for his own opening of ‘The Times They Are a-Changin’. ‘Talkin’ New York’ also references both Guthrie and Dylan’s movements in and out of the city, as Guthrie, who was no longer well enough to live in the city, spent weekends at a friend’s house in East Orange, and Dylan would travel that way to see him, singing, “So long, New York / Howdy, East Orange.”
Throughout his career, not only did Dylan cover many of Guthrie’s songs but also referenced his folk hero’s music time and time again, putting his inspiration and influence down into his own songs as a homage. “[He] was the true voice of the American spirit,” Dylan said of Guthrie as he dedicated his life to being a devout disciple and follower of the myriad lessons the folk singer passed down to him in song.
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