Bob Dylan on why he doesn’t play his songs “perfectly” like Paul McCartney
Famously, The Beatles were keen admirers of Bob Dylan throughout the 1960s. Despite having a sound dissimilar from Dylan’s folk style early on, Dylan would later become a huge influence on the Beatles in their work toward the middle of the decade. 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 introduced the Liverpool lads to cannabis in what proved to be a seismic moment in the history of contemporary music. After an evening of giggling and trivial conversation, they were well acquainted, but it seems the relationship between Dylan and The Beatles soured somewhat the following year after the Fab Four released their album Rubber Soul.
Though mutual admiration remained strong over the decades, Dylan only formed a lasting and fruitful relationship with George Harrison, with whom he worked on some music in the early 1970s. The pair later formed Traveling Wilburys alongside Jeff Lynne, Roy Orbison and Tom Petty.
Dylan’s misgivings regarding the suspiciously derivative nature of Rubber Soul, crucially its track ‘Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)’, abated over time as he continued to develop his sound. Famously, Dylan has never been one to stay in his lane, as a crowd of angry folk purists at Newport Folk Festival can attest. If one were to attend a Dylan concert today, he might treat the audience to a few 1960s classics, but it’ll take you a while to recognise the songs.
The ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ mastermind once addressed his restless approach to artistic development and reimagination by comparing his style with that of Paul McCartney and Elton John. During a 2009 interview with Bill Flanagan of HuffPost, Dylan explained why he never plays his songs as they appear on the albums. “I couldn’t if I tried,” Dylan said. “Those guys you are talking about all had conspicuous hits. They started out anti-establishment, and now they are in charge of the world. Celebratory songs. Music for the grand dinner party. Mainstream stuff that played into the culture on a pervasive level.”
“My stuff is different from those guys,” he added. “It’s more desperate. [Roger] Daltrey, [Pete] Townshend, McCartney, The Beach Boys, Elton [John], Billy Joel. They made perfect records, so they have to play them perfectly … exactly the way people remember them. My records were never perfect. So there is no point in trying to duplicate them.”
He later asserted that he’s never been a “mainstream artist” and has never tried to “fit in”. He said: “I’m coming out of the folk music tradition, and that’s the vernacular and archetypical aesthetic that I’ve experienced,” he concluded pensively.
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