“They were discovering Dylan”: How ‘Rubber Soul’ showed Joni Mitchell that The Beatles were levelling up
Bob Dylan changed music forever—and he did so in a quick flash at a tender age. Beyond the improbability of that feat, it is also a consummate victory that shouldn’t really have happened, like David kicking Goliath’s head in without even using his conniving, little catapult. By rights, Dylan should’ve been too avant-garde for the mainstream; he should’ve been too folky to reach triumph; too political for the battened hatches of pop culture; and he should’ve been too croaky to beguile.
But as Joni Mitchell asserts, once the original vagabond wandered onto the scene, nothing would ever be the same again, not even for the trailblazing Beatles. He was a complete unknown to the Fab Four, but he quickly became their “icon”, making Elvis Presley look old hat and vapid, figurative prompting them to tear down the posters from their walls. He was an inconclast looking to “inspire”.
Mitchell herself has also often been Dylan’s biggest critic, slamming him for plagiarism, bad breath, and insensitivity; essentially calling the freewheelin’ troubadour a super callous inauthentic mystic hexed by halitosis. This makes her statement pointing out his 1965 anti-love song anthem ‘Positively 4th Street’ as a pivotal moment of diegesis in the history of music all the more remarkable.
As she once told Sara Kettler: “There came a point when I heard a Dylan song called ‘Positively 4th Street’ and I thought ‘oh my God, you can write about anything in songs’. It was like a revelation to me.” She was pushed towards a new sense of honesty and introspection—every songwriter was.
This was a lyrical wallop that reverberated in the minds of many. As Mitchell’s former partner, the late David Crosby also told Stereogum: “Bob is a freaking wonderful poet. He’s a really skilful, inspired poet. His handling of words at that point in his life, is about as good as anybody is, period. That’s what really struck me. Musically, it’s a really simple old tune. It’s no problem. But the lyrics are stunning.” Pop music now had to raise its game to be on his level, and for the premier hit band, The Beatles, it was a case of keep singing about hand-holding platitudes or enter this new poetic territory.
According to Mitchell, they chose the progressive route and levelled up for all to see. “Rubber Soul was the Beatles album I played over and over,” Mitchell told Lava Magazine. “I think they were discovering Dylan, and the songs often had an acoustic feel.” On the record, the band mirrored the newfound introspection that Dylan had introduced to music. They’d mellowed out the sound to allow for more depth everywhere else.
As Mitchell explains, when it comes to ‘Norwegian Wood’ – a song that Lennon admitted to impersonating Dylan for much to the folk star’s chagrin – and the postmodernist touches that it contained: “I used to sing this one in my coffeehouse days in Detroit before I started writing for myself. The whole scenario has this whimsical, charmingly wry quality with a bit of a dark undertone. I’d sing it to put some levity in my set. I got a kick out of throwing it in there amongst all these tragic English folk ballads. Besides, I have Norwegian blood!”
The song is the perfect paragon of Dylan’s influence. Aside from the scathing quotes regarding imitation that came to the fore at the time, in retrospect, the duplicity on display within the track marked a new sense of irony in pop music now that even the frontrunners were riding the wave. The Beatles played with form, crafting a melody that masked a macabre underbelly, encapsulating the counterculture movement’s sharpening of the double edge of culture. This was a pop song with a point: a three-minute hit didn’t have to be straightforward.
As Paul Simon said of Dylan’s writing: “Everything he sings has two meanings. He’s telling you the truth and making fun of you at the same time.” Rubber Soul sees The Beatles apply this trope to riffing pop music, and Mitchell was one of many songwriters taking note. Like Dylan before them, they were not just grabbing hold of the zeitgeist, they were wrestling it in a new direction.
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