The last Bob Dylan song John Lennon loved: “It’s a myth”
When The Beatles went to America, they were already a fairly big deal, but their performance on The Ed Sullivan Show is what really made them stand out as the next big thing.
A British band had never broken America in the way that The Beatles managed to, and it all kicked off following an appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show – they took to the stage and played a continuous run of hits, and after that, everyone watching suddenly wanted to be in a band like theirs.
“There was no real future for a British band before The Beatles appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show in February 1964… that was the turning point, after which there was an avalanche,” said Andrew Loog Oldham, who was the manager for The Rolling Stones. “It totally transformed the possibilities, and as usual, The Beatles were the frontrunners. In music, there is The Beatles, and then there is everybody else.”
Unsurprisingly, The Beatles went straight to the top of the charts, as their song ‘I Wanna Hold Your Hand’ was adored by everybody who heard it. That being said, while the band enjoyed an elongated stint riding high, their time at number one couldn’t last forever, and it was the new folk rock stylings of The Byrds and Bob Dylan which eventually dethroned the Fab Four.
‘Mr Tambourine Man’ was originally written by Bob Dylan but then covered by The Byrds, who played around with the time signature and injected it with a little bit of rock. The band have commented that when Bob Dylan came to listen to them, that was when he decided to make the switch to folk rock, as he realised how easy it was to make his music danceable.
“Bob heard us do it and said, ‘Man, you could dance to this!’”, recalled the band’s bassist, Chris Hillman. “It really knocked him over, and he loved it.”
Bob Dylan began making predominantly folk rock after he heard The Byrds’ rendition of their song, which was a move scorned by many folk purists but loved by other music lovers all over the world. Even though it was Dylan who knocked the band off the top of the charts, The Beatles were all still big fans, and many argue that he influenced the way John Lennon wrote from then on out.
Of course, Bob Dylan was never a man to keep one stagnant style of music for very long, and so the folk-rock sound wasn’t here to stay. Instead, he moved on to various other kinds of music, exploring every corner of the sonic spectrum, seemingly annoying everyone who listened to him in the process, including John Lennon, who could never get on board with his sound after he left behind the iconic folk-rock sound. Lennon even said that one of the last good songs that Bob Dylan ever wrote was ‘Like a Rollin’ Stone’.
“I expect more,” said Lennon, concluding, “Maybe I expect too much from people. But I expect more. I haven’t been a Dylan follower since he stopped rocking. I liked ‘Rollin’ Stone’ and a few things he did then, I like a few things he did in the early days, [but] the rest of it is just like Lennon-McCartney or something. It’s no different. It’s a myth.”
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