The moment John Lennon stopped listening to Bob Dylan
For a short period, John Lennon idolised Bob Dylan and took influence from him on a variety of different songs for The Beatles. However, Lennon later claimed that he was never totally obsessed with Dylan, and usually, when he listened to his work, it was because George Harrison was pushing the issue.
Lennon turned his back on Dylan during his final interview before his death, conducted with Playboy’s David Sheff in 1980. The conversation was wide-ranging, exploring every facet of his career in extreme detail. Songs which Lennon confessed were written during his “Dylan period” famously include the likes of ‘I’m A Loser’, ‘You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away’, ‘Yer Blues’, and ‘Norwegian Wood’.
Another was ‘I Am The Walrus’, with Lennon telling Sheff: “The reference to ‘Element’ry penguin’ is the elementary, naive attitude of going around chanting, ‘Hare Krishna’ or putting all your faith in any one idol. I was writing obscurely, a la Dylan, in those days.”
Later in the same interview, Lennon quotes Dylan’s ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues’ and tells Sheff: “Listen, there’s nothing wrong with following examples. We can have figureheads and people we admire, but we don’t need leaders. ‘Don’t follow leaders, watch the parking meters.'”
At the time, Dylan had recently – and controversially – converted to Christianity, which prompted Sheff to ask Lennon for his thoughts. Respectfully, the former Beatle responded diplomatically and discussed religion as a whole rather than directly commenting on Dylan’s personal situation. He explained: “I don’t like to comment on it. For whatever reason he’s doing it, it is personal for him, and he needs to do it. But the whole religion business suffers from the ‘Onward, Christian Soldiers’ bit. There’s too much talk about soldiers and marching and converting. I’m not pushing Buddhism because I’m no more a Buddhist than I am a Christian, but there’s one thing I admire about the religion: there’s no proselytising.”
When probed on whether he was a Dylan fan, Lennon bluntly commented: “No, I stopped listening to Dylan with both ears after Highway 64 [sic] and Blonde on Blonde, and even then, it was because George would sit me down and make me listen.”
Lennon possibly stopped listening to Dylan after Blonde on Blonde due to the track, ‘4th Time Around’, which was featured on the album. In the song, Dylan responds to his newfound status as Lennon’s main musical influence and viciously sings, “I never asked for your crutch, Now don’t ask for mine.” The Beatles singer later admitted to Rolling Stone that it made him “very paranoid”.
He told the publication: “I was very paranoid about that. I remember he played it to me when he was in London. He said, what do you think? I said I don’t like it. I didn’t like it, and I was very paranoid. Just didn’t like what I felt I was feeling – I thought it was an out-and-out skit, you know, but it wasn’t. It was great. I mean, he wasn’t playing any tricks on me. I was just going through the bit.”
Listen to ‘4th Time Around’ below.
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