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The song Bob Dylan wrote about his hero

Mon 17 January 2022 16:45, UK

In 1962, the fresh-faced Bob Dylan would release his self-titled debut album through Columbia Records, a project that was helmed by the now-iconic talent scout John H. Hammond who had signed Dylan a few months prior. While the LP failed to inspire the music world upon first release, it is now etched into the records of music history as the birth of a contemporary cultural icon.

Still finding his feet as a recording artist, Dylan followed the way of the times while creating his debut, filling it up with cover renditions of folk standards such as ‘Baby, Let Me Follow You Down’, ‘House of the Risin’ Sun’, ‘Freight Train Blues’ and more. While those recordings helped settle the nerves for the 20-year-old, the album is arguably now best remembered as the first glimpse of Bob Dylan the songwriter. Amid the mix of the covers were two original numbers, ‘Talkin’ New York’ and ‘Song to Woody’, the latter of which documents a story of lifelong admiration.

One of Bob Dylan’s earliest compositions, ‘Song to Woody’, arrived as a tribute to the now-famed folk singer Woody Guthrie. Incorporating the tune of Guthrie song ‘1913 Massacre’, Dylan used the platform of his debut album to follow the lead of his hero. “I always kind of wrote my own songs but I never really would play them,” Dylan once said. “Nobody played their own songs, the only person I knew who really did it was Woody Guthrie,” he added.

Bob Dylan once explained the secret to his songwriting

At some point during the 1960s, Dylan had secured a copy of Woody Guthrie’s autobiography, Bound for Glory, borrowing the work from a classmate. From this moment on, Dylan was beguiled. Some early reports of Dylan’s early musical life claim that he allegedly even began to speak like Guthrie and, upon first walking into the iconic New York hotspot Cafe Wha?, proclaimed: “I been travellin’ around the country, followin’ in Woody Guthrie’s footsteps”.

When Dylan and Guthrie first met, after some rigorous detective work, Woody allegedly gave Dylan a note that read “I ain’t dead yet”. It sparked a sweet friendship as Dylan played a new song of his, ‘Song to Woody’. After Guthrie’s approval of the track, the material found its way onto Dylan’s debut.

With Guthrie’s influence on Dylan undeniable, Bob once said of his idol: “His repertoire was beyond category. Songs made my head spin, made me want to gasp, for me it was an epiphany. It was like I had been in the dark and someone had turned on the main switch of a lightning conductor.”

Detailing his inspiration behind the song years later, Dylan reflected: “I just wrote a song, and it was the first song I ever wrote, and it was ‘A Song for Woody Guthrie’. And I just felt like playing it one night and I played it. I just wanted a song to sing and there came a certain point where I couldn’t sing anything, I had to write what I wanted to sing because what I wanted to sing nobody else was writing, I couldn’t find that song someplace. If I could’ve I probably wouldn’t have ever started writing.”