Debatable. Dylan had already dabbled in electric rock & rollbefore the Beatles hit America, a fact that tends to get glossed over in the conventional narrative of Dylan’s career.
I knew that, but that single was a total failure and it came too early. I doubt if he had ever tried to go rock’n’roll again without the British invasion happening, and if he’d done, would’ve been so successful, but of course that’s speculation.
I never said dylan wasn’t the Beatles Daddy too. But Dylan could never have come up with Beatles music, and he knew that very well. The other way around was much more possible. I love both of these artists.
I don’t want it to be an “authenticity” ageist debate.
Which of these recording is unique, irreplaceable, numinous in quality?
To me Joes version has music that I find in many many other recordings that are catchier, more moving and have more soul. You do realize he was conscious of remaking an iconic song and needed to spin it, and that his approach had everything to do with american black soul singers? Otis Redding had more soul than Mick Jagger, but I don’t prefer his satisfaction to the stones.
Jimmy Page guitar, bombastic stop rhythms, breast beating, bending the melody to fit an idiosyncratic vocal , Joes singing, background vocalists taking over the refrain: all are available in other recording that are more satisfying to me.
Dylan was from Minnesota, the Beatles were from Liverpool. Dylan came from a folk and blues tradition (listen to his first album) while the Beatles came from a music hall and American rock tradition. And if you read Chronicles you’ll see that Dylan hardly wrote anything when he first came to New York, but was inspired by Brecht and Weill. Then it spilled out.
Dylan could never have written “She Loves You” (he is too ironic) and Lennon and McCartney could never have written “Hard Rain.” Hooray for diversity!
They all sprang from sources that were intertwined, and musically related. Which is why they heard each other so well.
Dylan could have written the lyrics to She loves you quite easily. I think you’re saying that he wouldn’t. (Lennon could have written song to woody or new morning quite easily.)
But Dylan could never have written the music. Dylan could not have written the music to Strawberry Fields, that means a lot, It won’t be long, honey pie, Oh! Darling or a hundred others of greater and lesser quality.
It’s much easier to imagine Lennon coming up with the lyrics than Dylan with the music.
All this is quite debatable, and deserves its own thread for sure, but it is a tangent here.
The Beatles’ version.
Cocker’s might be better, but it’s a song you can’t play twice, it loses all its energy. The Betales’ version can be enjoyed several times.
Thinking about this, no offense, but it is really wrong:
Dylan started out in Rock and Roll, playing Little Richard style piano, and wanting to join Bobby Vees band, later claiming to be Bobby himself. He chose folk because rock had become lame, among other better reasons
The Quarrymen started as a skiffle band. Skiffle came about because of the american folk revival of the early 50s, and specifically the music of leadbellly, when Lonnie Donegan had an international hit with Rock Island Line, and English kids got in a craze about that.
Like I said the roots were intertwined. It was only all about good music anyway, and talented people do recognize each other.
True about the early rock. However you can’t minimize the influence of Woody on his work. it is true that the move to rock was not nearly as big a break as it was perceived to be at the time.
Maybe - but where is the folk influence in their songs. (Before the White Album, that is). The stuff they played in Hamburg on that album were covers of stuff like Sweet Georgia Brown, and some of their early stuff were covers of Broadway show tunes. Imagine Dylan doing that - before Self Portrait, that is. When I’m 64, which was written long before it was released, is a great example of a music hall inspired song.
But I certainly agree that Dylan and the Beatles got a lot from each other.
Back then artists got influenced a lot more by non-rock music. Look how the Doors put Alabama Song on their first album.
We’ve got to consider early work only. By Strawberry Fields time the merging of influences can’t be denied. But I don’t know one Dylan song which is a simple thematically as “She Loves You.” And as unironic. Love songs in the first album were blues mostly. In the second Corinna was a cover, and “Don’t Think Twice” is hardly a love song. The singer is way nasty. The closest in the third album is One Too Many Mornings.
Honey Pie, though late, is interesting because it shows how when Paul wrote by himself he retreated right back to music hall. (Rocky Racoon also.)
Song for Woody was very early Dylan and clearly quite derivative of Woody Guthrie’s work. New Morning, if you read Chronicles, was written for a Broadway musical that never gelled. I think Paul could have written that better than John. I Am a Walrus was more John being Dylan - though I’ve read he meant it to be deliberately confusing - but the imagery and symbolism, though great, doesn’t hang together like that from Hard Rain, Tombstone Blues or Desolation Row.
This is a diversion, but this far into a thread we’re allowed it. And A Little Help has strong music hall roots, I’d say. Not as direct as Honey Pie or Maxwell’s Silver Hammer, but they are there.
ETA: When New Morning came out we Dylan fans were very relieved that the nightmare of Self Portrait was over. But it was a major change of direction. So it is not an example of original influences. I don’t think Dylan would have been able to write those songs in 1962 and 1963.
Ha. I haven’t been here long but I know how this is going to work; Your idea and mine of a folk influence are going to be different. (The whole Rubber Soul LP (when they started getting high and realizing they could do what they wanted) , You’ve got to hide your love away, Yellow Submarine, I’m a loser, one after 909, babys in black, what goes on, and Rocky Raccoon too …) Surprise!
McCartney brought the music hall and the harmonic sophistication to the partnership, having a dad who was a bandleader in that era. And Christ almighty people will never let him forget it will they?
Lennon was a musical genius who absorbed what he came into contact with just like Macca was. When he met mccartney he was playing a guitar tuned like a banjo, with 5 strings and didn’t know how to tune up. They taught each other very intensely and you can tell by the compositional tricks that come up in ones songs and then get used again in the others on the same LP.
Folk, blues and Country were main tributaries that Dylan and the beatles had in common.
This is a tangent though. I feel like Henry Fonda in 12 Angry Men. Well that’s better than Lee J. Cobb. (;0)
But Voyager, what is the thesis you’re going at? We may agree on a lot.
Ever hear Girl from the North Country? or boots of spanish leather? Masters of War is not ironic and much more simplistic than She Loves You. She loves you is a first person narrative addressed to a second person about a third female person. Something like that. MOW is anti war.
John Wesley harding, nashville skyline had straight forward love songs.
Dude, I’ve got all of Dylan (except for some of the gospel era trash) and lots of bootlegs that haven’t been released yet.
Yeah, a lot of protest songs (until we get to stuff like Tombstone Blues) are pretty direct, but I wasn’t considering them since the Beatles didn’t do protest songs until Taxman, at least. Blowin’ in the Wind is pretty direct also. So is Oxford Town.
Boots like One Too Many Mornings is a sad song about breakup. And a bit mean, in the end. Based on Suze going to Italy, this is mentioned in some other songs.
I must admit John did nasty also. Girl, Run for Your Life, Day Tripper, for instance. It took a long time for Dylan to do normal love songs. And they were hardly simple - She Belongs to Me, Love Minus 0/No Limit for instance. I might be forgetting something, but Sara is the first simple love song I can think of - and that is way late. And ironic in reality.
Well I never was talking about nastiness vs sincere love songs. don’t know why that matters. Protest vs love songs don’t matter to me either, although protest songs were finger pointing and simplistic a lot of times. If you count simplicity against the beatles you have to count protest against Bobby. And nastiness is not ironic necessarily. This is a rhetorical sinkhole. They are judged by their output, period.
And yeah you’re forgetting something: the examples I cited. And Pre tambourine man and Post motorcycle it was pretty straight, granted his poetic genius of course. Youre overlooking Another side too.
Dylan ran afoul of the folk establishment when he went all oblique. It was a real offense when he went internal and nasty. It didn’t really happen for a few years.
But Now, Voyager your thesis… Was it something to do with music halls…?
Yeah, that’s Lennon’s Dylan song. Of course Dylan could do Lennon too, or better, parodize him with Fourth Time Around (where he turned up the absurdity to 11 and was funnier than the original), and earlier with I Wanna Be Your Lover. I doubt that he ever wrote a melody as irresistible as a typical Paul song, though he had some fine and pretty love ballads, but you really don’t always know where the tunes are really, ahem, borrowed from with Dylan. A George song he could do: heck, he wrote one for Harrison.
Drad dog is right: the Beatles and Dylan shared a lot of influences, the biggest difference besides dance hall being Dylan’s much deeper country roots. But yeah, he was a rock’n’roller in his youth: he stated as his goal in life in his high school yearbook: “To join Little Richard’s band” and played rock’n’roll with his first band at his school, to the confusion and dismay of the teaching staff. He picked up folk for opportunity, but learned it very, very well and soaked it up like a sponge, and his admiration for Woody was honest and not an act.
I’d also note that Dylan and the Beatles were both absolutely potty about contemporary black soul music, from motown esp, stax too.
I hear Joe Cocker was a big fan too.
Good point. But the soul influence showed much later in Dylan’s work. With the Beatles (pun unintended) it was always there.
I’m just noticing that I talked a lot about Dylan (with Dylan, I just can’t help it, sorry), but haven’t stated my preference about the WALHFMF version: really, I got none, I like both versions very much. They are just so different; Cocker’s version is a stand alone song, whereas the Beatles’ works best in the context of the album. Ringo’s singing is charming, as always, and it’s just a very beautiful feel-good song. Cocker’s version is dramatic and passionate, and I like it when cover versions are creative and change the character of the original, though that doesn’t always work. Here it works perfectly. So it’s a tie for me.
Well, drad dog, I’ll admit I am not really a huge fan of the Beatles themselves. I like some of their songs, and even sometimes like the way they play/perform them. But I’m not really someone who likes the Beatles as a whole.
I used to say I just coudln’t get past that 60s sound, but I find I sometimes can. But in this case, it sounded so generic that I just couldn’t.
I understand why people like the Cocker version. It obviously captures a performer in the moment of laying everything on the line. But it just doesn’t work for me. Overwrought is the perfect word. I think it’s fair to call it a mess. To some it’s a lovable mess, but not to me.
The Beatles version is a cleanly-made, pleasant-sounding song. I don’t dislike it for not being especially energetic. There are plenty of great laid-back songs.
More importantly to my career as a karaoke nerd, I can sing the Beatles version, and I most definitely can’t do the Cocker one. This is a problem, because at least two brands have the former mislabeled as the latter. I’ve had to bail out before when the wrong one came up, and the KJ wasn’t paying enough attention to fix it.
I put down the mic and someone else picked it up and started singing. It was a little appropriate, I suppose. I needed a little help from my friends.