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muzaktomyears · 9 months ago

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George Harrison and Paul McCartney interviewed about Bob Dylan and the Beatles by MOJO magazine in 1993, including extracts from John Lennon being interviewed about Dylan in 1979:

GEORGE HARRISON

Do you remember Dylan at The Albert Hall?

Oh yeah, I was there. I remember it a lot. First of all you had him saying, You remember this song? This is how it used to go and this is how it goes now! But the thing I remember most about it was all these people who'd never heard of folk until Bob Dylan came around and two years later they're staunch folk fans and they're walking out on him when he was playing the electric songs. Which is so stupid. But he actually played rock'n'roll before. Nobody knew that at the time, but Bob had been in Bobby Vee's band as the piano player and he'd played rock'n'roll. And then he became Bob Dylan the Folk Singer so, for him, it was just returning back. And maybe The Beatles - well, not just The Beatles but the whole wave of rock'n'roll that happened again in the '60s - spurred him on into wanting to get back into the electric guitar.

Was there a degree of Beatles/Dylan mutual envy at that time?

Well, he got a little bit of pleasure out of us and we got a lot of pleasure out of him. But you know everybody starts out being slightly grungey, rebels against the world, we were like that too. You know the famous Beatles story: we cleaned up our act a bit because Brian Epstein could get us more work if we had suits. By the time Bob came along it was like, Yeah, we all want to be more funky again, and please put a little more balls into the lyric of the song. There's a funny thing that I don't think anybody else has noticed and that is when John wrote Norwegian Wood, it was obviously a very Bob Dylan song, and right after that Bob's album came out and it had a song called 4th Time Around. You want to check out the tune of that - it's the same song going round and round.

You were very consciously listening to each other?

Well I can't speak for him but we were listening. I think it was his second album we heard first in February or January of '64 and we were in Paris at The Olympia Theatre and we got a copy of Freewheelin' and we just played it, just wore it out. The content of the song lyrics and just the attitude - it was just incredibly original and wonderful, you know.

Did you meet him in '66?

I met him every time. I felt a bit sad for him because he was a bit wasted at that time. He'd been on a world tour and he looked like he'd been on a world tour. He looked like he needed a rest and that was the time he went back home and fell off his bike and almost broke his neck. So...

PAUL MCCARTNEY

What sort of shape was he in? He was just winding up a world tour...

He was pretty wasted. There were a couple of times I went to hotels - one was the Mayfair, I can't remember the other one. But he didn't appear much more wasted than anyone else - you know, we kept up with him! We all sort of lay around together; it wasn't the kind of scene where you had to say anything enlightening.

So it was pretty much Dylan holding court.

Oh it was, very much. It was a little bit An Audience with Dylan in those days: you went round to the Mayfair Hotel and waited in an outer room, while Bob was, you know, in the other room, in the bedroom, and we were getting ushered in one by one. I know Keith was there. And Brian.

Didn't you feel you both had to perform?

No, not really. I was just quite happy to pay homage. The only trouble really was that occasionally people would come out and say, you know, Bob's taking a nap or make terrible excuses, and I'd say, It's OK man, I understand, he'd out of it, you know. And they were a bit guarding, like the Pope's men at The Vatican. He can't see you just now...

Didn't he come round and play you an acetate of Blonde On Blonde? Or you played him an acetate of Revolver?

No, I played him some stuff off Pepper later. And I'd brought it on acetate or a tape of Pepper...

It must have been Revolver. This was '66.

I'm pretty sure it was Pepper 'cos I remember him saying, Oh I get it, you don't want to be cute any more. And I was saying, Yeah, that's it. We really admired him. I'd known his stuff as long as I'd known Ray Charles's, so he was a big hero of ours. He was very keen on I Wanna Hold Your hand - he'd thought the middle eight, "I can't hide, I can't hide" was "I get high, I get high" and was rather amused by that. And we were amused that he was amused. Then we eventually met him in New York, one of the big hotels there, he came round with his road manager who was a nice bloke. Al Aronowitz was there, a kind of mate of ours, Dylan, his road manager and a few other people showed up. And they brought along with some illegal substances of which we partook and had... quite a wild night.

What happened?

Well, I was wandering around looking for a pencil because I discovered the meaning of life that evening and I wanted to get it down on a bit of paper. And I went into a little room and wrote it all down, 'cos I figured that, coming from Liverpool, this was all very exotic and i had to let my ordinary people know, you know, what this was all about: like if you find the meaning of life you've got to kind of put it about! Mal handed me the little bit of paper the next morning after the party and on it was written, in very scrawly handwriting: THERE ARE SEVEN LEVELS. Till ten we'd been sort of hard scotch and coke men. It sort of changed that evening.

In '66 it seemed as though you almost wanted to change places: Dylan was the mystic folk prophet who wanted to be a pop star; The Beatles were the pop stars who wanted to go underground. Was there a kind of mutual envy?

None whatsoever, no. I think it was mutual admiration, certainly from our side there was admiration. I mean to this day... I just met him at the airport about a year ago and he just kind of shambles up and says, Hey Paul, y'alright man, and we give each other a big hug. I was in Heathrow and he was. He had an anorak on and had the hood pulled up. He was really like a kind of bagman, you know. And he just kind of shambled up to me, Hey Paul, alright man.

He seemed very attracted at that time by the idea of being a pop star, the suits, the screaming women...

Well I think he found something attractive about that. I don't really think it changed his stuff an awful lot. I don't know, there might have been some feeling that it was time for him to get off the street and into the hotel or something. I don't know.

That was the time when your music had the most in common, Revolver and Blonde On Blonde. You almost crossed over at that point.

Well, he influenced us and a lot of people. He influenced the Stones. Sympathy For The Devil is very Dylan, just the endless lyrics. I remember us being round at John's house at Weybridge, when I went round to write once, and he'd just got Like A Rolling Stone and we put it on and it seemed to go on and on forever. It was just beautiful. I don't know if he aspired to that showbiz thing you were saying but he showed us all that it was possible to go a little further. But the nice thing about Dylan for me was that he brought back poetry. We'd come from that student scene, 'cos we'd all started as students, you know - I was a kind of sixth form layabout, John was at the art school next door - and we'd started out with things rather like poetry readings in Liverpool. Hamburg was a student scene. There were kids in Hamburg who called themselves The Exies - The Existentialists - and wore a lot of black; Astrid and Jorgen and Klaus, they figured they were Exies. That was one of the sad things about The Beatles: we got so huge that that kind of student thing got cut short, but Dylan reintroduced that into all our lives. I always thought of Dylan as a poet first - him and Allen Ginsberg holding up signs, all very hand-held camera from New York, all very enigmatic.

You were never in awe of each other?

Oh he wasn't in awe of us. He just liked "I get high." As the guy who introduced us to smoking dope he just thought it was hilarious! I always like those sort of things, it's like Jake Riviera thinking "living is easy with eyes closed" was "living is easy with nice clothes". They're always better, those adaptations. But John was probably the most influenced. And George is one of those guys who can quote all Dylan's lyrics. There's always a lyric for an apt situation: George goes, Oh well! Remember! The pumps don't work 'cos the vandals took the handles! George knows the whole works of Dylan. But I think John was the most influenced in the vocal style. Certainly You've Got To Hide Your Love Away is a direct Dylan copy, it's like an impression of Dylan, Yeeew've got to hayed... that lerv ay-wayyy. Just saying ay-wayyy, rather than away...

Did John ever mention that car ride with Dylan which was filmed for Eat The Document?

Mmm?

You know, when the two of them got driven around Hyde Park with Pennebaker filming them?

Well he might have but not at length. We didn't really chat about that too much. I know he was very keen on Dylan.

There's a great bit in the film, when he's in the car with Dylan and it's five in the morning, and Dylan's drunk and completely out of it and threatening to throw up and John says: Do you suffer from sore eyes, groovy forehead or curly hair? Take Zimdon!

Zimdon! Ha ha ha. Zimdon! Well that's nice stuff, but he turned on the whole Zimmerman bit and made a lot of fun of Bob later.

When do you mean?

Later, you know. I got a feeling...

He recorded those Dylan parodies in the '70s, didn't he? [There are tapes of three of them - Serve Yourself, an acid response to Dylan's You've Got To Serve Somebody, the equally self-explanatory Mama Take This Make-Up Offa Me, and a spontaneous moulding of the live TV news into Stuck Inside of Lexicon With The Roget's Thesaurus Blues Again.]

He did. He always had a go at people, John. That was really part of his charm. He was ballsy enough to have a go at you, you know, then he'd lower his little glasses, look at you over the top of them and say, It's only me! John was the mouth. He was a lovely boy but he did shoot his mouth off. Quite often.

Why did he have a go at Bob?

I think he was quite disappointed that his name wasn't Dylan. Finding out that it was a Jewish name that he'd changed I think he felt a bit betrayed. I remember him making quite a stink about that.

But he must have known that from the start.

I'm not sure we did. No. I think we sort of found all that out later. He had a go at everyone then. Including, probably most of all himself. That's who the real go was at. You know, to understand John you had to sort of look at his past. The father leaving home when he was three. Being brought up by his aunt. And his mother, you know. It's extraordinary he made it to the age he made it to. So John had a mighty chip on his shoulder - we all did to some extent. John could say to you, Fuck off yer twat. Then he'd just go, Only kidding! You had to accept that he could swing both ways.

Why did he feel so let down by Dylan?

He loved Dylan so much. He did feel a little let down. John was like that. John like gurus. John was always looking for a guru. When he introduced Magic Alex who was just some Greek guy who was a bit of an expert in electronics. And I remember John coming round to my house and saying (mystic voice) This is my new guru, Magic Alex. And you had to sort of smile a little and go, OK well that's cool, Wow, knowing that this may not last. But... John had found a guru.

Was it the same with Dylan? You know, he wanted to sit at his feet?

Yeah. I think he did worship Dylan to some degree. He was certainly the big one. There was Elvis before that... but Elvis was a different kettle of fish. Elvis was going to shop us on the Nixon Tapes. That's another story...

I want to hear it!

You know those Nixon Tapes that he kept rolling all the time? There's a set of tapes were Elvis is trying to shop The Beatles. (Courteous Southern accent) "You know, Sir, They're very un-American! I believe they smoke drugs!" Elvis! Telling Nixon! He's trying to get made a marshal, trying to get made a US marshal.

Have you heard this tape?

No, I've just seen a transcript of it. It's quite wild. 'Cos Elvis is ryng to shop us. No doubt about it. Definite bad move, El!

That's hysterical!

It is, it's wild! You've got to laugh. But as I say, I think to John these people were great heroes and he found out a little later they were only human. Think about the Maharishi. We all went off with this guru and John got very let down and wrote Sexy Sadie. He was always doing that, he was always having an idol and seeing it knocked down. If you think about it it's probably very symbolic of his whole life, the father figure. Yoko in a way was a father figure. Hate to say it. But John always required that. Complex boy. He was a lovely boy but, perhaps, you know... idols with feet of clay. John always wanted people to be magic and, you know, we're all human.

What did he see in Dylan?

Inspiration, maybe. I don't know. Maybe that he allowed us to go further. He allowed the Stones to go further, then we did Pepper and we allowed everyone else to go further, It was like boots walking... we'd take a step, Dylan'd take a step, Stones'd take a step, we'd take another step, John'd take a step. I'd take a step, I'd do Why Don't We Do It In The Road?, John'd go, Fuck, I wish I'd written that...

Which of John's songs would you like to have written?

John's? Oh... if forced on the point I'd have to say, Help, Imagine, Strawberry Fields. But it doesn't matter, all in all, here we are, born, die, and on the way stuff happens. John did some magic stuff, Dylan did, Stones did, all of us have from time to time. I remember Dylan defending one of his loose vocals - some critic somewhere - by saying, (nasal whine) "Listen man there's an A in there somewhere! It goes from A flat to B flat but it goes through an A. Every note's in tune!" You know, there is an A in the middle of it somewhere but he just chooses to go around it. Great! Rules are meant to be broken.

So do you think he's deliberately 'deconstructing the myth'? How many opportunities has he had to reach a larger audience - Farm Aid, he was the final act of Live Aid, The 30 Year Tribute concert? The last two were absolutely appalling.

I think he does it on purpose, you know. He does it on purpose. I know someone played with him in one of his latest bands - G.E. Smith, New York guy - and I said, How is it, man? And he said Oh great! He said, We'd come up to him after a show and say, Fantastic man, Tambourine Man went down so beautifully, and then he wouldn't do it for two weeks! But I can see that...

Keep a good head and always carry a light bulb!

Yeah, it was nice, all that stuff. But the only pity really is that it's all closed up, like Moses passing through the waters, the Red Sea. We all got through it all, it tended to close up when everyone's got through it. Now it's re-opening a little bit. The modern scene's getting a little crazier again, but it's all a little bit corporate now. Very corporate. Sickeningly so. And you know it wasn't that way before. And he was one of the catalysts in the whole movement.

JOHN LENNON

Extracts from interviews broadcast in 1979 on New York's 1027WENW radio in The Lost Lennon Tapes (interviews by Jonathan Cott, David Shepp and Jann Wenner).

You first heard Dylan on a visit to Paris in 1963?

I think that was the first time I heard him at all. I think Paul got the record (Freewheelin') from a French DJ. We were doing a radio thing there and the guy had the record in the studio and we took it back to the hotel and (gauche accent) fell in luv, like!

Do you still see Dylan as a primary influence on your writing?

No, no. I see him as another poet, you know, or as competition. Just read my books which were written before I'd heard of Dylan or read Dylan or even heard of anybody. It's the same, you know. I didn't come after Elvis and Dylan, I've been around always. But it I see or meet a great artist, I love 'em, you know. I just love 'em. I go fanatical about them - for a short period. And then I get over it! And it they wear green socks, I'm liable to wear green socks for a period, you know.

You've Got To Hide Your Love Away and I'm A Loser?

Yeah, that's me in my Dylan period, 'cos that's got the word 'clown' in it. I always objected to the word 'clown' - or clown image that Bowie was using 'cos that was always artsy-fartsy - but Dylan had used it so I thought it was all right and it rhymed with whatever I was doing. So that was my Dylan period.

So you were saying, If Dylan can go it I can do it?

No, I'm just influenced by whatever's going on. It's the same as if Elvis can do it, I can do it. If the Everly Brothers can do it, me and Paul can do it. If Goffin and King can do it, Paul and I can do it. If Buddy Holly can do it, I can do it. Whatever it is, I can do it!

How would you characterise your relationship with Dylan?

Whenever we used to meet it was always under the most nerve-wracking circumstances. And I know I was always uptight, and I know Bobby was. And people like Al Aronowitz would try and bring us together. And we were together and we'd spend some time but I always used to be too paranoid or I'd be aggressive or something and vice versa. He'd come to my house - can you imagine it? This bourgeois home life I was leading? - and I used to go to his hotel. And I loved him, you know, because he wrote beautiful stuff. I used to love those so-called protest things. I loved the sound of him. I didn't have to listen to his words. He used to come with his acetates and say, Listen to this John, did you hear the words? And I'd say, It doesn't matter, you know, the sound if what counts, the overall thing. You don't have to hear what Bob Dylan says, you just have to hear the way he says it. Like, the medium it the message.

Your appearance in Eat The Document was a little edgy.

I've never seen it! I'm in it, you know! Frightened as hell, you know! I was always so paranoid. He said, I want you to be in this film and I thought, Why? What? He's going to put me down! It's gonna be... you know and I went all through this terrible thing. So in the film I'm just blabbin' off, just commenting all the time like you do when you're very high and stoned. But it was his scene, you know, that was the problem for me. It was his movie. I was on his territory. That's why I was nervous, you know. I was on his session.

MOJO (November 1993)

#bob dylan #the beatles #george harrison #paul mccartney #WHERE IS RINGO #john lennon #bob&george #also:#john&paul #because there's a lot of john in the paul interview (of course)#yoko in a way was a father figure #the interviewer telling paul john's joke and paul loving it #a lovely boy #a complex boy

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