I think that Bob's song "4th Time Around" was Bob just having fun doing a Beatles style song. He did like the Beatles and was friendly with them. The song was just another fun little Dylan ditty. I don't think he was angry or annoyed. He was just having fun.
Your more than likel right, but Lennon didn't work that way. If he had an inkling that someone was being critical of him he´d lash out with no holds barred. And leave it to Lennon to ridicule someone who's been born again. One of the reasons I've long ceased admiring Lennon. I think, in essence he was an evil fuck.
Who said there was a feud? Bob often took a song and put new lyrics to them. John said Dylan played the song for him and it made him a bit paranoid because he wondered if he was sending him up. This was at the time then he said he realised it was great. Bob has said how deep John's songs are and how they describe in few words the human condition and he released a tribute song to John.
Imagining Dylan hearing Norwegian Wood and getting insulted or whatever he was, reminds me of an interview with Elton John on Aussie tv in the 70s. When asked what he thought of Billy Joel's music, all he could say was that Joel had stolen the way Elton sings the word "life". That was his big point - that Joel's success as a piano man was because he rode coat-tails. 14 year old me was amazed that someone with that much fame and fortune could be so fearful of the rise of a challenger, but there it was. Johnny Carson famously never spoke again to Joan Rivers after her filling in for him resulted in her own late night show, and she went from protege to enemy. Dylan heard a band replacing him in the minds and ears of the kids, and took a pissy swipe. These people😅
Did John really know Bob Dylan that well? There was the famous meeting between Beatles and Dylan in 1964 but after that did Lennon really have much to do with Dylan on any level? George was Bob's personal friend.
Id say john knew that the only other song writer in the world that challanged him was Dylan, John probably was very jealous of bob, its normal. Two giants. Their styles where very different.
Don McLean in American Pie alludes to this feud and pokes Lennon himself "Lennin (sic) Read a book on Marx, implying JL was an "amateur" or at least not a very committed communist
Bob didn’t play the melody for “Norwegian Wood” - the 6/8 time is Dylanesque - but Lennon’s melody is longer, more interesting, better- and you’ve got a bridge in John’s song: Paul’s- parallel minor key, with harmonies- WTF? I LOVE Dylan, AND I accept that he’s a codger- is quick to point out people who’ve ’ripped him off’ while at the same time coming from the folk tradition: where credits-less appropriation was the MO. Dylan is/was the master. Much is made of Dylan’s influence on the Beatles, But less of the Beatles on Dylan. The Beatles made Bob want to become a rockstar. It’s clear- he heard ‘I want to hold your hand’ on the road thru the Rockies on the radio (“I get hi!”) He said that he recognized that what they were doing could only be done by a band.
Theres a Q&A Al Kooper does with a class of students at some university, and he says thay Dylan had played for John "Fourth Time Around" in a hotel room or something, and that John had kinda nicked it a bit. He said Dylan wasn't the type to cause a big stink over it, either publicly or legally, because there was just way too much respect between them, and besides, they were both churning out a ridiculous number of songs at the time anyway. Dunno how true it is, but Kooper doesn't seem like the bullshitting type.
How do YOU know that? God, I hate people like you. You shouldn't presume that anyone is in hell. Yes, there is a hell. Yes, there is a last judgement. But God judges- not you.
