This Early Bob Dylan Hit Made The Beatles’ John Lennon Nervous

In 1965, Bob Dylan released “Subterranean Homesick Blues”, a song he wrote by himself. “Subterranean Homesick Blues” is on Dylan’s fifth studio album, Bringing It All Back Home. Not as big a commercial success as some of Dylan’s other songs, “Subterranean Homesick Blues” did become a Top 40 hit.

A unique song because the title doesn’t appear in the lyrics, “Subterranean Homesick Blues” says, “Look out, kid / It’s somethin’ you did / God knows when / But you’re doin’ it again / You better duck down the alley way / Lookin’ for a new friend / A man in a coon-skin cap / In a pig pen / Wants eleven dollar bills / You only got ten.”

“Subterranean Homesick Blues” came out only three years after Dylan’s first single, “Mixed-Up Confusion”. But he was already making a name for himself as a songwriter, both among his fans and other musicians. In fact, The Beatles’ John Lennon says that it’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues” that made Lennon question his own ability as a songwriter.

What John Lennon Said About “Subterranean Homesick Blues” by Bob Dylan

In 1980, in one of Lennon’s final interviews, he admitted that listening to “Subterranean Homesick Blues” made him worry that he would never be as good a songwriter as Dylan.

“Listen, there’s nothing wrong with following examples,” Lennon later said, referring to this song. “We can have figureheads and people we admire, but we don’t need leaders. ‘Don’t follow leaders, watch the parking meters.’”

Numerous songwriters have tried to emulate Dylan and his writing. But with “Subterranean Homesick Blues”, Dylan was actually getting inspiration from another artist: Chuck Berry.

 “It’s from Chuck Berry, a bit of ‘Too Much Monkey Business’ and some of the scat songs of the forties,” Dylan tells the Los Angeles Times.

Lennon might have drawn inspiration from Dylan. But for Dylan, one of his biggest inspirations was songwriter Woody Guthrie.

“To me, Woody Guthrie was the be-all and end-all,” Dylan explains. “Woody’s songs were about everything at the same time. They were about rich and poor, black and white, the highs and lows of life, the contradictions between what they were teaching in school and what was really happening. He was saying everything in his songs that I felt but didn’t know how to.”

“Subterranean Homesick Blues” is Dylan’s first Top 40 single. Later that year, Dylan scored his first No. 1 single with “Like A Rolling Stone”.

Photo by Alisdair Macdonald/Daily Mirror/Mirrorpix via Getty Images

The post This Early Bob Dylan Hit Made The Beatles’ John Lennon Nervous appeared first on American Songwriter.