![\"Bob](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Bob-Dylan-The-Beatles-Split-Far-Out-Magazine1-1140x855.jpg\")
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(Credits: Far Out \/ Bent Rej \/ Apple Corps LTD)<\/p>\n
Fri 7 November 2025 17:30, UK <\/p>\n
John Lennon always needed a point ot prove throughout his life. But like God on his second Monday at work, finding a competitive purpose became increasingly difficult to come by when The Beatles<\/a> sat on an unprecedented precipice of fame, adoration, and lofty esteem as they mounted the crow\u2019s nest of culture in the early 1960s.<\/p>\n From Elvis Presley to Chuck Berry, the band had dethroned their idols, reaching further than pop music had ever thought to dream. But one man, who they simply bumped into in New York, still dangled the carrot of further progress out in front of them.<\/p>\n As Paul McCartney recalled of their famed first meeting at the Delmonico Hotel in 1964<\/a>, when Bob Dylan chatted with the band and gave them their first true toke of marijuana, but got them into more than mere green alone: \u201cI could feel myself climbing a spiral walkway as I was talking to Dylan. I felt like I was figuring it all out, the meaning of life\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n You often meet interesting strangers in hotel bars, but usually you discover the true virtue of popping a chair beneath the handle of an already locked door rather than the key to existence. So, they would soon collectively crown him their \u201cidol\u201d, and while Dylan\u2019s style might have been markedly differing, they would pore over his back catalogue and soon enough it would point the Fab Four in the right direction for their own future.<\/p>\n It was a year on from the famed \u2018meaning of life\u2019 meeting in the vaulted inn on Park Avenue, and Lennon sat utterly confounded on a couch in Liverpool. Fresh from recording Help!, the band\u2019s best work to date, it seemed further fame, fortune, and frenzied adulation were inevitable\u2026 yesterday. Yet today, success isn\u2019t what occupies Lennon\u2019s mind as he sits at home in Weybridge, playing a record on repeat.\u00a0<\/p>\n Picking up the phone, he calls Paul McCartney and says something along the lines of, \u2018You\u2019ve got to come over and listen to this new Bob Dylan single immediately\u2019. Macca is greeted by the greatest counterculture anthem of all time: \u2018Like a Rolling Stone\u2019. And in the unfurling progress of the 1960s, it\u2019s back to the drawing board for the Fab Four.<\/p>\n With \u2018Like a Rolling Stone\u2019, Dylan revolutionised the way that people look at songwriting, the mighty Beatles included. With the glowering track, \u201cHe showed all of us that it was possible to go a little further,\u201d McCartney told Clinton Heylin. The collision of rock \u2018n\u2019 roll with lyrical poetry and societal sagacity was a potent force that bent minds with all the will of Uri Gellar\u2019s therapy practice.<\/p>\n It would soon come to fruition what \u201ca little further\u201d meant for The Beatles as they ladled all of their creative clout and liberating ways into one single, utterly manic anthem of their own. If Dylan had mastered Delphic depth with \u2018Like a Rolling Stone\u2019, then Lennon decided to give people delirious mania that they couldn\u2019t even begin to understand.<\/p>\n \u2018I Am The Walrus\u2019 has no right being a giant hit so ubiquitous and beloved that even today, over half a century on from its release, you can say \u201cI am the eggman<\/a>\u201d to a group of children and one of them will likely respond, \u201cGoo-goo-chachoo\u201d. Unless that\u2019s just my rather esoteric niece? But all the same, the song remains timeless and unyieldingly transcendent, permeating society.<\/p>\n That shouldn\u2019t be the case. It is a nonsense poem inspired by the avant-garde world of Dadaism. It pioneered the coupling of pop with classical string arrangements in a truly full-blown manner. It is written in the dazzling fashion of a harmonic M\u00f6bius strip. It throws in modal shifts and defies functional harmony with mediant music techniques. It heralded sampling and stirred up psychedelia\u2019s furthest reaches.<\/p>\n![\"John](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/1762551487_389_John-Lennon-Bob-Dylan-Split-Far-Out-Magazine-1024x768.jpg\")
<\/a>John Lennon always admired Bob Dylan. (Credits: Far Out \/ UMG \/ Bent Rej)<\/p>\n
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<\/a>Bob Dylan, John Lennon and The Beatles have a complex relationship. (Credits: Far Out \/ Bent Rej \/ Yoko Ono \/ Trafalga Releasing)<\/p>\n