This week we continue the exploration of the relationship between Bob Dylan and the Beatles. Part II focuses on the individual members and their careers after the group’s split in 1970.
What do you think, is that George Harrison singing on Time Passes Slowly? I’m sure it is!
Below you’ll find some links to songs I couldn’t play in the episode, but that I think are very interesting and worth hearing.
Here’s a link to the third (and only unreleased) song that Harrison and Dylan co-wrote. This is the song Nowhere To Go that features the line “I get tired of being Beatle Jeff”.
If you’d like to listen to I Don’t Want To Do It in full, you can check it out here.
You can listen to the (short) clip of Dylan covering Here Comes The Sun live in 1981 here.
You definitely have to check out the BEAUTIFUL recording of Bob Dylan singing Something as a tribute to George Harrison on 13/11/2002 at Madison Square Garden in NYC. He prefaced it with the words:
Thank you. There's a tribute coming, I guess it's the next week or the week after, it's over in England, for George Harrison and <inaudible> lots of people <inaudible> I'm not sure who. But we can't make it. I just want to do this song <inaudible> for George because we were such good buddies.
There’s even a video of the performance, which you can watch here!
In case you want to hear John Lennon’s response to Bob Dylan’s Gotta Serve Somebody in full, you can do that here.
By the way, I was running out of time, so I couldn’t go much further into the complex relationship between John Lennon and Bob Dylan, but this article entitled “Bob Dylan and John Lennon's Weird, One-Sided Relationship” from the Atlantic in 2012 (when Tempest was released) is a very interesting read.
Playlist:
I’d Have You Anytime - George Harrison
Time Passes Slowly (early version) - Bob Dylan feat. George Harrison
Just Like A Woman (Concert for Bangladesh)
I Don’t Want To Do It (snippet) - George Harrison
Heart of Mine (Shot of Love)
God - John Lennon
Gotta Serve Somebody (Slow Train Coming, snippet)
Serve Yourself (snippet) - (John Lennon)
Roll On John (Tempest)
EDIT: Let me add two things that I’ve found since recording this episode. If you’re like me, you’re already loving the friendship between Bob Dylan and George Harrison, so you might enjoy watching this clip of them performing Peggy Sue together in the 80s. They seem quite drunk and like they’re having a lot of fun. I’ve also come across this funny video of Michael Douglas talking about meeting Harrison and Dylan (with his dog).