![\"John](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/John-Lennon-1988-Musician-The-Beatles-Far-Out-Magazine-1140x855.jpg\")
<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
Credit: Far Out \/ Alamy<\/p>\n
Sat 27 June 2026 18:00, UK <\/p>\n
Anything that The Beatles ever did was usually given the most critical treatment by John Lennon. <\/a><\/p>\n He may have been the one who helped write every single one of those classics, but even in the modern world, where contrarians are a dime a dozen, you couldn\u2019t find anyone who had more of a problem with the Fab Four than Lennon did after the band broke up. But even when they were still going strong, there were certain songs that Lennon was convinced that he was never going to like, even if he played the song 100 times for days on end.<\/p>\n Then again, that always tends to happen with working songwriters. No one has to like every single thing that they create, and even if there are some fantastic love songs in Lennon\u2019s catalogue, are we seriously going to make the case that a song like \u2018Little Child\u2019 deserves the same kind of praise and respect as \u2018Strawberry Fields Forever\u2019 or \u2018I Am the Walrus\u2019. Those songs sound like they come from two separate bands, but it took a while for Lennon to reach that point in his songwriting.<\/p>\n For the longest time, the Fabs were known as a teenybopper band that happened to write great pop songs, but somewhere around the time of Rubber Soul, Lennon didn\u2019t want to keep making the same tunes over and over again. The band were growing up by leaps and bounds, and when you listen to the love songs on that record, a tune like \u2018Girl\u2019<\/a> pales in comparison to what a tune like \u2018If I Fell\u2019 or \u2018You\u2019ve Got to Hide Your Love Away\u2019 were doing a few years before.<\/p>\n Lennon was clearly borrowing from his heroes like Bob Dylan, but Dylan was paying attention right back whenever he heard the band\u2019s tunes. You have to remember that Dylan was a popular artist for those who were paying attention, but if he was going to garner any mainstream hits, he was going to need to borrow a few tricks from what his British friends were doing. And while \u2018Like A Rolling Stone\u2019 changed the game<\/a> for a lot of people, \u20184th Time Around\u2019 was a bit too much of a steal in Lennon\u2019s mind.<\/p>\n After all, the main riff of Dylan\u2019s tunes is pretty much a carbon copy of what \u2018Norwegian Wood\u2019 was on Rubber Soul. It was clear that Dylan meant the song as an homage to what The Beatles had been doing, but for someone who had studied everything that Dylan was doing over the past few years, Lennon felt too insecure about his own song to think that Dylan was having a laugh at his expense.<\/p>\n \u2018Norwegian Wood\u2019 was clearly a step up from what the Fabs and Dylan had been doing, but \u20184th Time Around\u2019 was the first time that Lennon said that he couldn\u2019t listen to one of Dylan\u2019s tracks, saying<\/a>, \u201cI was very paranoid about that. I remember he played it to me when he was in London. He said, \u2018What do you think?\u2019 I said, \u2018I don\u2019t like it.\u2019 I didn\u2019t like it. I was very paranoid. I just didn\u2019t like what I felt I was feeling \u2013 I thought it was an out-and-out skit, you know, but it wasn\u2019t. It was great. I mean, he wasn\u2019t playing any tricks on me. I was just going through the bit.\u201d<\/p>\n Further reading: From The Vault<\/strong><\/p>\n And so began one of the single greatest songwriting battles in music history. It was all in good fun most of the time, but when looking through Lennon and Dylan\u2019s solo careers, there would be the odd moment where they would lob songs at each other in good fun, whether that was Dylan playing off of something that Lennon said or the former Beatle writing \u2018Serve Yourself\u2019 after Dylan became an evangelical on \u2018Gotta Serve Somebody\u2019<\/a>.<\/p>\n That relationship started off pretty rocky, but Lennon didn\u2019t need to spend his time being paranoid about Dylan\u2019s songwriting. His American colleague was clearly a fan of what he did, and while anything that came out of the folkie\u2019s mouth had the potential of sounding sarcastic, there was a sincere appreciation underneath those dark shades and curly hair back in the day.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/faroutmagazine.co.uk\/wp-content\/themes\/far-out-magazine\/img\/google-discover.svg\")
<\/a> The Far Out Beatles Newsletter<\/p>\n