{"id":695710,"date":"2026-01-14T16:09:14","date_gmt":"2026-01-14T16:09:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/695710\/"},"modified":"2026-01-14T16:09:14","modified_gmt":"2026-01-14T16:09:14","slug":"how-a-pathetic-bob-dylan-song-ended-john-lennons-love-for-him","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/695710\/","title":{"rendered":"How a “pathetic” Bob Dylan song ended John Lennon’s love for him"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"John<\/p>\n

(Credits: Far Out \/ UMG \/ Bent Rej)<\/p>\n

Wed 14 January 2026 15:07, UK <\/p>\n

John Lennon enjoyed many fractious relationships throughout his life. First, there was his mother, then Aunt Mimi, then Paul McCartney, Cynthia, Yoko and the list never ends. While the founding member of The Beatles<\/a> was known to be a staunch lover, throwing himself wholeheartedly into the peaks and pitfalls of human existence with reckless abandon, he was also just as likely to forget about the experience the very next day, dismissing it for a series of new-cobbled excuses. <\/p>\n

One such person provided a similar journey of exploration, adoration and then rejection for the bespectacled Beatle. A man who had not only been a counterpart but had, at one time, been a beacon of light in expression, a pathway forward into a new world of creativity, and just as so many of Lennon\u2019s relationships would, ultimately, leave him unsatisfied. That man was Bob Dylan.<\/p>\n

When the pair first met, there was an instant attraction. Each man had been championed as the voice of the restless youth movements, but both men had different approaches. In the earliest sparking moments of the 1960s, Lennon and Dylan had operated as different ignitions. Lennon was a populist who had unshackled a generation to move their bodies in a brand new way. Dylan, meanwhile, was a more cerebral flicker, connecting to a generation of lost souls with his words. <\/p>\n

1964 was the moment the two icons clashed over an expertly rolled joint, and the duo influenced one another deeply from the moment it happened. While Dylan could learn a thing or two about how to get your message out to millions and millions of fans, Dylan showed The Beatles, and namely John Lennon, how to find that message, to begin with<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As Paul McCartney once said, \u201cHe was our idol.\u201d When they first heard the introspective poetry of the folk songsmith, their world changed. As John Lennon recalls in The Beatles Anthology: \u201cIn Paris in 1964 was the first time I ever heard Dylan at all. Paul got the record [The Freewheelin\u2019 Bob Dylan] from a French DJ. For three weeks in Paris, we didn\u2019t stop playing it. We all went potty about Dylan.\u201d The Beatles would take Dylan\u2019s form of self-expression in folk music and apply it to pop.<\/p>\n

\"Bob<\/a>Bob Dylan smoking a cigarette in 1966. (Credits: Bent Rej)<\/p>\n

Tracks like \u2018Help\u2019 and \u2018You\u2019ve Got To Hide Your Love Away\u2019 are clearly connected to Dylan\u2019s songwriting approach. Lennon said of the latter: \u201cThat\u2019s me in my Dylan period again. I am like a chameleon, influenced by whatever is going on. If Elvis can do it, I can do it. If the Everly Brothers can do it, me and Paul can. Same with Dylan.\u201d But sadly, not everything lasts forever, and the influence and friendship Dylan and Lennon once shared soon began to wane.<\/p>\n

\u201cYoko was never under any Dylan mystique. She never thought much of him either way,\u201d confessed Lennon. \u201cFor a period, I was very impressed with him,\u201d the singer revealed. \u201cBut I stopped listening to Dylan with both ears after [Highway 61 Revisited] and Blonde on Blonde, and even then, it was because George [Harrison] would sit down and make me listen.\u201d Harrison had become infatuated with Dylan, leaving Britain behind to go and work with him, with the freewheelin\u2019 troubador happy to collaborate<\/a>. However, Lennon didn\u2019t shut off his old friend completely and still, like the rest of the world, followed the songwriter\u2019s career as he began to flourish in rock and roll.<\/p>\n

It had been a big leap for Bob Dylan to go from folk\u2019s undying acoustic hero to betraying those diehard fans and moving into rock. It speaks highly of an ever-evolving artist. However, such a need for perpetual motion will often see the most chaotic of moments occur, and Dylan fans got one as he began to explore the righteousness of rock music and delivered biblical sermons amid his songs when performing live, a style of delivery that first took root in Dylan\u2019s 1979 album Slow Train Coming.<\/p>\n

The record included a song that John Lennon would label \u201cpathetic\u201d. \u2018Gotta Serve Somebody\u2019, which Lennon deliberately mislabels as \u2018Everybody\u2019s Gotta Ge Served\u2019. \u201cWell, I was listening to the radio,\u201d he begins, \u201cAnd Dylan\u2019s new single, or whatever the hell it is, came on. He wants to be a waiter for Christ,\u201d Lennon adds, laughing to himself and his dictaphone, thereafter his critique becomes a bit more caustic. \u201cThe backing is mediocre [\u2026] the singing\u2019s really pathetic, and the words were just embarrassing,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

It led to Lennon writing his own song about Dylan, \u2018Serve Yourself\u2019, in which Lennon sings: \u201cYou tell me you found Jesus\/ Christ! Well, that\u2019s great, and he\u2019s the only one\/ You say you just found Buddha?\/, and he\u2019s sittin\u2019 on his arse in the sun?\u201d It\u2019s a clear role reversal after Dylan had used \u2018Positively 4th Street\u2019 to go after Lennon\u2019s remarkably familiar cadence.<\/p>\n

The nail in the coffin came a few weeks later when Lennon spoke to David Sheff about Dylan: \u201cAnybody who wants to hear Dylan just because of who he is isn\u2019t gonna understand what Dylan is saying now or then. They\u2019re just following some kind of image. They\u2019re the sheep anyway. Still, the whole religion business does suffer from the \u2018Onward Christian Soldiers\u2019 bit. There\u2019s too much talk about soldiers and marching and converting. I\u2019m not pushing Buddhism, because I\u2019m no more a Buddhist than I am a Christian, but there\u2019s one thing I admire about the religion: there is no proselytizing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Later adding: \u201cYou have to think in terms of process. Relying on your own spirit is healthy. If Dylan is into Jesus because of needing to belong, whatever, perhaps the next step will be to see the good of the experience as well as the other side.\u201d<\/p>\n

The truth is, religion never really sat well with Lennon. He was far too against any sense of establishment to be indoctrinated into believing a certain set of values for too long, especially a set that he hadn\u2019t himself come up with. Dylan\u2019s decision to follow his faith seemingly told Lennon that he no longer believed in himself. That giving himself over to a heavenly father meant forgetting those who were left on earth. Lennon\u2019s love and loss of figures in his life all seem to revolve around this one social movement. <\/p>\n

Abandonment is a terrible thing to have to deal with as a young child, and when Lennon moved in with his Aunt while his mother and father struggled to look after him started a series of events that would be littered across the Beatle\u2019s life. As his mother tragically died so young, so too did Lennon\u2019s innocence, and the faith he once had in people seemed to go the same way. Dylan was just another figure who seemed to leave Lennon alone. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Related Topics<\/p>\n

The Far Out Beatles Newsletter<\/p>\n

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Straight to your inbox.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ UMG \/ Bent Rej) Wed 14 January 2026 15:07, UK John Lennon enjoyed many…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":695711,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3936],"tags":[39538,77,8345,269,4162,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-695710","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-bob-dylan","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-john-lennon","11":"tag-music","12":"tag-the-beatles","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115894325400262629","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/695710","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=695710"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/695710\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/695711"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=695710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=695710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=695710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}