Review: 'Where the Music Had to Go: How Bob Dylan and the Beatles Changed Each Other

Of all the amazing, groundbreaking performers of the 1960s, none were more influential than the Beatles and Bob Dylan.

Dylan's influence was mostly on the lyrical front. He brought social consciousness and poetry into pop music. The Beatles, in turn, were influenced by him, bringing greater sophistication and personal expression into the words of their own songs.

Simultaneously, the Beatles explored sound, experimenting with recording techniques and bringing in an eclectic assortment of influences into their music: Rock'n'roll, country, folk, standards, music hall and modern classical. Dylan, meanwhile, inspired by the Beatles' early sound and success, "went electric," and started playing electric guitar and using a rock'n'roll backing band.

Together, Dylan and the Beatles' boundary breaking inspired nearly all of their peers, and their advances and achievements continue to influence songwriters today.

Jim Windolf's explores all of this in the form of a "dual biography" that charts the careers of its subjects from the beginning up through the present day, and it includes a recent interview with Paul McCartney as an afterward, in which Paul talks about his own relationship with Dylan throughout the years.

Packing in the details of these eventful lives is a challenge, and Windolf covers a lot of ground. At times, the text can read more like summary than biography. But when he slows down to examine Dylan and the Beatles' parallel paths and interactions, he offers up a lot interesting insights.

It's fascinating to compare and contrast the two acts. Like the Beatles, Dylan came from the overlooked North. He was an outsider and underdog from upstate Minnesota, much as the Beatles were up in Liverpool. Dylan learned his trade in Minneapolis and went to New York. The Beatles went to Hamburg and then London. Dylan landed a spot on "The Ed Sullivan Show," (but didn't play due to the program asking him to censor one of his tunes), as did the Fab Four. The two acts retreated from public performance at around the same time and emerged sounding refreshed, new and different. All of them loved Little Richard, Elvis and all of the other 50s rockers.

The performers' first meeting, in which they shared the sacrament of getting high together, is legendary, and is fully documented by Windolf, who also charts the performers' lesser-known encounters over the years.

He also notes that the back-and-forth between Dylan and the Beatles wasn't always congenial. When he felt that John Lennon's cribbing of his style had gone too far with "Norwegian Wood," Dylan fired back with "The Fourth Time Around," which mocked Lennon's lyrics while using a nearly identical melody. Years later, Lennon would make a home recording of a song titled "Serve Yourself" as a riposte to Dylan's Christian-influenced "Gotta Serve Somebody."

For the most part, though, Lennon and Dylan exhibited mutual respect for one another, but the deep friendship between the two camps was between Dylan and George Harrison. They met up to write and record together up in Woodstock in the late 1960s and, of course, later became Wilburys.

McCartney's interactions with Dylan haven't been as well documented, so the interview at the back of this book is enlightening. Windolf asked Paul questions he hasn't been asked before, and we learn that, in the early 1970s, he and Dylan spent a fair amount of time together in New York, bringing their families together for visits and meals.

The one Beatle who gets left out in Ringo, though Windolf does note that he's performed and recorded with Dylan over the years.

There's a lot here that fans of the Beatles and Dylan will already know, but Windolf's observations are interesting and keenly made. And, if you're a Beatles fan but not steeped in Dylan, you'll learn a lot from this excellent book.

"Where the Music Had to Go" is out April 14 and is available for order now from Bookshop.org.

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