News The Paul McCartney song inspired by Bob Dylan
There aren’t many musicians today who haven’t been influenced by Bob Dylan somehow. For most people, it’s because of his unique ability as a songwriter and how he can look at the world and provide a reflection of it in a song. For others, it’s because of his unique vocal tone; however, for Paul McCartney, it was because Dylan was the first person to give him weed.
During a party in The Beatles hotel room in 1964, Bob Dylan went to the back with Ringo Starr, who returned from the room looking strange. When they asked what he had done, Ringo told his fellow bandmates that he had just smoked weed and that the ceiling was moving and coming down. After that, the group didn’t need much more convincing to give it a go.
They all went to smoke with Dylan, who gave them each a drag. After not feeling anything right away, Harrison, McCartney and Lennon took a few more, and chaos ensued. “We were giggling, laughing at each other,” said McCartney, “I remember George trying to get away, and I was sort of running after him. It was hilarious, like a cartoon chase. We thought, ‘Wow, this is pretty amazing, this stuff.’”
When the band eventually split up, McCartney went to wind down for a bit on a Scottish farm that he owned. Here, he wrote ‘Juniors Farm,’ a song laced with references that pertain to Dylan. McCartney doesn’t directly state that the bard giving them weed played into the thought process to write the song, but it almost certainly will have done, given McCartney started growing weed on his farm and smoked it regularly.
The two ways in which McCartney has confessed Bob Dylan influenced him are in the title of the song and one of the references. Almost a decade before writing the song, Dylan released ‘Maggie’s Farm,’ a track still considered one of his best to date. McCartney said the title gave him a place to start with the song and confessed that it “Definitely was an influence.”
Whilst McCartney touches upon many different subject matters in this song, including actual world events like the impeachment of Richard Nixon, he makes a specific point of mentioning an Eskimo. When asked, McCartney also confirmed that that Eskimo was the Mighty Quinn, from the track ‘Quinn The Eskimo.’
Several things trigger our memory; it can be a song, a taste, or, in Paul McCartney’s case, a drag of a joint. Chances are, when he settled down on his farm after a decade of touring with the biggest band on the planet, he took a drag, thought of Dylan, and wrote that song. And who says Bob Dylan didn’t have influence?
