Main Writer: Lennon
Recorded: February 25 and 26, 1964
Released: June 26, 1964
4 weeks; no. 53 (B side)

Lennon didn't think much of "I should have known Better," the B side of "A Hard Day's Night." "Just a song," he said of it. "It doesn't mean a damn thing." But as the first Beatles song to show the direct influence of Bob Dylan, it opened up a musical competition between the two artists that continued for decades.

While the Beatles were in Paris in January 1964, a DJ gave them a copy of The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, which had come out in May 1963 but hadn't made much of a splash in Europe. "For the rest of our three weeks in Paris, we didn't stop playing it," Lennon remembered. "We all went potty on Dylan." When the band recorded "I Should Have Known Better" a month later, Lennon kicked the song off with a distinctly Dylan-inflected harmonica solo, much rawer than the ones on earlier Beatles records. Dylan was impressed by the Beatles, too, and hearing their records pushed him to change his musical direction. A year after "I Should Have Known Better," he began using a full electric band, starting with his legendary Newport Folk Festival appearance. "You could only [make that sound] with other musicians," Dylan said in 1971. "Even if you're playing your own chords, you had to have other people playing with you. And it started me thinking about other people."

In early 1965, Dylan recorded "If You Gotta Go, Go Now" — a nod to the British Invasion sound, with a riff that was reminiscent of "I Should Have Known Better." Lennon lobbed the ball back with "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)" that fall. (Their friendly songwriting rivalry was still going on shortly before Lennon's death, when Dylan recorded his God-fearing "Gotta Serve Somebody" and Lennon countered with "Serve Yourself.") Starr sat in with Dylan a few times in the Seventies and Eighties. But it was Harrison who ended up having the closest relationship with Dylan, frequently collaborating with him over the years and eventually forming the Traveling Wilburys in 1988. And Harrison might not have been the only one: Tom Petty told Rolling Stone that Harrison once said to him, "Oh, John would [have been] a Wilbury in a second."

Appears On: A Hard Day's Night

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