But I would not feel so all alone...

"Girl from the North Country"

Echo Helstrom, Bob Dylan's high school girlfriend. (Photo by Toby Thompson, source)
From the Wikipedia entry:

"Girl from the North Country" (also known as "Girl of the North Country") is a song written by Bob Dylan. It was first released in 1963 as the second track on Dylan's second studio album, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan. Dylan re-recorded the song as a duet with Johnny Cash in 1969. That recording became the first track on Nashville Skyline, Dylan's ninth studio album.

Dylan's 1959 Echo Harmonica, played during his high school days, this model chosen because it shared a name with his then girlfriend (source)

The song was written following his first trip to England in December, 1962, upon what he thought to be the completion of his second album. The song is a tribute to a former girlfriend, Echo Helstrom who Dylan knew before leaving for New York.

While in London, Dylan met several figures in the local folk scene, including English folksinger Martin Carthy. "I ran into some people in England who really knew those [traditional English] songs," Dylan recalled in 1984. "Martin Carthy, another guy named [Bob] Davenport. Martin Carthy's incredible. I learned a lot of stuff from Martin." Carthy exposed Dylan to a repertoire of traditional English ballads, including Carthy's own arrangement of "Scarborough Fair," which Dylan drew upon for aspects of the melody and lyrics of "Girl from the North Country," including the line from the refrain "Remember me to one who lives there, she once was a true love of mine."

A February 1964 live Canadian TV performance:


Pete Townshend did an adaption of "Girl from the North Country" on his 1982 album, All the Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes, an album with which I am somewhat familiar.

"The Times They Are A-Changin'"

From the Wikipedia entry:

"The Times They Are A-Changin'" is a song written by Bob Dylan and released on his 1964 album of the same name. In 2004, this song was #59 on Rolling Stone's list of "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time."

Dylan's friend, Tony Glover, recalls visiting Dylan's apartment in September 1963, where he saw a number of song manuscripts and poems lying on a table. "The Times They Are-a Changin'" had yet to be recorded, but Glover saw its early manuscript. After reading the words "come senators, congressmen, please heed the call," Glover reportedly asked Dylan: "What is this shit, man?", to which Dylan responded, "Well, you know, it seems to be what the people like to hear."

A protest song, it is often viewed as a reflection of the generation gap and of the political divide marking American culture in the 1960s. Dylan, however, disputed this interpretation in 1964, saying "Those were the only words I could find to separate aliveness from deadness. It had nothing to do with age." A year later, Dylan would say: "I can't really say that adults don't understand young people any more than you can say big fishes don't understand little fishes. I didn't mean ['The Times They Are a-Changin'] as a statement... It's a feeling."

Here's a young Dylan, with what appears to be his freight train ridin', disgruntled, Kerouacian/Steinbeckian hobo pals, on a CBC TV show called Quest, Feb 1, 1964:


The Byrds, who recorded a version on their Turn! Turn! Turn! (1965) album, performed it on an October 1965 episode of Hullabaloo (introduced by Michael Landon):

Eggman and Zimmerman take a cab

There's no doubt the meeting of The Beatles and Bob Dylan in 1964 was a momentous occasion in pop culture history. Dylan was a huge influence on John Lennon. One need only listen to "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away" (whereupon Lennon does his very best Dylan imitation) to hear evidence. Dylan is said to have introduced the Fab Four to the chronic. Legend goes, Dylan believed the Liverpudlians were already "imbibing" because he thought the lyrics to "I Want to Hold Your Hand" included the line 'I get high', when in fact they were singing 'I can't hide, I can't hide, I can't hiiiiiide'.

After Dylan, The Beatles would go from writing songs like "I Don't Want to Spoil the Party" and doing cover versions(!) of songs like "Mr. Moonlight", to revolutionizing pop/rock music with "Strawberry Fields Forever", "Eleanor Rigby", "Tomorrow Never Knows", "A Day in the Life", etc., etc., etc. Can you say catalyst?

Here's interesting video, taken from an old 8mm film, of Dylan and Lennon riding together in a taxi in 1966. Check out Lennon's thick Liverpool accent. And they both seem a bit hide, I mean high.

I've been a Beatles fan for over twenty years, and I've never seen this: