Bob Dylan had a big influence on every major British popular songwriter of the 1960s – apart from The Kinks’ Ray Davies, a new book suggests.
Academic Tudor Jones says Dylan’s songwriting influenced the work of British stars including John Lennon and George Harrison of The Beatles, Mick Jagger of The Rolling Stones and Pete Townshend of The Who.
But Jones argues in his book, Bob Dylan And The British Sixties, that Davies was probably the “least influenced”.
“Dylan’s influence on songwriting in modern British popular culture during the 1960s was … profound and far-reaching,” says Jones, a political historian and honorary research fellow in the history of political thought at Coventry University.
“The effect of his influence was felt on three main levels: first, in widening the range of subjects and themes that could be addressed in the lyrics of popular music; second, in conveying the notion that lyrics could have something reflective and significant to say about contemporary society, human relationships or even the existential realities of the human condition; and third, in fostering a more personal and emotionally direct mode of address.”
Jones suggests that The Beatles’ songs were about “boy-girl romance” before Dylan exerted his influence and adds: “In Britain the influence of Dylan’s songwriting was particularly evident during the 1960s in the case of The Beatles, and John Lennon and George Harrison especially.”
He says The Kinks also shifted from their early “hard-rock, power-chord singles” towards songs, including A Dedicated Follower of Fashion and Sunny Afternoon, which contained “further reflections on aspects of contemporary British society” in the mid-60s.
But he adds: “Paradoxically those were songs written by the one major British popular songwriter of the 1960s … who was probably least influenced by Bob Dylan.”
Jones highlights Davies’ 1965 song A Well Respected Man and says that marked a shift in The Kinks’ style. But he suggests that the song owes more of a debt to Noel Coward, Somerset Maugham or Peter Cook than Dylan.
– Bob Dylan And The British Sixties is published by Routledge.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article