Bob Dylan Adored This 60s Psych-Folk Deep Cut

Bob Dylan has a curious relationship with the 60s – a formative figure in the evolution of the counter culture on both sides of the Atlantic, he inspired, and then departed from, the folk revival. The songwriter’s push-and-pull experiences are evident in the songs he spotlights – never one to follow a path others have tread, he tends to defy expectations at every turn.

So it was in 1968, when Bob Dylan – returning after an enforced absence from the spotlight – chose to speak to influential American publication Sing Out. Essentially the in-house organ for the folk revival, the interview touched on his thoughts on contemporary songwriters.

Looking towards the Fab Four – who he had already met once or twice by this point – Dylan said the Beatles “work much more with the studio equipment, they take advantage of the new sound inventions of the past year or two. Whereas I don’t know anything about it. I just do the songs, and sing them and that’s all.”

The remarks are practically a manifesto for his contemporaneous work – the spartan ‘John Wesley Harding’ and the countrified miniature ‘Nashville Skyline’.

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Oddly, Bob Dylan had warm words for the Incredible String Band – a Scottish formed group who opened folk influences out to the world, producing genuinely psychedelic music in the process. At the time, the ISB were feted as psych-folk godheads, with Sir Paul McCartney pronouncing their album ‘The 5000 Spirits or the Layers Of The Onion’ as one of the best 1967 had to offer.

Speaking to Sing Out, Bob Dylan name-checked the Incredible String Band’s ‘October Song’. The Beatles had “carried on with their poetic legacy, whereas the Incredible String Band who wrote this ‘October Song’… that was quite good.”

He added: “As a finished song it’s quite good.”

It’s certainly a left-of-centre pick – but perhaps Bob Dylan was drawn to the song’s overt quest for originality…

I’ll sing you this October song
Oh, there is no song before it
The words and tune are none of my own
For my joys and sorrows bore it

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