What’s the earliest music you can remember liking? 3-year-old me was often found listening to my parents’ Beatles records, headphones strapped on and a quiet smile across my face.
It was around the same age that I memorized the lyrics to the Traveling Wilburys’ “Tweeter and the Monkey Man” and became a Bob Dylan fan. His performance years later at a big expo arena near my hometown sparked fresh interest in Dylan, and my mom recommended his Blonde on Blonde album to my high school friends and me.
“4th Time Around” was one of the tracks she mentioned as a favorite. It’s a metaphor about learning from past relationships and applying what you got from them to new relationships, she explained, highlighting the lyric “I filled up my shoe, and brought it to you”.
This post takes a deep dive into the meaning of those lyrics, but in the course of doing so I need to discuss a popular Beatles song with a connected legacy. I’ll provide some background on Bob Dylan’s history with the Beatles, then analyze the lyrics of “4th Time Around”, then analyze the lyrics of the the Beatles’ “Norwegian Wood” and compare the two. Disclaimer: the ideal reader is a serious Dylan fan.
It wasn’t until I recently looked at the Wikipedia page for “4th Time Around” that I realized my mom’s interpretation wasn’t widely shared. The article and its references see the song instead as a response to the Beatles’ “Norwegian Wood”. Apparently even John Lennon, primary writer of “Norwegian Wood”, thought Dylan was ‘one-upping’ him with this song.
Bob Dylan and the Beatles coexisted atop the anglophone pop world, with their paths crossing many times starting in the mid-1960s. While Dylan and George Harrison would become good friends and even bandmates, Dylan’s relationship with Lennon and Paul McCartney is best described as friendly rivalry.
Hearing The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan in 1964 was a game changer for the young Beatles. “For three weeks in Paris, we didn’t stop playing it,” said Lennon. Dylan famously influenced the Beatles’s mindstate directly by passing them their first joint in a Manhattan hotel room that same year.
Under the influence of Dylan among other things, the Beatles began adding more acoustic guitar textures to their songs and writing more introspective lyrics. “Things We Said Today” and “I’m a Loser”, both from later in 1964, are among the earliest examples. Acoustic guitar strumming can be heard throughout both songs, and the lyrics go beyond the simple proclamations of love and enthusiasm that characterize earlier Beatles songs. “Things We Said Today” imagines looking back on a relationship from the future, while “I’m a Loser” exposes the narrator’s personal vulnerabilities and shortcomings.
“You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away” from 1965’s Help! is the most obviously Dylanesque Beatles song to my ear. The instrumentation is entirely acoustic (Dylan didn’t go electric until late that year), and Lennon’s voice takes on an extra gravely tone in homage to Dylan. “That’s me in my Dylan period again,” Lennon once commented on the song.
The Beatles’ acoustic folk explorations reached an apex on their next album, Rubber Soul. The song “Norwegian Wood” sounded so Dylanesque that upon hearing it, Dylan reportedly exclaimed “What is this? It’s me Bob. He’s doing me!”. Dylan felt so ripped off, legend has it, that he then wrote “4th Time Around” in retaliation.
Al Kooper, who played organ on the track, responded to a question about “4th Time Around” at 44:20 in this 2012 panel: “When we were running it down, I said to Bob […] ‘Don’t you think you’re going to get a little shit about this from the Beatles?’ And he said ‘No, I think I should’ve given them shit about “Norwegian Wood”’.” Kooper goes on to claim Dylan had played an early version for the Beatles prior to “Norwegian Wood”, stating “I think they took that song and stole it from him.”
A 1968 Rolling Stone interviewer asked Lennon outright, “What did you think of Dylan’s version of ‘Norwegian Wood’?” He answered, “I was very paranoid about that.”
The two songs indeed bear musical similarities. Both can be counted in a 6/8 meter and the melodies share the same cadence. The first syllable of the verses is held for three beats followed by three more syllables:
“I [pause] [pause] once had a girl [pause] [pause]…” in “Norwegian Wood”, and
“When [pause] [pause] she said don’t waste [pause] [pause] …” in “4th Time Around”.
Each syllable gets one beat in the choruses, as in this scheme where the numbers represent beats 1-6:
“6-she 1-asked 2-me 3-to 4-stay 5-and 6-she…” in “Norwegian Wood”, and
“6-she 1-screamed 2-till 3-her 4-face 5-got 6-so…” in “4th Time Around”.
If that didn’t make sense, the point is that the vocals of the two songs follow the same rhythm.
Instrumentation is the biggest difference between the songs musically. While “4th Time Around” is built around the harp-like plucking of an acoustic guitar, “Norwegian Wood” features George Harrison on sitar. The latter song was monumental because it introduced western listeners to Ravi Shankar and Indian music in the 1960s. Far from the weirdest track on Blonde on Blonde, “4th Time Around” didn’t break new ground musically. So if Dylan was trying to one-up Lennon, he must’ve been trying to do so lyrically.
A Google query for “Fourth Time Around Norwegian Wood” shows the internet is littered with discussions about Dylan’s motivation for writing a similar-sounding song. But to quote another Dylan song, there are “no attempts to shovel a glimpse into the ditch of what [4th Time Around] means” beyond it being a parody of the Beatles.
The Genius page for “4th Time Around”, which allows community annotation of lyrics, says the song is about Dylan’s alleged relationship with actress Edie Sedgwick. During their relationship, Sedgwick had a car accident which left her temporarily using a wheelchair and crutches, two items mentioned in the song. One annotator even suggests the title refers to their fourth time sleeping together, which strikes me as ludicrously specific and literal. The song may indeed be inspired by their time together, but what is Dylan saying about it? Surely Dylan had greater, more universal aspirations for this song than just chronicling a wacky fight with his ex or getting back at John Lennon.
Let’s review the lyrics of “4th time Around”. You’re welcome to listen and read along as I add my interpretation stanza by stanza.
When she said, “Don’t waste your words, they’re just lies”
I cried she was deaf
And she worked on my face until breaking my eyes
And saying “What else you got left?”
Dylan describes a relationship ending in a fight, possibly even physically (“she worked on my face until breaking my eyes”). The two people don’t trust each other (“just lies”) and don’t feel heard (“I cried she was deaf”). The woman feels like she’s already gotten all she can out of him (“What else you got left?”) and is ready for something else.
It was then that I got up to leave
But she said, “Don’t forget
Everybody must give something back
For something they get”
The woman brings up reciprocity: relationships are exchanges, and she needs to make sure she’s gained something from him before they break up.
I stood there and hummed, I tapped on her drum
I asked her how come
Then she buttoned her boot, and straightened her suit
And she said, “Don’t get cute”So I forced my hands in my pockets
And felt with my thumbs
And gallantly handed her my very last piece of gum
He is reluctant to reciprocate at first, but gives in and offers her something meager of his. This can be understood metaphorically as giving her a lesson to take away rather than an actual physical object. It’s also worth noting that before he makes his offering, he casually uses something of hers by tapping on her drum.
She threw me outside, I stood in the dirt
Where everyone walked
And, when finding out I’d forgotten my shirt
I went back and knocked
The narrator feels conflicted over having left too much of himself behind in the relationship. Perhaps he even feels like she took the shirt off his back.
I waited in the hallway, she went to get it
And I tried to make sense
Out of that picture of you in your wheelchair
That leaned up againstHer Jamaican rum, and when she did come
I asked her for some
She said, “No, dear”, I said, “Your words are not clear
You’d better spit out your gum”
The narrator asks for more of her things (the rum) in addition to his own belonging (the shirt). She denies his request, and in retaliation he asks her to discard what he’s just given her (the gum). By saying she needs to spit out the gum to make her words clear, he implies that his gift has interfered with her ability to communicate.
She screamed till her face got so red
Then she fell on the floor
And I covered her up and then thought I’d
go look through her drawerAnd when I was through, I filled up my shoe
And brought it to you
This is the most crucial part of the song. After the conflict escalates and the partner loses consciousness, the narrator takes this opportunity to look through her drawer. We can understand this again not as literally looking through a drawer, but as evaluating everything he knows about her and their time together. He fills up his shoe i.e. gathers as much insight as he can out of it and brings it to “you”, his next partner. In other words, he enters a new relationship having learned and grown from the previous one. At the same time, he’s only bringing a small shoeful along, a few precious gems of wisdom to apply going forward rather than a suitcase full of past baggage that would stifle the next relationship.
And you, you took me in, you loved me then
You never wasted time
And I, I never took much, I never asked for your crutch
Now don’t ask for mine
The final line reportedly unnerved John Lennon, who thought Dylan was accusing him of using his songs as a “crutch”. The mention of a crutch also echoes an earlier mention of the addressee’s wheelchair, and is probably inspired by Dylan’s former romantic interest Edie Sedgwick using both while recovering from a car accident. In the context of my interpretation, we might read the narrator’s not asking for the crutch as setting boundaries about possessiveness and mutual reliance in the new relationship, especially after the last one ended with fighting over what each of them should give the other. Whatever he takes from this relationship, he won’t deprive the addressee of her most basic needs.
With this interpretation in mind, we can understand the song title “4th Time Around” as emphasizing the cyclicity of relationships: moving through multiple relationships in life and growing each time from previous experiences.
Since this song is allegedly a response to “Norwegian Wood”, let’s review the lyrics of the latter before comparing the two.
I once had a girl
Or should I say she once had me
She showed me her room
Isn’t it good, Norwegian wood?
The first line establishes a question of possession during an affair with a woman: who belonged to whom? The woman invites the narrator in and shares her flat with him. According to Paul McCartney, privy to Lennon’s thinking and involved in the songwriting, Norwegian wood was a cheap kind of decoration in vogue at the time. This line could either be disparaging the woman for lacking in means, or just painting a modest scene as the place of a simple affair.
She asked me to stay
And she told me to sit anywhere
So I looked around
And I noticed there wasn’t a chair
The flat doesn’t even have a chair. This implies she’s invited him for sex since the bed must be the only furniture available, but it also re-emphasizes her lack of possessions and the simplicity of the setting.
I sat on a rug, biding my time
Drinking her wine
We talked until two, and then she said
“It’s time for bed”
The narrator is consuming whatever the woman has as he waits to sleep with her.
She told me she worked
In the morning, and started to laugh
I told her I didn’t
And crawled off to sleep in the bath
They didn’t sleep together. Evidently she turned him down.
And when I awoke, I was alone
This bird had flown
So I lit a fire
Isn’t it good, Norwegian wood?
McCartney claims the final line means the narrator set fire to the place because he was upset at the woman spurning him. The song ends with the narrator destroying everything the woman had and taking nothing with him from the affair. Even under a less extreme interpretation, by lighting a fire he uses up the one thing the woman left behind for him.
Now let’s compare the lyrics of the two songs. Both deal with the disintegration of a relationship, but they are different kinds of relationships yielding different outcomes. The relationship in “Norwegian Wood” seems to be an affair or one night stand; the emptiness of the woman’s house reflects the lack of content in the relationship itself. “4th Time Around” on the other hand is about a serious and meaningful relationship, and the woman’s house is full of objects associated with their shared memories.
“Norwegian Wood” opens with the concern of which person possesses the other and ends with a fire lit in an empty flat, while “4th Time Around” deals with what each partner takes away from the relationship. The narrator gets nothing out of the encounter in “Norwegian Wood”; the woman is gone in the morning and leaves behind only firewood, which he proceeds to burn. There are no future prospects for the relationship. Looking at the broader context, the narrator may not have wished for anything from the affair to spill into other relationships because he was keeping it a secret. In “4th Time Around”, on the other hand, the narrator carries a shoeful of experience into a new and ongoing relationship.
“Norwegian Wood” and “4th Time Around” are acoustic folk-songs built around a similar rhythm that discuss relationships with women, but they offer entirely different perspectives on relationships. Even if the former was inspired by Dylan and provoked the latter, both Lennon and Dylan were too brilliant to not make each of their songs independently meaningful.
If Dylan’s goal was to one-up “Norwegian Wood”, he did so by writing a more mature meditation on relationships in the lyrics.
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