Where the Music Had to Go: How Bob Dylan and the Beatles Changed Each Other--and the World by Jim Windolf (Scribner, 2026)
Reviewed by Michael Jimenez
The Beatles album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is viewed as a watershed moment in the history of music. It was, in some ways, their first full studio album and it revolutionized what music could sound like. Perhaps as famous as the music was the iconic cover featuring an assortment of famous characters that the band members found interesting. One contemporary artist at the very top edge stands out in the top right-hand corner: Bob Dylan. This was not an accident.
Defining Dylan as the “fifth Beatle,” Jim Windolf’s Where the Music Had to Go: How Bob Dylan and the Beatles Changed Each Other-and the World goes deeper than earlier studies of these titans of music, illustrating just how Dylan and the Beatles influenced each other’s music (xvii). In some sense, it is remarkable that a book on their relationship had yet to be written. Contemporary music critics at the time noted the connection between them. Windolf’s carefully researched study often unpacks comments from Dylan, the Beatles, and people close to them to make his point about their important mutual influence.
Windolf writes each chapter juxtaposing the musical journey of his subjects on a mostly linear path that reveals striking similarities. For example, they all pay homage to Little Richard as crucial for their inspiration (8-18). The musicians all had a love for the history of music, which influenced their performances. As Dylan and the Beatles each helped develop a musical trend, often hearkening back to older songs, they feared making stagnant music. This fear would lead them to continually try to revolutionize their sound, often looking over their shoulders to see what the other artists were doing.
The Beatles and Dylan more or less came to the music scene about the time Elvis Presley had gone off to the army. To some extent, both camps knew that the other act was doing something special and that they had to meet each other. Even though Dylan was on the folk scene, when he first heard the Beatles, he did not dismiss them, musing that music had now changed (note the book’s title). John Lennon seemed the most obsessed with Dylan at first, desiring to make more serious music but wanting to be Dylan’s “ego equal” first (75, 80).
Once the initial meeting occurred, the musicians had a friendly rivalry that tended to push their creativity. Windolf tracks how they tended to follow each other and were inspired to evolve as artists (95). For example, Dylan’s turn toward rock and roll, going electric, was consciously inspired by the Beatles’ exciting sound, and Lennon’s and McCartney’s folk rock turn with songs like “Norwegian Wood” and “You Got to Hide Your Way” was seen as imitating Dylan. When Dylan was exclusively a folk artist, he tended to follow the script of other folkies and at least pay lip service to not desiring to pump out musical hits. When Dylan went electric, this all changed because he embraced the concept of being a rock star as embodied by the Beatles (158).
Eventually both acts would grow tired of exhausting concerts and the jeers of critics, and withdrew from the public scene to work in private on their music (214). However, as the Beatles became absorbed in making experimental studio music, Dylan was attempting to get back to the roots of a more authentic rock music (225). In short, they often engaged in a “not-always-friendly musical dialogue over what a pop song could or should be” (161). This rivalry was clearly on display in an infamous video of dialogue between Dylan and Lennon in the back of a limo in 1966 (189-97, 271). The influence of one act on another could be weighty. Windolf even catalogs the amount of times Dylan’s name came up as the Beatles were calling it quits as a band―more than any other artist’s (253).
At the tail end of the Beatles, it was George Harrison who grew closest to Dylan. In some ways, Dylan was the artist that helped George grow as an artist and make the break from the group (248-9). This seemed to be reciprocated when Dylan appeared with Harrison at the Concert for Bangladesh (along with Clapton and Ringo) and with his inclusion in Harrison’s super group The Traveling Wilburys (303-4). In fact, as the stars all continued their solo careers, the reclusive Dylan stayed in touch with them sometimes with personal visits, sometimes attending their performances (296). The mercurial Lennon’s more vocal turn to politics seemed to inspire them all to chime in on a few political issues in music and even though he had his own short stint of taking Christian evangelicalism seriously, Lennon was furious with Dylan’s born-again turn (289-93). As their careers continued, Lennon focused more on the “particulars of his own life” whereas Dylan sought “to capture universal truths” (265). Lennon’s murder would haunt them all, ultimately producing tribute songs by the remaining Beatles and then Dylan.
The book closes with a recent, revealing interview with Paul McCartney about Dylan (311-8). It mostly illuminates the level of respect the artists have for each other. Earlier in the book, Windolf records that Dylan was “in awe” of McCartney (308). McCartney clearly feels the same way. It is hard to argue against the idea that these five musicians changed music with their songwriting and performances and influenced each other.
Something special happened in the world with the music that the Beatles and Bob Dylan produced. Windolf’s book catalogs the behind-the-scenes moments that helped produce the magic of arguably some of the greatest songs in history. If the book critiques anyone it is not the five musicians. Instead, the music or political purists are the ones who look ridiculously out of step of history. In some ways, their idealism prevented them from appreciating the genius of these innovators. Ideologues who try to force our musicians to make political statements should take note.
Where the Music Had to Go is an unlikely story considering the origins of the protagonists are so different, but, as Windolf notes, these men were artists whose popularity stems from their ability to “make a genuine connection with other people” (307). Their popularity today reveals that this connection is enduring. Considering their perpetual fandom, the book should have no problem finding an audience.
Michael Jimenez is an Associate Professor of history at Vanguard University. He is the author of Remembering Lived Lives: A Historiography from the Underside of Modernity and Karl Barth and the Study of the Religious Enlightenment: Encountering the Task of History.
