August 28, 1964: Bob Dylan Meets The Beatles

A simulation. There were no photographers at the meeting.

August 28, 1964, 60 years ago: The 1st of the 2 great summits of rock and roll occurs: Bob Dylan meets The Beatles.

Dylan released his 3rd album, The Times They Are a-Changin', on February 10, 1964, the day after The Beatles made their 1st American TV appearance, on The Ed Sullivan Show. Among the songs they played was "I Want to Hold Your Hand," then the Number 1 song in America. The bridge goes as follows:

And when I touch you

I feel happy inside.

It's such a feeling that

my love, I can't hide, I can't hide, I can't hide!

But between the music and their Liverpudlian accents, Dylan thought they were singing, "I get high, I get high, I get high!" Dylan, a marijuana smoker, assumed that The Beatles were potheads, too.

In fact, the Fab Four did get high, many times -- but on amphetamines, pep pills. They used them to stay up all night when they were cutting their teeth in the clubs of the Reeperbahn in Hamburg, Germany before they made it big in their homeland. They had never smoked weed yet. It wasn't popular in Britain yet.

When The Beatles returned to America for their Summer 1964 tour, a meeting was set up between them and the leader of American music's protest movement. The band was staying in a 6th floor suite at the Hotel Delmonico, at 502 Park Avenue at 59th Street. Al Aronowitz, covering the tour for The Saturday Evening Post, was friendly with both the band and Dylan, and brought Dylan in.

Dylan brought joints in with him. He first offered one to Ringo Starr. According to one account, the drummer, "ignorant of dope etiquette, chugged through that first joint like a stevedore attacking his first Woodbine of the morning and collapsed in a giggling mess." Next was their manager, Brian Epstein, who was affected very quickly, saying, "I'm so high, I'm up on the ceiling."

Paul McCartney believed he'd attained true mental clarity for the first time in his life, and instructed Beatles roadie and major-domo Mal Evans to write down everything he said henceforth. Whatever John Lennon and George Harrison said or felt, it appears not to have been recorded.

At one point, the phone rang, and Dylan answered, "This is Beatlemania here!" They drank some wine, and got along great.

The 2nd great summit happened exactly 365 days later, on August 27, 1965: Elvis Presley met The Beatles. It didn't go nearly as well.

The effect that marijuana had on the music of Dylan, and on that of The Beatles, is debatable. The effect that the meeting had on each is undeniable. Dylan "went electric," and, within 2 years, produced 3 albums that are regarded as absolute classics: Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited (including "Like a Rolling Stone"), and Blonde On Blonde.

As for The Beatles, most of the effects of the meeting with Dylan were, by his own admission, on John. Without Dylan, he almost certainly would not have written "I'm a Loser," "I Don't Want to Spoil the Party," "Help!", "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away," "Nowhere Man," "Norwegian Wood," "She Said She Said" and "Tomorrow Never Knows" -- to say nothing of what he did from Sgt. Pepper onward.

In 1988, each in their 1st year of eligibility, Dylan and The Beatles were elected to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. That same year, George invited Bob to be in his "supergroup," The Traveling Wilburys, along with Roy Orbison, Tom Petty, and Jeff Lynne of Electric Light Orchestra. In 1992, at the Dylan tribute concert at Madison Square Garden, George sang "If Not For You," not one of Bob's better songs; and "Absolutely Sweet Marie," a good one that he probably wouldn't have written without The Beatles' influence.

Al Aronowitz lived until 2005. Built in 1929, the Delmonico was converted into apartments in 1974. In 2018, it was bought by the Trump Organization, and renamed Trump Park Avenue. Disgusting.