4th Time Around

"4th Time Around"
Song by Bob Dylan from the album Blonde on Blonde
Released	May 16, 1966
Recorded	February 14, 1966
Genre	Folk rock
Length	4:35
Label	Columbia
Writer	Bob Dylan
Blonde on Blonde track listing "Absolutely Sweet Marie" (11) "4th Time Around" (12) "Obviously 5 Believers" (13)

"4th Time Around" is a song by Bob Dylan on his 1966 album, Blonde on Blonde.

Narrative

With lyrics that contrast the mundane with the absurd, "4th Time Around" is suggestive of a young romance. The song revolves around the actions and brief spoken phrases of a man and a woman, who are presumably in the midst of a lover's quarrel. It opens with what could be interpreted as the climax of an argument "When she said/ Don't waste your words, they're just lies/ I cried she was deaf." The narrator refers to the woman as "she" throughout the song, but in the last stanza begins to address someone directly, using the pronoun "you", i.e. "you took me in,/you loved me then". Musically speaking, the simple folk melody of the song contrasts with the more blues-rock oriented sound of most of Blonde on Blonde.

Comparisons to "Norwegian Wood"

"4th Time Around" was commonly speculated to be a response to The Beatles' song "Norwegian Wood" - written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney for the 1965 album Rubber Soul - as the two tracks share a reasonably similar melody and lyrical premise. "Norwegian Wood" was one of the first Beatles tracks where the lyrics are more important than the melody and showed an obvious Dylan-influence. "4th Time Around" has been seen as either a playful homage, or a satirical warning to Lennon about co-opting Dylan's well-known songwriting devices. Lennon expressed a range of opinions on this topic in interviews between 1970 and 1980. He initially felt it to be a somewhat pointed parody of "Norwegian Wood", but later he considered Dylan's effort to be more a playful homage. Still, the last line of "4th Time Around" ("I never asked for your crutch / Now don't ask for mine.") played into Lennon's deep but misplaced paranoia about Dylan in 1966-67, when he interpreted this line as a warning not to use Dylan's songs as a "crutch" for Lennon's songwriting.

However, this line can also be read as a comment aimed at Joan Baez. During his early career, Baez had championed Dylan as a rising talent and regularly called him on stage with her when touring. As Dylan became the more popular artist, she expected the same treatment, but Dylan was reluctant to share the spotlight. In "4th Time Around", Dylan may have been commenting on their break-up and the feeling that he had never relied on her support (or "crutch"), while Baez was now leaning on her Dylan connection for credibility.^{[citation needed]}

But simply in the context of the song, "crutch" could just mean a physical "crutch" contrasted with Dylan's "crutch." There are probably two people in the song. "Her" would refer to the person the song is about, while "you" would refer to the person he is singing the song to, who happens to own a "wheelchair", symbolically or perhaps physically. He leaves one person to end up at another person's house, where he tells his story about the first person.

Also

A performance of "4th Time Around" from The Bootleg Series Vol. 4: Bob Dylan Live 1966, The "Royal Albert Hall" Concert appeared on the soundtrack for the film Vanilla Sky.

Covers

• Terry Melcher: Terry Melcher (1974)
• The Sports: The Sports Play Dylan & Donovan (1981)
• Pete Williams: The Times They Are A-Changin' (1992)
• Steve Gibbons: The Dylan Project (1998)
• Chris Whitley: Perfect Day (2000) and On Air (2008)
• Michael Moore: Jewels and Binoculars (2000)
• Michel Montecrossa: 4th Time Around (2001)
• Dylan Project: May Your Song Always Be Sung: The Songs of Bob Dylan, Volume 3 (2003)
• Yo La Tengo: I'm Not There Original Soundtrack (2007)

External links

• Lyrics