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.
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