4th Time Around

"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, lyrical premise, and 3/4 time signature. "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 1966 and 1980. Initially, he felt it to be a somewhat pointed parody of "Norwegian Wood", due particularly to the final line of "4th Time Around" ("I never asked for your crutch / Now don't ask for mine.") which played into his apparent paranoia about Dylan in 1966–67 because he interpreted it as a warning not to use Dylan's songs as a "crutch" for his own songwriting.[1] Later, however, he changed his opinion on the track to become more favourable when he considered Dylan's effort to be more a playful homage. This shift can be seen when he was asked about his opinion on the track in a 1968 Rolling Stone Magazine interview, in which he stated:

"I was very paranoid about that. I remember he played it to me when he was in London. He said, what do you think? I said, I don’t like it. I didn’t like it. I was very paranoid. I just didn’t like what I felt I was feeling – I thought it was an out and out skit, you know, but it wasn’t. It was great. I mean he wasn’t playing any tricks on me. I was just going through the bit."[2]

• Lyrics from official site