As the first musician to ever win the Nobel Prize in Literature, Bob Dylan‘s songwriting skills are unparalleled. But the man himself doesn’t consider all of his lyrics to be winners…and in one case, he didn’t even want to be associated with a song he helped to write.
While the 1969 film Easy Rider is considered a classic today, when Dylan first saw the film, he wasn’t a fan. Still, after Peter Fonda (who co-produced, co-wrote and starred in the movie) gave Dylan a private screening ahead of its release and asked him to write a theme, he reportedly wrote down a verse on a napkin and told Fonda to give it to Roger McGuinn, frontman for The Byrds, saying, “He’ll know what to do with it.”
“I guess he knew I was able to take it and run with it,” McGuinn told Guitar Player.
“He and I had been friends,” McGuinn continued. “When I lived in Malibu, he used to come over to my house, and we’d play guitars and shoot pool. So he handed the verse to me as a surrogate, I guess.”
Dylan didn’t give McGuinn any input on the tune as he finished writing it, even though the latter “wasn’t really a prolific songwriter” at the time, as he put it.
“I had a whimsical attitude about writing songs. Gene Parsons had turned me on to sea shanties around that time,” McGuinn said, adding, “But I wasn’t really trying to convey a big message or anything like that. I wasn’t a protest songwriter. I just wrote songs that appealed to me.”
Unfortunately, “The Ballad of Easy Rider” didn’t appeal much to Dylan, who wasn’t thrilled when he found out he was credited as a songwriter.
“He called me up at about three o’clock in the morning a couple of weeks later,” McGuinn recalled. “Bob said, ‘What’s this credit? I don’t need the money. You can take it off.’ I said, ‘Okay.’ He didn’t want any association with it because he didn’t like the movie.”
Of course, in this case, Dylan’s instincts were way off the mark, as Easy Rider went on to become a critical and commercial hit, winning an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay (Jack Nicholson also won for Best Supporting Actor). The song was also hugely popular, with Rolling Stone’s David Fricke praising the track for capturing “the weary blues and dashed expectations of a decade’s worth of social insurrection” in the liner notes of 1997’s “Ballad of Easy Rider” reissue.
“We had no idea it was going to be a blockbuster,” McGuinn said. “But that’s the way it was.”
Related: Bob Dylan Once Got Picked Up by the Cops for the Most Hilarious Reason
This story was originally reported by Parade on Sep 25, 2025, where it first appeared in the News section. Add Parade as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
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