The Story and Meaning Behind "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away," a Track Where The ...
The Beatles were growing fast in a musical sense by 1965, incorporating a wide variety of influences into their new music. Bob Dylan was one of those influences, and the Help! track “You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away” certainly owes a bit to Dylan.
But it also comes away sounding like a quintessential Beatles record, thanks to the touches the band added to the song while recording it. Here’s the story and meaning behind the achingly pretty and sad “You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away.”
Bob and the Boys
The Beatles met Bob Dylan in 1964 in New York City. By then, they were mutual admirers of each other’s work. The Fab Four liked that Dylan wrote about adult topics with fearless candor. Dylan liked how The Beatles electrified their message to make the biggest possible impact. As it turned out, each entity was moving, style-wise, in the direction of the other.
In the case of The Beatles emulating Bob, “You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away” was an admitted attempt by John Lennon to infuse his songwriting with the confessional honesty for which Dylan was known. He explained as much when looking back at the song in an interview found in The Beatles Anthology book:
“‘You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away’ is my Dylan period. It’s one of those that you sing a bit sadly to yourself, ‘Here I stand, head in hand …’ I’d started thinking about my own emotions. I don’t know when exactly it started, like ‘I’m a Loser’ or ‘Hide Your Love Away,’ those kind of things. Instead of projecting myself into a situation, I would try to express what I felt about myself, which I’d done in my books. I think it was Dylan who helped me realise that—not by any discussion or anything, but by hearing his work.
Source: Jim Beviglia/americansongwriter.com
