Back in the London Hilton in ’66, after a joint smoking session, fame and the price of it came into the conversation…
“I don’t know if I like it,” Dylan confessed.
“Like what?” a stoned McCartney asked.
“You know. Fame. Fame and fortune.”
“Beats smokey nightclubs all to hell,” Lennon said.
“Yeah, it does,” Dylan agreed. “But I feel like I don’t, you know, deserve it. I feel sort of, ah… guilty about all of it.”
Lennon wouldn’t hear of it. “Why should you feel guilty? You deserve it. All of it. You’re the best fuckin’ songwriter in the world. Your songs are deep. They mean something.”
“That’s just it,” Dylan said. “They don’t mean anything. I just write’ em. I don’t even know what my songs mean, and here I am, people calling me God and everything….”
“Don’t let George hear you say that,” McCartney joked.
Dylan continued, “So here I am, sitting in hotel rooms, banging away these words on a typewriter. Words! Phrases! Words and Phrases! Phrases and Words! And one morning I wake up and Albert tells me I’m a millionaire. Beats me.” He shrugged his shoulders. “Who said I wanted to be a millionaire?”
They were all pretty bombed by this time. Dylan could see that Lennon didn’t believe him, so he suggested that the three of them write a song together and he’d show them how it was done.
“Us write with you?” Lennon was shocked. Also a little scared. “We can’t write like that. We write these little love songs. Little rock & roll love songs. We can’t write Dylan. Only Dylan can do that.”
Dylan laughed, “That’s what everyone thinks. C’mon over here.”
He sat down behind a typewriter at the end of an eight-foot mahogany table. John and Paul sat at either side of the typewriter.
“Okay, now what’s the first thing that comes to your mind?” Dylan asked.
“I don’t know. I can’t think of anything,” Lennon said.
“It’s just words we’re looking for,” Dylan said. “Words and phrases. Think of words and phrases.”
Lennon was silent. “Words and phrases, right?” he said weakly.
Dylan couldn’t wait any longer. “Words and phrases right,” he said, then typed it as the first line of the song.
“You’re gonna use that?” Lennon said.
“I can use anything, John. It doesn’t matter. Now you think of something, Paul.”
McCartney looked down at his cigarette. “Cigarette ash”, he said, challenging Dylan.
Dylan seized it gleefully. “That’s it. You’ve got it. Now… ‘Words and phrases right’… ‘Cigarette ash keep me up all night!’ . . . yeah, that’s good.” He quickly entered it into the typewriter, then asked John for another thought.
“Where’d you learn to type so fast?” John asked. He didn’t want to accept the fact that this was how Dylan wrote.
“How come your mama types so fast?” Dylan said, ignoring Lennon. Then McCartney added, “At this rate she’ll be done by a quarter past.” Paul and Dylan laughed hysterically.
They continued on for a while, Lennon and McCartney getting the hang of it as they were working with Dylan on this song…”I picked my nose and I’m glad I did!” Lennon screamed. Then McCartney added, “No one knows my nose ’cause I keep it hid!”
At that moment, the three of them actually fell on the floor, they were laughing so hard.
“Oh, God, it hurts,” Dylan said from the floor. “I can’t stop.”
Lennon and McCartney looked at each other underneath the table. They could write songs with Bob Dylan. It felt terrific. Lennon started another line, but Dylan stopped him.
“Wait a minute now.” Dylan was wiping the tears from his eyes. “Lemme get that last one. Now what was it? I can’t even remember.” They were so stoned that time was standing still.
McCartney started to tell him: “It was … uh …” He couldn’t think of it. “What the hell was the line, John?”
“I don’t remember it, either!” Lennon shrieked.
They all fell on the floor again.
“Greatest fucking line in rock & roll history,” Dylan said, still on his back, “and we can’t remember what it is! I don’t believe it! I don’t believe it! …”
“PNEUMONIA CEILINGS” – Never released, never recorded, never even finished, was thrown into the garbage as soon as John and Paul left. Bob, still half laughing, exclaimed to Neuwirth “man, they ate that shit up, didn’t they?”
The Lennon-McCartney-Dylan collaboration, mostly known as “Pneumonia Ceilings” was rescued by a housekeeper at the hotel the day after John and Paul visited Dylan. She sold it for a mere $5 to Beatle fan….
Sources: http://moicani.over-blog.com/article-john-lennon-bob-dylan-53241676.html
