Influences
Dylan's biographers generally agree that the song owes its inspiration to his former girlfriend Suze Rotolo. He reportedly began writing the song during his visit to Italy in 1963 while searching for Rotolo, who was studying there.
Clinton Heylin reports that a Times reporter at a May 1964 Royal Festival Hall concert where Dylan first played "It Ain't Me" took the lines "no, no, no, it ain't me babe" as a parody of The Beatles' "She Loves You".
Read more about this topic: It Ain't Me Babe
Famous quotes containing the word influences:
“Professors of literature, who for the most part are genteel but mediocre men, can make but a poor defense of their profession, and the professors of science, who are frequently men of great intelligence but of limited interests and education, feel a politely disguised contempt for it; and thus the study of one of the most pervasive and powerful influences on human life is traduced and neglected.”
—Yvor Winters (1900–1968)
“Nothing changes more constantly than the past; for the past that influences our lives does not consist of what actually happened, but of what men believe happened.”
—Gerald W. Johnson (1890–1980)
“Do not seek anxiously to be developed, to subject yourself to many influences to be played on; it is all dissipation.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)