Tour the World via the Hotel Stationery Bob Dylan Wrote Songs On PART TWO | RAY PADGETT Flaggin' Down The Double Es

Tour the World via the Hotel Stationery Bob Dylan Wrote Songs On — Continued

Part 2: The Rest of the World

RAY PADGETT

JUN 03, 2025

 Sociedad Bilbaina gentlemen’s club for Rolling Stone promoting Tempest

Today, the second part of our World Tour of all the locations where Bob Dylan wrote songs on hotel stationery. This part travels outside North America, to songs written in hotels in the UK, Europe, and beyond.

(If you missed part one, I would definitely start there. It explains the premise—which probably does require some explanation.)

Onward in our journey…

Stop 6: London, England
Hotel: The May Fair
Song: “It Ain’t Me, Babe”

This is the only version I can find showing the flipside as well; ignore the unrelated ticket stub. via Flickr

When was he there?

We leave North America for our first visit overseas, and the second-earliest lyrics we will see, after last entry’s “Chimes of Freedom.” Unlike many of these hotels, the May Fair looms large in Dylan lore. He most famously stayed there in 1966, giving a press conference and doing a photoshoot in one of its rooms. Many well-known Dylan photos come from that May Fair stay. How well-known? I can think of six Dylan books that use May Fair 1966 photos on the cover:

 

But that Mayfair Hotel stay won’t come until 1966, a few years after “It Ain’t Me Babe.” He first stayed at the May Fair in 1962, when he was put up there by the BBC while in town to film Madhouse on Castle St. He wasn’t there long though—the hotel kicked him out. From The Guardian:

[Albert] Grossman was already in London, along with the singer Odetta, and saw Dylan put up in the raffish Mayfair Hotel near Berkeley Square.… Dylan moved from the Mayfair after complaints about his strumming his guitar in the lobby and according to Phillip Saville, “he was also having problems with his smoking habit and the management of the hotel sort of lent on his manager, Grossman, and indeed Bob, and asked if he would refrain from that kind of smoking.”

Bob didn’t hold it against them, apparently. This “It Ain’t Me Babe” draft comes from a visit in between those two, in Spring 1964, when he was in town for his performance at the Royal Festival Hall (a show I wrote about here). In fact, he first performed “It Ain’t Me, Babe” live at that very show—right after he’d been writing it at the hotel!

From the Sociedad Bilbaina not far from his hotel a Gentleman Only Club though guess you don’t refuse Bob!

Read on here . . . .  

It Ain't Me, Babe (Live at Royal Festival Hall, London, UK - May 1964)