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)

Sir Douglas Quintet - Linda Lu/Country Girl | jt1674

Yas oh Yas! 

https://www.tumblr.com/jt1674/785243982540242944/sir-douglas-quintet-linda-lu-country-girl

Tuesday Blue Funk? Here’s a remedy!

Useful advice from our Robert [Crumb that is!]

 

Harold Budd- Juno (The Pavilion of Dreams - Ambient Musics Series - B Eno) | jt1674

 again I think I bought most of not all the Ambient albums on vinyl when they came out!

https://www.tumblr.com/jt1674/785176336488710144/harold-budd-juno

George in Get Back . . . . .(2021)

George Harrison in The Beatles: Get Back (2021)
Directed by Peter Jackson

Traffic - No Face, No Name, No Number rehearsals The Complete BBC 1967-1968 | jt1674

 

https://www.tumblr.com/jt1674/785162504022196224/traffic-no-face-no-name-no-number

Bert Jansch & John Renbourn - The Time Has Come | Guess I’m Dumb

young young young!

Bert Jansch & John Renbourn - The Time Has Come (1966)

Virtuoso guitarists Bert Jansch and John Renbourn recorded an LP together before they founded Pentangle, and this song, written by Anne Briggs, was one the highlights.

BIRTHDAYS: Remembering Charlie Watts (2 June 1941 – 24 August 2021) “Charlie’s good t’night inne?"

To the world, he was a rock star. But Watts often said that the actual experience was draining and unpleasant, and even frightening. “Girls chasing you down the street, screaming … horrible!… I hated it,” he told The Guardian newspaper in an interview. In another interview, he described the drumming life as a “cross between being an athlete and a total nervous wreck.”

Watts wasn’t a rock music fan at first and remembered being guided by Richards and Brian Jones as he absorbed blues and rock records, notably the music of bluesman Jimmy Reed. He said the band could trace its roots to a brief period when he had lost his job and shared an apartment with Jagger and Richards because he could live there rent-free.

“Keith Richards taught me rock and roll,” Watts said. “We’d have nothing to do all day and we’d play these records over and over again. I learned to love Muddy Waters. Keith turned me on to how good Elvis Presley was, and I’d always hated Elvis up ’til then.”

“Every band I’d ever been in had lasted a week,” he said. “I always thought the Stones would last a week, then a fortnight, and then suddenly, it’s 30 years.”

By JILL LAWLESS and GREGORY KATZ
Photo by Terry Disney/Daily Express

Don's Tunes

My favourite story almost certainly apocryphal, is when Charlie heard Mick phoned his hotel room at 5 in the morning and said “Where’s my drummer?” He showered shaved put his three piece suit on, a dash of cologne and went round to Mick’s room in his hotel, knocked the door and shoving Mick by the shoulders (“punched"- Keef) and he said 

“Don’t ever call me your drummer again! 

I’m not YOUR drummer!

Your MY singer!’

Class act!

Bob Dylan photo of the day!

An intimate image of Bob Dylan with Suze Rotolo backstage at the Newport Folk Festival, 1963. Bob was 22 and Suze was 20. Just kids with a whole world to experience🌼🌵🌸

📸the legendary @jimmarshallphoto

did Jim Marshall photograph EVERYTHING!?

 

Molly Burch - Please Be Mine | TWILIGHTZONE

 Molly Burch // Please Be Mine (Official Video)

we like Molly and have featured her before . . . . . and with that we will sign off for the day . . . . .