From the grandly poetic ‘Idiot Wind’ I now shift to one of the simplest songs in the Dylan canon.

‘He Was a Friend of Mine’ is another tune recorded when Dylan was in his early 20s that feels like it was written by a much older man.

Truth is, I don’t know if Dylan actually wrote this song. So many of his early songs (as well as many from the past decade or so) are re-imaginings of classic Civil War-era tunes. He picks up a melody line here, a phrase there and recombines them into something brand new.

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