I've written twice before about possible influences on the lyrics of "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away," but yester-day I think I found yet an-other.
Years ago, I noted the similarity between "Gather 'round, all you clowns" and "Come gather 'round, people, wherever you roam" from Bob Dylan's "The Times They Are A-Changin'," and more recently, I discovered a resemblance between "Here I stand, head in hand" and "Baby, here I stand before you with my heart in my hand" from Chuck Berry's "Confessin' the Blues."
I listened to Another Side of Bob Dylan yester-day (because it was originally released on 8 August 1964) and noticed the lines "I can't understand / She let go of my hand / And left me here facing the wall" in "I Don't Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met)." These bear some resemblance to "Here I stand, head in hand, turn my face to the wall." While the structure is a bit different, the rhymes are the same: "(under)stand," "hand," and "wall" (later rhymed with "all" in Dylan's song, "small" in the Beatles'). Both even have "face/facing (to) the wall."
The Beatles Anthology quotes Lennon saying that "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away" is from his "Dylan period," so the resemblance between it and "I Don't Believe You" seems to have more merit than its similarity to "Confessin' the Blues," although Lennon could have had both in mind (either consciously or not) while he was writing.
