Ballad of Easy Rider

Album: Ballad of Easy Rider (1969)
Charted: 65
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  • Lyrics currently unavailable Writer/s: Roger McGuinn
    Publisher: Wixen Music Publishing

Comments: 2

  • AnonymousLove this song and movie my hubby was 18 and me 19
    Makes me nostalgic...one ot the greatest movies.thank you
  • Ken from Philadelphia, PaRoger tells a very different version of the events. The basic elements are the same but there is no malice on Dylan’s part. Peter Fonda, indeed, hoped Dylan would write the title song. He went so far as to arrange a private screening in New York for him. After the screening, Dylan jotted down a sentence (which became the first line of the song) on a scrap of paper and gave to Fonda, saying cryptically, “give this to Roger. He’ll know what to do”. Fonda returned to California and gave the scrap of paper to the only Roger he knew, Roger McGuinn. McGuinn took it and wrote the rest of the song. He had no other direction from Dylan except the one cryptic statement he made to Fonda in New York. To be safe, Roger had Dylan listed as a 50-50 co-writer. Dylan realized it months later when he started getting royalty checks and called Roger and said, very graciously, “take my name off there. I don’t need the money. You keep it.”
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