Post Malone’s unfinished song using Bob Dylan’s unused lyrics likely won’t see the light of day.
Producer Michael Cash has claimed that after the music legend handed over the rights to his archived track ‘Be Not Deceived’, which Malone worked on for Cash’s project ‘The Attic MP3s’, the ‘Circles’ hitmaker didn’t get a chance to put the finishing touches to the tune, and in the end, Bob, via his representative Jeff Rosen, told them they would “retract” their rights to the lost song.
Cash told Rolling Stone: “We got the stenciling done, he got some colours in, but he definitely wasn’t finished.
“It needed flair. It needed more layers. It wasn’t a complete piece of music, but it was definitely a song. It had a beginning, a middle, and an end. There was a bridge, there was a chorus. It just needed to be finished.”
He revealed how it “went from being something to be excited about to just turning into a circular, figure-eight pattern.”
Cash continued: “Rosen said to me at a certain point, ‘Well, we’re just going to retract the lyrics.’
“Bob and Mr. Rosen do things a specific way.
“They get things done in a New York minute, and then it started to become… Honestly, they just were like, ‘This should be finished.’”
He added: “It just seems like nobody really managed expectations, and it just seems like nobody communicated. A really cool piece of music got made, and then it just got weird. It got really weird.”
The project would have included the likes of Kendrick Lamar and J. Cole, too, and be like the 2014 Dylan tribute record ‘Lost on the River: The New Basement Tapes’, which saw Elvis Costello, Marcus Mumford, and Taylor Goldsmith record songs from the ‘Mr. Tambourine Man’s leftover lyrics.
Malone is a die-hared Dylan fan and “cried” when he heard the lyrics, which are “about a loss of innocence and what people are going through — disfranchised, kind of leaderless masses of children with no parent or guardian or shepherd or anything. It talked about going out and making your own way. And when you read it, honestly, it’s poetry. It’s beautiful.”
The 28-year-old star is a huge fan of the 82-year-old icon, whom he has a tattoo of – along with his other idols Kurt Cobain, John Lennon and Elvis Presley on his knuckles – and, in 2017, he revealed that the ‘Blowin’ In The Wind’ singer suggested he work harder at his lyrics.
He said: “I’m a big Bob Dylan fan. I have a nice Bob Dylan tattoo.
“He’s a genius and I heard that his grandson played my music for him and he liked the music be he said I need help with lyrics.”
Dylan also influenced Malone to pick up the guitar on his record ‘Beerbongs and Bentley’.
He told the Daily Star newspaper: “I played a lot more guitar on this album.
“I wanted to push boundaries and change the standard of what music is, and it’s a genre-less style of music instead of hip-hop.”
Malone was also inspired by Dylan’s bravery in picking up an electric guitar for the first time for Side Two of his fifth album ‘Bringing It All Back Home’, despite critics within the folk world, including musician Ewan MacColl, slamming him for performing with a rock band and moving away from political tracks in favour of hits like 1965’s ‘Like a Rolling Stone’.