Contrary to popular opinion, Post Malone‘s unfinished song using Bob Dylan’s unused lyrics will most likely not be released.
According to producer Michael Cash’s claim, after Dylan handed over the rights to his archived track ‘Be Not Deceived’ to Malone for Cash’s project The Attic MP3s, Post was not given the chance to put his finishing touches to use before Bob’s representative Jeff Rosen “retracted” their rights to the lost song.
In a interview with Rolling Stone, Cash stated:
“We got the stenciling done, he got some colors 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.”
Revealing how it “went from being something to be excited about to just turning into a circular, figure-eight pattern, Michael added ” “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.’” “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.”
Had it been completed the project would have included Kendrick Lamar and J. Cole, and could’ve been similar to Dylan’s 2014 tribute record ‘Lost on the River: The New Basement Tapes’, that featured Elvis Costello, Marcus Mumford, and Taylor Goldsmith.
A die-hard Dylan fan, Malone “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 contemporary pop superstar is a huge fan of the 82-year-old music icon, whom he has a tattoo of – along with his other idols Kurt Cobain, John Lennon and Elvis Presley on his knuckles.
In 2017, Post revealed that the ‘Blowin’ In The Wind’ singer suggested he work harder at his lyrics, and 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 influenced Malone to pick up the guitar on his record ‘Beerbongs and Bentley’ and as 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’.
Keep up with the latest trending music news by following us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram
Author: Saul Goode
Photo: Jean-Luc