When Bob Dylan writes a song or poem about a woman, he doesn’t take kindly to being jilted. In 1976’s “Sara,” for example, he begged his estranged wife Sara Lownds to come back to him by reminding her of all the time he spent “staying up for days in the Chelsea Hotel writing ‘Sad Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands’ for you.” Now Marianne Faithful has revealed that Dylan once tried to use his poetic charms on her when she was 17 years old.
“It’s true what they say: You regret the things you don’t do the most,” Faithful told WENN. “Apparently Bob Dylan spent days and days writing a poem for me in 1964 and I think it was understood in his circle that I would go to bed with him. I mean, I presume that’s the intention when you’re a very pretty girl and you go to a big star’s bedroom, isn’t it? But I didn’t realise this at the time because I was just a silly teenager and it was all a bit much.”
Did she turn down the poet laureate of rock? Well, not on purpose! “I very much wanted to go to bed with him, but I was pregnant and about to get married [to John Dunbar] at the time. I told him all this and he was furious and ripped the poem up in front of me. We are still very fond of each other and still talk about that night. I’ll always say to him, ‘But Bob, I was only 17’ and he always says, ‘Yeah, but I was only 22 myself!’”
Don’t worry, Bob, you’re in good company. Jimmy Hendrix’s plans to bed Marianne Faithful were also thwarted by another man. That time it was Mick Jagger: “I also once spent an evening with Jimi Hendrix whispering in my ear telling me all the things he was going to do to me – which I’m not going to share – but I was with Mick Jagger at the time and it would have been too unkind,” Faithful added. “I have to say that these are the things that I still regret a little.”