How Dylan influenced McCartney

The Beatles' record sales dwarfed those of Bob Dylan. In terms of musical influence, the relationship was inverse. 

Paul McCartney has described the guru master relationship:

He was our idol... I could feel myself climbing a spiral walkway as I was talking to Dylan... like I was figuring it all out, the meaning of life.

Despite this adulation, Paul was less obviously musically in thrall to the Minnesota man than his son. While Lennon, as he later conceded, went full hobo ('John, could you please sing it a little less like Bob Dylan?' George Martin), the influence on McCartney's songwriting was more subtle.

Dylanesque elements in Paul songs?

McCartney never abandoned his general adherence to the American songbook AABA format. Nor did he adopt the more acerbic tone associated with songs like Positively Fourth Street, as Lennon does for I'm a Loser. 

But there are clear Dylan influences in his mid-Beatle approach  songwriting. These include: 

• the invention of different personas to narrate songs (e.g Sergeant Pepper, She's Leaving Home) 
• ambiguous narration (Hey Jude, She's Leaving Home, etc)
• inventing new folk tales (Eleanor Rigby, Penny Lane, Rocky Racoon, Maxwell's Silver Hammer)
• using a more literary/poetic vocabulary

Tellingly, Paul never sounds like Bob even when using similar techniques - see I'll Follow the Sun, for example.