Bob Dylan once pitched Elvis Costello a studio album collaboration after ‘chaotic’ duet

Bob Dylan once pitched Elvis Costello a collaborative covers album after a “chaotic” duet.

While the covers album never came to be, Costello vividly remembers receiving an offer to perform with Dylan in the mid 2000s. Costello, as part of his 2007 tour of the United States, found himself working closely with the All Along the Watchtower hitmaker. While the pair would perform Tears of Rage together, it was an offer Dylan gave Costello just after the performance that stunned the Liverpool-born hitmaker. Initial conversations about a collaboration on-stage hit a snag when Costello asked if he and Dylan could perform an original, rather than a cover which had been a part of Costello’s set.

Costello, speaking with MOJO Magazine, said: “I did forty-five minutes just on my guitar. I’d see Bob now and again backstage and he suddenly asked me to come up at soundcheck. ‘I’ve been thinking about how to get you into the act,’ were his exact words. And I said, ‘Great, whatever you like.’ And he said, ‘I was thinking maybe we could do that song, Peace, Love and Understanding.’ I said, ‘Well, that’s great, except I didn’t write it.’

“And so we did Tears of Rage. And then I’m expecting, ‘Well, maybe that’ll be in the show tonight. The show was great and I didn’t get the call. A few days went by, and then a week went by, and we’re still on the road. And I’d given up. And in St Louis, I was just probably getting a cup of coffee and suddenly his production manager comes flying in and goes, ‘Boss wants you up there.’ And he’d decided to do the song just the two of us.

“And I came in singing it. He didn’t sing! He let me sing the whole first verse on my own. And I felt so exposed, y’know. Eventually he came in and we did the harmony. And then in the second verse, I sang the opening line. he sang the second line, and it wasn’t a line that was in any version of the song I knew, and it didn’t rhyme with my next line! I don’t even remember what noise I made, but it was one of panic.”

Despite the waiting around and lyrical change, Costello has fond memories of the performance, and particularly what happened afterwards. He added: “It’s one of my favourite things that ever happened. It was so chaotic. As we came off the stage, he said, ‘Yeah, you sing loud. We should do a record of Johnnie and Jack songs.’ I walked away with his manager and I said, ‘That’s never going to happen, right?'”

Costello and Dylan’s cover album of Johnnie and Jack, a country duo who performed at the Grand Old Opry, never came to be.