Bob Dylan nearly covered Foo Fighters hit during comeback tour: ‘You’ve got enough good songs’

Bob Dylan is no stranger to covering the work of his peers, but Foo Fighters found themselves on the fringe of his set during a comeback tour. The veteran songwriter, 85, has been covering Jerry Lee Lewis and Bobby Bland as of late but there was a time where he had considered having a go at a Dave Grohl-penned classic.

Though the cover would not come together in the end, there had been some suggestion that Dylan was going to try his hand at Everlong. How a Dylan interpretation of The Colour and the Shape hit would sound, we will never know, but the songwriter had intended it for his set at one point. Grohl would recall the interaction with Dylan and suggested there was interest from the Mr. Tambourine Man hitmaker in placing it in his set.

The unlikely suggestion came during even unlikelier circumstances, as Dylan had tipped Foo Fighters as the opening act of his performances. Just two years after the release of Modern Times, and Dylan was on the road with Grohl and company in 2006, performing in arenas across North America.

Grohl told Uncut Magazine: “A few shows in, we were at this hockey arena in Canada, and a production assistant came up and said, ‘Hey, Dave. Bob wants to talk to you. We’ll come and get you when he’s ready’. A few minutes later, someone comes in and says, ‘OK, Bob’s ready’. I started walking down this sterile, concrete hallway. The guy said, ‘He’s right around that corner’.

“There he was, standing in this tunnel that led out into the arena. All I could see was his silhouette: he had a black, hooded sweatshirt pulled up over his head, a black leather jacket, black jeans and black boots on. He was leaning against the wall with his arms crossed. Then he said, ‘Man, what’s that song you guys got? “The only thing I’ll ever ask of you is promise not to stop when I say when?”‘ I said, “Oh, that’s Everlong.'”

While Dylan was full of praise for The Colour and the Shape single, he went a step further and suggested he may even play it as part of his show. He told Grohl: “That’s a great song, man. I should do that song.” Grohl added: “I was like, ‘You know, I think you’ve got enough good songs to hold you over.'”

Dylan has covered many artists during his decades on stage including Grateful Dead, Leonard Cohen, and Bruce Springsteen. But Foo Fighters could have found their work reinterpreted by the master wordsmith back in the mid-2000s. The Everlong cover would never come to pass, but it offered an example of Dylan’s longevity on stage and his ear for modern music.