Despite working with all-time greats like Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson, and The Rolling Stones, Paul McCartney has one more name on his list of dream collaborators.
The Beatles and Wings member has made it clear on a handful of occasions that he would like to work with Bob Dylan in the studio. McCartney stated again when speaking on Amy Poehler’s Good Hang podcast that he doesn’t have the nerve to call Dylan and ask to work with him in the studio. While McCartney has released the likes of Say Say Say with Jackson and Ebony and Ivory with Wonder, the veteran songwriter has also featured some live show surprises throughout his career. Collaborations with Bruce Springsteen on-stage, writing with Elvis Costello on Flowers in the Dirt, and duetting with Johnny Cash can be found in McCartney’s legendary career, but working with Dylan appears to be what the Let It Be hitmaker wants most of all.
The Parks and Recreation star asked McCartney: “I bet you’ve been able to collaborate with mostly everybody that you wanted to collaborate with at some point, is there anybody that you still wish to collaborate with?”
McCartney responded: “No, I get asked this question and I always think Bob Dylan, but I’m too nervous to ring him up.”
Dylan is no stranger to collaborations and has in the last few years worked with Barbra Streisand on her The Secret of Life: Partners, Volume Two, which McCartney also appeared on. In the past, Dylan has also worked with U2, Gene Simmons, and the legendary Kurtis Blow’s Street Rock, a song that has Dylan rapping.
McCartney and Dylan have had a few encounters outside of music, with The Beatles legend failing to recognise the Mr. Tambourine Man songwriter at an airport. McCartney said: “I did, yeah. I was going through an airport, and this kind of homeless guy comes shuffling up to me in a grey hoodie. And I’m going, ‘Yeah? Can I help you?’ [Dylan voice], ‘Hey, Paul. It’s Bob.’ I must say, you know, he was very incognito. I would not have recognised him at all.”
One of McCartney’s earliest encounters with Dylan saw the pair share the “meaning of life” when at a party. Though Dylan would deliver what he believed was the meaning of life to McCartney, the Wings frontman was a touch disappointed with what he had written down.
McCartney said: “It was a crazy honour to meet him, we had a crazy party the first night we met. I thought I’d found the meaning of life that night. I went around trying round to our roadie going ‘Mal, Mal, Mal’ get us some paper and a pencil, I’ve got it!’
“Mal was a bit out of it and couldn’t find a piece of paper and a pencil anywhere but eventually at the end of the evening he found it and I wrote down my message for the universe y’know and I said ‘keep that, keep that in your pocket’ and Mal did. The next morning he said, ‘Here Paul, do you wanna see that?’ and I was like ‘what‘, he said that bit of paper and I said ‘oh yeah’ and it had written ‘there are seven levels’.”
Discover more from Cult Following
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
