The Bob Dylan album Elton John called “beautiful”
Bob Dylan has been a steadfast presence in Elton John’s life since his youth, bearing witness to the singer-songwriter’s ceaseless transformation and evolution. Throughout the years, Dylan has donned various personas, each eliciting delight from John, but there’s one album in his extensive catalogue that holds particular significance.
Dylan operated prolifically after breaking through into the mainstream with his sophomore album, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, in 1963. Over the next three years, he worked at an exhaustive pace, releasing five more albums before, finally, a motorcycle accident forced him to take a break from the relentless carousel.
Upon returning at the end of 1967, Dylan somewhat returned to his roots on John Wesley Harding, albeit mixed with newfound country leanings. Despite hinting at the latter on the aforementioned album, it still shocked many when Dylan decided to fully embrace country on 1969’s Nashville Skyline, which remains a favourite of Elton’s.
Most notably, the album opened with Dylan duetting with Johnny Cash on ‘Girl from the North Country’ and featured ‘Lay Lady Lay’. The latter was initially planned to be a collaboration with Barbara Streisand, which never came to fruition. However, in the end, Dylan didn’t need anyone else’s assistance to turn it into a masterpiece.
During an appearance on the Celebrity Playlist Podcast in 2011, John spoke of his love of Dylan, particularly of Nashville Skyline and ‘Lay Lady Lay’. He said while in conversation with Leon Russell: “I’m going to play something by Bob Dylan. How do you choose something by Bob Dylan? I racked my brains to try and choose something. Modern Times, which came out about six years ago, and was such a great record, but I went back to Nashville Skyline because it was such an unusual record for him to make.”
Elton continued: “When it came out, like Bob, he surprised you every now and again by completely going off into a different direction, and that’s why I admire him so much as an artist. Nashville Skyline was such a beautiful record, and ‘Lay Lady Lay’ is a great and beautiful song. It’s a great romantic song.”
As well as having a place among Dylan’s most vital work, Nashville Skyline had a transformative cultural effect and helped bring the gift of country to a new demographic. Before Dylan’s foray into the journey, it was a closed club, but this album proved otherwise and helped make it more inclusive than ever before.
Furthermore, the respect between Dylan and John is reciprocal. The English musician recalled in his autobiography, ME, “We passed Bob Dylan on the stairs at the Fillmore East, and he stopped, introduced himself, then told Bernie he loved the lyrics of a song from Tumbleweed Connection called ‘Ballad of a Well-Known Gun’.”
Listen to Nashville Skyline below.
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