Credit: Far Out / Riccardo Ghilardi

The peculiar phone call between Bob Dylan and Carrie Fisher

Sat 20 January 2024 17:15, UK

After losing out on the role of child sex worker Iris in Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver in the mid-1970s, Carrie Fisher bounced back impressively in George Lucas’ seismic sci-fi franchise, Star Wars. The intergalactic story was introduced in 1977 with the franchise’s first instalment, Episode IV: A New Hope, which launched Fisher to superstardom alongside Mark Hamill and Harrison Ford.

While bridging her late teens to early 20s, Fisher was immersed in the world of A-list fame. After entering into a brief romantic affair with Han Solo actor Harrison Ford, she rubbed shoulders with The Rolling Stones and members of the British comedy troupe Monty Python, among other impactful liaisons.

In her memoir, Wishful Drinking, Fisher reflected on her life, examining in particular her longlived struggle with addiction. Among the book’s many comical anecdotes was one in which the legendary singer-songwriter Bob Dylan gave her a strange phone call.

At the time, Fisher was working on the 1990 movie Postcards from the Edge, based on her 1987 semi-autobiographical novel of the same title. This was a particularly challenging period for Fisher as she reflected on her divorce from singer-songwriter Paul Simon, whom she had dated since 1977 and married in 1983.

“I started flying out to LA from New York a lot — and this was really bad for my relationship with Paul, and pretty soon we both knew it was over. (He might have known a little sooner than I did),” Fisher recalled in Wishful Drinking. “Mike Nichols used to say we were two flowers, no gardener. No one was minding the relationship.”

When she heard that Dylan was trying to contact her in the late 1980s, Fisher was wary about welcoming another troubadour into her life. “Fuck you. You get that stalker away from me,” she recalled voicing internally at the time. “I don’t want any more ’60s icons fucking up my life!”

Despite her apprehension, Fisher accepted a phone call from Dylan. Much to her surprise and relief, the ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ singer simply wanted her opinion on a cologne line he had been asked to endorse. The company had suggested the scent be titled ‘Just Like a Woman’ after Dylan’s 1966 song; although he wanted to help the campaign, Dylan wasn’t a fan of the title.

“Do I look like someone who would be wandering around with a bunch of cologne names rattling around in my head?” Fisher reflected. “Well, tragically, I did. I did have quite a few ideas for cologne names, and so I told them to Bob.”

“There was ‘Ambivalence’, for the scent of confusion. ‘Arbitrary’ for the man who doesn’t give a shit how he smells! And ‘Empathy’ — feel like them and smell like this,” she remembered suggesting.

“Well, Bob actually liked those!” she added with some surprise. “And then he said he thought he might like to open a beauty salon, and I said, ‘What? Like ‘Tangled Up and Blown’?'”

Listen to Bob Dylan’s ‘Just Like a Woman’ below.