Credit: Far Out / Alamy / Jean-Luc Ourlin

The failed duet between Bob Dylan and David Bowie

Mon 28 August 2023 16:00, UK

As prolific as he was versatile, David Bowie has a staggering 26 studio albums to his name. Record sales in the hundreds of millions made him one of the most influential artists of all time, consistently reinventing himself with a sharp relevance to glam rock and pop.

Bowie breezed through different personas with ease, but never at the expense of his songwriting. The ‘Let’s Dance’ singer always fused style and substance effortlessly, and being such a talented songwriter, was often asked to name the peers he respected. The legendary Bob Dylan often popped up in the conversation.

If ‘Song For Bob Dylan’ didn’t make it clear, Bowie was a huge fan of the philosophical songwriter. In turn, Dylan proclaimed he was a fan of Bowie. Their mutual respect was well-sustained, and Bowie mentioned during an interview with BBC Radio 6 that the pair were once set to form a duet.

“I wrote a lot of things with Dylan,” he said in the 2005 interview. “Actually, not many people know that. Me and Dylan, we were going to do a duet thing at one time. We got it in our heads that we could do it a duet, like Art & Garfunkel thing, but in the next morning, I didn’t hear another word from him,” David Bowie said.

The meeting of the minds wasn’t meant to be, but fans of both artists will agree it would have resulted in some groundbreakingly poignant lyrics. Although their collaboration never came to pass, Bowie always felt a kinship with Dylan. When asked if he felt he had any competition in the music industry, Bowie likened himself to the artist in the sense both of them almost defied genre.

“I feel that frankly over the last 20 years or so I’m pretty much my own man,” he explained. “I suppose it’s very cheeky of me to put myself in the same light, but if I look at Bob Dylan, he doesn’t have competition, he is just Bob Dylan. Whether you like him or don’t like him. Whether he does good stuff or bad stuff, he is still Bob Dylan.”

Bowie also touched on the media’s tendency to create rivalries that didn’t exist, noting The Rolling Stones were famously pitted against The Beatles. “You don’t compare [Dylan] with anybody, it’s not a competitive kind of thing,” he said. “It’s the same with The Stones, I know they create mock competitions for them with other bands – I’ve noticed in America it’s been happening. But there is really no way that you can compare The Stones with anybody.”

In a nod to his own shapeshifting tendencies, Bowie concluded: “I would hope, I think I’m probably am, in the same kind of position. I’m David Bowie, I’m either good, a pile of shit. I’m accessible or not accessible, obscure, very commercial. I changed all the time. But I’m still me.”