Credit: Raph Pour-Hashemi

The two bands Bob Dylan always wanted to work with: “I was completely bowled over”

Tue 30 December 2025 17:00, UK

It’s hard to really think of Bob Dylan as the kind that plays well with other artists.

For all of the great songs that he wrote and have been covered brilliantly by other rock and roll bands, there’s never a point in his career where he really needed an equal by his side to tell him how a part should be played or how to sing something better. He benefited a lot from working alone most of the time, but there comes a moment when even the sharpest musical minds might benefit from hearing a second opinion.

That did end up helping Dylan in the 1980s when working with people like Daniel Lanois, but by the end of the 1960s, he almost seemed too big to be told what to do. He was the spokesman for a generation, and while that led to a lot of people commending him for his work, it had to be hard when everyone was walking in your footsteps and looking to you for what the next great event in music was supposed to be.

It’s not like Dylan asked for that, either. He was always coy in interviews about being considered a legend, and while he was more than happy to put on a show for the press, he wasn’t exactly the most reliable musical narrator. He would speak out of both sides of his mouth half the time, and while it did get people talking, the real Dylan was the music fan keeping his ears open to what the rest of the world was hearing.

And by the mid-1960s, The Beatles were probably the only other band that could manage to beat him at his own game. John Lennon and Paul McCartney had turned themselves into a hit factory by that point, and when listening to their songs, Dylan was transfixed by the chords they were using whenever they went outside the traditional blues framework. But The Stones were always nipping at their heels as well.

The Rolling Stones may have had the reputation of being a more dangerous version of the Fab Four, but it’s not like they couldn’t hold their own. They were certainly influenced by what their Liverpool friends would do, but no one could argue that a song like ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want’ had the same kind of musical spark that anthems like ‘Hey Jude’ had when they first came out. And for all the classics Dylan made on his own, he was already gearing up to work with both bands.

Although nothing ever came out of it, producer Glyn Johns remembered Dylan wanting to bounce off of his favourite British acts, saying, “I babbled about how much we had all been influenced by his work. He said he had this idea to make a record with The Beatles and The Stones. And he asked me if I would find out whether the others would be interested. I was completely bowled over. Can you imagine the three greatest influences on popular music in the previous decade making an album together?”

While it’s hard to take anything that Dylan says at face value, there’s a good chance that it was true. He would eventually go on to work with George Harrison when making the song ‘I’d Have You Anytime’, and looking at The Beatles’ Get Back documentary, Harrison even motions to get Dylan in the group for a little while and see how things would have worked out.

Both Dylan and Harrison would have to wait a little while before getting their wish with the Traveling Wilburys, but the idea of the ultimate supergroup of the 1960s getting together is still one of the biggest ‘what ifs’ in popular music. We were already blown away by what they could do on their own, but maybe a song with Dylan’s lyricism, McCartney’s musicality, and a Keith Richards guitar riff was too good for this world.