Few musicians have been as prolific and influential as Bob Dylan, but Neil Young is certainly one of them. Even after all these decades, like Dylan he continues to be an endless source of lyrics and music, inspiring people all over the world. Throughout his career, Young has spoken about the American songwriter on several occasions and has even singled out two of Dylan’s songs as personal favorites, explaining what makes them so special to him.
2 Bob Dylan songs Neil Young is a big fan of
“Like a Rolling Stone”
“Like a Rolling Stone” by Bob Dylan is as fresh as the first day I heard it. I can still remember that afternoon in Toronto. It changed my life. The poetry, attitude, and ambience of that piece are part of my makeup. (…) One day he came over the speakers of my radio singing ‘How does it feel?’ over and over. The lyrics pounded their way into my psyche, this new poetry rolling off his tongue.”
“He spoke for a lot of us without knowing it. I felt connected to him in a moment. That was in Toronto, ’64 or ’65. Bob left his mark. I had to avoid listening to him for a long time in the late sixties and early seventies because I thought I would assimilate so much that I would suddenly be copying him. It was a conscious thing to avoid being too influenced. I am like a sponge in that when I like something, I become so influenced by it that I almost start to be it.”
Neil Young continued:
“Eventually I was able to pick up the harmonica without thinking I was copying Bob, just influenced by him. Dylan’s words are part of the landscape, like country names on a map. I have heard people try to sound like him, and it turns me off. People have tried to sound like me to the point that my dad thought “A Horse with No Name” was mine! (Hey, wait a minute! Was that me? Okay. Fine. I am back now. That was close!),” Neil Young said in his autobiography “Waging Heavy Peace”.
As Neil said, he has been a big fan of Bob Dylan since the early days and once recalled how his brilliance can be seen on how people connect to his songs. “I love Bob Dylan, I think he is great. In the very beginning I knew he was great. I was walking down the street and there is this guy in a Lincoln Navigator or continent. I can’t remember, was one of those black cars. He is in there and he is blasting ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ and singing at the top of his lungs. It’s an afro-american guy sitting there, he is about 30 years-old in a suit, just rocking”.
He continued:
“I heard Bob’s voice and I went ‘This is Bob, you know, this is the essence of his feeling and everything. The moment that he was delivering that song is so powerful, you can’t keep that’. That comes and goes through you. You can’t strive to be that, there is no way you own it.”
“I’ve heard Bob say that he doesn’t know who wrote, he doesn’t know the guy who wrote those songs anymore. I understand what he was saying, the feeling behind it. I look at it and I go ‘Well, I must been in a really different place doing that. But I was, I wrote those words, I sat down and I believe it,” Neil Young said in an interview with Charlie Rose in 2008 (Transcribed by Rock and Roll Garage).
“Girl From the North Country”
“Girl From the North Country” is one of Neil Young’s favorite Bob Dylan songs and he already had the chance to cover the track. “I know all kinds of songs that Bob sings, but I just had to do that one. I’d never done it before. When I started playing it, I realized I don’t know this song at all. I don’t know the changes, I don’t know how to play it.
“With Bob’s masterful songwriting, the chords are all sideways. It sounds like simple stuff — it’s only got three chords, but I’m working my ass off trying to figure out when they arrive. I love my version” That one’s got changes that are just irrational. Yet the song just bobbles along. It’s a great sympathetic character Bob created, the way he treats his love. It’s really beautiful — the respect that he shows (to the woman in the song),” Neil Young said in an interview with L.A. Times in 2014.
Neil’s version was released on his 2014 album “A Letter Home”, which also featured covers of Bert Jansch, Gordon Lightfoot, Willie Nelson and Bruce Springsteen. Neil had the chance to first hear Bob Dylan’s music around 1963 and was instantly hooked by his music.
He said:
“My first time hearing Bob Dylan was back in Winnipeg around 1963. I was trying to figure out how to get to the USA and had met some friends who had told me about a possible job working on the railroad.”
“Following up on that, I visited one of them. They were all sitting around listening to a record I had never heard. Some guy was singing, playing harmonica and acoustic guitar. We were all listening now. Hanging on to the words he sang. There was something about that, the way it sounded. I thought it was folk music, but not like the folk music of the Kingston Trio. I started to hear more and more of Bob,” he said in his book “Waging Heavy Peace”.