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Bob Dylan’s opinion on The Rolling Stones
Bob Dylan was a huge inspiration for songwriters all over the world after showing on his first records that they could sing about anything they wanted, not only about being in love.
He inspired bands like The Rolling Stones and was later influenced by them as well, going electric and moving in a Folk Rock direction. Over the decades, he has spoken about those groups, sharing his opinion on the band led by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards.
What is Bob Dylan’s opinion on The Rolling Stones
Bob Dylan has always been a big fan of The Rolling Stones and once said they were the greatest Rock and Roll band of all time but also the last one. “(They) are truly the greatest Rock and Roll band in the world and always will be. The last too. Everything that came after them, Metal, Rap, Punk, New Wave, Pop-Rock, you name it. You can trace it all back to the Rolling Stones. They were the first and the last and no one’s ever done it better,” he told Bill Flanagan in 2009.
However, during the same interview, he also noted that they needed to get bassist Bill Wyman back. “I’m not saying they don’t keep going, but they need Bill. Without him they’re a Funk band. They’ll be the real Rolling Stones when they get Bill back,” he said. Even though he is one of the most prolific and influential songwriters of all time, with more than 600 songs to his name, Bob Dylan still wishes he had written some Rolling Stones songs. When asked by The New York Times, which were the ones, he mentioned “Angie”, “Ventilator Blues” and “Wild Horses”.
He had already mentioned the band in one of his most recent songs, “I Contain Multitudes”, from his 2020 album “Rough and Rowdy Ways”. Dylan also had the opportunity to join them on stage many times and to tour as their opening act. When he went on the road with them in 1998, he used to join the Stones to perform “Like a Rolling Stone”, which had been successfully covered by the British band in 1995. Two of their most famous performances together took place in Brazil and Argentina that year. “Blowin’ in the Wind” was another Dylan song they performed together during those shows.
Bob Dylan already said “Ruby Tuesday” is one of his favorite songs by them
Besides the three tracks mentioned previously, Bob is also a big fan of “Ruby Tuesday”, having said that the song from “Between the Buttons” (1967) was one of the “prettiest” they did. “That was ‘Ruby Tuesday’ by The Rolling Stones, one of the prettiest songs they ever recorded is from ‘Between the Buttons’ (1967). You might be interested that ‘Ruby Tuesday’ was supposed to only be a B-side. For those of you who don’t know what a B-side is, that was the other side of a 45, that wasn’t a hit, the A-side, in this case was supposed to be ‘Let’s Spend the Night Together’ but a lot of disc jockeys thought it was too sexual, so they wouldn’t play it.”
“But they played the flip side and that’s how ‘Ruby Tuesday’ became such a hit. What I like about that record is Brian Jones playing the recorder. The recorder is a woodwind of the family known as Fipple flutes. A fipple is a wooden plug at the end of a flute. The flute in its heyday was associated with birds, shepherds, miraculous events, funerals, marriages and amorous scenes. I think it’s one of the most beautiful sounds known to man,” Bob Dylan said during his Theme Time Radio Hour in 2006 (Transcribed by Rock and Roll Garage).
Keith Richards thinks Bob Dylan doesn’t have a great voice but he is a fan of his
Although Keith Richards is a big fan of Bob Dylan and the Stones were deeply influenced by his songwriting, he doesn’t particularly like his voice that much. In his biography “Life”, Richards said the American musician doesn’t have a great voice. “I think Mick and I looked at each other and said, well, if John and Paul can do it… The Beatles and Bob Dylan to a great extent changed songwriting in that way and people’s attitudes towards voice. Bob has not got a particularly great voice, but it’s expressive and he knows where to put it. That’s more important than any technical beauties of voice. It’s almost anti-singing. But at the same time what you’re hearing is real,” Keith Richards said.
Funny enough, Keith once described Dylan as a “nasty little bugger”. He recalled that Dylan told him he could have written “Satisfaction”, but Keith couldn’t have come up with “Desolation Row”. “He showed you that rock’n’roll didn’t need to be quite so restricted by that verse-chorus-verse formula. We pushed each other in those days. Bob’s a nasty little bugger. I remember him saying to me, ‘I could have written Satisfaction, Keith – but you couldn’t have written Desolation Row.’ I said, ‘Well, you’re right there, Bob!’” Keith Richards said in an interview with NME in 2014.
The most recent time The Stones and Bob performed on the same bill was back in 2016 at the Desert Trip Festival. Bob didn’t have the opportunity to record with The Stones, but he already worked with some of its members. One of the guitarist Mick Taylor, who was part of many of his albums.
