Without Bob Dylan, popular music could have been very different, since even The Beatles were influenced by his songwriting. Successful American bands like the Eagles and the Grateful Dead owe a lot to him and although he didn’t talk much about other groups during his career, he did share some of his views on these two bands.
Bob Dylan on Eagles and Grateful Dead
Grateful Dead and the Eagles are two of the American bands that Bob Dylan is a big fan of, even revealing some of his favorite songs by them. “’New Kid in Town’, ‘Life in the Fast Lane’, ‘Pretty Maids All in a Row’”. That could be one of the best songs ever,” he told The New York Times in 2020, listing some of his favorite Eagles songs. He mentioned those tracks after talking his tribute to Glenn Frey and Don Henley in the lyrics of his sol “Muder Most Foul”. “Play Don Henley, play Glenn Frey. Take it to the limit and let it go by,” the lyrics say.
Another Eagles track he likes is “Witchy Woman”, which he mentioned in his book “Philosophy of a Modern Song”. After recalling that Bob Luman wrote and recorded a song called “Twichy Woman” in 1954, he said: “Eighteen years later, Bernie Leadon and Don Henley removed the first letter from the title and launched Henley’s songwriting career with lyrics describing a hallucinogenic amalgamation of succubus and thaumaturge, equal parts troubadour temptress and Jazz Age casualty, conjured up partially by reading the Nancy Milford biography of Zelda Fitzgerald in the throes of a flu-driven fever dream. I wonder why no one has ever removed one more letter and recorded a song about an itchy woman,” Bob Dylan said in his book.
Even though he is a fan of the Eagles and the members of the band also admired him, Dylan never had the chance to perform with them as the Eagles. However, he did play with the Grateful Dead multiple times, even recording the live album “Dylan & the Dead” (1989). In his book “Philosophy of Modern Song”, Bob talked about them.
He said:
“The Dead are from a different world than their contemporaries. Jefferson Airplane, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Big Brother, all of them together wouldn’t even make a part of the Dead. What makes them essentially a dance band probably begins with the jazz classical bassist, Phil Lesh, and the Elvin Jones-influenced Bill Kreutzmann.”
“Lesh is one of the most skilled bassists you’ll ever hear in subtlety and invention. And combined with Kreutzmann, this rhythm section is hard to beat. That rhythm section along with elements of traditional rock and roll and American folk music is what makes the Dead unsurpassable. Combined with their audience, it’s like one big free-floating ballet,” he said in his book “Philosophy of Modern Song”.
Bob Dylan already covered Don Henley’s “End of Innocence” and many Grateful Dead songs
Although Bob Dylan has been one of the most prolific songwriters in the world throughout his career, having written more than 600 songs, he still finds room in his setlists to cover songs by other artists. Curiously, he already covered one of Don Henley’s biggest solo hits “End of Innocence”, that happened in 2002 , being featured on several of his concerts in the United States.
The Eagles’ drummer and singer is also a fan of Dylan and went to see him perform live several times, once acknowledging him in the crowd and saying: “We were trying to get Don Henley up here tonight but we couldn’t find him”. When it comes to the Grateful Dead, Dylan has covered their songs multiple times over the years. More recently, in 2022, he featured “Friend of the Devil” in his shows. It was the first time he had played one of their songs since 2007.
Although Bob likes the Eagles, back in the ’80s he said that there were many records with predictable notes, mentioning theirs as an example. ”A lot of records you hear it’s all filled up. Every note is already there for you. Have you ever listened to an Eagles record? One thing about the Eagles, the song are good and all that. But when you listen to the Eagles, every note is predictable. You know exactly what it’s going to be before it’s even there, you know.”
“I started to sense some of that on (my album) ‘Infidels’. I didn’t like it, because that’s not my kind of record. So I decided to re-do some of the vocals. Because I knew how they were gonna sound before they came out,” Bob Dylan told Martha Quinn in 1984.
He was a huge fan of Jerry Garcia and called him “superb”
Jerry Garcia died too soon at the age of 57 back in 1995, which represented the end of the Grateful Dead, with the band only touring with “spin-off” versions of the group. At the time, Bob Dylan paid tribute to his late friend. He said there was no way to measure how great he was and calling him a superb musician.
“There’s no way to measure his greatness or magnitude as a person or as a player. I don’t think eulogizing will do him justice. He was that great. Much more than a superb musician with an uncanny ear and dexterity. He is the very spirit personified of whatever is muddy river country at its core and screams up into the spheres. He really had no equal. To me he wasn’t only a musician and friend. He was more like a big brother who taught and showed me more than he’ll ever know.”
Dylan continued:
“There are a lot of spaces and advances between the Carter family, Buddy Holly and, say, Ornette Coleman, a lot of universes. But he filled them all without being a member of any school. His playing was moody, awesome, sophisticated, hypnotic and subtle. There’s no way to convey the loss. It just digs down really deep,” Bob Dylan told Rolling Stone.
“Dylan & The Dead” was recorded when they toured together playing in stadiums across the United States in 1987. They played separate sets and together during the tour, but the album only featured Dylan songs. Curiously, he once said that the late Grateful Dead guitarist and singer Jerry Garcia showed him that his songs could have been better. “I can’t say that I’ve made any great-sounding records.”
“A lot of the older songs were just blueprints for what I’d play later on the stage. Jerry Garcia proved that to me. He took a lot of the songs and actually recorded them. (Jerry) sang them a step further than they were on my records. He heard where they should go. I would hear his versions of songs of mine and I’d say, ‘OK, I understand how it should go.’ Then I would play that and might even take it a step further. There have been other artists who have recorded my songs and shown me the way the song should go,” Bob Dylan said in an interview with Edna Gunderson in 1997.