The legendary Beach Boys mastermind Brian Wilson recalled on his social networks a funny encounter he had with Bob Dylan a few decades ago. The musician said that coincidentally when he was at the Malibu emergency room a guy walked up to him asking if he was Brian Wilson and that guy was Dylan.
Brian Wilson recalls funny encounter with Bob Dylan
“Once I was in the Malibu emergency room getting a weigh-in and this guy walked up to me. He had curly hair and was on the short side. ‘Are you Brian Wilson?’ he asked. ‘Yeah,’ I said.’Hi,’ he said. ‘I’m Bob Dylan.’ He was there because he had broken his thumb.”
“We talked a little bit about nothing. I was a big fan of his lyrics, of course. ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ was one of the best songs, you know? And ‘Mr. Tambourine Man’ and ‘It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue’ and so many more. What a songwriter!”
“I invited him over to my house for lunch the next day. That was a longer conversation. We just talked and talked about music, we talked about old songs we remembered, songs before rock and roll. We talked about ideas we had. Nice guy,” Brian Wilson said.
Dylan is a big fan of Wilson
In an statement on Wilson’s official website, Dylan praised him, saying: “Jesus, that ear. He should donate it to the Smithsonian. The records I used to listen to and still love, you can’t make a record that sounds that way. Brian Wilson, he made all his records with four tracks. But you couldn’t make his records if you had a hundred tracks today,” Bob Dylan said.
Dylan was part of the Wilson song “The Spirit Of Rock and Roll” that also had Electric Light Orchestra‘s Jeff Lynne. The track was part of Wilson’s unofficial album “Sweet Insanity” that was recorded from 1986 to 1990. But that album was rejected by Sire Records because of the inclusion of a rap song “Smart Girls” and the lyrics from Wilson’s former controversial psychologist Eugene Landy.