The artist that Paul McCartney said he would like to be similar

Paul McCartney is one of the most important musicians of all time, and his songwriting partnership with the late John Lennon might be the most influential in music history, or at least in Rock and Roll. The Beatles didn’t just change music forever, they changed the world. As the band’s primary songwriters, McCartney and Lennon were certainly fundamental to its success. However, without George Harrison and Ringo Starr, nothing would have been the same.

Over the decades, millions of musicians have aspired to be at least a little like McCartney. But believe it or not, Paul once said he wishes he were more like a famous songwriter, at least in one aspect.

The artist that Paul McCartney said he would like to be similar

There are not many songwriters who can be on the same level of success and influence like Paul McCartney, but the legendary Bob Dylan is certainly one of them. The Beatle really admires him and in an interview with NME, he said he would like to be a little bit more like the American musician. Because according to him, Bob is legendary and doesn’t give a shit about it.

“I always like what he does. Sometimes I wish I was a bit more like Bob. He’s legendary… and doesn’t give a shit! But I’m not like that. His new album (Rough And Rowdy Ways)? I thought it was really good. He writes really well. I love his singing. He came through the standards albums like a total crooner. But, yeah, I like his new stuff,” Paul McCartney said.

McCartney said Bob Dylan influenced The Beatles

Dylan started his musical career in 1957 and released his debut album in 1962, one year before The Beatles debut album “Please Please Me” (1963). He was a big influence for the band in terms of songwriting, because it showed them that it was possible to write about other things besides love. In an interview with John’s youngest son Sean Lennon, for BBC Radio 2, in 2020, McCartney recalled he even had a Dylan record before The Beatles released their first one.

“We certainly got a lot from Dylan and I know I had one of his first LPs at home before The Beatles. I used to play that quite a lot so I was steeped in him and I think your dad was too, but that was just one of the influences. There’s an awful lot more because ‘Strawberry Fields’ and ‘Penny Lane’, those are very much us remembering our youth.”

“And it’s a funny thing we used to say when we were little older. I mean, older, like 20 or something even. Really young, like babies, you know. But we thought we were kind of men of the universe and big men by then as we get a little bit older,” Paul McCartney said.

The night The Beatles met Bob Dylan

Two of the most influential acts of the 60s, Bob Dylan and The Beatles first met each other in the early years of that decade.  In an interview for the Beatles Anthology released in 1995 (Transcribed by Rock and Roll Garage), McCartney recalled when the band first met Dylan.

“It was a great honor to meet him. We had a crazy party the night we met, I thought I’d got the meaning to life that night. I went around trying to find our roadie. ‘Mal, Mal get a pencil and a paper, I got it!’ Mal was a bit out (of himself). He couldn’t find a pencil and paper anywhere.”

“Eventually in the end of the evening he found it. I wrote down my message for the universe, you know. I said (to the roadie), ‘Keep that in the pocket’. The next morning he said ‘Paul, do you wanna see?’. I said ‘What?’, he said ‘That bit of paper’. I said ‘Oh yeah!’ I had written ‘There are seven levels’,” Paul McCartney said.

Although both musicians admire each other, Dylan became closer to George Harrison. Besides writing songs together as solo acts, they would later be bandmates in the supergroup Traveling Wilburys. The band was also formed by Tom Petty, Jeff Lynne and Roy Orbison.