The Bob Dylan song Jerry Garcia called one of the best of all time

The legendary American multi-instrumentalist, singer and songwriter Bob Dylan is one of the most prolific artists of all time. He wrote more than 600 songs during the past six decades. He was admired by many other famous and influential artists, one of them being the Grateful Dead co-founder, guitarist and singer Jerry Garcia.

Dylan even toured with Grateful Dead back in the late 80s, which gave birth to the live album “Dylan and The Dead”. Dylan and Garcia were good friends and once revealed which was one of his songs, that Garcia said was one of the best of all time.

The Bob Dylan song Jerry Garcia called one of the best of all time

In an interview with Paul Zollo back in 1991, Dylan was talking about a few songs from his career. At a given moment, they talked about the track “Joey”, which was released on Dylan’s 1976 album “Desire”. According to the Folk Rock composer, Garcia once told him it was one of the greatest songs of all time.

To me, that’s a great song. Yeah, it never loses its  appeal, that’s a tremendous song. And you’d only know that singing it night after night. You know who got me singing that song? (Jerry) Garcia. Yeah. He got me singing that song again. He said that’s one of the best songs ever written.”

“Coming from him , it was hard to know which way to take that. (Laughs) He got me singing that song again with them (The Grateful Dead). It was amazing how it would, right from the gat go, it had a life of its own, it just ran out of the gate and it just kept on getting better and better and better and better and it keeps on getting better.”

He continued:

“It’s in its infant stages, as a performance thing. Of course, it’s a long song. But, to me, not to blow my own horn, but to me the song is like a Homer ballad. Much more so than ‘A Hard Rain,’ which is a long song, too. But, to me, ‘Joey’ has a Homeric quality to it that you don’t hear everyday. Especially in popular music,” Bob Dylan said.

“Desire” is one of the most famous albums released by Bob Dylan. Although it doesn’t feature many of his biggest hits, it also has famous tracks like “Hurricane” (Inspired by Rubin ‘Hurricane’ Carter), “Isis”, “Mozambique” and “One More Cup of Coffee” and “Romance in Durango”. Curiously not all the tracks were not written by Dylan on his own. In most of the songs he had the help of the songwriter Jacques Levy. He had many special guests on that album like Eric Clapton, Emmylou Harris and Scarlet Rivera.

Specifically in the track “Joey”, there are two special musicians: Dominic Cortese, playing the accordion and mandolin, and Vinnie Bell, playing the bouzouki.

Garcia showed Dylan his songs could have been recorded better

As Dylan told Edna Gunderson, in an interview back in 1997, Jerry showed him that his songs could have been recorded better. He admitted that he didn’t make many “great-sounding records” and believes that many of the old songs were “blueprints” for what he would later on perform live. “Jerry Garcia proved that to me. He took a lot of the songs and actually recorded them and 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.