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The Stones song Bob Dylan said was one of the prettiest they did
Bob Dylan is a huge fan of The Rolling Stones and has said that they were the greatest and the last true Rock and Roll group. Over the decades, he had the chance to perform with them and become good friends with Mick Jagger and Keith Richards.
Although he hasn’t discussed their discography very often, he once revealed which song he considers one of the prettiest the Stones ever recorded.
The Stones song Bob Dylan said 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.
Bob had the chance to meet the late Brian Jones and was a big fan of him as a musician. “I remember hanging out with Brian Jones in 1964. Brian could play the blues. He was an excellent guitar player — he seemed afraid to sing for some reason — but he could play note for note what Robert Johnson or Son House played,” he said in an interview with Rolling Stone in 1978.
Bob Dylan thinks The Rolling Stones are the greatest band of all time
Bob has always been a big fan of The Rolling Stones and has even considered them to be the greatest Rock and Roll band of all time, but also the last one. However, he thinks they are much better if Bill Wyman is playing bass. “(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. (…) “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 told Bill Flanagan in 2009.
In 2020, Bob was asked by The New York Times which songs by the British band he wished he had written. He mentioned the tracks “Angie”, “Ventilator Blues” and “Wild Horses”. He is a really good friend of the group and already performed with them multiple times live.
Back in the mid-90s when the Stones covered “Like a Rolling Stone”, Dylan joined them on stage a couple of times. In 1998 he was their opening act in South America and performed the song with them in Argentina and Brazil. The most recent time Dylan was their opening act was during the 2016 Desert Trip Festival.
Dylan once gave the middle finger to the Rolling Stones
In the 1990s The Black Crowes was The Rolling Stones opening act and the band’s vocalist Chris Robinson told Howard Stern that he saw Dylan pissed with the Stones and gave the middle finger to the group. “That was in Montpellier, South of France. It was Black Crowes, Bob Dylan and The Rolling Stones. It was the best week. I will always remember because I’ve met Bob that day and he is ultimately my biggest hero. So we were backstage, I mean, behind Keith’s amps. The Stones, ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ was their single in Europe for that tour, when they were on that Voodoo Lounge cycle.”
“And they’re gonna have Bob sit in and I’m like ‘Oh my god’. So Mick Jagger is wearing like a long blue satin shirt with a belt, pirate style over it and I just remember things. I don’t know my social security number but I know that. So they’re like ‘Ladies and gentleman, Montpellier”, you know. There’s 60.000, 70.000 people out there. (And they say) ‘Bob Dylan!’. Bob comes walking right beside me and Rich and he is wearing the exact same outfit. I was like ‘That’s fucking amazing’. He walks out on stage and you know, The Rolling Stones are The Rolling Stones, the greatest Rock and Roll band of all time.”
He continued:
“They’re playing a Bob Dylan song and Bob is there. The Stones don’t jam, they don’t deviate. So it’s like (Chris imitates Mick Jagger singing ‘Like a Rolling Stone’). Then they go around the chorus and then they come up to Bob’s turn. So the band brings the (imitates the song’s rhythm) and Bob goes to the mic and doesn’t sing it. And you see them looking around and they’re like ‘Okay’, it’s kind like you’ve missed the turn at a roundabout and you got to go all the way around.”
“So they go all the way around again and ‘One, two, three’. He just leans into the mic, turns away and I’m like ‘Oh my god, what the fuck’. It goes on for another half a verse. And then Mick’s gonna come over and save the day and then Bob finally goes to and start singing something. They don’t finish and they’re walking off stage and we were standing there, (Bob) walks off before the end of the song and they are like ‘Bob Dylan!’ He turns around and he looks at them (shows his middle finger) saying ‘Fuck you!’ He gave them the finger and I’m like ‘The best fucking concert I’ve ever seen in my life, it’s incredible’. I can see Keith, he goes ‘Don’t be like that, Bob!’” Chris Robinson said (Transcribed by Rock and Roll Garage).
