There are few musicians more revered and more beloved that Paul McCartney.
The former Beatle has his pick of top artists dying to collaborate with him, and over the years McCartney has recorded with such stars as Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, Elvis Costello, Rihanna and Kanye West, and Nirvana alums Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic, among others.
Depite all those big names, there’s one artist whom Sir Paul would love to work with — yet has been too intimidated to approach.
Sir Paul Is ‘Too Nervous’ To Call Up Bob Dylan
During a recent appearance on the “Good Hang with Amy Poehler” podcast, McCartney discussed his dream collaborators.
“I get asked [who I want to collaborate with] and I always think Bob Dylan,” he said, via People.
“But I’m too nervous to ring him up. ‘Bob? It’s Paul,'” he said, jokingly imagining the interaction.
When host Amy Poehler admitted she had a tough time picturing the “Like a Rolling Stone” singer speaking on a telephone, McCartney joked that Dylan could probably be found “in some bush, in a sleeping bag, maybe.”
As he explained, even though he and Dylan have known each other since the 1960s, they’re far from close.
“I’m a little bit nervous to approach him,” McCartney admitted. “Some people it’s easy, you sort of think, we could chat easily,” he said, inferring that shooting the breeze with Dylan was no mean feat.
An Earlier Encounter with Dylan
McCartney recalled that the last time he’d run into Dylan was in 2016, when they were both headlining the Desert Trip music festival, nicknamed “Oldchella” for its A-list lineup of veteran rockers from the ’60s including The Who, Neil Young and The Rolling Stones.
According to McCartney, someone on his team told him that Dylan had reached out and asked if he could say hello.
“I came in to see him and it was like, ‘Wow.’ It was just him and me in this massive, big tent backstage and he was very complimentary,” McCartney said, remembering the occasion.
“It was funny ‘cause… A little bit embarrassing,” McCartney added. “He said, ‘You’re a star.’ I thought, ‘What do you say to that?’ ‘Well, thank you Bob. I love what you do.’… Anyway, he’s great. I love his music, I love his songs.”
A Musical Meeting
According to legend, when The Beatles met Dylan for the first time in the 1960s, he was responsible for introducing them to marijuana.
During a 2020 appearance on “The Adam Buxton Podcast,” McCartney confirmed that was indeed the case, recalling that he and his bandmates were hanging out with Dylan when he abruptly “vanished into a backroom.”
“Ringo [Starr] went back to see him and then after a couple of minutes Ringo came back in looking a little bit dazed and confused,” McCartney said. “We said, ‘What’s up?’ and he said, ‘Oh, Bob’s smoking pot back there.’ We said, ‘Oh, what’s it like?’ And Ringo said, ‘Well, the ceiling feels like it’s sort of coming down a bit.’ And we all sort of dashed into the backroom to partake in the evil substance. And it was quite an evening. It was crazy, it was very fun.”
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Paul McCartney Reveals the One Artist He’s ‘Too Nervous’ To Approach About Collaborating