Inside the David Bowie and Bob Dylan collaboration that never happened

12 May 2025, 11:58

When it comes to music, both artists are as influential as it gets.

Ask most musicians nowadays (and throughout the past fifty years) and they'll no doubt have some level of reverence for both Bob Dylan and David Bowie.

In their many shapeshifting guises, Bowie and Dylan have proved to be two of the most influential artists in the history of popular music.

Naturally, as Dylan's career flourished long before David Bowie even stepped on stage, he also provided the 'Starman' with plenty of inspiration.

Dylan's once-in-a-generation wordsmithery and enigmatic persona certainly rubbed off on Bowie, who took things to another level by creating characters to portray his music.

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As history tells us, Bowie would evolve into an artist as pioneering as Dylan – though they couldn't have been further apart stylistically as their careers continued down their own distinct paths.

Despite that, the two very nearly collaborated. Bowie was a serial collaborator who bounced off the creativity of artists like Brian Eno, Mick Ronson, Nile Rodgers and many more to springboard into intriguing new realms.

A duet with Bob Dylan certainly would've been one for the history books. If it had come to fruition that is. So what happened?

Bowie was never quiet in sharing his adulation for Bob Dylan and how his music impacted his own decision to pursie music as a career.

On his lauded 1971 breakthrough album Hunky Dory, Bowie made his admiration for Dylan known with the song 'Song For Bob Dylan'.

Referencing Dylan's 1962 homage to Woody Guthrie, 'Song To Woody', Bowie revealed in a 1976 interview that his homage was also setting out his intention to follow in Dylan's footsteps and become a major force in music himself.

"'Song For Bob Dylan' – that laid out what I wanted to do in rock. It was at that period that I said, 'okay (Dylan) if you don't want to do it, I will.'"

"I saw that leadership void," he continued. "Even though the song isn't one of the most important on the album, it represented for me what the album was all about. If there wasn't someone who was going to use rock 'n' roll, then I'd do it."

But by the time any kind of collaboration would've happened, they were both bonafide legends with busy schedules.

Talking to Marc Riley in 2004, David Bowie revealed that he and Dylan came close to working together, sharing ideas and talking up a duet. Then Dylan went cold.

Song for Bob Dylan (2015 Remaster)

"I wrote a lot of things with Dylan,” he recalled. “Actually, not many people know that. Me and Dylan, we were going to do a duet thing at one time.

"We got it in our heads that we could do it a duet, like a Simon & Garfunkel thing, but in the next morning, I didn’t hear another word from him”.

Bowie was disheartened, as he felt a kinship with Dylan, adding: "I feel that frankly over the last 20 years or so I’m pretty much my own man.

“I suppose it’s very cheeky of me to put myself in the same light, but if I look at Bob Dylan, he doesn’t have competition, he is just Bob Dylan.

"Whether you like him or don’t like him. Whether he does good stuff or bad stuff, he is still Bob Dylan.”

Marc Riley Interviews David Bowie in 2004

He then added that Dylan, like similar legends in The Rolling Stones, are beyond compare in terms of their cultural significance.

“You don’t compare [Dylan] with anybody, it’s not a competitive kind of thing,” he said. “It’s the same with The [Rolling] Stones, I know they create mock competitions for them with other bands.

"I’ve noticed in America it’s been happening. But there is really no way that you can compare The Stones with anybody.”

Gushing in his praise of Bob Dylan – much like most of his contemporaries – on professional basis, on a personal level there wasn't exactly palpable chemistry between the two if you consider their first ever meeting in person.

David Bowie - Tryin' To Get To Heaven (Official Audio)

In a 1976 interview in Playboy magazine, David Bowie revealed the reality of meeting Bob Dylan didn't set his world alight.

"I saw Dylan in New York seven or eight months ago," he said. "We didn't have a lot to talk about."

Bowie went a step further to add: "We're not great friends. In fact, I think he hates me.

He continued: "After a concert we went to someone's house, I don't remember who we were going to see. Dylan was there. I was very talkative and I talked to him for hours and hours."

"The truth is that I don't know if he was amused, or I scared him, or repulsed him. I didn't wait for him to respond."

The same could be said about Bowie waiting around for Dylan to get back to him on their proposed duet. Now that Bowie is sadly no longer with us, we can only imagine how it would've turned out.

He did however record a couple of Bob Dylan covers - 'Like A Rolling Stone' with Mick Ronson and a 1998 demo recording with Tony Visconti of 'Tryin' to Get to Heaven' that was later released in 2021 - which may give the curious among us some clue to how it would've panned out.