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Tue 30 September 2025 19:30, UK
While not all collaborations between artists would be a good idea, you have to sometimes wonder whether a meeting of minds between the likes of Bob Dylan and The Beatles would have produced something wonderful.
Of course, George Harrison and Dylan would go on to work together in the 1980s as two-fifths of the Traveling Wilburys, but this was far from a project that demonstrated what it would be like to hear this fabled collaboration.
With Jeff Lynne, Tom Petty and Roy Orbison also in tow, there were other songwriters with their own unique voices and songwriting approaches having a say in where their sound went, and it doesn’t necessarily tell us anything about how the unification of two of the 1960s’ most celebrated artists would have fared on record together.
This does at least prove to us that he’d have been able to work with one of them, but this was several years after the demise of The Beatles, and they’d both developed considerably in their artistry to reach a point where their collaboration was bound to work well. The route that Harrison went down as a solo artist was far closer to the world that Dylan inhabited than anything he’d ever done with the band, but would the other three members have taken well to having this outsider’s voice on their albums?
As a folk singer in the 1960s, but one who was prone to upsetting the status quo, Dylan’s appeal was quite different to that of the Beatles, yet they were still arguably the most talented in their respective fields. Despite their differences, would it have worked out on the strength of their individual talents, or would it have produced disastrous and career-killing results?
At the Isle of Wight Festival press conference in 1969, Dylan spoke highly of The Beatles’ work, and even suggested that there was a possible opportunity for him to have worked with the band. “George Harrison has come to visit me,” he revealed. “The Beatles have asked me to work with them. I love the Beatles and I think it would be a good idea to do a jam session.”
Now, by this point, he’d have had limited time to work with the band, considering how they’d pretty much called it a day and recorded their final work together as a group, so the prospect of Dylan working with the Beatles as a whole was all but non-existent by the time he revealed that they’d expressed an interest in working with him.
However, given where they went on their final release, the rawer and more blues-oriented Let It Be, there’s more than enough stylistic difference to suggest that their brief flirtation with a new style would have gelled well with what Dylan was known for doing. We’ll sadly never know whether it would have been a fruitful session had they ever had the chance to collaborate, but if Dylan had gotten on board with it sooner, it may have been possible that having someone like him in the studio could have rescued the band from their demise, and ushered them in a new direction as they entered the 1970s.
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