Bob Dylan and George Harrison Bailed on a Recording Session With Elvis
Both Bob Dylan and George Harrison cited Elvis Presley as an early inspiration. Harrison had the chance to meet with Elvis more than once. Dylan also had the opportunity to meet the musician, but he passed on it. He explained that both he and Harrison had plans to meet with Elvis, but they decided not to.
George Harrison said it was sad when he met Elvis
George Harrison met Elvis more than once but said that their meeting in the 1970s was a bit sad. Elvis was playing a show at Madison Square Garden, and Harrison viewed it as a glittering, overblown letdown.
“I wanted to say to him, ‘Why don’t you just come out in your jeans and your black shirt — get rid of all them horrible women singers in your band, all them horrible trumpet players and just have James Burton and the drummer and the bass player and the piano player? Just come out and do ‘That’s All Right, Mama,'” Harrison told Creem Magazine in 1988. “But instead he came out and did (sings) ‘I did it myyy wayyyy.’ Oh, Jesus. But we all loved Elvis and it was sad to see what happened to him.”
Bob Dylan said that he and George Harrison passed up a chance to record with Elvis
Unlike Harrison, Dylan never met Elvis. He had the opportunity to record with Elvis and Harrison but ultimately did not. In a 2017 interview on Dylan’s official website, interviewer Bill Flanagan said, “I heard you and George Harrison were once supposed to do a recording session with Elvis, but he never showed up. What’s the real story?”
In response, Dylan explained that “He did show up, it was us that didn’t.”
He offered no further explanation about why he and Harrison chose to pass on the opportunity to record with the music legend. An earlier interview provides some insight into the choice, though: Dylan simply did not want to meet Elvis.
“I don’t know if I would have wanted to see Elvis like that,” he told Rolling Stone in 2009. “I wanted to see the powerful, mystical Elvis that had crash-landed from a burning star onto American soil. The Elvis that was bursting with life. That’s the Elvis that inspired us to all the possibilities of life. And that Elvis was gone, had left the building.”
George Harrison greatly admired Bob Dylan
Harrison and Dylan got along quite well, both as collaborators and as friends. Harrison revered Dylan’s work.
“George quoted Bob like people quote Scripture,” Tom Petty said in a 2002 interview with Rolling Stone. “Bob really adored George, too. George used to hang over the balcony videoing Bob while Bob wasn’t aware of it. Bob would be sitting at the piano playing, and George would tape it and listen to it all night.”
The two men would eventually play in The Traveling Wilburys together.
“When the Wilburys started, George was so reverent of Bob,” Petty said. “At the end of the first day, he said, ‘We know that you’re Bob Dylan and everything, but we’re going to just treat you and talk to you like we would anybody else.’ And Bob went, ‘Well great. Believe it or not, I’m in awe of you guys, and it’s the same for me.'”
