Bob Dylan Passed on a Song Paul Simon Wrote for Him
Bob Dylan is a phenomenal songwriter who doesn’t need much help from other artists to write great music. He did collaborate with other artists, such as George Harrison and Tom Petty, but he has had a fantastic career as a solo singer. One artist who rose to fame around the same time as him was Paul Simon, who did write a song for Bob Dylan, but the folk-rock singer turned it down.
Bob Dylan never capitalized on a song Paul Simon wrote for him
Paul Simon rose to fame in the 1960s, around the same time as Bob Dylan. Simon was the second half of the Simon & Garfunkel duo that he started with Art Garfunkel. The pair had several essential songs from the decade, including “Mrs. Robinson” and “The Sound of Silence”. In a 2011 interview with Rolling Stone, Simon admitted he didn’t like coming in number two to Dylan but was still an admirer of the “Like a Rolling Stone” singer.
“I usually come in second to (to Dylan), and I don’t like coming in second,” Simon shared. “In the beginning, when we were first signed to Columbia, I really admired Dylan’s work. The Sound of Silence wouldn’t have been written if it weren’t for Dylan. But I left that feeling around The Graduate and ‘Mrs. Robinson.’ They weren’t folky anymore.”
Simon would admit that Dylan influenced him as a songwriter and did get the opportunity to play with him a few times. In 1999, Dylan and Simon did a lengthy tour as part of Dylan’s Never Ending Tour. Simon said he wrote a song with Dylan in mind for his So Beautiful or So What album and hoped he’d record it with him. While Dylan liked the track, he never followed up to get any work done on it.
“I’d written the title track ‘So Beautiful Or So What’, and there were two verses that I thought would be good for Bob,” Simon told Mojo. “It’s kind of a blue song, and I thought it could accommodate his voice now that it’s real rough. I thought he could be the voice of wisdom. I sent a message via our mutual manager asking if Bob would like to sing on the song.”
“The first word I got back was that he liked it and he wanted to do it, but then I never heard anything more,” he continued. “I had a deadline, and I needed to get the album finished. I figured maybe Bob was burnt out from touring, or maybe he had more dates to do. It was no big deal.”
Simon and Dylan have a complicated history
Bob Dylan and Paul Simon appear to be friends with one another, but it’s a relationship that has had its ups and downs. One incident left Simon with a poor impression of Dylan. Simon & Garfunkel performed in Greenwich Village in New York, where Dylan emerged as a prominent folk singer. In the book Paul Simon: The Life by Robert Hilburn, Simon recalled Dylan attending the performance with writer Robert Shelton.
The two were drunk and giggled through much of the performance. While it’s unclear if Dylan was laughing at Simon, the singer recalled being “hurt” by his laughter since it was from someone he admired. Simon also said Dylan got worse once he stopped being “folky” and he never appreciated how he puts down other artists.
“Unfortunately, I’m always being compared to Bob Dylan,” Simon said in the book Homeward Bound: The Life of Paul Simon by Peter Ames Carlin. “Our philosophies are different. He is always dumping [on] people more than I do. It’s really easy to put somebody down. The biggest thing Dylan has going for him is his mystique.”
