Bob Dylan Didn’t Speak to Anyone for a Week After Elvis’ Death
Bob Dylan counts Elvis Presley as one of his greatest influences, noting that he wouldn’t be where he is today without the other singer. While they never met, Dylan proved his devotion to Elvis throughout the years. He was such a fan that Elvis’ death put him in mourning. A friend mentioned that she wasn’t a fan of Elvis’ music, and Dylan gave her the cold shoulder. According to him, though, he stopped talking to everyone the week after Elvis’ death.
Bob Dylan was a huge fan of Elvis’ music
Dylan credits Elvis with inspiring him to pursue a creative career.
“When I first heard Elvis’ voice, I just knew that I wasn’t going to work for anybody and nobody was going to be my boss,” he once said, per Goldmine. “Hearing him for the first time was like busting out of jail.”
When Dylan visited the spot where Elvis recorded “That’s All Right” at Sun Records in Tennessee, he knelt and kissed the spot on the floor where Elvis stood. He reportedly also began an Elvis tribute album but abandoned it after recording “Lawdy, Miss Clawdy,” “Money Honey,” and “Any Way You Want Me.”
He didn’t speak to anyone in the week following Elvis’ death
Elvis died in 1977 at the age of 42. When Dylan heard the news, he was on his farm in Minnesota with his family and the artist Faradi McFree. Dylan told McFree that Elvis died, and she responded that she had never been a fan of his music.
“That’s all I have to say – he didn’t talk to me for a week,” McFree later said, per Far Out Magazine. “He really took it bad … He was really grieving. He said that if it wasn’t for [Presley] he never would have gotten started. He opened the door.”
Dylan gave McFree the cold shoulder, but she wasn’t the only one he stopped speaking to. According to the singer, he didn’t talk to anyone after hearing about Elvis’ death.
“I went over my whole life. I went over my whole childhood,” he said, per Simon & Schuster. “I didn’t talk to anyone for a week after Elvis died. If it wasn’t for Elvis and Hank Williams, I couldn’t be doing what I do today.”
Bob Dylan once said he never wanted to meet Elvis
Despite his reverence for Elvis, Dylan said that he never wanted to meet the other man.
“I never met Elvis,” he told Rolling Stone in 2009. “I never met Elvis, because I didn’t want to meet Elvis. Elvis was in his Sixties movie period, and he was just crankin’ ’em out and knockin’ ’em off, one after another. And Elvis had kind of fallen out of favor in the Sixties. He didn’t really come back until, whatever was it, ’68?”
He explained that he had several opportunities to meet Elvis, but he passed them up.
“Two or three times we were up in Hollywood, and he had sent some of the Memphis Mafia down to where we were to bring us up to see Elvis. But none of us went,” he said. “Because it seemed like a sorry thing to do. I don’t know if I would have wanted to see Elvis like that. I wanted to see the powerful, mystical Elvis that had crash-landed from a burning star onto American soil.”
