When Bob Dylan comes calling, it’s usually a good idea to answer. Michael Bolton learned this firsthand when the legendary singer-songwriter contacted him in the early ’90s.
Dylan, fresh off his 1990 Under the Red Sky album, apparently wanted to continue to collaborate with others. (Red Sky included several famous cameos, including Slash, David Crosby, Elton John and Jimmie Vaughan. He’d also been recently writing and recording with the Traveling Wilburys.) Bolton was between projects at the time; he’d released his sixth album, Soul Provider, in 1989, which included five Top 40 hits. Soul Provider also included some guest performers, like Kenny G and Steve Lukather, plus songs cowritten with Diane Warren, Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil.
Dylan, however, would be the ultimate collaboration for Bolton, who’d been a fan since his teenage years.
He was, understandably, nervous at first, telling the Hartford Courant at the time, “I thought, ‘How am I going to work with this guy? What if I don’t like one of his lyrics? What if I don’t like an idea he comes up with? What am I going to say? No, Bob, that’s not good enough’? I didn’t know how I was going to write with him.”
What happened when the pair finally sat down to work together? Watch the video below to get the entire odd-couple story.
Bob Dylan Albums Ranked
Not so surprisingly, Bob Dylan’s recording career has lots of ups and downs. That’s bound to happen when you stick around for more than 50 years and release three dozen albums during that time.