Bob Dylan and George Harrison

This love of ours, it has no end

The subtitle is a lyric from Dylan’s unrecorded song “I Don’t Want to Do It”. George’s demo of it in 1970 is one of my favorite versions of a Dylan song by another artist. I can’t think of another song Dylan has written that is more nostalgic, which is so unusual for someone famous for not looking back. George never forgot it, because he released a fully produced version in 1985, which I’ve always thought of as George beginning to sow the seeds of The Traveling Wilburys.

The song was likely written during their first extended period of time without the other Beatles over Thanksgiving 1968. George would write to Dylan of the experience, "it was really beautiful being with you and I hope we shall meet sometime again during this incarnation. Love to you all from us all." They would go on to play tennis on the Isle of Wight, go into the studio for Bob’s New Morning album, and triumph together at The Concert for Bangladesh. Then there seems to be a lack of Bob and George stories that I can think of, with one notable exception you don’t often hear. George reportedly showed Bob a film of his 1974 Dark Horse Tour, to which Bob advised him to shelve it, and it still hasn’t seen the light of day.

In Scott M. Marshall’s book A Spiritual Life, I read a story that I hadn’t recalled seeing elsewhere before. It begins with Dave Kelly, hired as Dylan’s personal assistant in October 1979 because he met Dylan’s criteria of understanding the music business and being sincere in his Christian faith. Bob’s assignment to Dave was to find representatives from all the major churches in the San Francisco area that he could give free tickets to in exchange for making themselves available after the show to those who might want to learn more about what Bob would be preaching each night from the stage. It turned out none of the churches were interested unless they could be the only ones doing it, and Bob had said there should be a different church each night for two weeks. Dave said, “He was disgusted by it. He could not believe that they would really think like that because that’s so un-Christian. He couldn’t believe they would leave these kids unattended because of their own ego or their own sense of they were right and those other guys were wrong.” Around the same time, Dave goes on to say:

Bob was supposed to have dinner with George Harrison, who was in the same hotel. But what we found out was he had literally just checked out. It was the first time that they would’ve been able to talk in a while and you figure that George is going to talk to Bob about his newfound faith. But apparently George had very quickly checked out right before Dylan arrived which was very, I thought, symbolic of how everybody was treating him-even people that he knew and loved and had been his friend for many years and had admired him. And from George’s perspective, semi-worshipped Dylan, but he was not about to have that meeting and talk about that stuff because maybe he was too afraid of what might happen. I remember Bob saying, ‘He was supposed to meet with me here tonight, to have dinner, and he checked out early.’ I think Dylan took that pretty much as an insult and at the same time, like a ‘Why is he afraid to meet with me? What’s he scared of?’ kind of thing. I never heard any follow-up, like there was an emergency at home or anything, so it just seemed very fishy.

I’ve always thought that Bob going Gospel was more interesting to his music and life, than “going electric.” The first story related by his personal assistant Dave Kelly I think goes a long way to explain why Dylan moved on from Christianity, at least in a formal sense. It’s important to understand that in the context of why I think George may have snubbed Bob. George grew up Catholic, but like Bob had become disenchanted with organized religion, which like all institutions can be extremely flawed. George may have thought this was the place Bob was coming from, and he may have felt this had nothing in common with his own spiritual journey. I don’t recall George cropping up again until Bob’s shows in London in 1981, but by then he had incorporated some secular songs back into the setlist.

Despite the subsequent Wilburys albums, George’s beautiful slide guitar appearance on Bob’s “Under the Red Sky”, and singing “My Back Pages” at “Bobfest”, I somehow feel they were never as close again after the story related above. It breaks my heart that there was never a Wilburys tour, Bob didn’t appear at The Concert for George, and all the new music of Bob’s George never got to hear. Instead, I’ll think of the pinnacle of their musical and personal relationship at The Concert for Bangladesh. “I’d like to bring you on a friend of us all, Mr. Bob Dylan.”