Paul McCartney Reveals the One Artist He’s ‘Too Nervous’ to Ask to Collaborate with Him
Paul McCartney Reveals the One Artist He’s ‘Too Nervous’ to Ask to Collaborate with Him
Rachel DeSantisTue, October 13, 2026 at 6:14 PM UTC
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Paul McCartneyCredit: Good Hang with Amy Poehler/Youtube -
Paul McCartney says he is too nervous to call Bob Dylan about collaborating
The musicians first met in 1964 but McCartney says he does not know Dylan well
The pair have spoken and hung out a number of times over the years
Paul McCartney surely has one of the most robust Rolodexes in show business — but there’s still one number he’s nervous to call.
The legendary musician, 84, has collaborated with everyone from Stevie Wonder and Michael Jackson to Rihanna and Phoebe Bridgers. But it’s unlikely McCartney will ever give Bob Dylan a ring.
“I get asked [who I want to collaborate with] and I always think Bob Dylan. But I’m too nervous to ring him up,” the star said on the Good Hang with Amy Poehler podcast on Tuesday, Oct. 13. “‘Bob? It’s Paul.’”
When Poehler, 55, joked that she had a hard time picturing Dylan, 85, on the phone, McCartney quipped that the folk legend was likely “in some bush, in a sleeping bag, maybe.”
McCartney previously opened up about his relationship with Dylan to BBC Radio 2 earlier this year, saying that while they first met in the 1960s, he doesn’t actually know the “Blowin’ in the Wind” singer all that well.
“I’m a little bit nervous to approach him. Some people it’s easy, you sort of think, we could chat easily,” he said.
The “Band on the Run” singer said he’d last seen Dylan in 2016 at the music festival Desert Trip in Indio, Calif. Someone on McCartney’s team said Dylan had asked if he could say hello.
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“I came in to see him and it was like, ‘Wow.’ It was just him and me in this massive, big tent backstage and he was very complimentary,” McCartney recalled. “It was funny ‘cause… A little bit embarrassing, he said, ‘You’re a star.’ I thought, ‘What do you say to that?’ ‘Well, thank you Bob. I love what you do.’... Anyway, he’s great. I love his music, I love his songs.”
Paul McCartney in Los Angeles in January 2018; Bob Dylan in Los Angeles in February 2015.Credit: Jon Kopaloff/FilmMagic; evin Mazur/WireImage
Dylan launched his career with his self-titled debut album in 1962, which came just one year before the Beatles set the world on fire with Please Please Me.
McCartney said in a 2020 BBC Radio documentary that Dylan was highly influential on the Beatles, and that he often listened to Dylan’s records at home before the band took off.
The band met Dylan for the first time in New York in 1964 at their hotel, and he was the one who introduced them to marijuana.
McCartney recalled the meeting on The Adam Buxton Podcast in 2020, saying they’d been hanging out in a hotel suite when Dylan “vanished into a backroom.”
“Ringo [Starr] when back to see him and then after a couple of minutes Ringo came back in looking a little bit dazed and confused. We said, ‘What’s up?’ and he said, ‘Oh, Bob’s smoking pot back there,’” he recalled. “We said, ‘Oh, what’s it like?’ And Ringo said, ‘Well, the ceiling feels like it’s sort of coming down a bit.’ And we all sort of dashed into the backroom to partake in the evil substance. And it was quite an evening. It was crazy, it was very fun.”
on People
Source: “AOL Entertainment”
