IT’S 1985. Somewhere in Los Angeles, a studio switchboard lights up. A receptionist takes the call, puts it through to one of the recording spaces, and says in deadpan tones: “It’s Bob Dylan on the phone for Dave Stewart.”
Even though Stewart and Annie Lennox are riding a wave of phenomenal pop success as the Eurythmics, he can’t quite believe his ears.
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“At the time, I was producing a record for a guy called Feargal Sharkey,” he recalls today, referring to The Undertones singer’s debut solo album featuring the hit A Good Heart.
“At first, I thought it was Feargal having a laugh because he knew I was obsessed with Dylan but, as soon as I heard the voice, I was like, ‘Oh s**t! It can’t be anybody else. That voice is so recognisable’.”
The notoriously elusive American legend and the pop guru from Sunderland agree to meet later “at a tiny Thai restaurant on Sunset Strip.”
They instantly hit it off, spending “four or five hours” together, ending up in “a late-night Mexican place” and cementing what becomes an enduring friendship.
For Stewart, it’s a chance to finally get to know his biggest hero — the singer who prompted him to pick up a guitar as a teenager and who inspired his lifelong infatuation with music.
Dylan, in return, came to appreciate his British pal, once referring to him as “Captain Dave, a dreamer, a fearless innovator, a visionary of the highest order.”
The reason I’m telling you all this is because Stewart has celebrated his love of Bob by making a covers album — Dave Does Dylan.
‘I loved playing football’
Talking via Zoom from Nashville, he explains: “I’d always been crazy about Dylan and was doodling away in a hotel room, reminiscing about playing his songs in folk clubs when I was a kid. “So, I put my iPhone camera on a stick and started singing straight into it.”
Stewart found the process quite therapeutic. “I played 60 shows last year,” he says.
“You get to the hotel or backstage and there’s this waiting, waiting, waiting.
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“I’ve always found ways of coping with it. Even back in Eurythmics days, I’d have a little studio set-up so Annie could pop in and we’d mess about.”
Over time, Stewart assembled a sizable collection of Dylan covers, which he would post on Instagram.
Such has been the positive response that he has turned his stripped-back, one-take efforts into a 14-track album — just his warm, expressive vocals and deft acoustic guitar.
Dave Does Dylan is released tomorrow on vinyl as part of Record Store Day and will be available on streaming services in July.
There’s also a PBS special in the States, filmed with a band. The album bears songs from his subject’s folk period — which Stewart learned in the Sixties — such as A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall, Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright and To Ramona.
It takes in well-known Dylan songs from other eras like Simple Twist Of Fate, Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door and Make You Feel My Love.
There’s a gorgeous rendition of lesser-known Emotionally Yours from 1985’s Empire Burlesque album, which, you’ll discover, is of special significance.
Like all the other kids, I dreamed of playing for Sunderland but then I had my knee broken during a match. It was shattered in a few places.
Dave Stewart
But before his thoughts return to that year and the fateful meeting of musical minds in LA, followed by reminiscences of further encounters with Dylan, Stewart casts through the mists of time to his childhood.
“I just wanted to play football,” he says. “I would turn out for three teams on a Saturday.
“Like all the other kids, I dreamed of playing for Sunderland but then I had my knee broken during a match. It was shattered in a few places.
“The same month, my mum left my dad. My brother had gone to college, and I was stuck in the house, bored out of my mind. Outside, there was horizontal, freezing rain.”
But when the postman delivered a parcel from Stewart’s cousin, everything changed. “My cousin was nine years older than me,” he reports.
“He sent two pairs of corduroy Levi’s and some blues albums.
“I put one of the records on. Very early blues, Robert Johnson maybe. It had me in a trance, but I didn’t really understand it.
“Then I noticed my brother had two other albums, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan and Another Side Of Bob Dylan.
‘I became obsessed’
“When I listened to those, I thought, ‘Holy st, this really is music!’ So I hobbled into the kitchen and put the radio on.
“It’s 1964, I’m 13 years old and I’m hearing The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Kinks, Dusty Springfield. It was f*ing amazing.”
Enthused by what he heard, Stewart went to his brother’s wardrobe and got hold of his five-string guitar. “I couldn’t really play it,” he admits. “But I tried to make a bluesy sound.”
Cue a visit to Mr Len Gibson, a World War Two veteran, “who had made a guitar out of nothing when he was a Japanese PoW.”
I sang to myself — all Bob Dylan — because I could put those two records on again and again,” he continues. I became obsessed and forgot about everything else.
Dave Stewart
Stewart says: “He lived round the corner and very sweetly showed me how to play.”
Despite learning with “the tuning all wrong, like a banjo or something” and having to start again, he was bitten by the music bug.
“I sang to myself — all Bob Dylan — because I could put those two records on again and again,” he continues.
“I became obsessed and forgot about everything else.
“My school grades went from being third from top of the class to bottom. One thing went up and everything else crashed down.”
By the time he was 15, Stewart was itching to perform in the folk clubs around Sunderland — The Londonderry, The George & Dragon and “others outside the city where I would go on the bus.”
He says: “I looked young for my age, and I remember standing in a corridor as the guy on the door said, ‘You can’t come in, son.’”
Eventually Stewart’s persistence paid off and he presented a set featuring To Ramona and Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright.
He later learned I’ll Be Your Mirror by The Velvet Underground & Nico.
By 1970, Stewart had moved to London and was part of an acoustic band signed to Elton John’s label. “We sang harmonies and knew Crosby Stills & Nash songs,” he says.
DYLAN ON ‘CAPTAIN DAVE’
IN typically eloquent fashion, Bob Dylan once paid tribute to his friend Dave Stewart via a fax:
“Captain Dave is a dreamer and a fearless innovator, a visionary of high order, very delicately tractable on the surface but beneath that, he’s a slamming, thumping, battering ram, very mystical but rational and sensitive when it comes to the hot irons of art forms.
“An explosive musician, deft guitar player, innately recognises the genius in other people and puts it into play without being manipulative.
“With him, there’s mercifully no reality to yesterday. He is incredibly gracious and soulful, can command the ship and steer the course, dragger, trawler or man of war, Captain Dave.”
“When I was 19, but looked about 15, I married my girlfriend. We would lie on the floor of the bedsit getting stoned listening to Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks, Nick Drake, John Martyn — and all four sides of Bob Dylan’s Blonde On Blonde.
“From then on, I started collecting every Dylan album that came out, in every format.
“I loved his Seventies records, Blood On The Tracks and Desire. He couldn’t quite relate to the dance-pop Eighties, but I find gems on every single one of his albums.”
It was indeed a strange time for Bob, having to navigate synth-based music when his go-to styles had been folk, rock, blues and country.
Conversely, Stewart was a scene-setter in tandem with Annie Lennox.
The pair first got noticed as members of The Tourists, scoring a Top 30 hit with a cover of Dusty Springfield’s I Only Want To Be With You.
‘We drank sake’
But, of course, they’re best remembered for a euphoric rush of hits as Eurythmics — Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This), Love Is A Stranger, Who’s That Girl?, Here Comes The Rain Again and the rest.
We drank quite a bit of sake, which is Japanese of course, and Thai whisky — and we talked for ages and really hit it off.
Dave Stewart
Right in the middle of that mayhem, in 1985, Stewart found himself sitting in the Thai restaurant with Dylan.
He picks up the story: “We were seated in the far corner, and I asked if they could put a little screen around us.
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“We drank quite a bit of sake, which is Japanese of course, and Thai whisky — and we talked for ages and really hit it off.”
They discovered a shared obsession with art-house movies by the likes of Italian directors Federico Fellini and Pier Paolo Pasolini.
Stewart had already been involved in making the surreal, now iconic video for Sweet Dreams, “which the record company thought was bonkers.”
It showed androgynous Lennox with close-cropped orange hair, dressed in a man’s suit and tie — and Stewart fooling around in a field with a cello.
His chat with Dylan took a dramatic twist when, “by the time we’d moved to a late-night Mexican place, Bob said, ‘Why don’t we make a film tomorrow?’ He was serious.”
With zero notice, Stewart assembled a crew to shoot videos for two songs from Dylan’s latest album, Empire Burlesque — Emotionally Yours and When The Night Comes Falling From The Sky.
For the first, Dylan had said: “I want an actress who looks like a very young Elizabeth Taylor and I want to have an argument with her.”
Stewart laughs before relating the scene. “Bob sat under a tree outside the church where we were filming, arguing with this girl, just to get the horrified look on her face — but you can’t hear it because there is music playing!
“For the second video, Bob didn’t have his band so there’s me playing guitar, Feargal [Sharkey] going mad on his tambourine and a girl we met in the Mexican place singing backing vocals.”
After these fun but chaotic scenes, Stewart and Dylan “met loads of times.”
“I took the boys [his two sons] round to Bob’s place and he showed them how to milk a cow,” he says.
“Then he’d come round to my house in LA on a motorbike. One time, the guy looking after the studio thought somebody had broken in but it was just Bob wearing goggles.”
Stewart recalls how the Traveling Wilburys — Dylan, George Harrison, Roy Orbison, Tom Petty and Jeff Lynne — convened in his back garden for nine days in May, 1988, “recording their first album in my little studio.”
He also talks of meeting up with Bob in Rio De Janeiro when they were on separate South American tours. “We decided to go into the countryside and our tour managers were freaking out.
“We drank a very sugary, very strong Brazilian drink. It gives you a blinding headache in the morning.”
Another time, in London, Stewart invited Dylan onto his houseboat in Camden Lock.
“My mum was making soup and Bob was just sitting there, playing the guitar,” he says.
“Then we took a black cab to Hyde Park and visited Speaker’s Corner. I thought Bob would enjoy seeing people standing on boxes ranting.”
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The visit clearly made an impression because Dylan’s TV Talkin’ Song from his 1990 album Under The Red Sky begins with the lines: “One time in London, I’d gone out for a walk / Past a place called Hyde Park where people talk.”
Then came a celebrated Tuesday afternoon in 1993 when Stewart filmed Dylan strolling around Camden Market — this time for a cover of traditional folk song Blood In My Eyes.
He says: “I got Bob to put on a top hat and said to him, ‘We’ll just walk around and I’ll film people’s reactions’.
“Very quickly, about an hour in, I realised that we didn’t have security and there were quite a lot of people about.
“So, I rang this great Colombian girl who had won a trip to England in a photography competition. She joined us and took pictures of Bob — one of them became the album cover.”
As you can tell, Dave Does Dylan comes with an incredible back story, providing rare insight into both artists.
Stewart still catches Bob’s live shows whenever he can, seeing him at Hollywood’s Pantages Theatre and Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium.
All we need now is an album of Eurythmics covers called Dylan Does Dave.
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Dave Stewart
Dave Does Dylan
★★★★☆
EURYTHMICS: NEVER SAY NEVER
ANNIE Lennox and Dave Stewart remain on good terms and adopt a “never say never” approach to Eurythmics reunions.
The last was a sublime set in 2022 when they were inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame.
Lennox has ruled out touring but Stewart keeps the flag flying by performing the Eurythmics Songbook with his band and Vanessa Amorosi on vocals.
“The songs are still on the radio all the time in the States,” Stewart says. “I can play whatever I want, having co-written and produced all the songs. I know them by heart.
“And I can stick in anything else I want – a Dylan song maybe!”
