Bob Dylan is a music icon, but apparently he wasn’t thrilled to be backed by a supergroup of musicians one night in 1992—and he had a unique way of showing it.
That’s according to David Letterman, who shared the story in a new clip posted to his YouTube channel Tuesday.
The performance went down as part of Late Night with David Letterman’s 10th Anniversary Special at Radio City Music Hall, where Dylan had agreed to perform his classic song “Like a Rolling Stone.”
“As Paul [Shaffer] tells it, Bob agreed to be on the show, but did not realize he would be accompanied by others,” Letterman explains. “Bob was under the impression it would be Bob and his guitar.”
Instead, Dylan was backed by an all-star band put together by Shaffer for the event, comprised of his own World’s Most Dangerous Band, a horn section featuring Doc Severinsen, Carole King on keyboards, Steve Vai and Chrissie Hynde on guitar, and a murderer’s row of backup singers that included Roseanne Cash, Michelle Shocked, Nanci Griffith, Mavis Staples, and Emmylou Harris.
In protest and/or frustration, Dylan performed a particularly unintelligible version of the song.
“This was Bob sending us all a little message,” Letterman says. “I think this was Bob’s little way of having fun with us.”
“You almost needed someone signing [backup] , because it was so bizarre,” Letterman adds of the performance, before showing a brief clip of Dylan’s quasi-gibberish song.
Letterman says he was inspired to revisit Dylan’s performance after watching a YouTube video about the writing of “Likea Rolling Stone.”
“I had forgotten that it was odd,” Letterman remarked, “but boy is it odd!”
Apparently there were no hard feelings on either end, as Dylan returned to perform on Letterman’s late-night shows at least two more times, including on one of his very last Late Show episodes in 2015, when Dylan responded to Letterman thanking him by telling him “it’s an honor.”
“I know this is showbiz and all,” Letterman recalls. “But when Bob said that to me, I took it. I kinda bought it. I thought ‘wow, that’s pretty cool.'”
You can watch Dylan’s full 1992 performance from Late Night‘s 10th anniversary special below, courtesy of Letterman archivist Don Giller, who shared it to his YouTube channel several years back:
