Paul McCartney Reviews Bob Dylan Live: ‘I Couldn’t Tell What Song He Was Doing’

If you’ve attended a Bob Dylan concert of late, only to see him hide behind a piano and wearing an oversize hoodie while singing what you believe are consonants and vowels, and thought, Huh, guess what? Paul McCartney had a similar takeaway. Sir Paul told The Rest Is Entertainment that he’ll never tire of playing the greatest hits of his career — Beatles or otherwise — despite the repetition of them all when he tours. “Well, I can do songs they don’t know,” he says of his fans. “I’ve got a lot of black holes. But they’ve paid a lot of money.” Compare this ideology to Dylan’s track record for radical and often strange reinterpretations of his material, which McCartney has experienced for himself. “I’ve been to see a couple of shows of Bob’s. I couldn’t tell what song he was doing,” he explains. “Now that’s a bit much, because I know his stuff. I get it if he doesn’t want to do ‘Mr. Tambourine Man.’ Maybe he’s fed up with that, but I would like to hear it. And I’ve paid.” (Not the point, but Dylan really can’t comp him a ticket?) McCartney recently shared that he considers “Mr. Tambourine Man” to be one of the most significant songs in his life, in addition to Chuck Berry’s “Maybelline” and the Human League’s “Don’t You Want Me,” because he’s a man of style and taste.