When Bob Dylan met the Replacements: The New Yorker unearths a priceless decades-old anecdote
September 26, 2012
Bob Dylan's new album Tempest has been stirring up all kinds of thought-provoking, in-depth coverage this month (including a must-read Rolling Stone interview with Dylan himself conducted by Mikal Gilmore), but this little slice of storytelling just might take the cake.
In this month's issue of the New Yorker, Tempest engineer and longtime record producer Scott Litt is profiled, and during the interview this little gem popped out:
He was producing an album by the Replacements, and Dylan, who was recording nearby, dropped in to check them out – at the very moment, as it happens, that Paul Westerberg, the Replacements’ leader, was launching into a Dylan parody of theirs called “Like a Rolling Pin.” Westerberg, his back turned to the control room, failed to notice Dylan standing there, and Litt, to Westerberg’s later chagrin, didn’t stop him.
When the song was over, Dylan, who was wearing a hoodie, said, “You guys rehearse much?,” and then walked out.
Oh, to be a fly on the wall of that control room...
