4 Times Willie Nelson Covered Bob Dylan Songs

He’s [Nelson] like a philosopher-poet,” said Dylan during Nelson’s 60th birthday celebration. ” He gets to the heart of it in a quick way."

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In 1973, Bob Dylan was in Durango, Mexico, with Kris Kristofferson filming Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, when he first met Willie Nelson. While on set, Kristofferson and Dylan spent a lot of time together and talked about Nelson. “I asked Bob, ‘Why isn’t Willie famous? He’s a genius,’” remembered Kristofferson in an August 2010 interview with Classic Rock. “So, the next day, Bob calls Willie up and gets him to come down to the set, and he made him play his old Martin guitar for ten hours straight. They ended up doing all these old Django Reinhardt tunes. It was fabulous.”

When Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue Tour made a stop in Houston three years later, Nelson and Dylan performed “Gotta Travel On” together, then reunited in 1985 to record “We Are the World.” By the early ’90s, the two co-wrote and recorded their first and only song, “Heartland.”

Featured on Nelson’s fortieth album, Across the Borderline, the song centers around the struggles and livelihood of agricultural workers, which led him, along with Neil Young and John Mellencamp, to form Farm Aid in 1985—There’s a home place under fire tonight in the heartland / And the bankers are taking my home and my land from me.

By the early 2000s, Nelson and Dylan reconvened for a run of shows at minor league baseball parks in 2004 and again in 2009. Dylan also played Nelson’s Outlaw Music Festival in 2017 and rejoined the fest again in 2024.

FALCON HEIGHTS, MN. – AUGUST 1984: Country musician, singer, songwriter Willie Nelson performing in concert at the Minnesota State Fair grandstand, Thursday, August 23, 1984, Falcon Heights, Minn. (a suburb of St. Paul, Minn.) Photo by Minneapolis Star and Tribune staff photographer Darlene Pfister. (Photo by Darlene Pfister/Star Tribune via Getty Images)

“He’s [Nelson] like a philosopher-poet,” said Dylan during Nelson’s 60th birthday celebration. ” He gets to the heart of it in a quick way. His guitar playing is pretty phenomenal. I don’t really ever see anybody giving him any credit as a musician, but in my book, he’s pretty up there at the top.”

Dylan continued, “He takes whatever he’s singing and makes it his. There’s not many people who can do that—even with something like an Elvis tune. Once Elvis done a tune, it’s pretty much done. Willie’s the only one in my recollection that has even taken something associated with Elvis and made it his. He just puts his own trip on it.”

For nearly 50 years, both continued to tour together and collaborate. Nelson also covered a few of Dylan’s songs, including the following four renditions.

Nelson’s 40th album, Across the Borderline, features collaborations with his Highwaymen bandmate Kris Kristofferson, along with Bonnie Raitt, Paul Simon, and Sinéad O’Connor, and other contributions by Lyle Lovett, John Hiatt, and more.

The album also features the Nelson and Dylan co-write “Heartland” and a cover of Dylan’s 1989 Oh Mercy track “What Was It You Wanted.”

Released on Dylan’s 1978 album Street-Legal, “Señor (Tales of Yankee Power)” is a minor-key ballad that tells the story of an old man he once met on a train from Mexico to San Diego. “He must have been 150 years old,” said Dylan. “Both his eyes were burning, and there was smoke coming out of his nostrils.” 

In 2007, Nelson covered “Señor,” alongside Calexico, for the soundtrack for Todd Haynes’ Dylan biopic I’m Not There.

“Gotta Serve Somebody” (2008)

Dylan opened his 1979 album Slow Train Coming with the more religious-bent “Gotta Serve Somebody.” At the time, Dylan was a born-again Christian and wrote the song about finding meaning in life through God. John Lennon found the lyrics were “embarrassing” and “Serve Yourself” in response to Dylan’s song—You tell me you found Jesus/ Christ! Well, that’s great, and he’s the only one / You say you just found Buddha? / And he’s sittin’ on his arse in the sun?

“I was listening to the radio and Dylan’s new single or album or whatever the hell it is came on,” said Lennon in a recorded diary entry unearthed in 1999. “‘Everybody’s got to be served.’ I mean, what was it? ‘You’ve got to serve someone’ … ‘You’ve got to serve somebody.’ So he wants to be a waiter now? A waiter for Christ. Backing was mediocre … the singing really pathetic and the words were just embarrassing.”

Regardless of Lennon’s opinion, “Gotta Serve Somebody” earned Dylan a Grammy Award for Best Rock Vocal Performance by a Male in 1980. Nearly 30 years since its original release, Nelson also recorded the song for his 2008 album Moment of Forever.

In 2015, Nelson and Merle Haggard released their sixth and final collaborative album, Django and Jimmie. The album topped the Country chart and features a collection of songs written by Haggard or Nelson, along with a cover of Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright” midway through.

Originally released by Dylan on The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan in 1962, the song was also covered by Waylon Jennings on his debut album Waylon at JD’s from 1964.

Photo: Darlene Pfister/Star Tribune via Getty Images

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