Ten of the best classic Bob Dylan covers

There are rich pickings to be had in mining the catalogue of one of the world’s most prolific songwriters: Graeme Ross narrows down his list of versions which more than do justice to the original

His Bobness, bard of rain (Getty)

Exactly 50 years ago this week one of the most fondly remembered bands of the 1960s, Manfred Mann, were at the peak of their popularity with their third UK number one, a jaunty, rollicking version of the Bob Dylan song “Mighty Quinn”. Dylan, of course, has famously never had a number one single as a performer but as one of the most covered artists in the history of music, his songs have attracted a huge and diverse range of acts with widely variable results. With so many to choose from everyone will have their own favourite Dylan covers, but for me, you would be hard pushed to top this list.

10 Warren Zevon – Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door (2003)
Of all the cover versions of this song (over 150 at the last count) composed by Dylan for the soundtrack of Sam Peckinpah’s elegiac western Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, none have resonated as movingly as Zevon’s, for the simple reason that when he recorded it, Zevon himself was dying from inoperable lung cancer. Throughout his career Zevon always displayed an innate gift for looking the dark stuff right in the eye, and with his valedictory album The Wind he unflinchingly stared his own impending death square in the face on a clutch of emotionally charged songs, with the fragile, fractured vocals of “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” a bittersweet highlight.

9 Manfred Mann – Mighty Quinn (1968)
By the time Manfred Mann recorded this as yet unreleased song from Dylan and The Band’s famed 1967 Basement Tapes sessions, they were seasoned veterans in the art of covering Dylan, having taken “Just Like a Woman” into the top ten, and “If You Gotta Go, Go Now” to number two. Dylan’s own version wasn’t officially released until 1970 under the title “Quinn the Eskimo” and has an endearingly shambolic quality, but in the hands of one of the great singles bands of the 1960s, “Mighty Quinn” is transformed into a joyous pop standard that topped the UK charts for two weeks.

8 Madeleine Peyroux – You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go (2004)
A light jazzy, almost whimsical soft shoe shuffle around one of Dylan’s greatest breakup songs from his 1975 masterpiece Blood on the Tracks, with Peyroux ably demonstrating her well-documented Billie Holiday influence.

7 Spirit – Like a Rolling Stone (1975)
Arguably the toughest nut in the Dylan canon to crack, so how best to approach a remake of one of the most influential songs of all time? In Spirit’s guiding light Randy California’s case, replace the vitriol of the lyrics and swirling density of the music with whispered vocals and gossamer finger-picking guitar before branching into a trippy, bluesy jam. The result? A delicate, graceful rendition of Dylan’s greatest song.

6 Howard Tate – Girl from the North Country (1972)
One of the great almost forgotten soul singers turns Dylan’s evocative classic of lost love into a sparkling slice of Southern Soul. Given the full Atlantic Records treatment with booming horns and Tate’s soaring voice, it shouldn’t really work but the resulting celebratory air is a perfect counterpoint to the sombre and regretful mood of the original.

5 Julie Driscoll with Brian Auger and the Trinity – This Wheel’s On Fire (1968)
For just a heartbeat, the striking Julie Driscoll was the face and voice of 1968 thanks to this top five single and a luminous appearance on Top of the Pops. Driscoll’s alluring vocal and Auger’s Hammond organ swirls allied to distortion and phasing gave the record a spooky ambience that captured the essence of late Sixties psychedelia. A co-write with The Band’s Rick Danko and not officially released until 1975, “This Wheel’s on Fire” may refer to Dylan’s infamous motorcycle crash in 1966, but it’s more likely he intended it as a metaphor for the path of excess he found himself racing down at that stage of his life. The song later gained new exposure when Driscoll re-recorded it for the theme to Absolutely Fabulous.

4 Emmylou Harris – Every Grain of Sand (1995)
The Queen of Alt/Country was on peak form on 1995’s Wrecking Ball and her take on a rare masterpiece from Dylan’s born-again period is an ethereal, life-affirming experience. Harris gives it the song the reverential performance it deserves and it may even top Dylan’s own deeply spiritual version. Listen to Harris’s voice straining and cracking 2 minutes and 27 seconds in and you cannot fail to be moved.

3 The Band – I Shall Be Released (1968)
So inexorably linked were Dylan and The Band that it’s only natural that they covered him better and more than most. Dylan had recorded a version of “I Shall be Released” with The Band as part of the famed Basement Tapes sessions in 1967 which wouldn’t see an official release until 1991. The Band placed their version as the final track on their game-changing debut album Music From Big Pink and masterfully captured Dylan’s gospel-hued declaration of physical freedom and spiritual redemption. Richard Manuel’s haunting falsetto and Levon Helm and Rick Danko’s harmonies are simply heartbreaking and give the song a rare hymn-like quality.

2 The Byrds – Mr Tambourine Man (1965)
The innovative brilliance and influence of the Byrds’ version of Dylan’s wordy, surrealistic epic can never be overstated. The Byrds’ “Mr Tambourine Man” is severely truncated (they only used the second verse of Dylan’s original), but in just two minutes and 18 seconds it brought Dylan into the mainstream, launched their own stellar career as arguably the greatest American band of the Sixties and birthed the new, exciting genre of folk rock just as Dylan himself was moving more towards rock. Roger McGuinn’s jangling electric 12-string Rickenbacker is one of the greatest sounds in popular music and along with his languid lead vocal and the Byrds’ signature harmonies helped fashion a timeless classic that topped the charts on both sides of the Atlantic and challenged all comers, notably the Beatles, to up their game.

1 The Jimi Hendrix Experience – All Along the Watchtower (1968)
Rarely in the annals of popular music has a song undergone such a radical and definitive re-imagining as “All Along the Watchtower”. Hendrix took the sense of doom and urgency inherent in the lyrics of Dylan’s spare, rootsy original and transformed the song into a magnificent apocalyptic roar, once heard, never forgotten, the brilliance of which Dylan himself later acknowledged by adopting Hendrix’s arrangement in concert as a tribute to the fallen musical genius.