Bob Dylan on covering Sinatra: Frank 'is the mountain'

(Image credit: Christopher Polk/Getty Images)

published 23 January 2015

Bob Dylan has been thinking about doing an album of songs made famous by Frank Sinatra since he heard Willie Nelson's album Stardust in the late 1970s, he tells Robert Love in AARP The Magazine — an interview Dylan requested, his one and only for the album Shadows in the Night. Longtime fans shouldn't be surprised by his Sinatra album, Dylan said, because he's played most of the standards over the years.

"To trash those songs would be sacrilegious," he tells Love. "And we've all heard those songs being trashed, and we're used to it. In some kind of ways you want to right the wrong." He continues:

When you start doing these songs, Frank's got to be on your mind. Because he is the mountain. That's the mountain you have to climb, even if you only get part of the way there.... I myself never bought any Frank Sinatra records back then. But you'd hear him anyway — in a car or a jukebox. Certainly nobody worshipped Sinatra in the '60s like they did in the '40s. But he never went away — all those other things that we thought were here to stay, they did go away. But he never did. [AARP]

Part of this is about getting old, Dylan suggested: "Don't try to act like you're young. You could really hurt yourself." But he also laughed off any comparisons to Sinatra: "Comparing me with Frank Sinatra? You must be joking. To be mentioned in the same breath as him must be some sort of high compliment. As far as touching him goes, nobody touches him. Not me or anyone else." Read the entire interview at AARP.

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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.