Bob Dylan’s Favorite Bob Dylan Cover: “I Liked His Version Better Than Mine”

Covering Bob Dylan is a musical right of passage that countless artists have taken over the years, but of the thousands upon thousands of cover versions of his material, Bob Dylan has only named one as his favorite. In fact, Dylan went so far as to say he preferred the cover version to his own—certainly no small feat for someone as infamously particular about his music.

In true Dylan fashion, the cover he deemed the best borders on the obscure in comparison to more commercially successful renditions of his songs. This cover was a bit scrappier and a touch more raw, not unlike a fresh-faced Dylan in the mid-1960s.

Bob Dylan’s Favorite Bob Dylan Cover

As was often the case for singer-songwriters in the 1960s, some of Bob Dylan’s earliest successes came from more prominent artists covering his music while he was still building a name for himself as a solo artist. The Byrds covered “Mr. Tambourine Man,” The Turtles released their version of “It Ain’t Me, Babe,” and so on. But in his memoir Chronicles, Vol. 1, Dylan revealed the only cover version of his song that he felt really got it.

“The Johnny Rivers [cover of “Positively 4th Street”] was my favorite,” the singer-songwriter wrote.” It was obvious that we were from the same side of town, had been read the same citations, came from the same musical family, and were cut from the same cloth. When I listened to Johnny’s version, I liked his version better than mine. I listened to it over and over again.” 

“Most of the cover versions of my songs seemed to take them out into left field somewhere,” Dylan continued. “But Rivers’ version had the mandate down: the attitude and melodic sense to complete and surpass even the feeling that had put into it. When I heard Johnny sing my song, it was obvious that life had the same external grip on him as it did on me.”

John Ramistella’s Connection to Robert Zimmerman

Bob Dylan’s opinion that Johnny Rivers’ version of “Positively 4th Street” was indicative of the musicians’ similar upbringings is, unsurprisingly, right on the nose. Robert Zimmerman and John Henry Ramistella, respectively, embarked on their musical careers under new names, struggling to make ends meet while they cut their teeth on the East Coast.

Rivers made it to the West Coast before Dylan, having established his reputation for his live recordings at Los Angeles’ Whisky a Go Go nightclub. In an interview with Las Vegas Magazine, Rivers recalled seeing a young Dylan at the club. “Bob Dylan used to come into the Whisky when we first opened and hang out. He would come upstairs to our dressing room; he was really kind of quiet, and everybody [knew him] as that guy that wrote that song for Peter, Paul, and Mary, “Blowing in the Wind.” He was known in the folk world but not in the pop-rock world.”

As for Dylan’s kind words about Rivers in his memoir? Rivers read them. “Everyone called me after that and said, ‘Wow, did you see what Bob Dylan wrote about you in his book?’” Rivers said. “It’s a pretty good compliment. There’s thousands of recordings of his songs. Everybody back in those days, especially in the ‘60s, recorded at least one Dylan song on their album, even the jazz singers. So, for him to say out of all those recordings, mine was his favorite…I think he said he liked it better than his record.”

Photo by Everett/Shutterstock

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