In 1986, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers worked as Bob Dylan's backing band for his True Confessions tour. Two years later, the icons would collaborate again, when they joined forces alongside George Harrison, Jeff Lynne, and Roy Orbison in the supergroup the Traveling Wilburys.
"I learned so much from Bob Dylan," Tom Petty said earlier this year. "He gave us a kind of courage that we never had, to learn something quickly and go out on stage and play it. You had to be pretty versatile because arrangements could change, keys might change, there's just no way of knowing exactly what he wants to do each night. You really learnt the value of spontaneity, of how a moment that is real in a concert is worth so much more than one you plan out."
Saturday night, on what would have been Petty's 67th birthday, Dylan showed his famed versatility, playing a surprise cover of the late-legend's "Learning to Fly" at a show in Colorado.
"It's shocking, crushing news," Dylan said in a statement to Esquire.com after Petty's death on October 2. "I thought the world of Tom. He was a great performer, full of the light, a friend, and I'll never forget him."
And truly, the greatest honour for any musician, is to have Bob Dylan cover one of your songs.
