Bob Dylan on Willie Nelson: ‘Ancient Viking Soul’

Willie Nelson, and specifically his life on the road, is the focus of a new opus profile in The New Yorker. The highlights are many, but Bob Dylan’s attempt to explain the appeal of Nelson stands chief among them.

In a statement to the magazine, he cautions that it’s difficult to speak of Nelson “without saying something stupid or irrelevant, he is so much of everything.” But Dylan tries nonetheless, in his own poetic Dylan way, ruminating on the 92-year-old Country Music Hall of Fame member as an “Ancient Viking Soul,” a “Master Builder of the Impossible,” and a “Moonshine Philosopher.” (The capped letters are all Dylan’s.)

In one dandy of a phrase, he identifies Nelson and his signature long, braided hair as the “Red Bandana troubadour, braids like twin ropes lassoing eternity.”

“What do you say about a guy who plays an old, battered guitar that he treats like it’s the last loyal dog in the universe?” Dylan continues. “Cowboy apparition, writes songs with holes that you can crawl through to escape from something. Voice like a warm porchlight left on for wanderers who kissed goodbye too soon or stayed too long. I guess you can say all that.”

In the end, Dylan circles back to the quixotic nature of the task of describing Willie Nelson.

“But it really doesn’t tell you a lot or explain anything about Willie. Personally speaking I’ve always known him to be kind, generous, tolerant and understanding of human feebleness, a benefactor, a father and a friend. He’s like the invisible air. He’s high and low. He’s in harmony with nature,” Dylan concludes. “And that’s what makes him Willie.”

Nelson and Dylan spent this past summer on the Outlaw Music Festival Tour, but the pair go back more than 50 years and have shared the stage numerous times. They’ve sung their joint composition “Heartland” together, as well as Townes Van Zandt’s “Pancho & Lefty,” and were famously members of the U.S.A. for Africa “We Are the World” charity recording in the Eighties.

Both remain true road dogs. Earlier this month, Dylan, at 84, announced an extensive 2026 tour kicking off in March in Nebraska. Nelson currently has no announced dates, but as a message on his website reads, “Check back often, Willie is always On the Road Again.”