Marianne Faithfull was "so upset" when she found out Bob Dylan had torn up a poem he'd written about her.

Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan

The 74-year-old singer has remembered how she first met the legendary singer - who turned 80 on Monday (24.05.21) - at the Savoy hotel and he was "hammering away" on a typewriter, and she only learned later, after she'd rejected his romantic advances, that she'd been the source of his inspiration on that occasion.

She said: "I first met Bob at the Savoy in 1965. There’s a clip of me and Joan Baez singing 'As Tears Go By' in the hotel room while Bob is hammering away on a typewriter.

"Later when I turned him down, he told me that it had been a poem about me, but he’d torn it up.

"I was so upset, but we got over that and have been friends for 56 years. I really like him."

Marianne singled out 1966's 'It's All Over Now, Baby Blue' as her favourite track from Dylan's extensive body of work and explained how the song is helping her rediscover her voice following a near-fatal battle with coronavirus last year.

She told The Guardian newspaper: "I think 'It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue'is about those times in life where you just have to say, 'OK, we tried, it didn’t work', but it’s a much sleeker way of saying it. It’s very loving, but obviously it’s all over.

"I don’t really know why I love it so much, but I’ve been in many situations where I would have liked to have time stop and have a band playing and sing that song to people. I’ve recorded it twice. The second time, I’d had more experiences and really felt it. I love the way his songs change octaves.

"I’m suffering long Covid and my voice is cracked, but I’m trying to recover it by singing 'It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue'."

Meanwhile, Marianne's ex-lover, Sir Mick Jagger singled out 1965's 'Desolation Row' as his favourite Dylan track because he can always find something "wonderful and new" in the song.

He said: "I love the lovely half-Spanish guitar lines from the session guitarist, Charlie McCoy. It’s actually a really lovely song, which shouldn’t work with the imagery but does. You can listen to it all the time and still get something wonderful and new from it."

And the Rolling Stones frontman recalled watching the 'Blowin' in the Wind' hitmaker at work in the studio and admitted he couldn't record in the same conditions.

He said: "I was at a session for 'Blood on the Tracks' [1975] and really enjoyed watching him record 'Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts', with this incredible depth of storyline, surrounded by all these boring people from the record company who he had sitting in the control room. I couldn’t record like that."

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