Bob Dylan Shared Songwriting Stories with Steve Jobs

Bob Dylan is "smart as a tack," open and honest, the recently deceased Steve Jobs told his biographer Walter Isaacson for an authorized biography on the co-founder of Apple that was released today, Oct. 24, by Simon & Schuster.

Jobs shared his impressions of the folk-rock legend after meeting with him for two hours in 2004. The two had an extensive and seemingly personal conversation during which Dylan told Jobs stories of his life and how he wrote his songs, writes Isaacson in the book, titled simply 'Steve Jobs.'

"I was really nervous, because he was one of my heroes," said Jobs to Isaacson as reported by Roger Friedman of Showbiz 411. "And I was also afraid that he wouldn’t be really smart anymore, that he’d be a caricature of himself, like happens to a lot of people. But I was delighted. He was as sharp as a tack. He was everything I’d hoped. He was really open and honest."

Jobs continued, "He was just telling me about his life and about writing his songs. He said, 'They just came through me, it wasn’t like I was having to compose them. That doesn’t happen anymore, I just can’t write them that way anymore.' Then he paused and said to me with his raspy voice and little smile, 'But I still can sing them.'"

As those who followed the Apple visionary's life story know, Jobs idolized Dylan. The 2004 meeting is what led to the Apple visionary becoming what Friedman deems Dylan's "unofficial archivist" and to Apple's 2007 release of Dylan's digital catalog.