We had historian Doug Brinkley on the show today to talk about his Rolling Stone interview with Bob Dylan. There’s a poignant moment in the Rolling Stone piece (which is not available online, I’m afraid) when Dylan describes visiting his hometown of Duluth, Minnesota, and then making a side trip up into Canada:

“I went to see Neil Young’s house in Winnipeg,” he says. “I just felt compelled. I wanted to see his bedroom. Where he looked out of the windows. Where he dreamed. Where he walked out of the door every day. Wanted to see what’s around his neighborhood in Winnipeg. And I did just that.”

“How did you do that?”

“I don’t know,” he answers. “Somebody found out for me where he used to live. I mean, there’s no marker or anything. And some people were living in his house. He lived in an upstairs duplex with his mother. I wanted to walk the steps that Neil walked every day.”

“Does he know you did that?” I ask.

“I don’t think so,” Dylan says with a grin. “I was meaning to send him a card afterward and tell him that. That I’d been there. Where he used to hang out and where he started out. Neil, I respect him so much.”

OK, I admit, that one gives me shivers. Neil Young of course has his own new album out, “Fork in the Road,” another well-received rocker. And these two guys — two great survivors, so different in their ways, still making their art — have such mutual respect for each other, as anyone who’s followed them over the years knows. It prompted me to poke around on YouTube. Check out a few of the things I found.

Here’s Young talking about Dylan in an interview with Charlie Rose. “I’ve heard Bob say he doesn’t know the guy who wrote those songs anymore…”

And here’s Neil covering Dylan’s “All Along the Watchtower”…

Dylan returns the compliment with this cover of the great Neil Young song “Old Man” in 2002… “Old man, look at my life, I’m a lot like you were…”

They were so much older then. They’re younger than that now…