Ricky Nelson had a long friendship with Bob Dylan, but their connection goes deeper than most fans realize. In a new interview, Nelson’s sons, Matthew and Gunnar, looked back on their late father’s career and shared the surprising story behind “Garden Party,” the 1972 song that became their dad’s final Top 40 hit.
Speaking on Billy Corgan’s The Magnificent Others podcast, Gunnar recalled the influence of their father’s famous musician friends in the early 1970s, more than a decade after his heyday as a 1950s teen idol with hits such as “Poor Little Fool” and “Hello Mary Lou.”
“I mean, we really grew up around our dad’s Stone Canyon Band that was the scene that was happening up in Laurel Canyon,” Gunnar shared. “So, we grew up around Linda Ronstadt and the Crosby Stills and Nash guys and Jackson Browne and Joni Mitchell and Dylan over at the house all the time. And our dad was during the second phase of his career with the Stone Canyon Band and playing an acoustic and singing three-part harmony all the time.”
“It was reinvention when nobody thought he was going to do anything,” Matthew Nelson added. “They thought he was washed up and done. It’s an incredible story.”
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The brothers noted that Bob Dylan influenced their father “a lot,” most notably by convincing him to become a songwriter.
“I don’t think that ‘Garden Party’ would exist without Bob Dylan, to be honest,” Gunnar said. “He was at our house a lot, and according to what we heard, they had a moment together where Bob and our dad, our dad had basically gone into forced semi-retirement at that time. The world had changed. The Beatles had invaded America, everything had shifted, and the singer-songwriter thing was happening at the time, and our dad was taking some time off to have a family.”
Gunnar continued: “Apparently they had a conversation one day, and Bob just said, ‘Look, you know, I understand that the kids consider you completely over, you’re a has-been,’ He said, ‘Well, you know, thanks, Bob.’ And he said, ‘No, no, what I’m saying is it’s all about writing now. It’s all about writing.'”
Matthew added that Dylan’s pep talk inspired their dad to write.
“He said, ‘Why don’t you screw them up? Why don’t you write some songs? Can you write?’ He said, ‘I don’t know. I haven’t tried.’ And that was enough to get him to do it,” Matthew explained. “And in ’67 he started releasing songs that he wrote for the first time, you know, which was a real moment for him.”
“Garden Party” was written after Nelson was booed off the stage at Richard Nader’s Rock ‘n’ Roll Spectacular Volume IV concert at Madison Square Garden in May 1971.
“He got booed off the stage for walking on stage with long hair and looking like, you know, a cowboy hippie,” Matthew said. “They couldn’t believe that that black-and-white television, clean-cut Ricky Nelson of Ozzie and Harriet was the same dude. He wrote a song about the experience, or it basically wrote itself and he was the translator, because he said it came to him in a dream and the lyrics are all on one piece of paper. We have them on the wall at home.”
Dylan is mentioned in the second verse of Garden Party” with the lyric, “And over in the corner, much to my surprise, Mr. Hughes hid in Dylan’s shoes wearing his disguise.”
Dylan was once asked if he had a favorite song in which he is mentioned—the folk legend is name-checked in John Lennon’s “Yer Blues” and David Bowie’s “Song for Bob Dylan,” among others.
“Garden Party,” he replied in a Q&A posted on his website,
In 2025, Dylan performed a cover of “Garden Party” at the Outlaw Music Festival in Chula Vista, California, in tribute to Nelson, who died in 1985 in a plane crash. On Corgan’s podcast, the Nelson brothers called the legendary singer’s performance of the song a “full circle” moment.
Related: 1965 Rock Classic, Featuring Lyrics Inspired by Reimagined Bible Passage, Ranked Among the ‘Most American Songs of All Time’
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