Dylan and Dave

One of the most intriguing rarities on

1985 is an unreleased Bob Dylan instrumental, Meridian West, which emerged from a late November 1985 recording session in London. At the time, the mercurial folk icon was working with Eurythmics’ Dave Stewart and a session band that included Blondie drummer

Clem Burke. Mike Scott had been invited to come by the studio to play and, of course, jumped at the chance, with Waterboys bandmates Steve Wickham and Anthony Thistlethwaite joining him.

Scott was “praying” the experience resembled freewheeling Dylan sessions of yore – “I was hoping Bob would be singing and trying out songs that no one had ever heard before, and the band would be trying to guess what was going to happen next” – although the reality was much different. At the time, Dylan was playing electric guitar on a series of instrumentals, but not singing; as far as Scott could tell, lyrics were due to be added later. “They were doing very slickly arranged instrumentals with

Dave Stewart really in charge,” Scott recalls. “It was very high-quality work. It just wasn’t what I expected with Bob. He was in good shape, though, and was very friendly with us. We had a nice time with him.”

Scott and his bandmates performed one of these instrumentals the next day in another London studio, where they were trying out potential new players for The Waterboys. “By good luck, because I was checking out the musicians, I had the cassette machine running.” When Scott started working on 1985, he managed to dig up this tape. “To my delight, it was a very high-quality recording,” he says. “It was about nine minutes long. So I edited it down to three with the best bits.” Decades later, Dylan hadn’t forgotten Meridian West – and, even better, gave Scott his blessing. “[Dylan’s management] said, ‘ Yeah, Bob remembers it. He’s happy for you to use it.’”