Bob Dylan remembers Little Richard - "My shining star, my guiding light"
I just heard the news about Little Richard and Im so grieved, Dylan wrote. He was my shining star and guiding light back when I was only a little boy. His was the original spirit that moved me to do everything I would do.
Dylan continued, I played some shows with him in Europe in the early nineties and got to hang out in his dressing room a lot. He was always generous, kind and humble. And still dynamite as a performer and a musician and you could still learn plenty from him. In his presence he was always the same Little Richard that I first heard and was awed by growing up and I always was the same little boy. Of course hell live forever. But its like a part of your life is gone.
In Dylans high school yearbook in 1959, then-senior Robert Zimmerman famously wrote that his life ambition was to join Little Richard. As the Star Tribune reported, Dylan even attempted to emulate Little Richards imitable performing style during his first-ever public performance at a Hibbing High School talent show in 1957.
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/bob-dylan-little-richard-tribute-996935/