See Jeff Bridges Cover Bob Dylan’s ‘The Man in Me’ on ‘Conan’
Bob Dylan‘s “The Man in Me” will forever be associated with Jeff Bridges. The song, which originally came out in 1970 on New Morning, soundtracks the opening credits of The Big Lebowski, one of Bridges’ career-defining roles.
The actor stopped by Conan on Wednesday and performed the track with help from O’Brien’s house band and guitarist Quinn Sullivan. While “The Man in Me” is loose and roomy to begin with, Bridges’ ramshackle rendition accentuated these qualities, as he perched casually behind a small keyboard in front of his backing group.
This is not the first time Bridges has channelled his inner Dylan in a live setting. He also performed “The Man in Me” last year on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, and has played the tune with his band the Abiders at Lebowski Fest.
In a recent interview with Rolling Stone, Bridges picked “The Man In Me” as his favorite Dylan track, and remembered collaborating with the musician more than a decade ago. “We worked together on [the 2003 movie] Masked and Anonymous,” Bridges noted. “He’d knock on my trailer door and go, ‘Hey, you wanna pick?’ We would play the version of ‘You Belong to Me’ that he did on the Natural Born Killers soundtrack.”
Bridges has released several albums under his own name. The most recent, Sleeping Tapes, came out in 2015.