Bob Dylan and Jim Morrison, two of the most influential musicians of the 1960s, both drew heavily on the work of Beat Generation writer Jack Kerouac, whose free-flowing prose style shaped their approach to lyrics and performance. Dylan's fascination began in 1959 when Allen Ginsberg gave him a copy of Kerouac's poem Mexico City Blues, which he later said "spoke to me in my own language", while Kerouac's spontaneous, rejection-of-convention ethos remained embedded in Dylan's songwriting even though the two never met before Kerouac's death in 1969.

Dylan particularly admired Kerouac's 1957 novel On the Road, praising its "breathless, dynamic bop phrases" and comparing its narrative pace to a speeding freight train. Morrison, too, counted On the Road among his favourite books, so much so that The Doors' keyboardist Ray Manzarek credited it with the band's very existence, and Kerouac topped a wider list of Beat influences on Morrison that included Ginsberg, William Burroughs and Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Although Dylan and Morrison rarely crossed paths and never discussed their shared admiration for Kerouac directly, the article argues their poetry independently channelled the same bohemian, improvisational spirit he embodied.