“He was never in one place too long, always moving on”: Dylan in Los Angeles, December 16, 1965

MICHAEL OCHS ARCHIVES/GETTY IMAGES

Spanning six decades, from 1960 to 2020, these remarkable stories shed new light on rock’s most capricious and elusive genius, whose startling transformations from folk hero to electrified renegade and beyond continue to captivate us all.

To begin, then, let us return to Minnesota, Dylan’s home state, where an earnest young admirer awaits the arrival of folk royalty…

Dylan at the Singers Club Christmas party, The King & Queen pub, London, on his first visit to Britain, December 22, 1962

BRIAN SHUEL/REDFERNS; VICKY SHARP; GETTY IMAGES

THE 1960S

A “NEAT” but “funny looking” new face arrives in New York City; Buddy Holly, the Delmonico Hotel and a typewriter all figure highly, as does a roadside epiphany in an open-topped car

“He carried a little briefcase”

PEGGY  SEEGER: Bob was always around whenever Ewan [MacColl] and I played in Minneapolis, where he was a student at the university. He’d ask us for our autographs. He was always very neat and carried a little briefcase. Two years later, when we went back to Minneapolis, the organiser said, “Remember that little fella who was always attached to you? You know that’s Bob Dylan, right?” You’d be astounded at how far away from the pop scene Ewan and I were, so when Robert Zimmerman became Bob Dylan it didn’t mean anything to us.

Not long after, he came to the UK and performed at the Singers Club [December 1962]. But nobody could hear him because we didn’t have microphones and his voice wasn’t loud enough. Some peple have since said that he was given the cold shoulder, but I don’t think that’s true. It was just that at that time we were singing pretty much folk songs or highly political songs in our club. Bob Dylan’s songs fell halfway in between. It was a new kind of song.

“His first paid performance”

RAMBLIN’ JACK ELLIOTT: In late 1961, I took a bus out to New Jersey to visit Woody Guthrie in hospital. This kid was there, quite an engaging guy – kinda pudgy and funny-looking, but nice. He told me he had all my recordings. It was Bob.

Back in New York City, he’d ask me all about Woody, who I’d known since 1951. I was some years older than Bob and got him into the musicians’ union. At his first paid performance at Gerde’s Folk City, they put up a cardboard sign written in ballpoint pen: “Appearing tonight: Son of Jack Elliott”. So there was some sort of parental relationship going on there, you might say. I used to play harmonica with my guitar, just like Woody did. Bob did the same thing. People used to poke me and say, “He’s imitating you, Jack.” I couldn’t see the resemblance myself, but I suppose his playing was reminiscent of my crazy, whoopedup, distorted blues-style harp.

“Is that true about Buddy Holly?”

CAROLYN HESTER: I was playing at Gerde’s Folk City in Greenwich Village one night in 1961 and introduced “Lonesome Tears” by saying, “This one’s by Buddy Holly, who taught it to me.” Before you know it, somebody in this little hat pulled his chair up to almost beside me. He said, “Is that true about Buddy Holly? I just think the world of him. It’s nice to meet you, I’m Bob Dylan.” Six months later, Bob hitchhiked to a club in Boston where I was playing and talked the manager into letting him open for me. He said afterwards, “I’ve been living with Dave Van Ronk and he’s been helping me get gigs, but they’re so few and far between. I can play guitar and harmonica. Where are you going to be next?” I said that I was about to make an album for John Hammond. I already had a guitar player, Bruce Langhorne, so I asked Bob, “Would you mind playing harmonica?” He said: “I’m there!” Back in New York, in September, John gathered the band in a borrowed apartment in the Village. We sat at a picnic table in the dining area – Dylan’s across from me, Bruce is next to me, across from John Hammond, Bill Lee is standing with his double bass. John was absolutely fascinated by Bob, who ended up playing on three songs on the album [1961’s Carolyn Hester]. I’m so proud when I think that’s where Bob started.

“He was so paranoid, it was funny”

WAVY GRAVY: Bob and I connected in Greenwich Village in the early ’60s where I was a poet and activist. He was a delightful person with a great sense of humour, just fun to hang out with. He was so paranoid, it was funny. We’d be walking along and he’d suddenly pull me into a doorway and say, “Hey, see that guy over there? Let’s wait until he leaves.” I’d say, “Do you know who he is?” He’d go, “No, but he makes me nervous!” Bob wrote “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” on my typewriter, in the tiny little room I had above the Gaslight [Café]. I helped a bit with the idea. I used to talk to Bob about using fresh imagery. I had a line that went something like, “Little sister’s legs alive with ponies”. I was trying to say things differently, rather than just “moon, June, spoon”. I remember Bob singing “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall”, with Hamilton Camp on the choruses, up there in that room. That was the first time anybody ever heard it.

“A hotbed of songs”

JOHN  SEBASTIAN: I spent most of my time with Bob in the basement of Gerde’s Folk City. We ended up playing harmonica together down there. We used to entertain ourselves by trying to outdo each other with dumb songs we knew – really stupid, ’50s rock’n’roll stuff. He loved it.

Bob was a real hotbed of songs, very charismatic. He was never in one place too long, always moving on. Then when he started gaining fame at a much higher rate than me, our criss-crossing became less frequent. One night at the Gaslight, he uncorked “Chimes Of Freedom” for the first time. I stood at the back thinking, ‘What the hell happened to this guy since I last looked? Who gave him the Ten Commandments?’ It was borderline comical, because he’d always had this real kinda scufflin’ aspect to him, a real ragamuffin character. Then all of a sudden here he was with the strength of a Greek play every time he opened his mouth.

“We were all being good old lads”

PAUL McCARTNEY: I’m not sure whether he’s very keen on me telling this, but here we go. It was at the Delmonico Hotel on Park Avenue and 59th in New York City in August, 1964. We were in a hotel room, all being good old lads having our Scotch and Coke – it was an afterparty, I think. Dylan arrived and he went into the bedroom with his roadie. Ringo went along to see what was up. So he finds Dylan, rolling up, and he has a toke. He came back in and we said, “What was it like?” So Ringo says, “The ceiling is kind of moving down…” We all ran into the backroom going, “Give us a bit, give us a bit!” So that was the very first evening we ever got stoned!

“A light-bulb moment”

JOHN STEEL: When The Animals played our first dates in New York in October ’64, we managed to get a meeting at Al Grossman’s apartment – the one on the Bringing It All Back Home cover. Bob wasn’t really what we expected. He was always folkylooking on his album covers, then all of a sudden this very smartly turned-out guy walked in, wearing a mohair jacket and a shirt with cufflinks. He had very fine skin, almost translucent. He was very chatty and served us a big tossed salad with shrimps and some chilled white wine. It was all very sophisticated. He was in the studio working on what became Bringing It All Back Home. He played us a rough cut of “Subterranean Homesick Blues”. We all went, “What! It’s electric?” Everything he’d done until then had been acoustic. Then he told us how he’d been driving along in his open-topped car, listening to the radio, when he heard our version of “The House Of The Rising Sun”. He said, “I had to pull over to listen to it. It was like a light-bulb moment!” He decided that the next thing he was going to do was electric.

Dylan visits The Beatles at the Delmonico Hotel, NYC, August 1964 – Neil Aspinall (front) and Al Aronowitz pictured

MICHAEL OCHS ARCHIVES/GETTY IMAGES; MIRRORPIX VIA GETTY IMAGES; MARY McCARTNEY; GETTY IMAGES

10 A PPEARANCES ON  OTHER ARTISTS’ ALBUMS

Sir Douglas to you: with Doug Sahm in 1966

HARRY BELAFONTE 

THE MIDNIGHT  SPECIAL, 1962 

One of Dylan’s first appearances on record, playing harmonica on the title track. In his memoir, Chronicles, Dylan writes stirringly about the actor, singer and activist; in his book My Song, Belafonte meanwhile recalls the “skinny, scraggly-haired kid”.

BIG JOE WILLIAMS, ROOSEVELT SYKES, LONNIE JOHNSON &  VICTORIA SPIVEY 

THREE KINGS AND THE  QUEEN, 1964 

Dylan contributed harmonica and vocals to veteran blues singer Spivey’s album; a photograph of the pair from the sessions became the back cover to Dylan’s New Morning.

DOUG SAHM 

DOUG SAHM AND BAND, 1973 

A fan of Sahm’s Sir Douglas Quintet in the 1960s, Dylan contributed backing vocals, guitar, harmonica, organ and an original song – “Wallflower” – to Sahm’s excellent 1973 album. 

BETTE MIDLER 

SONGS FOR THE NEW  DEPRESSION, 1976 

The Divine Miss M persuaded Dylan to duet on a sly, sauced-up, piano-led version of his “Buckets Of Rain”.

LEONARD COHEN 

DEATH OF A LADIES’ MAN, 1977 

Dylan is among the riotous chorus (also featuring Allen Ginsberg) on the great “Don’t Go Home With Your Hard-On”.

KEITH GREEN 

SO YOU WANNA GO BACK TO  EGYPT, 1980 

Dylan met Green –a former child star turned Christian singer – through his own religious studies, and contributed unmistakable harmonica to “Pledge My Head To Heaven”.

WARREN ZEVON 

SENTIMENTAL  HYGIENE, 1987 

Dylan blew harmonica here on “The Factory”; when Zevon announced his terminal cancer in 2002, Dylan began regularly covering his songs live.

BRIAN WILSON 

S WEET INSANITY,  1990 

Dylan joined the Beach Boy in 1990 for Wilson’s planned second solo album, Sweet Insanity. It was never released, but their curiously Meatloafian duet “Spirit Of Rock’n’Roll” was instantly bootlegged.

WILLIE NELSON 

ACROSS THE  BORDERLINE, 1993 

The pair have played together often, but this co-write from Nelson’s duets album remains their only studio collaboration to date.

RALPH STANLEY 

CLINCH MOUNTAIN  COUNTRY, 1998 

Dylan’s high, forlorn duet on “Lonesome River” with the banjo-plucking bluegrass legend is one of his most beguiling performances of the 1990s.

DAMIENLOVE

10 DYLAN ALIASES

AKA Elston Gunnn, 1959

ALAMY STOCK PHOTO; GETTY IMAGES; SANTE D’ORAZIO; AMY GRANTHAM

ELSTON GUNNN

TEENAGE piano pounder Robert Zimmerman gave this as his name to Bobby Vee when he joined the pop star’s live band in 1959.

BLIND BOY GRUNT

Contributed several tracks to Broadside Ballads, a 1963 album celebrating Broadside magazine, the folk-scene Bible.

TED HAM PORTERHOUSE

A mysterious figure playing harp on Ramblin’ Jack Elliott’s 1964 LP, Jack Elliott.

BOB LANDY

This unbreakable anagram hid the identity of a piano player on 1964’s The Blues Project album.

WILLIAM W KASONAVARICH

Dylan’s answer to a journalist who asked why he changed his name. “Wouldn’t you if you had a name like William W Kasonavarich?”

EGG O’SCHMILLSON

Co-conspirator on a planned 1971 LP with Allen Ginsberg for Apple. It was never released, but tapes appeared on 1994’s Ginsberg comp Holy Soul Jelly Roll.

ROBERT MILKWOOD THOMAS

In a thinly veiled nod to the Welsh poet, he supplied piano and backing vocals on Steve Goodman’s Somebody Else’s Troubles in 1972.

LUCKY WILBURY

One of 1988’s blessed Traveling Wilburys posse. On their second LP in 1990, he was replaced by Boo Wilbury.

JACK FROST

First appeared as co-producer on 1990’s Under The Red Sky; he’s been Bob’s go-to producer since 2001’s “Love And Theft”.

SERGEI PETROV

Co-writer of 2003 movie Masked & Anonymous. 

DAMIEN LOVE

“These cuf flinks”

DANIEL  KRAMER: Bob asked me to shoot the album cover for Bringing It All Back Home, but Columbia’s art director told me I wasn’t doing it. He wanted a superstar photographer. I went downstairs to meet Bob and Albert [Grossman] for lunch in the commissary and explained what had happened. Without saying a word, Albert put his hand around my wrist and pulled me to my feet, then did the same to Bob and he dragged us to the elevator. I’ll spare the details of what Albert said to the art director, but when we left I was doing the album cover. For the shoot at Albert’s house I wanted a different Bob. I wanted the prince of music, not the vagabond troubadour. He had these cufflinks that Joan Baez had given him, so he got all gussied up. Then he went into the basement and found that yellow air-raid sign and brought all this junk up. Sally [Grossman] was in that bright red outfit, which I don’t think she ever wore again. Bob was very smart. I loved working with him because he was always willing to give. It wasn’t just me – it was Bob arranging those shots.

“He was goin g to blow it”

KRIS KRISTOFFERSON: As a janitor at Columbia in Nashville, I got to see the Blonde On Blonde sessions close up in February 1966. It was my first week at work and it was just incredible. The norm was to crank out three songs in three hours, but Bob showed up without any songs written. He’d be sitting at the piano in the centre of Studio A, with his dark glasses on, and he’d be writing while the band was off playing cards or ping-pong. About five in the morning he’d gather them together and they’d cut something fantastic. I’d never seen anything like it; I was sure he was going to blow it. I got to know Bob later on, when he came back out to Nashville to do The Johnny Cash Show. We still sort of keep in touch. Every now and then I’ll get a call, but by the time I call back he can’t remember what he was calling about, or he claims he never called me in the first place!

“An amazing, crazy experience”

ROBBIE ROBERTSON: The Band came from a completely different side of the tracks. With The Hawks we played tough-ass bars, not coffee houses. We didn’t know folk music. Then this guy comes along, the king of the folk singers, with this audacious idea for an experiment… I became friends with Bob very early on. I started to really understand the magic of his talent. But every night we played [on the ’66 tour], people booed us and threw stuff at us. It was an amazing, crazy experience. We knew we were getting better all the time. We just had to play to each other. Bob didn’t budge. The world was wrong and we were right. After that, in early ’67, with all of us moving up to Woodstock, we had the opportunity to invent some new music. At Big Pink, I don’t know if I’ve ever seen Bob Dylan more relaxed. It was just fun. The Hawks became The Band and we made our first record. I distinctly remember the look on Bob’s face when he heard Music From Big Pink. You could see the pride in his eyes.

“Everyone was in tears”

GRAHAM  NASH: In June 1969, Joni [Mitchell] and I went to Nashville, where she was due to play on The Johnny Cash Show. Dylan was one of the artists appearing too. Afterwards, John invited us all to dinner at his house. He stood up after we’d eaten, tapped a glass with a gold knife and said, “We have a thing here at the Cash house where people sing for their supper. So who’s going to be first?” No-one moved, so I got up and did “Marrakesh Express”. As soon as I’d finished, I stood up and walked straight into a standing lamp, which crashed to the ground. That broke the ice. Then Bob got up and did something from Blonde On Blonde, then “Don’t Think Twice” and, I think, “Lay Lady Lay”. His performance that night was incredible. I remember everyone was in tears afterwards.

“He went through my trash”

ELLIOTT  LANDY: Bob and I got to know each other when we were both living in Woodstock. He came over to my house one day and I showed him some very arty-looking nudes that I’d taken, in the style of the Impressionist painters. We went through them all and he was laughing. At the end he said, “Did you see the story there?” I said, “What story?” He suggested we go through them again, which we did. And as the pictures played, he was writing down what he thought each girl would be saying, making up things. It was hysterically funny. He said that we should publish them at some point. I followed up over the years, asking if he was ready to publish, but it never happened. The thing is, after we finished the session he left the house, then maybe five minutes later knocked on the door. Then he went through my trash bin and retrieved the notes that he’d thrown away. It wasn’t like they were at all valuable to me, but Bob did it in a very friendly way.

“Bob didn’t budge”: going electric at the Westchester County Center, White Plains, New York, Feb 5, 1966

ALICE OCHS/MICHAEL  OCHS ARCHIVES/GETTY  IMAGES;  DALE SMITH/ALAMY  STOCK PHOTO; ABC PHOTO ARCHIVES/GETTY  IMAGES

“EVERY NIGHT, PEOPLE BOOED, THREW STUFF” 

ROBBIE ROBERTSON

Beats meet: (l–r) Robbie Robertson, Michael McClure, Bob Dylan, Allen Ginsberg, San Francisco, 1965

At the Ryman Auditorium, Nashville, filming the very first Johnny Cash Show, May 1, 1969

It ain’t me: Dylan fails to go unrecognised at the Mariposa Folk Festival on the Toronto Islands, July 16, 1972

KEITH BEATY/TORONTO STAR VIA GETTY IMAGES; GETTY IMAGES

THE 1970S

T HERE is “crazy-ass small talk” and an old woodpanel station wagon heads to Muscle Shoals; brandies at the Bitter End, red wine in Laurel Canyon and an unexpected hook-up with Muddy Waters…

“He didn’t say a word the whole day”

JIM KELTNER: I got a call from Leon Russell in March 1971 to come to New York, to play drums with Bob. We ended up cutting “Watching The River Flow”. It was a very natural recording, with everybody in the room grooving along. Bob stood facing against the wall. I could see his mouth and lips moving – he was writing a song as we went! Leon led the show as a pianist-producer, but Bob was in charge – but he didn’t say a word that whole day. I asked him a little simple question, like, “How many kids do you have?” He didn’t answer. It wasn’t that he was dissing me. He can be very talkative – we had some crazy-ass small talk later, in the Traveling Wilburys – but the thing with Bob is, he’s not, one to one, gregarious. He’s never been to my house in 50 years, where George [Harrison], say, came all the time. That’s not Bob’s personality. But he does know instinctively when he needs to talk and when he doesn’t. That’s a good thing to know, if you’re playing with him.

“They broke into the studio”

PATTERSON  HOOD: Dylan made Slow Train Coming and Saved in Muscle Shoals, though I didn’t meet him then. He had been to town about five or six years earlier to play on a Donnie Fritts record that he’s not even credited on. He drove from Malibu in an old wood-panel station wagon with Sara and the family. I was about six or seven, maybe a year or two older than Jesse Dylan, so they arranged a playdate. I met Dylan when we went to pick Jesse up. I knew who he was, to the extent that a little kid can know who he is, but it was right around the time “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door” was a hit, so I knew he was the guy who sang that song. It was crazy when he came to Muscle Shoals, ’cause word had somehow got out that he was there. It’s the only time anyone ever actually broke into the studio – one of my dad’s partners found somebody hiding in the closet of his office. They have no idea how he got in, the place was like a fortress. They think he scaled the sidewall and got in through an upstairs window and then down somehow so he was in the closet.

“WE THINK HE GOT IN VIA AN UPSTAIRS WINDOW”

PATTERSON HOOD

“A tricked-out Maserati”

MARIA MULDAUR: I knew Bob from back in Greenwich Village. To my surprise he occasionally showed up after I’d moved to LA. While I was making my first solo record, I played an acoustic gig at the Ash Grove with Daniel Friedberg and David Nichtern, who wrote “Midnight At The Oasis”. All of a sudden I see Bob, Roger McGuinn and Spanky from Spanky And Our Gang. They listened to the set and then we hung out. Bob’s friend, Louie Kemp, was there too; they were driving a real fancy, totally tricked-out Maserati. We drove to my little bungalow in Laurel Canyon, drank red wine and listened to music. That’s what we’d do back then. If someone had a new album, we’d all go over to someone’s house and very proactively listen to it, like we were watching a movie. It wasn’t background party music. Then the guitars would come out, so we’d sit around and play tunes for each other. I remember asking Bob to sing “Corinna, Corinna”, because I love the way he does that. His phrasing was flawless, so expressive.

“In his own universe”

GLENN  BERGER: I was assistant engineer for all the Blood On The Tracks recording sessions. First night, Eric Weissberg brought in his Deliverance band, who were absolutely psyched to play on a Dylan record. But Dylan was quite odd. We’d been told nobody was to talk to him, he didn’t interact with anybody. He started running down a tune, which usually takes a couple of hours. Dylan just runs it down once or twice and if somebody hits a wrong note, Dylan tells them to stop. Then he starts playing a different song without telling anybody, so the guys screw up, and he waves them to drop out too. He essentially fired the band, until finally just the bass player, Tony Brown, remains, sitting inches away from Dylan desperately staring at his hands, trying to figure out the next chord. Dylan’s own performances were electric, his intensity was mindboggling. Maybe a savant would be the right word, so focused was he in his performance. He didn’t know who was in the room with him. He was in his own universe.

Arriving at the Winterland Ballroom, SF, forThe Last Waltz, November 25, 1976

LARRY HULST/MICHAEL OCHS ARCHIVES/GETTY IMAGES; JEFF HOCHBERG/GETTY IMAGES; RICHARD McCAFFREY/MICHAEL OCHS ARCHIVES/GETTY IMAGES; GETTY IMAGES

With Joan Baez for Night Of The Hurricane,a benefit for boxer Rubin Carter, MSG, Dec 8, 1975

With Roger McGuinn at the Fox Warfield Theatre, SF, Nov 1979

“We played basketball ”

ROGER  McGUINN: In the early ’70s, I lived in Malibu. Bob came over from time to time to shoot pool and watch movies. We played a little basketball one day – he was quite good; I wasn’t – when he casually mentioned, “I want to do something different, something like a circus.” Then he slam-dunked the basketball into the hoop. A few months later I was in New York when Larry Sloman told me that Bob was over at The Bitter End. I found Bob and Jacques Levy sitting at a small table in the back room, drinking brandy. Bob yelled, “McGuinn, we were just talking about you!” He told us about a tour he and Jacques were putting together, then invited me to join the group. I had my own concerts booked within the same timeframe, so I turned down the invitation.

Larry called next morning: “Dylan invited you on tour last night and you turned him down? That’s not a great idea!” With a slightly groggy head, I called my agent and told him to postpone my concert dates. Dylan’s idea of the “circus” that he’d mentioned during our basketball game months earlier in Malibu became the Rolling Thunder Revue.

“He was testing me”

SCARLET  RIVERA: I hung out with Bob through the whole first day we met in Greenwich Village, right up until dawn. He was testing me for the Rolling Thunder Revue. He’d already given me songs to play with no chart and no key, then that night he said, “I’ve gotta go see a friend of mine play. Do you wanna come along?” It wasn’t until we pulled up outside The Bottom Line and saw Muddy Waters’ name on the marquee that I realised what he meant. Bob joined Muddy on stage for a song, then said, “Now I want to bring up my violinist.” So I scrambled up. The other guys all take a solo, then Muddy Waters nods at me, “Your turn!” I had to improvise a 16-bar solo. One by one they all started to smile. That was part two of the test. I guess I passed, because I ended up on Desire and the Rolling Thunder Revue. My musical relationship with Bob was just intuitive. Many people are intimidated when they work with him, but emotionally I was kind of like him. I was very remote, kind of a lone wolf. Incidentally, that story about him getting the idea for face make-up after I’d taken him to see Kiss is not true. I absolutely would not have dreamed of bringing Bob Dylan to a Kiss concert!

“Nobody says no to Bob!”

RONEE BLAKLEY: I first met Bob at The Other End in Greenwich Village in October 1975, when we were introduced by Bobby Neuwirth after David Blue’s show. I got up on stage and started playing four-handed piano with Bob and singing along. At the mic, Bob invited me to join his tour, but I told him I couldn’t because I was headed out the next morning for Muscle Shoals to prepare for my own tour. Bobby Neuwirth screamed, “Nobody says no to Bob Dylan!”

The party kept going at the Gramercy Park Hotel. Bob tried to convince again, but I needed to catch the flight from JFK. As I left, he held the elevator door open and said, “You should have caught me in my prime” [a line from an alternate version of “A Simple Twist Of Fate”]. I said, “I think I have.” When I arrived at Muscle Shoals, my band told me to go tour with Dylan – so I reached Bob at his hotel. He told me to get back on a plane. A car picked me up at JFK that night. I was taken straight to Columbia Studios. When I walked through the door, Bob had this big smile, handed me the lyrics to “Hurricane”. It was probably close to midnight and I still hadn’t slept, but we just picked up and started recording. Bob and I were on one mic together, almost mouth to mouth, singing together live.

THE 1980S

A N acoustic version of a Madonna hit, a Great Dane named Snoopy, and a Mediterranean sojourn to the Hill Of The Muses

“So easy-going”

SLY DUNBAR: One evening in spring 1983, we were at Compass Point Studio where we got a call from Chris [Blackwell]’s assistant. She said, “Bob Dylan has called. He wants you and Robbie [Shakespeare] to record on his session.” I thought they were kidding, but she said, “It’s no joke. He wants you to fly over to New York.”

We got to The Power Station, expecting a tough session [for Infidels], because we thought he might be difficult. But he came in, just put the harmonica round his neck and started working on a song. It was the coolest thing, so easygoing. We started working the groove. Bob would change words on the fly. I remember us running down “Jokerman” without realising it was being recorded. Then at the end Bob said, “That’s it!” Simple as that. Most of the other songs were just one takes.

To this day, me and Robbie still wonder why he sent for us. I don’t know if it was the Grace Jones stuff he’d heard, but he probably wanted to present something different. He obviously remembered us and had kept listening, because years later he called us and said, “You guys have just won a Grammy!” [for 1997’s Friends]. That was the first we even knew about it.

“The ultimate ‘Oh Dad!’ moment”

GREGG  SUTTON: The first day I showed up to play bass for the 1984 European tour, Bob and I were dressed exactly the same: motorcycle boots, black jeans, white T-shirt and grey jacket. We stared each other up and down like it was a Marx Brothers movie. But we connected. We traded jackets, stuff like that.

His eldest son, Jesse, travelled with us and once in a while there’d be one of these “Oh Dad!” moments. I found them really funny, because it really humanised the guy. He’d say or do something that Jesse would just get embarrassed about. We were in Stockholm, it was big news on the front page of every paper and there were fans outside the hotel. Bob couldn’t go out. After a while he got really bored, so he had Gary Shafner [road manager] dress up in his leather jacket and straw hat. He and the others were watching from the 11th-floor balcony as Shafner went downstairs and got torn apart by the mob. Dylan was very amused. Jesse called it the ultimate “Oh Dad!” moment.

“HE WAS A JOKER. HE LIKED TO FUCK WITH ME, Y’KNOW” 

ARTHUR BAKER

Beyond the fringe: Dylan in London, August 17, 1986

BRIAN RASIC/GETTY IMAGES; GETTY IMAGES

“Playing ‘Like A Virgin’ on acoustic guitar”

ARTHUR  BAKER: The most noticeable thing about Bob in the studio when we did Empire Burlesque was that he had no patience. When we got around to mixing the record, he said: “Blonde On Blonde was a double album and we mixed it in two days.” I told him that was 8-track and we were now using 48-track, so it was going to take at least six times longer. “Oh OK, yeah, I get it.” One night we were working on a mix, so he went out to the movies. He’d gone to see Mask and was totally blown away by it when he got back. He was like, “I didn’t think Cher had that in her!” Other times I’d be mixing a track and he’d be sitting in the room – I wouldn’t say it was petrifying, but it was unnerving – on a couch in front of the desk. I was mixing something one night and hearing something really weird beneath it. So I turned the volume down quickly and it was Bob singing “Like A Virgin” on acoustic guitar. He was figuring out how to play Madonna. We’d already finished the record and he’d say to me, “I’d like to make a record like Prince or Madonna. Can we do that?” He was a joker. He liked to fuck with me, y’know.

FIVE BOOKS BY DYLAN

TARANTULA  1971

Dylan’s first book lay unpublished for a few years – but was written during the enormous outpouring that produced his 1965-66 albums. A speeding, absurdist antinovel of prose-poems and cut-up-consciousness, it similarly blends the blues with the Beats.

WRITINGS AND DRAWINGS  1973 

Covering his output up to 1971, Dylan’s first lyrics collection also featured liner notes and poems, and line drawings in the style of his first great role model, Woody Guthrie.

CHRONICLES: VOLUME ONE  2004 

Supposedly the first of three volumes, Dylan’s spellbinding memoir shuffles three time frames: New York in 1961; the period around 1970’s New Morning; and making 1989’s Oh Mercy. Simultaneously revelatory and elusive, it displays evidence of the same cut-up-and-collage approach of recent albums.

THE NOBEL  LECTURE 2017 

A pocketsized volume preserving Dylan’s speech on receiving the Nobel Prize In Literature, which stirred controversy when claims emerged that Dylan had cribbed sections from study notes. Track down the excellent recording he made, reciting his speech over glancing jazz piano, like Kerouac’s 1950s readings with Steve Allen.

MONDO SCRIPTO  2018 

The catalogue issued to accompany the exhibition of the same title, this fascinating thing resembles a sequel to Writings And Drawings: Dylan handwrites the lyrics to some 61 songs, illustrating each with pencil drawings. 

DAMIEN LOVE

`10 DYLAN STORIES

ONa health kick while filming 1973’s Pat Garrett And Billy The Kid in Mexico, Dylan ruined a scene for Sam Peckinpah by jogging across the background with Harry Dean Stanton.

● In 1974, Peter Grant introduced himself to Bob saying, “I’m Peter Grant,I manage Led Zeppelin.” Dylan replied, “Do I come to you with my problems?”

● In the mid-1980s, a woman in London’s Crouch End answered her doorbell to find Dylan on the step. He asked, “Is Dave in?” Her husband, Dave,a plumber, was out on a job, but she invited Dylan in to wait and he sat drinking tea until Dave arrived home – at which point Dylan realised this wasn’t Eurythmic Dave Stewart’s house.

● In her memoir Wishful Drinking, Carrie Fisher recounts Dylan calling her in the late ’80s: “This cologne company had contacted him to see if he would endorse a cologne called Just LikeA Woman. Now Bob didn’t like that name, but he liked the idea of endorsing a cologne. And he wanted to know if I had any good cologne names…”

● In 2004, Dylan pitched the idea of starring in his own TV sitcom to confused executives at HBO.

● In 2008, Dylan surpriseda couple in Winnipeg when he turned up at their door asking if he could see inside the house because Neil Young had grown up in it.

● In 2009, walking alone in a street in New Jersey, Dylan was picked up by cops responding to a local homeowner’s call reporting a suspicious-looking character outside. It has been rumoured he was searching for Bruce Springsteen’s old house.

● The same year, in Liverpool, Dylan joined a Beatles tour to visit John Lennon’s childhood home. A National Trust spokesman said, “He could have bookeda private tour, but he was happy to go on the bus with everyone else.”

● In Glasgow, in 2011, Dylan purchaseda set of bagpipes from the city’s National Piping Centre. Proving he was serious about the instrument, he bought not only Highland Bagpipe Tutor Book One, but also Book Two.

● One night in 2014, driving through LA, Dylan spotted someone dressed as Mr Spock walking along Hollywood Blvd with someone else dressed as boxing promoter Don King. He jumped out of his car to take selfies with them. 

DAMIEN LOVE

“Direct, fromthe-spirit”

BENMONT TENCH: The experience of touring with Bob in ’86, alongside the other Heartbreakers, was kind of an interior trip. When Bob played music off the cuff it was often the most direct, from-the-spirit thing there is. At a festival in Australia, Bob walks to the other end of the stage, where Tom [Petty] and Howie [Epstein] were, and starts playing “Desolation Row”. We’d never rehearsed it or discussed it before. It’s one of the great pieces of music of all time, we’re with the man who created it and we’re going to play it spontaneously for an enormous number of people. I knew the song inside out, but to be in that creative moment, with Bob just starting to play it and not even count it off, was really special.

Another time in Gothenburg, Sweden, we were just about to go on stage and I asked Bob what slow song he wanted to play in the middle of the set, because we had a few all figured out. He said, “Do you know ‘Tomorrow Is A Long Time’? Let’s do it, just me and you.” When things like that happened, it was genuinely transcendent. Bob would rise to the occasion and just knock you over.

“It crashed to the ground”

KURTIS BLOW: “I was recording in Studio B at The Power Station in New York City, in 1986, when Bob walked in. He was recording right next door, in Studio A. “Man, I heard your background singers,” he said. “They sound really good. Could I use them on my record?” I said, “Of course. But you owe me a favour in return.” He gave me his number and said to call him any time. So I phoned and asked him to rap on a song called ‘Street Rock”. He said, “Sure. Come out here and I’ll record it in my studio.”

I flew to LA with my road manager, Wayne Valentine, and drove up to Dylan’s house in Malibu. Bob answered the door: “Kurtis Blow, how you doin’? Come in!” Bob had a huge Great Dane named Snoopy, and Wayne was petrified of dogs. Once he stepped into the house, the dog started growling at him. Wayne ran across the living room in panic and jumped on the dining table. He was a 300-pound guy and the whole thing crashed to the ground. It was hilarious. Bob was so cool about it: “No problem, I’ll fix it.” He was such a sweet soul. He took the dog into another room, then we followed him into the studio, where he recorded that intro in one take. It really sounded incredible.

“BOB WAS SO GREAT TO BE AROUND, VERY RELAXED” 

VAN MORRISON

People have said that Kurtis Blow taught Bob Dylan how to rap, but that’s not true. To me, “Blowin’ In The Wind” is a rap, so he was doing that long before I was.

On an “interior trip”: Tom Petty with Dylan in Los Angeles, 1986

“We were near the Acropolis”

VAN MORRISON: I have a really good memory of the time Bob and I were out near the Acropolis in Athens. It was being filmed for Arena [as seen on BBC documentary One Irish Rover: Van Morrison In Performances], in June 1989 and Bob happened to be touring Greece at that time. So it was just a very spontaneous, spur-ofthe-moment thing for us to get together. I’d been telling the filmmakers about having been to Greece before and going to the Hill Of The Muses [Philopappos Hill], so I’d suggested that Bob and I go up and do something. It was all very easy-going. Bob was so great to be around, very relaxed and amenable. He’s always been that way with me. We had a great time playing up there. 

And let me just say, Happy 80th, Bob!

Van Morrison guests at Wembley Stadium, July 7, 1987

AARON RAPOPORT/CORBIS/GETTY IMAGES; KEITH BAUGH/REDFERNS; GETTY IMAGES

Taking tea (and questions) during a video shoot in Camden with Dave Stewart, July 1993

PETER LUCKHURST/SHUTTERSTOCK; FLORIA SIGISMONDI

THE 1990S

“P EOPLE come at him from all angles”…  Japes with George, a trip to Camden Town and parkinglot assignations

“George rolled his eyes”

DON WAS: On Under The Red Sky, Bob made a real effort to put everyone at ease in the studio, which is something I’ve always admired about him. He was humble and very funny. There was obviously a deep and long-standing friendship between Bob and George Harrison, and the mood in the studio [Harrison plays on the title track] was quite jocular. Before George had even gotten a sound on his guitar or heard the song, Bob sat down behind the board in the engineer’s seat, hit the record button and said, “Play!” Apparently, it wasn’t the first time Bob had done this to George. The guitar was way out of tune and George didn’t even know what key the song was in. Bob indicated that the solo was perfect and that we were done. George rolled his eyes, turned to me and asked, “What do you think, Don?” I said, “It was really good, but let’s see if you can do an even better one.” “Thank you!” answered George. Bob laughed, rewound the tape and let the engineer have his chair back. George nailed the solo on the next pass.

“It’s like kung-fu”

DAVID  LINDLEY: Bob was a big fan of [Lindley’s band] El Rayo-X and came to see us in New York, at Sounds Of Brazil. So we already knew each other when I was called to play guitar in his band for Under The Red Sky. A lot of people get the impression he has a star complex, but he’s not like that at all. He’s just saving his energy for what he’s doing, because it’s like kung-fu, y’know. People come at him from all angles and he has to deal with them. We’d talk about all sorts of things, mainly music and guitars. Dylan would organise stuff in the studio as we were going along, shuffling verses around a lot and changing words. It was amazing to watch. There was always the freedom to bring your own ideas to the table, and he would be very open to that, but sometimes he’d insist he was right, in a very nice way.

“All a bit surreal”

RICHARD THOMPSON: I was on tour in Europe in 1991 with Bonnie Raitt when I was asked to come and play the Seville Guitar Legends. I did a short set, then Dylan’s manager asked me if I’d play some songs with Bob. I think we did three songs as an acoustic duo and then I was in the house band for “All Along The Watchtower” and stuff. It was a strange meeting because he didn’t seem very forthright. It was all a bit surreal. I was dog-tired from travelling, forcing myself to pay attention. But it was a great honour to play with Bob.

I met him again a few years ago, at the Americanarama Festival, which was like a package tour playing outdoor venues in the summer [of 2013]. Bob was the headliner, Wilco were on it, My Morning Jacket… and we were bottom of the bill, going on at 5.30pm! But I got to say hello to Bob and he was so gracious and lovely. He said Fairport did the best covers of his songs, ever. So that was very nice to hear. On that Americanarama tour he did “1952 Vincent Black Lightning” [from 1991’s Rumor And Sigh]. He didn’t tell me; I just heard it as he did it. I was shocked and stunned. That’s pretty special, to have your song covered by arguably the greatest songwriter of the 20th-slash-21st century.

“A rented top hat”

DAVE  STEWART: One evening in July 1993, I was at home in London and Bob called, saying he wanted to film something the next day. He mentioned Camden Town and the market. So next morning he came round and we listened to “Blood In My Eyes”. We wandered around the Camden streets with Bob in a top hat that I’d rented, black velvet jacket and black leather gloves. I filmed on two 8mm cameras. We improvised everything. At one point so many people wanted to ask Bob questions, I managed to get the owner of a café to allow Bob to sit in the corner. Then one by one I allowed different people to sit next to him and ask questions, but I had Bob carry on miming to the song whilst I filmed through the window. It looks surreal. I’d called my friend Ana María Vélez, a Colombian photographer, to come over, and one shot of him in the café is the cover of World Gone Wrong [1993].

Things started to go a bit out of control as we wandered through the streets, so I suggested to a small crowd to just keep about 10 feet behind and follow Bob as the Pied Piper. Bob kept them amused by juggling while I lay on the ground and asked them to come over a bridge and walk over me as a shot to end the film with. That afternoon I asked director Sophie Muller if she could help edit this footage. Only then did I realise that what we did was possibly a video for “Blood In My Eyes”. Bob and I thought we were just filming stuff and having fun.

“In a parki ng lot”

DANIEL  LANOIS: We recorded Time Out Of Mind in 1996, in Miami, at Criteria, a very nice studio with a backdoor to a small parking lot with a fence round it, nothing special. Bob preferred to speak with me there, not in front of this 11-piece orchestra we had. Bob says his songs can be done in any time signature, in any key with any chord. It’s really about the lyric. So when it came time to record “Standing In The Doorway”, we went out the back and I said, “I always had a love for ‘Sad Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands’. It’s a waltz, really. So why don’t we try this that way, Bob? I have a little electric mandolin theme, which you could respond to with your verses...” He agreed and we went in and did it. That gives you the idea that Bob was a very private man – and that was an extension of privacy for him, to say let’s talk about things as the architects in the parking lot. Then we’ll bring it to the orchestra.

THE 2000S ANDBEYOND 

“SWINGING with the moments” on the Never Ending Tour, crafting wrought-iron gates, changing key on a nightly basis and giving soul-baring speeches

“He’s never lost that passion”: presenting Modern Times, his 32nd studio album, in 2006

WILLIAM CLAXTON; RICK GUEST; DANNY CLINCH; GETTY IMAGES

“HE EVEN TOOK A SHOT AT MERLE HAGGARD” 

JACKSON BROWNE

“What are you doing that for?”

LARRY CAMPBELL: Playing guitar for Bob on the Never Ending Tour was a rollercoaster. He was a regular guy who was fun to hang out with occasionally – with the same issues as everybody else, who loved his family and was trying, like all of us, just to get through the day and make the best of it. I feel privileged to have glimpsed that side of him as well as the more notorious side. For example, one day you’d get the impression that what he wants from you is this particular approach to a song or whatever. So you’d train yourself to take that approach, but then a few days later it’s like, “What are you doing that for?” It would be like he never asked you to do that. So you had to swing with those moments and be quick on your feet. For the years I was with Bob, it was a way of training myself to serve the song.

“A palomino horse”

ROGER DALTREY: In 2003, I was making a History Channel programme on Native Americans. I’d been filming out in Wyoming with a Native American Indian called Bad Hand, dressed in full war armour, with his palomino horse all feathered and painted. When I got back to the hotel that night, it turned out that Bob was playing in Jackson Hole, on the ski slope. So I went along and said hello. Bob said, “Hey, what are you doing here, Roger?” He asked why I was wearing a full cowboy outfit, so I told him what I’d been doing and that I’d come straight off the set. He got really interested in the whole idea of this mythic Native American and suddenly said, “I want to come with you tomorrow!” Of course, he was playing somewhere else the next day, so he couldn’t. But, knowing Bob, that’s what he would’ve preferred to do.

“He’s right around that corner ”

DAVE GROHL: Around 2008, we opened up on his arena tour. A few shows in, we were at this hockey arena in Canada and a production assistant came up and said, “Hey, Dave. Bob wants to talk to you. We’ll come and get you when he’s ready.” A few minutes later, someone comes in and says, “OK, Bob’s ready.” I started walking down this sterile, concrete hallway and the guy said, “He’s right around that corner.” There he was standing in this tunnel that led out into the arena. All I could see was his silhouette: he had a black, hooded sweatshirt pulled up over his head, a black leather jacket, black jeans and black boots on. He was leaning against the wall with his arms crossed. I walked up to him and said, “Hey, Bob, how’re you doing?” He’s like, “Hey, man, how’s it going?” We talked for a little bit and he thanked us for being on the tour and then he said, “Man, what’s that song you guys got? ‘The only thing I’ll ever ask of you is promise not to stop when I say when’”? I said, “Oh, that’s ‘Everlong’.” He said, “That’s a great song, man. I should do that song.” I was like, “You know, I think you’ve got enough good songs to hold you over.” Honestly, it was one of the most incredible experiences of my entire life. It was fucking terrifying – but he couldn’t have been nicer.

“He cornered me”

ELTON JOHN: T-Bone Burnett, who knows Bob very well, told me about these wrought-iron gates that Bob makes. So I went to visit him with David and Zachary, my little boy who’d just been born. Bob was there in his hoodie with a roll-up cigarette. He showed us around his studio where he makes the gates. Then he cornered me and said, “I’ve got this new album, I want to play it to you.” He played me the whole of Together Through Life on a boombox and it was fantastic! Like any artist, when you’ve got something new to play you’re excited, but you’re also pretty nervous – ‘What are they thinking?!’ It was wonderful to see him so excited about his music.

He’s never lost that passion; he’s always trying to change things around. He’s an amazing man – you don’t know anything about him, but he’s always doing something artistic. Whether it’s painting, making gates, sculpture or writing, he never stops. He’s 80 years old and still as good as he was in the ’60s, but in a completely different way. I admire that. How could you not?

Accepting the MusiCares Person Of The Year award, LA, February 6, 2015

“Oddly uplifting and encouraging”

JEFF TWEEDY: Seeing Bob Dylan a lot when Wilco toured with him in 2013 was the most oddly uplifting and encouraging thing. There were a lot of people there who just can’t get enough of this guy, who’s given zero shits for so many years if they’re there or not. That’s so life-affirming! What he’s doing is way weirder than the music he was making when he was young. I had a great time. We’d get told what key “The Weight” was 10 seconds before we went on stage. It was in a different key every night, by the way.

He said hi to me at the start of the tour on the way to the stage, and he knew my name, and it was about all I needed. I was really thrilled. There was no way to play it cool. I got to talk with him when we got up and played with him. One night I told him that Mavis Staples said hi. He said, “Tell her she should have married me.” [laughs]. So the next night I said, “She says she’s still available.” He said, “Yeah, right. I wish!” My impression of him was always like he’s the prettiest girl at the party, where everybody’s afraid to talk to him. When you had a moment to, the only thing shocking was that they were human.

“He said wild stuff”

JACKSON  BROWNE: I was there when Bob was honoured by the MusiCares Grammy organisation in February 2015. People weren’t expecting him to do a speech, because they thought it wasn’t really him – but it was long and incredibly intimate. He absolutely killed it. He said wild stuff like, “Leiber and Stoller didn’t like what I was doing.” He was saying, ‘Fuck you, Leiber and Stoller!’ Everybody in the room is going, ‘What? Are you kidding me?’ He even took a shot at Merle Haggard. People were saying, “Are you out of your mind?”

By the end of this thing he’d shammed everybody all along the way, really. But the point he was making was really interesting. He said that somebody who grew up singing “John Henry” might go on to write “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall”. He was very sparing on quoting himself or aggrandising what he did. He wasn’t trying to do that; he was trying to say where he came from. That’s what was so great about it. For everybody who was wondering how it all happened for him, the simple answer was folk music and the engagement with those long, deep struggles of all the people who make up this country.

“This is going to work”

BLAKE MILLS: I got a call asking if Sound City A will be available, then Bob came down one day and I gave him a tour. As soon as he walked in he went, “Yeah, this is going to work.” He was ready to go, but we just started talking about what he had in mind to do, in terms of how many musicians and how he wanted the set-up. There are certain people who definitely construct records in layers, but for Rough And Rowdy Ways –I think for most of Bob’s records – you get the sense that it’s more performance-based and live. You don’t sit around with Bob and he explains the song to you – either you get it right away or you don’t. Everything that we did was happening in the room and performed as it sounds. So in that sense it’s quick, almost like a live show. Musicians all love hearing everybody else’s first takes, but when it comes to our own it’s really hard to live by. I’ve got a lot of respect for people like Bob, who really practise that in their own work.

Interviews by Michael Bonner, Nick Hasted, Rob Hughes, Sharon O’Connell, Tom Pinnock, Sam Richards and Graeme Thomson

5 NOTABLE  TV  APPEARANCES

Surfing the new wave on Letterman, March 22, 1984

AL LEVINE/NBCU PHOTO BANK/NBCUNIVERSAL VIA GETTY IMAGES VIA GETTY IMAGES; LESTER COHEN/WIREIMAGE; SAMMY TWEEDY; KOURTNEY KYUNG SMITH; GETTY IMAGES

MADHOUSE ON CASTLE STREET, 1963

P HILIP Saville, director of this experimental absurdist BBC play, had seen the almost-unknown Dylan performing in New York and brought him to London to co-star. Playing a Greek chorus figure, Dylan punctuated the drama with four songs, including the as-yet-unrecorded “Blowin’ In The Wind”. The BBC destroyed this historic footage in 1968.

LATE NIGHT WITH DAVID LETTERMAN, 1984 

Dylan hadn’t toured since 1981 when he played live on Letterman’s talk show. Ostensibly there to promote the recent Infidels album, he delivered something else: backed by three-piece punk outfit The Plugz, clad in regulation new wave skinny-tie-and-drainpipes, his three-song stand wasa one-off garage riot that ranks among his most memorable performances.

OMNIBUS: GETTING TO DYLAN, 1987

Arguably the best thing to come out of the Hearts Of Fire movie is this BBC documentary filmed on set, as reporter Christopher Sykes attempts to interview Dylan. The result is mesmerising, with Dylan alternating between friendly, playful, caustic and unnerving: he spends the entire time sketching his questioner, even as Sykes manages to capture an unforgettable portrait of the singer.

DHARMA AND GREG, 1999 

Viewers of the 1990s sitcom were surprised when an episode about Dharma (Jenna Elfman) taking up drums concluded with her auditioning for Dylan – whose appearance wasn’t advertised prior to airing. One of the show’s writers, Eddie Gorodetsky, is a Dylan pal – he later collaborated on Theme Time Radio Hour.

EXPERIMENT ENSAM, 2014 

This Swedish web series sought to investigate what it’s like for one person to do alone what people only ever experience in groups – in this case, attending a Dylan show. Fredrik Wikingsson was the lucky, lonely guinea pig, as Bob and his band came on stage to play a set of favourite covers, including songs by Buddy Holly and Little Walter, at Philadelphia’s otherwise empty Academy Of Music. 

DAMIEN  LOVE

Dylan in Madhouse... in 1963 and (right) in Dharma And Greg