This is why Bob Dylan is, well, Bob Dylan…What a great story…
By Annette Witheridge
He has sold albums by the million and was the idol of the 1960s protest movement. But yesterday Bob Dylan discovered what it’s like to be just a face in the crowd.
Police were called in a quiet seaside town after he was spotted freewheelin’ down the street and apparently acting suspiciously. A 22-year-old female officer demanded to see his identification papers.
He assumed she would at least recognise the name if not the face. But she ordered him into the back of her car and took him to his hotel to check his story.
Then she radioed her older colleagues at the police station to ask if anyone knew who Bob Dylan was.
‘I’m afraid we all fell about laughing,’ said Craig Spencer, a senior officer in Long Branch, New Jersey. ‘If it was me, I’d have been demanding his autograph, not his ID.
‘The poor woman has taken rather a lot of abuse from us. I offered to bring in some of my Dylan albums. Unfortunately, she doesn’t know what vinyl is either.’
It was in 1965 that Dylan wrote Like A Rolling Stone, with its line: ‘How does it feel to be on your own, a complete unknown?’
He found out while staying at the Ocean Place Resort in Long Branch. Before taking part in a concert with Willie Nelson and John Mellencamp, he decided to take a stroll through the town’s Latin quarter.
‘Residents called to complain there was an old scruffy man acting suspiciously,’ said officer Spencer. ‘It was an odd request because it was mid-afternoon. But it’s an ethnic Latin area and the residents felt he didn’t fit in.’
This is not the first time that Dylan has wandered off alone while on tour.
After a concert in Belfast in 1991, he shunned his chauffeur-driven limo and was captured by a TV crew waiting at a bus stop.
And in the middle of an American tour he popped unannounced into the childhood home of author Mark Twain.
When the stunned curator asked if he was really Bob Dylan, he said: ‘I guess I am.’
5 Responses
Guess he was just a ……’complete unknown’:)
Like A Rolling stone
no direction home.
stop that
Is it just me or has anyone else noticed that the more Tom Petty hung around Dylan (via The Traveling Wilburies), the more he sounded like him? (example: “I Won’t Baaaaack Dooown”)
On another nostalgic musical note. I just walked into Lady H’s office which is unoccupied today. Seems somebody left the radio on over the weekend. I’ve no idea what station it’s on, but they were playing the theme from “Swat” (full-length, disco version). Yeah, I boogied down!
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to find and delete that security cam footage before she finds and uploads it.
In all fairness, the cop understood him when he said his name was Bob Dylan. Had he mumbled incoherently, she probably would have recognized him right away…
Shortly after Natural Born Killers came out I was taking Atlanta based Penthouse Pet Samantha Michaels to a party. I had the soundtrack CD on in the truck and “You belong to me” come on.
She looked at the CD Player and squinted her eyes then looked at me and said
“Who is THAT?”
Incredulously I said you don’t know who that is? The man is a legend…That’s Bob Dylan.
To which she replied, “Well he sounds like Elmer Fudd”
I have never been able to listen to that song without thinking of that.