

































Man behind the myth: Little-known facts about Bob Dylan
- Bob Dylan is widely recognized as one of the most influential musicians of all time. He’s won countless awards, he’s in nearly every Hall of Fame, he writes, he paints, he performs—and yet he remains an elusive figure whose smile is rare but full of warmth. Check out this gallery of intriguing facts you probably didn’t know about this hugely acclaimed figure.
All facts according to CBC Music unless otherwise indicated.
© Getty Images
0 / 34 Fotos
He was born Robert Allen Zimmerman - But he’s gone by a lot of names, including Elston Gunn, Tedham Porterhous, Blind Boy Grunt, Robert Milkwood Thomas, Boo Wilbury, Sergei Petrov (as a writer), and Jack Frost (as a producer).
© Getty Images
1 / 34 Fotos
He's never had a number one single - He’s come close on the Billboard charts with ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ and ‘Rainy Day Women #12 & 35,’ but even though many of his songs will live past the current number one hits, he never topped the chart.
© NL Beeld
2 / 34 Fotos
He made 'Rainy Day Women #12 & 35' in one take - Dylan was famous for single-take recordings, including this number two hit.
© NL Beeld
3 / 34 Fotos
He was a high school legend - Hibbing High School’s principal deemed Dylan’s music “unsuitable” and cut his talent show performance short. Then, if that wasn’t enough, his yearbook quote read, “To join Little Richard.” Oh, and he skipped out on his grad party like the ultimate too-cool kid.
© Getty Images
4 / 34 Fotos
Dylan loves a good cherry pie - His usual order in his high school cafeteria was cherry pie á la mode.
© NL Beeld
5 / 34 Fotos
His first ever professional recording was for Harry Belafonte - He played harmonica on the title track of Belafonte’s ‘Midnight Special,’ because, you know, everyone’s gotta start somewhere…
© Getty Images
6 / 34 Fotos
He loved playing chess - Songs like ‘The Times They Are A-Changin’ feature chess imagery, and Bob Spitz’s ‘Dylan: A Biography’ revealed the musician’s tactic of distracting his opponent by talking during the game.
© Getty Images
7 / 34 Fotos
He suffered a breakdown after Elvis died - After the King’s death, Dylan admitted, “I went over my whole life. I went over my whole childhood. I didn’t talk to anyone for a week after Elvis died. If it wasn’t for Elvis and Hank Williams, I couldn’t be doing what I do today,” according to Ian Bell’s ‘Time Out of Mind: The Lives of Bob Dylan.’
© Reuters
8 / 34 Fotos
He lied about being an orphan to sign a deal - Dylan was 20, a minor, when he first signed to Columbia Records, and instead of getting his parents to sign the contract, he claimed not to have parents at all.
© Getty Images
9 / 34 Fotos
The legendary Bob Dylan was a frat boy - Before dropping out of the University of Minnesota, he pledged to the Sigma Alpha Mu fraternity.
© Getty Images
10 / 34 Fotos
He was once arrested for looking suspicious - When he was 68-years-old, the singer was detained by the New Jersey police after being found wandering around a neighborhood in the pouring rain wearing sweatpants and two hooded raincoats, officers told ABC News.
© Getty Images
11 / 34 Fotos
He was in a Victoria’s Secret commercial - In 2004, Dylan could be spotted in the women’s lingerie advertisement accompanying supermodel Adriana Lima.
© Getty Images
12 / 34 Fotos
His first song was for Brigitte Bardot - Like so many before and after him, the French actress captured his heart and, he told Playboy, the first song he ever wrote was for her. “It had only one chord. Well, it is all in the heart."
© Getty Images
13 / 34 Fotos
‘Like a Rolling Stone’ began as an epic - It was allegedly between six and 22 pages long.
© Getty Images
14 / 34 Fotos
He married a Playboy bunny - Sara Lownds, his first wife, worked at a Playboy club in New York.
© Getty Images
15 / 34 Fotos
There’s a good chance he introduced The Beatles to cannabis - Many sources, including author of ‘The Beatles: The Biography’ Bob Spitz, claim that Dylan was the first person to hand the Fab Four a “jazz cigarette.”
© Getty Images
16 / 34 Fotos
He has an impressive filmography - He played a drifter named Alias in Sam Peckinpah’s 1973 film ‘Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid,’ as well as Billy Parker in ‘Hearts of Fire’ (1987).
© NL Beeld
17 / 34 Fotos
But not all his films were impressive - He wrote, directed, and starred in ‘Renaldo and Clara’ (1978), a four-hour film that received unanimously terrible reviews.
© NL Beeld
18 / 34 Fotos
He’s a prolific painter - Along with restoring old cars, riding horses, sailing boats, acting, writing, directing, and being a huge cultural influence, Dylan also knows how to work a brush and fill a gallery.
© Getty Images
19 / 34 Fotos
Though he’s not the smartest with art - In an interview with Spin in 1985, Dylan confessed to having traded Andy Warhol’s ‘Elvis Presley’ painting for a couch. “I always wanted to tell Andy what a stupid thing I done, and if he had another painting he would give me, I'd never do it again," he said.
© Getty Images
20 / 34 Fotos
Though many see his motorcycle accident as a tragedy, he doesn’t - In fact, he told Spin that the accident forced him to take a step back from his schedule and focus his perspective.
© NL Beeld
21 / 34 Fotos
He’s a born-again Christian - He took a three-month course at the Vineyard School of Discipleship in 1978.
© Reuters
22 / 34 Fotos
He wrote an experimental novel - ‘Tarantula’ combined poetry, stream of consciousness prose, and a lyricism saturated in the turbulence of the ‘60s, which was when he wrote it.
© Getty Images
23 / 34 Fotos
And he won the Nobel Prize in Literature - Fifty years after writing ‘Tarantula,’ it earned him one of the most prestigious prizes an author can get.
© Getty Images
24 / 34 Fotos
His lyrics were cited in US legal opinions and briefs - In a 2007 study, judges and lawyers were found to have cited Dylan’s lyrics 186 times, as compared to 74 Beatles citations, the Star Tribune reports.
© NL Beeld
25 / 34 Fotos
Outrage over his turn towards the electric was too late - He was actually playing electric guitar before he turned to folk. He told Playboy that listening to one of Odetta’s records inspired him to trade his electric guitar for an acoustic one.
© NL Beeld
26 / 34 Fotos
He once had a completely silent dinner with Van Morrison, Glen Hansard, and Elvis Costello - Hansard described the bizarre event to The San Francisco Gate, saying “I don’t know how these guys’ brains work. I don’t know if it’s Asperger’s or autism. But the whole meal was silent. No one said anything.”
© NL Beeld
27 / 34 Fotos
Joni Mitchell has a grudge against him - In an interview with the LA Times, Mitchell expressed a great disgust at being compared to him, claiming, “Bob is not authentic at all. He's a plagiarist, and his name and voice are fake. Everything about Bob is a deception. We are like night and day, he and I.”
© Getty Images
28 / 34 Fotos
The Traveling Wilburys were born at his beach house - The supergroup—consisting of Dylan, Tom Petty, George Harrison, Jeff Lynne, and Roy Orbison—formed at Dylan’s Malibu home when the guys wanted to keep things going after recording Harrison’s ‘Handle With Care.’
© Getty Images
29 / 34 Fotos
He grew up watching movies for free - Perhaps this is not so unlike kids these days, but at the time, having family members who owned movie theaters in Minnesota would have been a big deal for Dylan's growth, especially since he went on to act and write screenplays.
© Getty Images
30 / 34 Fotos
Suze Rotolo’s pet name for him was "The Pig" - The girl on the cover of his album ‘The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan,’ an artistic inspiration and his girlfriend for a time, loved to call Dylan ‘RAZ’ (his initials), as well as "The Pig." Aw.
© Reuters
31 / 34 Fotos
Johnny Cash saved his career - Columbia Records was considering dropping Dylan, but Cash convinced them to keep him on. The next album Dylan recorded was ‘The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan.’ Dylan returned the favor by being Cash’s first guest performer on ‘The Johnny Cash Show.’
© Reuters
32 / 34 Fotos
He averages 100 shows annually - Dylan’s so-called Never Ending Tour began in 1988, and he’s played more than 2,700 concerts since then, according to the Star Tribune.
© Getty Images
33 / 34 Fotos
Man behind the myth: Little-known facts about Bob Dylan
- Bob Dylan is widely recognized as one of the most influential musicians of all time. He’s won countless awards, he’s in nearly every Hall of Fame, he writes, he paints, he performs—and yet he remains an elusive figure whose smile is rare but full of warmth. Check out this gallery of intriguing facts you probably didn’t know about this hugely acclaimed figure.
All facts according to CBC Music unless otherwise indicated.
© Getty Images
0 / 34 Fotos
He was born Robert Allen Zimmerman - But he’s gone by a lot of names, including Elston Gunn, Tedham Porterhous, Blind Boy Grunt, Robert Milkwood Thomas, Boo Wilbury, Sergei Petrov (as a writer), and Jack Frost (as a producer).
© Getty Images
1 / 34 Fotos
He's never had a number one single - He’s come close on the Billboard charts with ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ and ‘Rainy Day Women #12 & 35,’ but even though many of his songs will live past the current number one hits, he never topped the chart.
© NL Beeld
2 / 34 Fotos
He made 'Rainy Day Women #12 & 35' in one take - Dylan was famous for single-take recordings, including this number two hit.
© NL Beeld
3 / 34 Fotos
He was a high school legend - Hibbing High School’s principal deemed Dylan’s music “unsuitable” and cut his talent show performance short. Then, if that wasn’t enough, his yearbook quote read, “To join Little Richard.” Oh, and he skipped out on his grad party like the ultimate too-cool kid.
© Getty Images
4 / 34 Fotos
Dylan loves a good cherry pie - His usual order in his high school cafeteria was cherry pie á la mode.
© NL Beeld
5 / 34 Fotos
His first ever professional recording was for Harry Belafonte - He played harmonica on the title track of Belafonte’s ‘Midnight Special,’ because, you know, everyone’s gotta start somewhere…
© Getty Images
6 / 34 Fotos
He loved playing chess - Songs like ‘The Times They Are A-Changin’ feature chess imagery, and Bob Spitz’s ‘Dylan: A Biography’ revealed the musician’s tactic of distracting his opponent by talking during the game.
© Getty Images
7 / 34 Fotos
He suffered a breakdown after Elvis died - After the King’s death, Dylan admitted, “I went over my whole life. I went over my whole childhood. I didn’t talk to anyone for a week after Elvis died. If it wasn’t for Elvis and Hank Williams, I couldn’t be doing what I do today,” according to Ian Bell’s ‘Time Out of Mind: The Lives of Bob Dylan.’
© Reuters
8 / 34 Fotos
He lied about being an orphan to sign a deal - Dylan was 20, a minor, when he first signed to Columbia Records, and instead of getting his parents to sign the contract, he claimed not to have parents at all.
© Getty Images
9 / 34 Fotos
The legendary Bob Dylan was a frat boy - Before dropping out of the University of Minnesota, he pledged to the Sigma Alpha Mu fraternity.
© Getty Images
10 / 34 Fotos
He was once arrested for looking suspicious - When he was 68-years-old, the singer was detained by the New Jersey police after being found wandering around a neighborhood in the pouring rain wearing sweatpants and two hooded raincoats, officers told ABC News.
© Getty Images
11 / 34 Fotos
He was in a Victoria’s Secret commercial - In 2004, Dylan could be spotted in the women’s lingerie advertisement accompanying supermodel Adriana Lima.
© Getty Images
12 / 34 Fotos
His first song was for Brigitte Bardot - Like so many before and after him, the French actress captured his heart and, he told Playboy, the first song he ever wrote was for her. “It had only one chord. Well, it is all in the heart."
© Getty Images
13 / 34 Fotos
‘Like a Rolling Stone’ began as an epic - It was allegedly between six and 22 pages long.
© Getty Images
14 / 34 Fotos
He married a Playboy bunny - Sara Lownds, his first wife, worked at a Playboy club in New York.
© Getty Images
15 / 34 Fotos
There’s a good chance he introduced The Beatles to cannabis - Many sources, including author of ‘The Beatles: The Biography’ Bob Spitz, claim that Dylan was the first person to hand the Fab Four a “jazz cigarette.”
© Getty Images
16 / 34 Fotos
He has an impressive filmography - He played a drifter named Alias in Sam Peckinpah’s 1973 film ‘Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid,’ as well as Billy Parker in ‘Hearts of Fire’ (1987).
© NL Beeld
17 / 34 Fotos
But not all his films were impressive - He wrote, directed, and starred in ‘Renaldo and Clara’ (1978), a four-hour film that received unanimously terrible reviews.
© NL Beeld
18 / 34 Fotos
He’s a prolific painter - Along with restoring old cars, riding horses, sailing boats, acting, writing, directing, and being a huge cultural influence, Dylan also knows how to work a brush and fill a gallery.
© Getty Images
19 / 34 Fotos
Though he’s not the smartest with art - In an interview with Spin in 1985, Dylan confessed to having traded Andy Warhol’s ‘Elvis Presley’ painting for a couch. “I always wanted to tell Andy what a stupid thing I done, and if he had another painting he would give me, I'd never do it again," he said.
© Getty Images
20 / 34 Fotos
Though many see his motorcycle accident as a tragedy, he doesn’t - In fact, he told Spin that the accident forced him to take a step back from his schedule and focus his perspective.
© NL Beeld
21 / 34 Fotos
He’s a born-again Christian - He took a three-month course at the Vineyard School of Discipleship in 1978.
© Reuters
22 / 34 Fotos
He wrote an experimental novel - ‘Tarantula’ combined poetry, stream of consciousness prose, and a lyricism saturated in the turbulence of the ‘60s, which was when he wrote it.
© Getty Images
23 / 34 Fotos
And he won the Nobel Prize in Literature - Fifty years after writing ‘Tarantula,’ it earned him one of the most prestigious prizes an author can get.
© Getty Images
24 / 34 Fotos
His lyrics were cited in US legal opinions and briefs - In a 2007 study, judges and lawyers were found to have cited Dylan’s lyrics 186 times, as compared to 74 Beatles citations, the Star Tribune reports.
© NL Beeld
25 / 34 Fotos
Outrage over his turn towards the electric was too late - He was actually playing electric guitar before he turned to folk. He told Playboy that listening to one of Odetta’s records inspired him to trade his electric guitar for an acoustic one.
© NL Beeld
26 / 34 Fotos
He once had a completely silent dinner with Van Morrison, Glen Hansard, and Elvis Costello - Hansard described the bizarre event to The San Francisco Gate, saying “I don’t know how these guys’ brains work. I don’t know if it’s Asperger’s or autism. But the whole meal was silent. No one said anything.”
© NL Beeld
27 / 34 Fotos
Joni Mitchell has a grudge against him - In an interview with the LA Times, Mitchell expressed a great disgust at being compared to him, claiming, “Bob is not authentic at all. He's a plagiarist, and his name and voice are fake. Everything about Bob is a deception. We are like night and day, he and I.”
© Getty Images
28 / 34 Fotos
The Traveling Wilburys were born at his beach house - The supergroup—consisting of Dylan, Tom Petty, George Harrison, Jeff Lynne, and Roy Orbison—formed at Dylan’s Malibu home when the guys wanted to keep things going after recording Harrison’s ‘Handle With Care.’
© Getty Images
29 / 34 Fotos
He grew up watching movies for free - Perhaps this is not so unlike kids these days, but at the time, having family members who owned movie theaters in Minnesota would have been a big deal for Dylan's growth, especially since he went on to act and write screenplays.
© Getty Images
30 / 34 Fotos
Suze Rotolo’s pet name for him was "The Pig" - The girl on the cover of his album ‘The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan,’ an artistic inspiration and his girlfriend for a time, loved to call Dylan ‘RAZ’ (his initials), as well as "The Pig." Aw.
© Reuters
31 / 34 Fotos
Johnny Cash saved his career - Columbia Records was considering dropping Dylan, but Cash convinced them to keep him on. The next album Dylan recorded was ‘The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan.’ Dylan returned the favor by being Cash’s first guest performer on ‘The Johnny Cash Show.’
© Reuters
32 / 34 Fotos
He averages 100 shows annually - Dylan’s so-called Never Ending Tour began in 1988, and he’s played more than 2,700 concerts since then, according to the Star Tribune.
© Getty Images
33 / 34 Fotos
Man behind the myth: Little-known facts about Bob Dylan
The Freewheelin’ singer-songwriter turns 77 this year
© Getty Images
His age it is a-changin’! Bob Dylan gave voice to the youth in the ‘60s and crafted an enormous legacy that has inspired, and will continue to inspire, millions of people for years to come. Check out this gallery of little-known facts about this tremendously famous figure.
All facts according to CBC Music unless otherwise indicated.
RECOMMENDED FOR YOU











MOST READ
- Last Hour
- Last Day
- Last Week