Give me cool Bob Dylan stories

He Sang to Bewildered Kindergartners
Page Six ran an item in 2007 about Dylan showing up to his grandson’s school in Calabasas, California, to perform: “The ‘weird man’ … keeps coming to their class to sing ‘scary’ songs on his guitar … [Dylan]’s been singing to the kindergarten class just for fun, but the kiddies have no idea they’re being serenaded by a musical legend.”

He Believed Kiss Fans Would Burn in Hellfire
Dylan was in the midst of his Born Again phase in 1980 when he performed a concert at the University of Arizona. Facing an audience angry about hearing songs in praise of Christ when they wanted to hear the hits, Dylan hissed, “If you want rock’n’roll, you can go see Kiss and rock’n’roll all the way down to the pit!” Dylan’s attitude toward the hottest band in the world softened over time. He co-wrote a song with Kiss’s Gene Simmons, “Waiting for the Morning Light,” on the latter’s 2004 solo album.

His Dog Fouled Katherine Hepburn’s Flowers
For a time, Dylan rented a home next door to Katharine Hepburn in Manhattan’s Turtle Bay neighborhood. According to his aide-de-camp Victor Maymudes, Dylan let his Bullmastiff, Brutus, “shit in her flowerbed all the time.” And these weren’t dainty droppings. “The dog could really lay some logs,” Maymudes wrote. “I think if it was a small dog, [Hepburn] wouldn’t have cared.”

His Dog Also Ate Michael Douglas’s Caviar
Michael Douglas tells a story about being invited by George Harrison to hang out with him and Dylan. “George Harrison walks in with Bob Dylan. Bob Dylan has the biggest dog you’ve ever seen in your life.” Douglas orders some caviar for the trio, which Dylan’s dog (Brutus again?) promptly devours. “Bob Dylan hadn’t said a word yet,” Douglas recalls, “then finally he looks over and goes ‘far out.’”

He Tried to Get an HBO Show
Sometime in the late ’90s or early 2000s, Dylan decided he wanted to star in a slapstick comedy on HBO. Larry Charles, who at the time had been a main writer on Seinfeld and Mad About You (and who’d go on to direct Borat), got a call to meet with him. That led to a bizarre meeting with HBO, which involves someone whispering, in reference to Dylan, “he’s like a retarded child.” The whole story, which Charles shared on Pete Holmes’s You Made It Weird podcast, is worth hearing.

He Played Chess With a Stranger to Avoid Other Strangers
Folk singer Todd Snider told The Village Voice an insightful second-hand story: A friend of his played on the same European festival bill as Dylan, and after the concert, the musicians, Dylan included, had to take a ferry back to their hotels. Dylan was surrounded by onlookers and needed an escape. “My friend [who was sitting at a table with a chessboard] walked right up to [Dylan] and said, ‘Bob, we got the chessboard you wanted’ and Bob saw his chance and took it. My buddy got to play silent chess with him the whole trip, and as long as Bob seemed engaged, people seemed to leave him alone.”

He Confused the Replacements With R.E.M.
Bob Mehr’s Trouble Boys: The True Story of the Replacements is one of the best recent rock biographies. It’s also got a great little Dylan story. The Replacements were recording in the same studio in Hollywood as Dylan, then working on Under the Red Sky. And one day, Dylan showed up at the younger band’s session. Mehr quotes engineer Clif Norrell: “He was saying, ‘My kid loves you; my son’s really into your band.’ You could see [the Replacements’] eyes light up, and then Dylan goes, ‘You’re R.E.M., right?’”

He Sulked About Being Called “Byronic”
Dearly departed keyboardist Ian McLagan did a stint in Dylan’s backing band in the early ’80s, an experience he shared in his memoir, All the Rage. Turns out Bob was a tetchy bandleader. Before a gig in Rome, Dylan appears in the band’s dressing room wearing “a black drape jacket with a white high-collar shirt.” McLagan tells him, “You’re looking very Byronic tonight” and is then confused when Dylan stews over the comment for several days. Almost a week later, in Barcelona, Dylan asks, ‘Hey, Ian, at the show in Rome, why did you call me moronic?’”

He Didn’t Much Care for Led Zeppelin
This one also comes from McLagan’s book: During the mid-’70s, McLagan finds himself in a room with Dylan and Led Zeppelin’s infamously brutish manager Peter Grant, where he witnesses the following exchange: “Hello, Bob. I’m Peter Grant, I manage Led Zeppelin.” After a short silence, Dylan replies: “I don’t come to you with my problems.”

He Got His Daves Confused
Dave Stewart of the Eurythmics had invited Dylan to come by his studio in London, and the latter took him up on the offer — or tried to anyway. “He got my address wrong. He went up to this house, rang the doorbell and a woman came to the door. He said, ‘Is Dave here?’ and her husband was called Dave, so she said, ‘No, he’s at work’ and Bob was going, ‘He’s at work? That’s funny, I thought I was supposed to come around here.’… By the time he got round to my place he was really flustered … he’s a funny chap.”