The 10 Sins of Bob Dylan

I just finished reading the best Dylan bio ever (surpassing previous title holder Clinton Heylin's Bob Dylan: Behind the Shades), Brit journalist Howard Sounes' Down the Highway: The Life of Bob Dylan (2001). Based on painstaking new research, including the real dope on Dylan's myth-stoked 1967 motorcycle accident, it really details the human side of Bobby Zimmermen, especially his womanizing - there's even a suggestion that his embrace of Christianity in the 80s was partly because of his affairs with his born again Soul Sista backup singers Clydie King, Carole Childs, and Carolyn Dennis (who he secretly married, divorced, and had a love child with).

Though I'm a true Dylan fan, I learned some rather unsavory things about my hero. Nobody's perfect, I know that. It's like Sir Mick once sang, "Every cop is a criminal, and all the sinners saints." I don't put anybody on a pedestal. But the following are such egregious and heinous wrongs that I must set the record right by deeming them...

The Top 10 Sins of Bob Dylan:

1. "Ballad In Plain D"
Dylan's diatribe against the Rotolo sisters, ex-girlfriend Suze and her "parasite" sister Carla, was the one song Dylan regretted writing. Inspired by his anger following an ugly breakup with Suze at Carla's apartment, it hung its dirty laundry out to dry on 1964's Another Side of Bob Dylan. In the liner notes to 1985's Biograph box set, Dylan admitted that "It was a mistake to record it and I regret it." The closest he came to an apology, apparently.

2. Wanton Womanizing
Ah, Dylan's labrynthine love life...it obviously inspired him, as many women played the part of his muse, but it also taxed him - quite literally. His two divorces -from "Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands" Sara Lowndes in '77 and backup singer Carolyn Dennis in '92 - cost him many the pretty penny an no doubt had something to do with his relentless touring schedule (touring providing both an escape from the troubles at home and mucho moolah with which to pay alimony and child support - not to mention opportunities for more "road women" affairs and future palimony suits!) It was Dylan's infidelity that cost him first Echo Star Helstrom ("Girl From the North Country"), cheerleader-cute Bonnie Beecher (another candidate for the real "Girl From the North Country"), Suze Rotolo (who was so upset by his flagrant affair with Joan Baez that she attempted suicide and, later, chose to have an abortion when pregnant with Bob's child), Sad-Eyed Sara Lownds, and Joan Baez (who only found out that Dylan had dumped her when Sara answered the door to his room in 1965).

3. Trading Elvis for a Sofa
Andy Warhol gave Dylan an original silk screen of his famous cowboy Elvis painting, but Dylan hated it, first hanging it upside down in his home, then putting it in a cupboard before finally trading it to manager Albert Grossman - FOR A SOFA! Grossman knew a sweet swindle when he saw it (like the contracts he signed with Dylan and The Band), and eventually sold the Warhol at auction for $750,000! Hope that sofa offers state-of-the-art comfort, Bob!

4. Horace Freeland Judson
There are many cruel scenes in Dont Look Back, D. A. Pennebaker's documentary about Dylan's 1965 European tour - the patronization of fellow troubadour Donovan, the cold shoulder given Joan Baez, the drunken party at London's Savoy Hotel suite party - but none more mean-spirited than the assault on Time reporter Horace Freeland Judson, who Dylan rips apart as if he were the clueless Mr. Jones himself from "Ballad of a Thin Man." It's painful to watch. Dylan the rock star is a total dick to a guy just doing his job. What would Woody think?(Reporter Rant Runner-up: The Silver Medal for Media Surliness surely goes to Dylan's Swedish Radio Interview from the same tour).

5. Joan Baez
Dylan asked, "How many roads must a man go down, before he can call himself a man?" Joan should have asked, "How many doors must be shut in your face before you get a clue that hie doesn't care for you?" Poor Joan. She helped Dylan get early folk creds when she brought him on her tours and shared her bed and home with him when he stayed with her in Monterey. And in return? He asked her to join him on his 1965 Dont Look Back tour, then gave her the total cold shoulder, insulted her by never asking her to join in on stage, and made fun of her with his sycophantic cronies (Bobby Neurith chief among them). It eventually was enough to send her back home crying. Even then Joan didn't get it. Hearing that Bob had taken ill in Italy, she went to his hotel room only to have the door answered by Sara - the girlfriend he neglected to tell Joan (or anybody for that matter) about. Oopsie! It would be 10 years before the two saw each other again, this time for the Rolling Thunder Revue and Dylan's cinematic messterpiece, Renaldo and Clara, in which Joan had to act alongside Mrs. Dylan, Sara Lowndes. Glutton for punishment, Joan?

6. Eating the Documents
Dylan cut up the 1966 European tour footage filmed by D.A. Pennebaker, without allowing Penny to make a duplicate print to preserve the valuable historical (and musical concert) footage for posterity. Dylan the Auteur's disjointed mess of a "home movie," Eat the Document, was a bust. Rejected by NBC, which had originally planned to air it as a TV documentary, it took Martin Scorcese to finally salvage and properly edit the footage for his excellent 2005 documentary No Direction Home. Thanks Marty! On a similar note, Renaldo and Clara remains the best record of Dylan's 1975-1976 Rolling Thunder Revue tour, but Dylan had to turn in an artsy-fartsy, imcomprehensible 4-hour "messterpiece" that is, by most accounts, completely unwatchable. Even Dylan fans can't sit through it. Leave the directing to the pros, Bob! They don't tell you how to play music, do they?

7. Love and Theft
Dylan was once asked jokingly at a press conference, "Do you think you'll ever be hung as a horse thief?" It was a funny line, until you consider that in real life, Dylan the record-lover was twice caught stealing people's record collections. When Dylan was in college and living in Minneapolis' Bohemian Dinkytown, he stole his friend Jon Pankake's valuable Harry Smith-curated Anthology of American Folk Music collection. And when he was staying in Denver in 1960, he stole singer Walt Conley's albums and was busted by the police. Charges were dropped by a forgiving Conley, and Dylan hitch-hiked back East. Dave Van Ronk described the early Dylan as a snorer, a Yiddish word for "professional mooch," and this early behavior more than justifies that characterization.

8. Dave Van Ronk
Dylan lifted Dave Van Ronk's arrangement - the one he taught the kid himself! - of "House of the Risin' Sun" for inclusion on his first album and recorded it before Van Ronk's version came out. Van Ronk asked his friend not to record it before his own version came out, but Dylan did and Van Ronk was miffed. Van Ronk eventually forgave him when Eric Burdon and The Animals copped Dylan's version for their hit single version.

9. Liam Clancy's Girlfriend
Dylan's friendship with the Clancy Brothers dated back to his fledgling folk coffeehouse days in Greenwich Village. In 1992, after the Clancy Brothers performed as part of a Dylan 30th Anniversary Concert Celebration in New York, Liam Clancy asked Bob if he ever screwed Liam's girlfriend Cathy while the Brothers were on the road. Dylan hemmed and hawed but finally admitted he did. "Man, she loved you. But she was so lonesome...and...I did comfort her." Some friend. Too old (or drunk) to fight about it, Liam just handed Dylan a guitar and made him sing an Irish folk song for pennance.

10. Faridi McFree
Dylan boinked ex-wife Sara's Nanny, Faridi McFree, the very day the news broke that his divorce was settled. Sara was vacationing with the kids in Hawaii at the time and McFree was home house-sitting for her. Dylan later dropped McFree to insure that Sara, who felt betrayed by her ingrate Nanny, would give him visitation rights with his children. This one hit just a little too close to home.

Related Links:
Bob Dylan's Girlfriends