Man behind the myth: Little-known facts about Bob Dylan

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.

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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).

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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.

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He made 'Rainy Day Women #12 & 35' in one take - Dylan was famous for single-take recordings, including this number two hit.

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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.

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Dylan loves a good cherry pie - His usual order in his high school cafeteria was cherry pie á la mode.

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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…

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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.

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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.’

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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.

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The legendary Bob Dylan was a frat boy - Before dropping out of the University of Minnesota, he pledged to the Sigma Alpha Mu fraternity.

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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.

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He was in a Victoria’s Secret commercial - In 2004, Dylan could be spotted in the women’s lingerie advertisement accompanying supermodel Adriana Lima.

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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."

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‘Like a Rolling Stone’ began as an epic - It was allegedly between six and 22 pages long.

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He married a Playboy bunny - Sara Lownds, his first wife, worked at a Playboy club in New York.

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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.”

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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).

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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He’s a born-again Christian - He took a three-month course at the Vineyard School of Discipleship in 1978.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.”

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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.”

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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.’

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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.

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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.

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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.’

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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.

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