100 Funny Bob Dylan Moments

Met Prince Phillip at the home of the blues HOUSE OF BLUES

Then had burgers at the Hard Rock Cafe nearby.

So House of blues does bad burgers?

93. the "World's Greatest Grandpa" bumper sticker he purchases in Chronicles Volume One

(less ha-ha funny than endearing-funny, if that makes sense)

94. Handy dandy, if every bone in his body was broken he would never admit it
He got an all girl orchestra and when he says strike up the band, they hit it

96.
PLAYBOY: Mistake or not, what made you decide to go the rock-'n'-roll route?

DYLAN: Carelessness. I lost my one true love. I started drinking. The first thing I know, I'm in a card game. Then I'm in a crap game. I wake up in a pool hall. Then this big Mexican lady drags me off the table, takes me to Philadelphia. She leaves me alone in her house, and it burns down. I wind up in Phoenix. I get a job as a Chinaman. I start working in a dime store, and move in with a 13-year-old girl. Then this big Mexican lady from Philadelphia comes in and burns the house down. I go down to Dallas. I get a job as a "before" in a Charles Atlas "before and after" ad. I move in with a delivery boy who can cook fantastic chili and hot dogs. Then this 13-year-old girl from Phoenix comes and burns the house down. The delivery boy - he ain't so mild: He gives her the knife, and the next thing I know I'm in Omaha. It's so cold there, by this time I'm robbing my own bicycles and frying my own fish. I stumble onto some luck and get a job as a carburetor out at the hot-rod races every Thursday night. I move in with a high school teacher who also does a little plumbing on the side, who ain't much to look at, but who's built a special kind of refrigerator that can turn newspaper into lettuce. Everything's going good until that delivery boy shows up and tries to knife me. Needless to say, he burned the house down, and I hit the road. The first guy that picked me up asked me if I wanted to be a star. What could I say?

PLAYBOY: And that's how you became a rock-'n'-roll singer?

DYLAN: No, that's how I got tuberculosis.

Good one, though #96 = #6.

haha, my bad ... here's another good one from the same interview

DYLAN: The thing that most people don't realize is that it's warmer to have long hair. Everybody wants to be warm. People with short hair freeze easily. Then they try to hide their coldness, and they get jealous of everybody that's warm. Then they become either barbers or Congressmen. A lot of prison wardens have short hair. Have you ever noticed that Abraham Lincoln's hair was much longer than John Wilkes Booth's?

PLAYBOY: Do you think Lincoln wore his hair long to keep his head warm?

DYLAN: Actually, I think it was for medical reasons, which are none of my business.

97. "See the primitive wallflower freeze
When the jelly-faced women all sneeze
Hear the one with the mustache say, "Jeeze
I can't find my knees""

come on ppl, just three more

j/k

98. Weberman interview http://www.interferenza.com/bcs/interw/weberman.htm
DYLAN: (breath) **Le** those two sentences, man. I don't get them at all. I don't understand them, even --

WEBERMAN: -- why, if you do, I might gain a soul --

DYLAN: Yeah, well, that's shit -- those last two sentences. I don't think I said that.

WEBERMAN: Yes, you did. That's just what you said, man. You said, You re not gonna get into my life -- I said, 'Why?' -- * then you said, 'If you do, I might gain a soul.'

DYLAN: I don't understand that, do you?

WEBERMAN: (pause) Uhh -- I don't know -- I don't know -- it could be looked at in a number of ways, man -- you could *** --

DYLAN: Yeah, why don't you -- d'why don t you take it out of your article and look at it in a number of ways -- and let s d'uh -- you know, and -- and roll it around awhile -- and then when you -- when we know what it means -- why don't you tell me, and then -- ah, let's see if it's worth putting in an article --

WEBERMAN: (pause) Uh** --

99.

100. Three decades later, A.J., now fifty-five, his once-wild
mane receded to silver fringe (but still talking very fast),
recalls the incident, one of the more colorful in the often
drearily hagiographic Dylanological chronicles: "I'd agreed
not to hassle Dylan anymore, but I was a publicity-hungry
motherfucker. . . . I went to MacDougal Street, and Dylan's
wife comes out and starts screaming about me going through
the garbage. Dylan said if I ever fucked with his wife, he'd
beat the shit out of me. A couple of days later, I'm on
Elizabeth Street and someone jumps me, starts punching me.

"I turn around and it's like -- Dylan. I'm thinking, 'Can
you believe this? I'm getting the crap beat out of me by Bob
Dylan!' I said, 'Hey, man, how you doin'?' But he keeps
knocking my head against the sidewalk. He's little, but he's
strong. He works out. I wouldn't fight back, you know,
because I knew I was wrong. He gets up, rips off my 'Free
Bob Dylan' button and walks away. Never says a word.

"The Bowery bums were coming over, asking, 'How much he
get?' Like I got rolled. . . . I guess you got to hand it to
Dylan, coming over himself, not sending some fucking lawyer.
That was the last time I ever saw him, except once with one
of his kids, maybe Jakob, and he said, 'A.J. is so ashamed
of his Jewishness, he got a nose job,' which was true -- at
least in the fact that I got a nose job. . . ."

"The sun's not yellow/it's chicken"

101. http://consequenceofsound.net/2009/05/13/bob-dylan-makes-surprise-appearance-on-beatles-tour/

^^^^^Apparently he also visited Neil Young's boyhood home when he was in Canada recently.

Peter Grant: Mr. Dylan, my name is Peter Grant. I'm Led Zeppelin's manager.
Dylan: I don't come to you with MY problems, do I?

- at a party or backstage or somewhere, mid-'70s

103. "Mona tried to tell me
To stay away from the train line.
She said that all the railroad men
Just drink up your blood like wine.
An' I said, "Oh, I didn't know that,
But then again, there's only one I've met
An' he just smoked my eyelids
An' punched my cigarette."'

http://www.expectingrain.com/jokes.html

I think about the Elston Gunnn anecdote once a week

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RPkJeziNyI&feature=kp

'i sucked the milk out of a thousand cows'

(onscreen, dylan, cow)

Roseanne (Barr) is onstage at the end of Frank Sinatra 80th birthday TV special, and Dylan comes up to her and says "I really liked the way you sang the National Anthem."

bob dylan crisps

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DUdAL0_X0AA3GeK.jpg

"Professor Longhair—I got nothin’ to say about him. We told you about him before, and you know how to look him up in Wikipedia. That’s where he lives – Wikipedia, Louisiana."

"The Three Wise Men–Caspar, Balthazar, and Melchior...three names you don’t hear much any more…well, except for Balthazar."

"Gerry Goffin and Carole King wrote no shortage of good songs. Here's one you might not know. It's performed by that archetypical New York group that kept Atlantic records afloat for many a year, a group that had a number of famous lead singers, and easily made the transition from 50's R&B to 60's soul...of course, I'm talking about Yes. Naw, I'm talking about the Drifters!"

For The New Basement Tapes, T Bone Burnett put together a group with Elvis Costello, Rhiannon Giddens, Jim James, Marcus Mumford and Taylor Goldsmith, to finish songs based on old lyrics of yours. Did you hear any of those songs and say, “I don’t remember writing that?”

Did you say Taylor Swift?

Taylor Goldsmith.

Yeah, OK. No, I don’t remember writing any of those songs.

“How about Ratt?”

https://youtu.be/cntGcbU3nM8

"Fan of Bobby's for a long time...."

"All wrestlers are."

"My wife and I were happy for thirty years. And then we met."

I wrote this awhile back, playing off some things in the newz at the time (posting it here on a quiet Saturday night, to minimize claims of self-promotion): http://kimgordonsrealage.tumblr.com/post/5810288062/bob-dylan-ive-battled-25-a-day-addictions-all

haha those TTRH quotes are hilarious, wish I had the patience to listen through all those episodes

51. Some old David Letterman anniversary show from Radio City Music Hall, where they gave him a tremendous build up and recruited a huge all-star band, and he came out and sang the laziest, slurriest "Like a Rolling Stone" ever. I'm pretty sure he just sang the vowels.

I think it's more kind of lol but mostly sad territory...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YedNVVw8LD0

^ Bob probably had some bad sushi before the show. (What a band, btw!)

i saw bob dylan in the mid-2000s and that was pretty much how he sang all his songs

1987:

At one of the first rehearsals, Dylan showed up late. The band was only able to rehearse some ninety minutes before Stan Lynch let Petty know he had to leave. "Tom was like, 'Fuck. Where do you need to be?'" says Lynch. "And I told him, 'I'm going to see Frank and Sammy tonight at the Greek.' The whole band just starts backing away from me. I mean, literally, it was like 'we don't know him'. This might have even been the first rehearsal. Bob's got his shades on, kind of noticing the conversation but not a part of it. Two minutes later Bob says, "Frank and Sammy?' The room's still dead quiet. 'I love those guys,' he says. I go, 'Well, I have two tickets. Fourth row. And I don't have a date.'" Lynch and Dylan left in the drummer's Jaguar XJS, a twelve-cylinder two-seater. There wasn't room for Dylan to bring security. "I thought Stan was getting brownie points with the new boss," says Mike Campbell. "I was kind of jealous."

Lynch continues: "Then we get to the Greek Theatre, and he tightens his sweatshirt hood around his face. We make our way down to the fourth row. He looks like the Unabomber. But by that point, a few people are realizing that Bob Dylan is there. You can sort of feel the energy. The show starts, and its fucking great. But I kinda got one eye on Bob, one eye on Sammy. Like, 'How's Bob reacting to this? How's Bob reacting to me loving Sammy so much? What's happening here?' The whole thing is odd, with the people around us reacting to how Bob is reacting to Sammy."

At the end of the set, after a standing ovation, Dylan made to leave. Perhaps all the talk about Sammy Davis Jr. had confused things. Lynch, not knowing what to do, grabbed Dylan by the back of his sweatshirt as he started heading toward the aisle, reminding him that Frank was still due to perform. "But now its the intermission," says Lynch, "and I'm pressed for more conversation. Then Cheryl Tiegs, the supermodel, walks by, and its a perfect opener. She's hot! Musicians can only talk about a few things, right? I go 'Cheryl Tiegs, man.' He goes 'Huh? Who?' I say, 'Right there in front of you.' ... And this is where I knew we were going to be friends. He says 'That's way after my time.' I go, 'What?' He says to me, 'I like Ann Margret, Elizabeth Taylor.' He starts naming chicks like that. I say 'Really?' He looks at me, takes his sunglasses off, and says 'Really'".

when bob dylan looks at you and takes off his sunglasses, get ready for a moment

Larry Charles' telling the story of the HBO slapstick comedy series he and Dylan wrote is the best, so many funny parts:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQDTSu8v8QI

I say "I want a hot beverage" in Bob's voice to my wife about once a week.

And she says "You ain't him..."

More like rolls her eyelids and punches my cigarette.

In the same category, there's Carrie Fisher's story about how she met Dylan: he calls her up out of the blue and she assumes it's to ask her out, but no, it's because a company has asked him to endorse a cologne and he thinks she might have some good ideas for cologne names. "Do I look like somebody who would be walking around with a bunch of cologne names rattling around in my head? Well, tragically, I did." He also tells her he's thinking about opening a beauty salon.

That's a great story

That Letterman performance upthread is pretty bad, but it's absolutely hamstrung by the shitty video recording. Here's a far better version without the flutter on the audio ("like a bee singing into a fan" as one comment put it):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LaNXwqLFnc

I guarantee you won’t see this one coming pic.twitter.com/wygC15Qcpy

— Jordan Hoffman (@jhoffman) January 13, 2021

In his new WTF interview, Rick Rubin tells a story where Bob Dylan, George Harrison, and Tom Petty are writing a Traveling Wilburys' song together. Harrison leaves for a minute, and Dylan leans over to Petty and whispers, completely seriously, "You know, he was in the Beatles."

— Luke Epplin (@LukeEpplin) July 19, 2021

Also the Modern Lovers

Peter Grant: Mr. Dylan, my name is Peter Grant. I'm Led Zeppelin's manager.
Dylan: I don't come to you with MY problems, do I?

- at a party or backstage or somewhere, mid-'70s

― I wish he hadn't adapted my critique of his "ilxor" moniker (Myonga Vön Bontee), Wednesday, May 13, 2009 4:09 PM (twelve years ago) bookmarkflaglink

That’s the greatest thing I’ve ever heard.

Dylan clearly channeling Groucho Marx there.

...or maybe George in A Hard Day's Night. something in that vein.

it's all in the mind