When Bob Dylan first arrived in New York, friends found him pleasant, if a bit odd, but their opinion of him shifted when he got “mean.” According to his friends, the change in Dylan occurred when he became famous. While Dylan came across as condescending, the personality shift likely had something to do with his discomfort with his success. Dylan was never at ease with his fame, which made him lash out.
Bob Dylan could be mean and condescending to his friends
When Dylan first moved to New York, many of the people he met were already established musicians. When he found fame, he started criticizing their careers. He called The Rolling Stones’ Brian Jones talentless, told folk singer Phil Ochs that he wasn’t a musician, and patronizingly told Dave Van Ronk to give up the blues in order to make money.
According to Van Ronk, Dylan often got away with this because of how famous he was.
“By that point,” Van Ronk said, per the book The Ballad of Bob Dylan: A Portrait by Daniel Mark Epstein, “he had gotten used to everybody applauding any idea that came into his head.”
Bob Dylan got mean when he became famous
Dylan’s friends noted that he became a very different person after he became famous.
“When he got famous around then, he got kinda mean,” Jack Elliot told Rolling Stone in 1972. “He was very quick, very sarcastic, dealt with people like a boxer, parrying blows and remarks and skipping out in a hurry.”
He wanted to come out on top in a conversation, even if it meant hurting another person.
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“But it was just devastating, the way he could twist somebody’s words back on themselves and make them feel he was right and they were wrong,” Carla Rotolo said.
While it does not excuse his behavior, Dylan uses cruelty as a defense mechanism. He did not like the way fame opened his life up to onlookers, so he lashed out when people got too close. Joan Baez, his girlfriend, said that his stage fright often manifested itself in random bursts of anger. He didn’t know how to handle celebrity, which made him act out.
“It scared him,” Van Ronk said. “He never trusted anybody in his life. Now there were a lot more people grabbing at him, to mistrust.”
He didn’t soften with age
At this point, Dylan has been famous for 60 years. According to his road manager, though, he didn’t soften with age and experience.
“He’s crankier now by far,” Victor Maymudes said ahead of Dylan’s 60th birthday, per the book Down the Highway by Howard Sounes. “No, he’s miserable. He’s miserable as f***.”
Maymudes noted that Dylan’s fame continued to wear on him over the years.
“He’s doing the best he can with his life,” he said. “He is forced to live a weird kind of life because of the impact he’s had. All his fears and phobias are enlarged by the success. It didn’t help him overcome them, it made everything worse.”
