Bob Dylan Hurt Himself in a Motorcycle Accident, but He Reportedly Wasn’t Riding It at the Time
In 1966, news broke that Bob Dylan had been badly injured in a motorcycle accident, but nobody seemed to know the details. Nearly 60 years later, details about the accident are still muddy. Dylan hasn’t spoken much about it, but others have divided themselves into two camps. Some say the accident left the musician with serious injuries, while others doubt it ever happened. According to Dylan biographer Daniel Mark Epstein, the musician did have an accident, but not in the way people might think.
Bob Dylan hurt himself in a motorcycle accident
In 1966, Dylan retreated from public life after a motorcycle accident. Details about his injuries were few and far between, but, according to Epstein, the accident was nowhere as severe as people thought.
“There was a motorcycle, and there was a very weary, clumsy poet who wanted to ride on it,” Epstein wrote. “He said he had not slept in three days. The dusty, disused vehicle was in [Dylan’s manager] Albert Grossman’s garage in Bearsville, not ready to be mounted because the tires were flat. Bob Dylan was walking the heavy motorcycle from Grossman’s drive down Striebel Road toward Glasco Turnpike, where he would get the bike repaired, and [his wife] Sara was following him in the car. Somehow Dylan lost his balance on the slippery road and the motorcycle fell on him. That’s how he got hurt. That was the motorcycle accident.”
After the accident, Dylan and his wife did not call the police or an ambulance. He recovered at a nearby doctor’s home and managed to avoid publicity.
The accident might have been mostly symbolic
We may never know what actually happened with Dylan’s accident, but he seemed to admit that it was more of a symbolic crash than a literal one. He had recently risen to massive fame and had spent a long period of time on the road, away from his family. He also admitted to feeling extremely worn out from drug use.
“I was on the road for almost five years,” he told Rolling Stone in 1969. “It wore me down. I was on drugs, a lot of things. A lot of things just to keep going, you know? And I don’t want to live that way anymore.”
Dylan was running himself ragged, and the accident, regardless of how severe, presented itself as a way out. He had worn himself down and needed a break.
“[I] still didn’t sense the importance of that accident till at least a year after that,” he said. “I realized that it was a real accident.”
Bob Dylan has been accused of lying about more than just his motorcycle accident
Over the years, Dylan has faced accusations of lying about more than just his accident. He told a reporter that he had fallen out of contact with his parents when he was, in reality, putting them up in a hotel so they could see his concert. He has told stories of joining the circus, running away from home, and his complicated family life. According to one Dylan biographer, much of his memoir, Chronicles: Volume One was pure fabrication.
“Jesus Christ, as far as I can tell almost everything in the Oh Mercy section of Chronicles is a work of fiction,” Clinton Heylin said, per Rolling Stone. “I enjoy Chronicles as a work of literature, but it has a much basis in reality as [Dylan’s 2003 film] Masked And Anonymous, and why shouldn’t it? He’s not the first guy to write a biography that’s a pack of lies.“
