Bob Dylan Once Kicked a Club Owner Out of His Own Venue for Looking at Him

In his career, Bob Dylan has played hundreds of different venues, but he made a less-than-stellar impression at a club in Boston. The singer, who has a reputation for his spiky temperament, interpreted a look from the club owner as an act of aggression. While he initially refused to perform altogether, the venue was able to strike a deal with the singer.

The ‘Tangled Up in Blue’ singer grew weary of touring early in his career

Roughly five years into his music career, Dylan began to tire of life on the road. He’d found high levels of success in a relatively short period and was constantly touring. He had a young family, and his time away from home strained him.

“I was on the road for almost five years,” he said in 1969, per Rolling Stone. “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.”

After a motorcycle accident, Dylan retreated entirely from public life, taking a step back from touring for several years.

Bob Dylan didn’t want a club owner to stay at his own venue

Dylan eventually began to tour again, embracing it with gusto. Since the 1980s, he has been on the popularly-coined Never Ending Tour, only taking a break for the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. He was preparing for a concert in Boston when a perceived slight led him to threaten to cancel the show altogether. 

Club owner Steve Adelman saw Dylan in the stairwell of the Avalon club. Adelman had met many famous musicians in his career, so he only glanced at Dylan when they passed each other. Per The Beacher, Adelman’s assistant soon informed him that Dylan wanted to cancel the show because of a “‘run-in’ he had with someone who fit Adelman’s description.” 

After a meeting between the club’s production manager and Dylan’s tour manager, they reached a solution, though not one that was advantageous for Adelman. Dylan would play the show as planned as long as Adelman left the club. To avoid further problems, Adelman left without seeing Dylan perform at his venue.   

Bob Dylan was upset when his tour staff didn’t talk to him at shows across several venues

In a move that likely aimed to avoid situations like the one at Adelman’s club, Dylan’s concert promoter Bill Graham once told tour staff not to speak to the singer.

“Before we went out, I got the whole tour staff together in San Francisco and I said, ‘You know, this is Bob Dylan,’” Graham wrote in the book Bill Graham Presents: My Life Inside Rock and Out. “‘I don’t think he’s the kind of guy who wants you to say to him every day, ‘Hi, Bob! How you doin’? What’s goin’ on?’ Please try to understand that and give him some respect for his privacy.”

After several shows, though, Dylan got lonely.

“The tour started,” he said. “In the third or fourth city in the middle of the night, someone knocked on the door of my hotel room. I opened the door and it was Bob. He came in. I could see he had a problem. I said, ‘Is everything OK, Bob? Something’s wrong?’ He said, ‘Bill. Why isn’t anybody talking to me?’”