Bob Dylan’s Childhood Friend Said the Singer Has Few Friends Left: ‘Most of the People Around Him Are Employees’

Bob Dylan’s close childhood friend grew increasingly distant from the musician in the early 2000s. While he still considers them friends, he said they are not in close contact anymore. According to his friend, Louis Kemp, this is what many of Dylan’s relationships are like now. He spoke a bit about the distance in their friendship but noted that Dylan is still very close with his family. 

The musician values his privacy

Dylan is a notoriously private celebrity, something that people who worked with him were well aware of.

“Being a good tour manager means that you can feel what your artist is comfortable with,” concert promoter Bill Graham wrote in the book Bill Graham Presents: My Life Inside Rock and Out. “Then you build an entire traveling world around him.” 

To make Dylan comfortable, Graham instructed staff not to speak with him.

“Before we went out, I got the whole tour staff together in San Francisco and I said, ‘You know, this is Bob Dylan,'” Graham explained. “‘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.”

Ultimately, though, Dylan knocked on Graham’s door in the middle of the night, concerned about the fact that nobody was talking to him.

Bob Dylan’s friend said he doesn’t have many friends left

Dylan met Kemp and Larry Kegan, two of his closest friends, at a Jewish summer camp when he was a teenager. 

“I would say Larry and I were his best friends, sure,” Kemp said in the book Down the Highway by Howard Sounes. “My friend is Bobby Zimmerman, and I don’t relate to him as Bob Dylan — that professional persona … I was never a fan. I was a friend of Bobby Zimmerman, and that’s a whole different relationship from what most people have.”

In 2001, however, Kemp and Dylan’s relationship grew far more distant. Dylan released his album Love and Theft on Sept. 11, 2001. While Kegan was driving to purchase the album, he had a fatal heart attack. 

“I broke the news to him. We had a long conversation,” Kemp said. “After 2001 we weren’t in touch.”

Kemp did not reveal the reason for the new distance between them, but he said they are still friends, just not in close contact anymore. He said that Dylan has relationships like this with many people.

“Most of the people around him are employees,” Kemp said.

Bob Dylan’s friend said the musician is close with his family

Though Kemp said Dylan does not have many close friendships, he has a tight-knit relationship with his family. He doesn’t often discuss it, but they’re an important part of his life.

“He doesn’t like to bring his family into [the public eye],” Kemp said, adding, “He has always kept it private, as much for their protection as anything. He figured out how to deal with it all better than anybody else I have ever seen who became famous.”