Bob Dylan’s Friend Said the Musician Was a ‘Very Lonely Man’ With ‘so Few’ People to Talk to

One of Bob Dylan’s longtime friends was Liam Clancy of the Irish folk band The Clancy Brothers. He followed the group around when he first moved to New York to study their performance style. As time went on, he grew close with Clancy. When discussing his old friend, Clancy provided a glum analysis of Dylan’s life, noting that he was a very lonely person. 

Bob Dylan’s childhood friend said most of the people around Dylan were employees

Another longtime friend of Dylan was Louis Kemp, who Dylan met at summer camp as a teenager. They remained friends after Dylan found success in his music career.

“I would say Larry [Kegan, another camper] 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.”

After Kegan’s death in 2001, however, Kemp and Dylan grew more distant. While Kemp said they were still friendly, they fell out of touch. According to Kemp, Dylan wasn’t left with many close friends.

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

Bob Dylan’s friend Liam Clancy said the singer was a lonely person

When Dylan moved to New York in 1961, he became a fan of The Clancy Brothers and followed them to various performances in Greenwich Village. 

“I got to be friends with Liam and began going after-hours to the White Horse Tavern on Hudson Street, which was mainly an Irish bar frequented mostly by guys from the old country,” Dylan said, per Irish Central. “All through the night, they would sing drinking songs, country ballads, and rousing rebel songs that would lift the roof.”

Clancy said they got along well because of their similar upbringings. Dylan was from Minnesota, and Clancy was from County Tipperary, but they were both able to find a sense of community in New York.

“People who were trying to escape repressed backgrounds, like mine and Bob Dylan’s, were congregating in Greenwich Village,” he said, per The New York Times. “It was a place you could be yourself, where you could get away from the directives of the people who went before you, people who you loved but who you knew had blinkers on.”

They were close, but Clancy said Dylan lacked many good friends.

“A very lonely man,” Clancy said. “So few people left in the world, I suppose, that he [can] talk to.”

Tom Petty once spoke about his friendship with the ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ singer

Though both Kemp and Clancy described him as lonely, Dylan did have friends. Tom Petty, who toured with Dylan and worked with him in The Traveling Wilburys, shared what it was like to be friends with the musician. 

“I’ll tell you this about him: I saw a lot of people running circles around Bob, being afraid of him, or afraid to say what was on their mind,” Petty said, per American Songwriter. “Trying to anticipate what he was trying to say or do. I always found that if I asked Bob a direct question, I would get a direct answer. So maybe our friendship wasn’t that difficult, because I made up my mind that I would treat him like anybody else. Though I was certainly in awe of his talent. But people are just people.”