The Truth to Rumors Bob Dylan Got Arrested After Being Mistaken For a Homeless Man
Ever since the Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown was released and became such a success, with Timothée Chalamet hailed for playing Dylan, fans have become much more interested in Dylan’s life. That includes not just his music and his romantic relationships, which were depicted in the biopic, but new stuff that has resurfaced, like the legendary musician’s alleged beef with filmmaker Woody Allen.
But one of the most amusing new reports is that of Dylan allegedly being arrested because he was mistaken for a homeless man. This is, perhaps, particularly funny because one of Dylan’s songs says, “In Jersey, anything’s legal as long as you don’t get caught.” But luck perhaps wasn’t on Dylan’s side on July 23, 2009. Or it was, depending on how you want to look at it.
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The story goes as follows. Dylan was in Long Branch, New Jersey, participating in a national concert tour. It was pouring rain, and Dylan somehow wandered into the yard of a home that had a “For Sale” sing on it, scaring the homeowners into calling the police.
Long Branch police officer Kristie Buble explained it like this. “We got a call for a suspicious person. It was pouring rain outside, and I was right around the corner so I responded. By that time, he was walking down the street. I asked him what he was doing in the neighborhood and he said he was looking at a house for sale.”
“I asked him what his name was and he said, ‘Bob Dylan,’ Buble said. “Now, I’ve seen pictures of Bob Dylan from a long time ago and he didn’t look like Bob Dylan to me at all. He was wearing black sweatpants tucked into black rain boots, and two raincoats with the hood pulled down over his head.”
Hilariously, it’s one of those things that sounds both too hard to believe and too hard not to believe at the same time. “So I said, ‘OK Bob, what are you doing in Long Branch?’ He said he was touring the country with Willie Nelson and John Mellencamp. So now I’m really a little fishy about his story. I did not know what to believe or where he was coming from, or even who he was. We see a lot of people on our beat, and I wasn’t sure if he came from one of our hospitals or something,” Buble said.
Dylan carried no identification but pointed the police officer to his tour buses. Following her training, Buble said she indulged him.
“He was really nice, though, and he said he understood why I had to verify his identity and why I couldn’t let him go,” Buble said. “He asked me if I could drive him back to the neighborhood when I verified who he was, which made me even more suspicious.”
Once there, it was easy to verify who Dylan was. On the account that he was, indeed, Bob Dylan, he was not arrested. And the police officer took a lot of ribbing from her own people.
Dylan, however, has a history of trying to hide his identity, so it’s hard to blame this police officer for her mistake. A complete unknown, indeed. The joke makes itself.
