To some, he's "a complete unknown" . . . but one famous ex knows all about Bob Dylan's behavior backstage, at the height of his fame—and she says "tantrums" were not uncommon.
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00:00To some, he's a complete unknown, but one famous ex knows all about Bob Dylan's behavior
00:04backstage at the height of his fame, and she says tantrums were not uncommon.
00:09Lies. Lies and rubbish.
00:12In May 1965, folk singer Joan Baez wrote a letter to her sister while on tour in England
00:16with her boyfriend Bob Dylan, and told her that things were falling apart. Baez wrote
00:20that Dylan had become so unbelievably unmanageable that she couldn't stand to be around him.
00:25She added that everyone traveling with him was going mad while he was having his frequent
00:28tantrums.
00:29He's better than you.
00:30Yeah.
00:31All right?
00:32Right away, I hate him.
00:33He's all right. I like him, anyway.
00:35At least some of these bursts of anger before shows were, in Baez's opinion, related to
00:39Dylan's unusual version of stage fright. She once told Rolling Stone,
00:42He never had the traditional stage fright the way I did. He was always bopping around
00:46writing songs. But it would come out in another way, a sudden furious tantrum because his
00:50coat was stolen one time.
00:52Before the English tour, when the two were still doing well, Dylan had a meltdown when
00:55his favorite jacket — Baez called it a horrible little coat — disappeared before
00:59a show. It's unclear which coat exactly Baez was referring to, as a few seem to match the
01:04general description. Whichever one it was, Baez hated it. She says it was brown, vomit-stained,
01:09smelled horrible, and the sleeves were too short. But Dylan loved it.
01:13Baez told Rolling Stone,
01:14I'm sure to this day he thinks I must have stolen it. I was really working on him, trying
01:18to get him to get rid of that jacket.
01:19When the couple returned to their dressing room before a concert, Dylan's jacket had
01:24He lost it, acting like a 5-year-old, screaming at the police, their entourage, and Baez,
01:28she recalled. She chalked it up to performance-related tension. That night, though, was the worst
01:33she'd seen.
01:34Dylan, wild-eyed with fury, sent everyone except Baez scurrying, she recalled. She talked
01:39him down, and he gave a brilliant performance that night.
01:46The couple split up in the spring of 1965, but remained friends. Dylan would finally
01:50apologize for his behavior toward her more than 40 years later.
01:54Dylan met Baez in 1961, shortly after he'd arrived in New York City to pursue his music
01:58in the city's burgeoning folk scene, as depicted in the biopic A Complete Unknown, starring
02:02Timothee Chalamet as Dylan and Monica Barbaro as Baez. Baez was already a folk star with
02:07a hit record under her belt by the time they met, and she helped popularize Dylan.
02:11The two dated and toured together for several years, with Dylan rising from obscure folky
02:15to rock stardom by the mid-1960s. By the spring of 1965, when Baez flew to England
02:20with Dylan for his tour, their relationship had become strained to the breaking point.
02:24So it's possible that his angry outbursts before performing may have been related to
02:28their disintegrating bond. Or maybe he just really loved that horrible little coat.