Bob Dylan Responds To Backup Dancer Who Says She Was Told Not To Make Eye Contact

It was true a few weeks ago, and it’s still true today: Dylan be tweetin’. Yes, the real Bob Dylan is posting messages to his formerly management-controlled account on x dot com. The other day he tweeted about attending a Nick Cave concert in Paris, which is not as mind-blowing a thought as Bob Dylan going to see Metallica twice but is still pretty cool: “Saw Nick Cave in Paris recently at the Accor Arena and I was really struck by that song Joy where he sings ‘We’ve all had too much sorrow, now it the time for joy.’ I was thinking to myself, yeah that’s about right.” This means, as one intrepid social media user pointed out, that Dylan has now seen Black Country, New Road in concert too (assuming he showed up to the Cave show early enough to see the opener). Gonna need his thoughts on that band on the TL please.

In response to the Cave tweet, a woman named Cheryl Henry shared a story about a time when she was working as a backup dancer for Dylan at the 1991 Grammys. It almost reads like a poem:

My Joy was taken away after rehearsing as one of
the Backup dancers for your set on the Grammys
in NYC 1991
We all had to walk single file to exit
thru the backstage area, past the dressing rooms
where you were standing wearing a hooded black robe,
kinda like the boxers used to wear
& you said to me as I passed you
“Now don’t you go cutting that long red hair of yours
before tomorrow night”
By the time I reached the exit door at Radio City
I had been told not to return
Nadine (who was running things) had told us all
before NOT to make eye contact with you !
I guess I snuck a peek as I passed you !
I had a letter with me also from an old friend of yours
Katherine Perry who knew you in your West Village days
It wasn’t meant to be Gemini Man….

Dylan wrote back, “Saw your reply. Just want you to know I’ve never told anybody not to make eye contact with me. That is just ridiculous. And the next time you see me please look straight into my eyes.” Henry then acquitted him of any wrongdoing: “I knew it wasn’t coming from you ! I look forward to it ! XXXX OOOO” There’s no accounting for tone on social media, and I’d like to be charitable in my interpretation, but “next time you see me please look straight into my eyes” is a weird overcorrection, no?

In other Dylan news, Rolling Stone’s cover story on Timothée Chalamet and the upcoming biopic A Complete Unknown reveals that Dylan, who personally annotated the screenplay, slipped a totally inaccurate scene into the movie. According to director James Mangold, when he pressed Dylan about what the public might think about the deliberate falsehood, Dylan replied, “What do you care what other people think?” You can read that whole story here.