Bob Dylan wanted to punch Woody Allen and “knock his glasses off”
In the early 1960s, Bob Dylan rose to prominence as a protest singer, surging in Woody Guthrie’s slipstream. Much of the young performer’s outrage was angled towards warmongering politicians, most directly conveyed in tracks like ‘Masters of War’ and ‘Talkin’ World War III Blues’. Despite this plea for peace, however, Dylan was no stranger to violent confrontations.
Like John Lennon, Dylan undermined his worldview in a handful of violent outbursts throughout his career. Ostensibly, the pressure of global fame and the quest for consistency under the beady public eye can make for a rather short temper.
Dylan once showed his aggressive side when attending a party in the mid-1960s. During the party, the ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ singer walked over to The Rolling Stones co-founder Brian Jones and his friend, Stash. Dylan allegedly gave his embittered opinion of the American filmmaker Woody Allen.
“You know what I’d do if Woody Allen was here?” Dylan asked, according to the book Brian Jones: The Making of the Rolling Stones by Paul Trynka. “Punch him in the face, knock his glasses off, and tread on them.”
“Dylan was extremely aggressive,” Stash noted, “way, way out there. He would corner you, jab his finger into your chest, and he would go on and on with this amazing rap. Then he’d try to enlist you in a vendetta. He’d have these passing whims, like a hatred of Woody Allen or Terry Southern — ‘let’s all get him,’ all of it like a whirlwind.”
Although Dylan’s rage appeared unwarranted in the party setting, it was surely based on some prior contact between him and Allen. The legendary director Orson Welles once offered a similarly cutting character reference for his peer.
“I hate Woody Allen … He has the Chaplin disease. That particular combination of arrogance and timidity sets my teeth on edge,” Welles once said. “He is arrogant. Like all people with timid personalities, his arrogance is unlimited. Anybody who speaks quietly and shrivels up in company is unbelievably arrogant.”
Frank Sinatra also held bitter feelings toward Allen. The crooner heard from his former partner Mia Farrow, whom Allen also dated in the 1980s, that Allen was abusive to her daughter Soon-Yi Previn in their subsequent relationship and marriage. The 53-year-old Previn remains married to an 88-year-old Allen today.
“Frank wanted him fucking clipped,” Sinatra’s friend Len Triola once told Allen’s biographer David Evanier. “Taken out. That’s what he wanted. Frank loved Mia. He spoke to three people every day [his wife Barbara, his daughter Nancy, and Farrow].”
Watch Bob Dylan confront one of Donovan’s groupies in a clip from 1965 below.
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