Early in his career, Bob Dylan sang about peace, but he didn’t always practice it in his personal life, as indicated by his attitude toward director Woody Allen. Dylan was prone to aggression, according to those who knew him in the early 1960s. At a party, seemingly out of nowhere, the musician mentioned wanting to attack Allen if he was there. This might not have had to do with an actual dislike of the director, though.
In the mid-1960s, The Rolling Stone’ Brian Jones was at a party with his friend Stash when Dylan approached them in the bathroom. He surprised them with his aggression toward Allen, who was, perhaps luckily for him, not in attendance.
“You know what I’d do if Woody Allen was here?” Dylan asked, per 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.”
According to Stash, Dylan was prone to bouts of aggression like this.
“Dylan was extremely aggressive,” he said, “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.”
If Dylan did dislike Allen, he was not the only celebrity to feel this way. Actor and director Orson Welles once famously spoke about his dislike of the director.
“I hate Woody Allen … He has the Chaplin disease. That particular combination of arrogance and timidity sets my teeth on edge,” Welles once said, per Esquire. “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, who Dylan greatly admired, felt similarly. His ex-wife, Mia Farrow, confided in him after learning about Allen’s relationship with her daughter, Soon-Yi Previn, and the allegations of his abusive behavior toward her daughter, Dylan. Sinatra allegedly offered to handle the situation.
“Frank wanted him f***ing clipped,” Sinatra’s friend Len Triola told Allen’s biographer David Evanier, per the Daily Mail. “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].”
While Dylan allegedly told Jones and Stash that he wanted to fight Allen, his vendetta against the director wasn’t necessarily a long-lasting one. According to Dylan’s friends, he could be mean after he rose to fame. He lashed out against his friends and isolated himself as protection against the increasingly weighty pressures of fame. He may have picked random targets of his ire, like Allen and Southern, as a way to ward off people trying to get close to him.
During this time period, Dylan also admitted to heavy drug use. This would have fed any aggressive behavior.